On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

solarbird has some thoughts about one of the Vulgarian's latest eruptions on "Pravda Sotsialnaya" yesterday, in which he demanded the US federal government get on with the ethnic cleansing on what I suspect to be Stephen Miller's continuing "advice". She's on point here.

This is one of the major reasons why I still think Canada should get out of the so-called "Safe Third-Country Agreement" with the US government right bloody now. Yesterday would have been better, and today would still be good. We need more people up here in Canada anyway to do all manner of work. Whether it's through regular immigration channels, regular refugee channels, or emergency "save the people about to be put through refoulement ASAP, dammit" measures.

Yes, there's a specific word for what Trump and Miller are trying to do to millions of people across the USA right now.

Refoulement.

That's what "remigration" is code for. Sending them back to the undeserved hells they've escaped from.

I intend to have a word about this with my MP and/or her staff. Today.

I mentioned privately last week that I'd been accepted for enrolment into the Canadian Dental Insurance Plan. The one that our federal government hired Sun Life to administer for everyone earning less than C$90K/year and not already covered by their employer or their province?

That one.

I finally got the card in the papermail from Sun Life today.

Orange and pink and white plastic.

It's just hitting me now that, after over three decades of paying out of pocket by instalments for my dental health basics - exams, fillings and repairs of same, that sort of thing - I no longer have to worry about that part of my life's financial juggling. It's already covered through my federal income tax from now on unless I land a sufficiently lucrative job with its own coverage.

Hoping it all works out.

I have just signed up to delegate to the Ottawa Transit Commission about the upcoming service changes. I have next to no script for this. I am almost certain to have to do this while I'm working on my day job, and it will be over Zoom.

I have somewhat less than two days to decide whether or not to settle for a written submission instead, and if so, what to write for it.

It's underway now.

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra-season-2-episode-1-dr-hunt-n1309994

This is not a good decision to take.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/rapid-tests-federal-government-stop-supply-provinces-territories-epidemiologist-furness-1.7191833

This is not what I want for the future of the Public Broadcaster:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbc-radio-canada-layoffs-budget-1.7048530

Here and I've been listening to this year's edition of the Massey Lectures for most of the afternoon while I was working on the new day job...

The fan fiction project by John Concagh that I've been working on that map for just uploaded a new chapter tonight.

https://edgeofmidnight.weebly.com/chapter-fourteen.html

This is what Labour Day was created to distract us from in Anglophone "North America", right?

As of this year's edition, I'm still looking for steadier work, better work, honest or at least honourable work. My most recent contract was fun, good, mentally healthier, better-paying than I'd had before. Too bad it was only two months.

Pleased to see the tentative agreement between Treasury Board of Canada and four bargaining groups represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Hoping it goes better for the Union of Taxation Employees and soon.

I have concerns(!) about the choice of phrasing in Treasury Board President Mona Fortier's arguments for a hybrid work model for those branches of the federal civil service that her branch of the federal cabinet has jurisdiction over.

Also, doubling down on "right of the employer" rhetoric is not helpful.

The civil service needs sufficiently safe workspaces to return to and, for those who do not or cannot drive, a sufficiently safe public transit system to use to get there. I'm not seeing that here. OC Transpo and STO must be allowed to return to "mask up!" rules for everyone who can medically manage it or this isn't going to do what the current government is hoping for. And the same requirement exists for public transit in any city that has such services and a federal civil service presence.

Without at least the mask rules back in place, we won't have safe federal workspaces. We'll have superspreader sites. Again.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/treasury-board-president-calls-return-to-office-plan-right-of-employer

(Yes, there's other arguments to be made for efficiencies, pollution/ecological considerations, savings on government expenditures, etc.. Other people are making those arguments.)

Yeah, so I read this tonight from the professors Armstrong (yes, professors, plural):

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2022/12/17/here-is-a-health-care-to-do-list-for-the-federal-government.html

The list of advice at the other end of that link makes sense to me. Given the current state of most of our provincial governments, I don't trust the people who run them with a single actual physical penny, no matter that our country no longer mints them as legal tender. Particular emphasis on point 4 as quoted below:

"Understand that health care is not a business like the rest. It is about people who need and people who provide care, doing so on the basis of their acquired skill and experience. Public services should not be organized on the principles of for-profit services but rather should recognize the specificity of care and of our shared responsibility as well as our shared benefits. This means, as a minimum, ensuring that funding does not go to profit, that we build surge capacity into the system and that we attend to the conditions of work which are the conditions of care."