I am not a fanboy for our current Conservative government by any means, but by no means should the failures in defense procurement be pinned solely on this government. The Conservatives did get it right with their contract procedure for acquiring new vessels for the Royal Canadian Navy, it was independent, devoid of politics, and absolutely fair. In fact the opposition parties, the NDP and Liberals, are holding this as the gold standard to which all procurement should be awarded.
The F35 though is a failure. The failure is not the Conservatives alone to bear. One of the misnomers that comes from this is that the F35 was sole-sourced. Wrong. If one takes the time to read how the F35 project came about, you’ll see that the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) program had two competing planes from two different manufacturers. The Boeing X32 and the Lockheed-Martin X35 were prototypes pitched to the powers that be on the JSF project. The two competed on cost, materials, features, performance and timelines. X35 won as selected by the partners which include countries like the United States, Canada, Norway, Austrailia, Great Britain and others. Then those countries pooled their orders and that’s where we are. The JSF program was first proposed in 1993 by the US Government and in 1997 the Canadian Government first signed on as a partner. Who was Prime Minister of Canada in 1997?
This guy, Jean Chretien. Liberal Prime Minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003. Chretien signed on to the program as a replacement for the CF188 fighters (yes, I used the real name for the Canadian F18′s).
The decision on which plane won the competition was announced in 2001. The X35 outperformed the X32 and so it was chosen. Who was Prime Minister during that time? Jean Chretien.
This is the same Prime Minister who cancelled a program in 1993 to replace aging Sea King helicopters, paid $500 million in cancellation fees only to buy the same helicopter in 2001 for search and rescue duty in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Sure, there have been screwups and personally, I think we could do without the F35′s, the F18 Super Hornets would be a good fit at a much lower cost. Defense analysists state we should have an airforce of about 200 fighter jets for the population and support we need in Canada. 65 F35′s or 200 F18 Super Hornets. I’ll go with 200 planes.
And what about the subs?
Canada bought four used diesel-powered subs from the British Royal Navy in 1998 for 750 Million Dollars. Since then they have seen literally no service. The HMCS Chicoutimi disaster epitomizes the poor defense policy it was to buy some other navy’s junk. 14 years after purchase we still have no subs that operate, except for scraping the bottom of the ocean floor in military accidents.
Who was Prime Minister when the Victoria-class subs were purchased?
Yup same guy.
So who is to blame with the failures of Canadian military procurement? Who is to blame for the F35 being chosen? Who is to blame for the method that the F35 was chosen? Who is to blame for junk submarines that wouldn’t even make it on to an episode of Canadian Pickers?
Yup. That guy.
Originally published on OurHometown.ca
Has bilingualism gone too far in Canada? I believe that it has. Just as many other past inequalities have been over-corrected, the Trudeau-idea of bilingualism has gone from a good idea to blatant discrimination. The comments by Dr. Dany Tombler made last week about bilingual hiring practices at the Cornwall Community Hospital and the subsequent reaction within the community prove, without a doubt, that bilingualism has gone too far.
The idea of bilingualism comes in two forms. First, that service providers such as businesses or government should provide customer service in both English and French so that no one is excluded. The second form is that a population is bilingual enough to be able to work comfortably in either French or English.
Take the 2006 Statistics Canada numbers for the area of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry and the City of Cornwall. Residents who only spoke English accounted for 58 per cent of the population, 40 per cent were bilingual and only two per cent could only speak French. French as a mother-tongue or primary language accounted for 13 per cent of that total.
Residents of this region can function quite well in English and French, with only a very small minority being unable to speak any English. If the population is functionally bilingual with 98 per cent of the residents able to speak English, why are we making a push for agencies and businesses to offer fully-bilingual service? Why did the Cornwall Community Hospital voluntarily ask to be regulated under the French Language Services Act in 2007?
By going this route, the hospital cuts itself off from hiring staff based on merit and skill, which is a dangerous slope to go down. We’ve already seen this over-correction in Ottawa where people working in the public service are limited in job opportunities based on their language. There have been many reports of positions where English-only candidates have been passed over for a candidate who is bilingual, even where it was not a requirement to be bilingual. This is something that many, including this writer, has experienced in the past.
It is not my suggestion that we kick out the French nor should we take an axe to all French services, but let’s be reasonable and come up with better, more practical solutions to providing service. In the case of the Cornwall Community Hospital, why not have designated staff that as part of their job description can provide translation services? This way, the hospital could hire English-only speaking staff, or French-only speaking staff and it would be based on merit and qualifications, not the language they speak. The point has been made recently in many media outlets that if you are sick and need help, the language one gets service in is less relevant than getting treatment. I agree wholeheartedly.
The fact that the hospital voluntarily entered into compliance with the French Languages Services Act, they were not forced into it, is very disturbing to this writer. The hospital Board chose to voluntarily discriminate against those who do not speak French, and for that reason alone I support the actions of the Mayor of South Stormont and their Township Council in withholding their annual contributions to the hospital until this has been resolved. I will go as far as to call for the Mayors and Councils of the other five townships in SD&G to take that same view. Cornwall City Council should also go this route, but won’t because that would mean it would have to admit failure of it’s own bilingualism policy, something that will never be admitted to.
Had the Province or the Federal Government stepped in and mandated or forced the hospital to comply with the French Language Services act, then at that point, you look at the blame falling on those levels of government, but the hospital chose to go down this discriminatory path, and now it will need to deal with those consequences.
No one should be discriminated against, either by race, religion or the language they speak.
Two days later, and I am no longer a Blackberry user. After dealing with Telus Mobility Support agents, and an agent via their Twitter feed, I am through. I have downgraded my service to my wife’s old LG Flip Phone and ditched the malfunctioning Blackberry.
I was not budging on the $150 fee to renew my contract to get a new phone, and they were not budging on making it right their faulty device. Despite my protestations that this was a continuing problem from when it was under warranty and as they did not fix the problem then, they should fix it now.
I was offered a 25% discount on the $150 fee, but was told “you should just take the deal”. I protested and said I would switch to the old phone, “you should just take the deal, how will you do without your Blackberry?”
The agent didn’t like being told that that was none of his business. Same agent refused to transfer me to someone to do that unit swap.
So with 15 months left on my contract, I will be paying the smallest amount on my piece-of-crap LG phone. No more email and no more web on my phone. As soon as my 15 month sentence is up, I will be no longer a Telus customer. My wife’s Blackberry also is due at the same time and that phone will be leaving Telus.
I did phone around to Bell and Rogers, and both offered good deals. Better, in fact, than what Telus wanted.
In 15 months I may not need a cell phone, so who knows what I will use, but it will not be Telus.
This is not my first issue with Telus; it has been five years of issues with Telus. The last time I had a major issue, I had to contact Telus’s executive office and their board of directors in order to get this resolved. These blog postings are being emailed to those same people. If someone from the Executive Office makes it right again, then I may reconsider. But I doubt anyone will.
15 months to go.
Originally published on OurHometown.ca
The announcement by Caterpillar of the closure of their Electro-Motive locomotive plant in London, Ontario last week was a punch in the gut. Not only for the 450 workers who went from lock-out to clean their lockers out, but for the community, the province and the country as a whole. No sooner did the announcement go out, the finger-pointing game began.
PHOTO CREDIT – Kevin Burkholder, Eastern Railroad News
The announcement by Caterpillar of the closure of their Electro-Motive locomotive plant in London, Ontario last week was a punch in the gut. Not only for the 450 workers who went from lock-out to clean their lockers out, but for the community, the province and the country as a whole. No sooner did the announcement go out, the finger-pointing game began.
It was the union’s fault, it was the greedy company’s fault. Blame McGuinty! Blame Harper! Blame everyone, and they should as there is enough blame to go around.
Caterpillar bought Electro-Motive in 2010. With a track-record of moving production from expensive facilities to lower-cost facilities, this move from Caterpillar should not have been a surprise to anyone. When a company starts contract negotiation by stating that everyone has to take a 50% pay cut, they are playing hardball and are prepared to walk.
The Canadian Auto Workers union representing those employees can stand to take some heat here too. For most of the facility’s life, it was owned by General Motors. The same highly-paid union salaries that dragged down costs in GM’s auto production occurred here as well. Union wages rose and rose, the sky is the limit to the land of milk and honey. When business was good, the company could afford to accede the request for more money and benefits. The problem with that is, Electro-Motive may have been the number one company in it’s field for the first 50 years, the last 40 years have been spent as second-fiddle to General Electric. The company is not as cutting edge anymore.
The McGuinty government can carry some blame on two fronts. Not for the Premier’s comments two days prior to the closure announcement, but for both stagnating industry in Ontario, and for a feckless response after the announcement. With a highly skilled, technical manufacturing plant like Electro-Motive, there is no reason why the Ontario government could not have been out helping locate a company to come into that plant and hire some if not all of the workers. How can McGuinty do that with eight years of performance that has put nails in the coffins of manufacturing plants from Cornwall to Sarnia?
The Harper government also has some blame, namely in approving the sale of Electro-Motive to Caterpillar in 2010. With Caterpillar opening new production facilities at the same time as the purchase of Electro-Motive being announced, it does not take a rocket scientist to see that Caterpillar could quite possibly relocate production outside of Canada.
In the end we all lose from this closure, just as we have from closures at Courtalds and Domtar in Cornwall, to Caldwell Linens in Iroquois to Black and Decker in Brockville and so many more plants that have closed in the last 30 years. When we lose the ability to manufacture goods and products ourselves, we become more dependent on foreign interests to do it for us. We lose trades, we lose knowledge, and ability. Losing those is the worst, as once it’s gone, is very hard to get those skill sets and those people back.
I have been a client of Telus Mobility since March of 2007. Since that time I have gone through three phones. First an HTC Starcom 6700 Phone running Windows Mobile, then an Original Motorola Moto Q and finally, my Blackberry Curve 8530. Each time when I’ve had issues with the phone, I have had to fight with Telus to repair, replace or upgrade the phone. I thought after switching to Blackberry in May of 2010, that my issues with phones were over with. I thought wrong.
My bills haven’t been too expensive, and the phone was mostly reliable, in the beginning. Sometimes I’d take a picture, and the phone would reboot. I called Telus support and we’d do a few things and the problem went away. Then the reboots became more frequent. Issues resolved with a few phone calls and some backing up and restoring action on the phone. Then the warranty ran out.
Now nine months after the warranty ran out, my phone reboots endlessly. The phone hasn’t even finished loading from the last reboot, it reboots again.
Four hours on the phone with Telus Mobility. Even a few messages on Twitter with @TELUSsupport to fix the issue. Their solution was to replace the phone, which they will do for $150 to let me out of my existing contract. Then I could get a new phone and a new contract. I don’t think I should pay $150 to replace a piece of equipment that has been faulty for a long time, and should be their responsibility to replace since the issues started when it was under warranty.
What I want is a phone that works, and doesn’t reboot every 30 seconds. What I also want is a provider to actually back what they sell for phones.
It appears that Telus isn’t it.
A tin-can and string sounds more reliable.
