Curiosity is terminal

Tuesday, 19 June 2012

Could These Things Be Connected?

Doug Saunders had a good article on the war of 1812 in the weekend Globe. Yes, I read the weekend Globe. I don't want to discuss it. Everyone has an embarrassing habit. This is mine.

Anyway,  it was about the war of 1812. (Everything seems to be about the war of 1812 these days. Remember those heady days when you turned on CBC radio and EVERYONE! was talking about sex? I thought that was tiresome. Who knew I would feel nostalgic for the merely tiresome?)

Anyway! (again) this article had this neat little gem in the middle of it:

"The events of the war,” historian Colin Read wrote, “demonstrated that a significant portion of the province’s approximately one hundred thousand inhabitants were either indifferent or hostile to the British cause … how to purge the province of this lamentable pro-American element was clearly a major question, then.”
The solution, our leaders decided, was to import people who were loyal – not inventive or talented or ambitious, but loyal."   (italics mine)

Which made me think of the shiny new legislation that allows employers to bring in foreign workers and pay them 15% less than the prevailing wage. And the about-to-be-new shiny legislation that repeals the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act, which used to specify that workers on Federal contracts had to be paid the local prevailing wage and be compensated for overtime.


Yes indeed. One more way to not be proud to be Canadian.





8 comments:

  1. Sadly, however, while this retrograde legislation is being passed, the great Canadian snooze fest continues undisturbed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am seriously thinking about taking a nice 2 quart saucepan and a whisk and walking to Ottawa. I wonder if anyone would join me?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Me just tell me when!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh and by the way I will bring a dutch kettle just to remind harper of his governing policy of proliferating "dutch disease" and a dutch wooden spoon!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mogs, Do you think anyone else would join us?

    I am a little south of the middle of nowhere. If I walked 40km a day (8 hours, roughly) I figure I could get there in something just over 100 days.

    ReplyDelete
  6. For me it is just over 3500 km to the commons in Ottawa!

    If I started walking now I should get there in ~100 days!

    How many young people can get there this fall when parliament reopens? With bull-horns? And huge fans to blow the stink from our house of commons?

    Let's ask everyone to come and see what happens?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Harper thinks he’s sharper
    But really he’s a barber
    With evil thought’s he harbor’s
    He wants to shave all we have in common
    From our Canada, oh what a nave is he.

    Little does he know?
    Allot of us are committed
    To saving the country
    He thinks is dimwitted

    And the only dimwit I see is he!
    He is leading us into slavery
    With his tricky knavery
    To his lord and master

    Big oil big bad oil
    For now we all have to toil
    To get the Alberta crude
    To the Chinese dude

    Huh this is rude
    And makes no sense
    We have a red prime minister
    Who is more than a little sinister?

    I am asking him to step down
    He’s really looking like a clown
    And he’s not a real Calgary-ian
    Just a tyrant Toronto Ontarian

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ouch:

    http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article35265.html?all=true

    corporate global governance uhhggg

    ReplyDelete