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How many ineffective roads must a union walk down…
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Presumably the reasoning is that the federal court process is taking too long and maybe a minority Parliament overflowing with hostility would move faster.
I can’t say I’m optimistic about this after more than a decade of working with Parliamentary committees and trying to get the executive to promptly fix shit they fucked up.
The union’s letter
The letter from the union sets out the issues it wants investigated Parliamentarily:
- Insufficient Workspaces: There is a lack of available desks and workspaces, leading to overcrowding.
- Health and Safety Violations: Many desks and offices are dirty, and the overall air quality is poor, contributing to unsanitary conditions.
- Privacy Concerns from Unprecedented Surveillance Measures: The introduction of new surveillance measures that potentially encroach on employees’ privacy and distract managers from critical project management tasks, shifting focus away from more important responsibilities.
- Noisy Office Environment: The noise levels in the office are disruptive, with few quiet spaces for focused work. The busy atmosphere makes it difficult for employees to concentrate, further exacerbating the challenges of productivity.
- Inadequate Equipment: The current hotelling system limits access to necessary equipment, such as monitors and ergonomic setups, hindering employee comfort and efficiency.
- Limited Meeting and Collaboration Spaces: There is a shortage of meeting rooms and collaborative areas, which restricts in-person teamwork.
- Insufficient Lockers: There are not enough lockers available, and those that exist are often too small to accommodate personal belongings.
- Impact on Stress and Anxiety: Employees frequently experience stress and anxiety due to the struggle to find workspace, unreliable booking systems, and a general lack of resources.
- Work-Life Imbalance: These conditions contribute to an unhealthy work-life balance for employees.
- Employee Morale: Overall, the current working conditions have a negative impact on employee morale, further affecting our workplace culture.
No wonder so many of the federally employed people I love seem on the verge of burnout and breakdown.
I don’t know how the union concluded the solution to all of this is for federal employees to patiently endure life-draining exploitation including health and safety violations and unprecedented surveillance measures while it tries a different path for submitting a polite request to the apathetic people who created this system that they please give a shit.
(There is not a single word in the letter about COVID, despite the fact that the most recent forecast shows 1 out of every 38 Canadians currently infected, and poor air quality increases the risk of infection from this potentially disabling disease. I think that’s shameful.)
The Parliamentary vehicle
1. Mandate debate?
The letter is addressed to the Clerk of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates (OGGO). Here’s what seems most relevant from that Committee’s mandate:
The mandate of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates focuses on the estimates process as well as on the effectiveness and proper functioning of government operations.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(c), the Committee’s mandate includes … the study of … the effectiveness, management, and expenditure plans of:
- central departments and agencies;
- new information and communication technologies adopted by the government;
- cross-departmental mandates, including programs delivered by more than one department or agency; [and]
- Crown corporations and agencies that have not been specifically referred to another standing committee….
Among the 21 organizations the Committee is explicitly mandated to study is the “Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat,” which I understand to be where this shitshow originated.
But then CBC reports this quote from Treasury Board of Canada president Anita Anand that seems to suggest a “beyond the scope” argument.
In response…, Treasury Board of Canada president Anita Anand said the return-to-office decision was an administrative one and not political.
“This administrative decision was made by the Treasury Board Secretariat, in collaboration with the Privy Council Office and deputy ministers across government, who support this change,” she said in a French-language statement to Radio-Canada.
I don’t know if it’s correct to suggest that OGGO’s authority extends only to political decisions, not administrative ones. My former union seems to think there is precedent for this type of study: “OGGO is the same committee that investigated past failures on behalf of the employer, including the changeover of the public sector health care plan from Sun Life to Canada Life as part of its mandate.”
But the precise scope of OGGO’s mandate could be irrelevant anyway. I’ve attended committee meetings where an official ruling on scope was overturned by Parliamentarians voting per party instructions.
Everything is political.
2. Timing and outcome of previous studies
Let’s assume that OGGO decides to take up this investigation. The questions I want answered next are “How quickly does this committee tend to go from idea to report?” and “What is the likely outcome anyway?”
Let’s use the public sector health care plan report cited by my former union as an example.
28 September 2023: the Committee begins to discuss studying the issue.
17 October 2023: the Committee votes to study the issue.
7 December 2023: the Committee hears from witnesses from Public Works, the Treasury Board Secretariat, and Canada Life.
26 February 2024: the Committee hears from one union (PSAC).
22 May 2024: the Committee considers a draft report.
3 June 2024: the Committee’s report is tabled in the House of Commons; it includes nine recommendations and requests that the government table a “comprehensive response” to the report.
1 October 2024: the government presents its response in the form of a letter from The Honourable Anita Anand, PC, MP, President of the Treasury Board.
I actually think a year between motion and government response is quick as far as a committee study is concerned. But even assuming Parliament doesn’t implode and reconstitute somewhere between A Handmaid’s Tale and The Purge, it would still be another year of employees commuting and deteriorating, for recommendations.
I do not read that government response and conclude “yes, this process will get employees prompt, humane results.”
Playing your strengths
The strength that employees have comes from their unity and their labour.
I don’t see how unions expect to win if their approach is for employees to comply to their own detriment with ten enumerated types of harm while the narrow processes the federal government set up to its own advantage play out slowly.
I do see how unions could win if they encourage employees, en masse, to stop volunteering their free time to commuting. An unnecessary commute could be additional paid hours, or it could be hours deducted from the contracted work week, or it could simply not happen. The costs of a policy imposed unilaterally by the employer must be borne by the employer, not subsidized by employees.
This is not time and health that employees will ever be able to get back.
Anita Anand could write a government response to a committee report in her sleep. It is time for unions to wake her up with immediate financial and productivity consequences.
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Safe Spaces
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You’d think we’d want safe spaces for ourselves and others.
It seems to me that should be universally aspirational, maybe even a government priority or a constitutional minimum or a biological imperative or something.
Instead, people who ask and push for safe spaces are called snowflakes and worse.
We’re often told we’re not worth the effort, at least by governments, employers, corporations, relatives, and religions. We start to think we don’t deserve to be safe. Sometimes we get mad at anyone who has the audacity to think that they do.
I should be clear that I write this from a space of comfort, within my control and budget. As far as spaces in a capitalist / ableist / sexist / increasingly militaristic society go, it is quite safe.
I’m trying to push myself to venture outside of my safe space more, physically and otherwise.
But I’m also getting better at recognizing when my nervous system is approaching a problem and it’s time to retreat to my safe space and recharge. Regulate. Figure out the next step.
We all deserve the time and support and safe space for that.
Why would anyone not want that?
Please enjoy this video of a parrot that has found a safe space to be its authentic self:
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A Climate of Community
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A recurring theme in the news lately is capitalism-aggravated climate disasters that devastate people and regions.
Capitalist governments are unwilling to mitigate climate disasters and unable to respond to the need caused. There is too much. Responders, care workers in general, are underpaid and exhausted and disheartened.
Infrastructure — weakened by years, maybe decades of neglect by capitalist governments — is costly to repair, especially if the goal is to withstand extreme heat and drought and ice storms and hurricanes and tornadoes and floods. But usually the goal is just to get it done as cheaply as possible; someone else can pay when it fails.
It’s hard to feel optimistic against these facts.
I read a lot of science fiction and try to think about what I need to learn to be more useful in community. I’ve come up with skills like learning to grow and prepare and not waste food. Learning to repurpose and repair rather than replace. Learning to resolve interpersonal conflicts. These are not skills this particular society prioritizes, to our detriment.
Recently I read that amateur radio can be useful to help people connect in disaster zones when other channels have failed. I’m drawn to the idea of getting a licence myself, and with it my own call sign (!). Maybe I’ll even learn Morse Code.
That feels like a more hopeful approach to the current dystopia than each individual unit buying their own personal generator. It also feels like a more realistic approach than expecting rescue from governments that repeatedly leave people behind.
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Universal ambivalence (pharmacare news)
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Bill C-64 now at third reading in the Senate
Per CBC, the federal pharmacare bill made it through committee study in the Senate this past week and is scheduled for a final vote on October 10. No further amendments were made to the bill, in large part for the political reason that it would then have to return to the House of Commons, which is a shitshow, for further study. The Senate is once again in the position of having to pass legislation it and experts see problems with because the Government left things to the last minute and did a half-assed job besides.
I don’t understand what the Senate’s observation on the bill is meant to accomplish, but the CBC article explains a bit about the Minister expressing ambivalence when he appeared in the Senate:
During a Sept. 18 hearing of the Senate committee, Holland said he was “ambivalent” about how pharmacare would be administered. He later clarified his position by calling for universal, single-payer coverage in a letter to committee chair Sen. Ratna Omidvar on Sept. 27.
“This standard of coverage means that all residents of a participating province or territory will be eligible to receive free access, without co-pay or deductible, to a range of contraception and diabetes medications. Under this program, the cost of these medications will be paid for and administered through the public plan, rather than through a mix of public and private payers,” Holland said in the letter.
Apparently parliamentarians and journalists found this clarification reassuring, perhaps assuming a principle of statutory interpretation that a letter from a Minister has more weight than the text of the actual law. But here is the text of the actual law (s. 6(1)):
The Minister must, if the Minister has entered into an agreement with a province or territory to do so, make payments to the province or territory in order to increase any existing public pharmacare coverage — and to provide universal, single-payer, first-dollar coverage — for specific prescription drugs and related products intended for contraception or the treatment of diabetes.
I don’t understand where the Minister got ambivalence out of that.
Was he unaware of the text of this quite short bill when he, as Minister, went to present and defend it in the Senate, all the while haranguing senators not to amend it because “every word was carefully debated and argued over“?
Or is there legal ambiguity to the terms “universal, single-payer, first-dollar coverage” that his government didn’t bother to address through definitions?
Both explanations seem quite bad from a rule of law perspective.
But, there is already one pharmacare agreement signed!
Something I hadn’t considered in my projections of when Canadians might actually benefit was the possibility of bilateral pharmacare agreements being signed before the legislation came into force.
Presumably the BC-Can pharmacare agreement is signed contingent on Bill C-64 becoming law, since the only other explanation I see is that the Minister already had the authority to enter into these agreements, from some other source. That would certainly call into question why the Liberals didn’t enter agreements earlier and what the non-hype point of this legislation would be.
So let’s assume it’s properly contingent. Akin, perhaps, to regulations that get drafted early so they can be ready once whatever enables them becomes official. Expeditious! Except even if the bill becomes law next week, apparently BC won’t get anything until next fiscal year anyway. So there wasn’t anything earmarked for pharmacare in this year’s budget after all? I don’t think Mark Holland is very good at his job.
A neat thing worth highlighting in this agreement is that, since BC already covers oral contraceptives, again per CBC, the province negotiated “to make something else free at point-of-purchase, free for British Columbia women”: free post-menopause hormone therapy. That’s cool, although “free hormone therapy for anyone who needs it” would have been cooler.
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About the author
CKirkby
- earned degrees in language / literature and law (but is not currently a lawyer or a journalist);
- worked for over a decade on Parliament Hill;
- misses writing; and
- appreciates thoughtful comments, en anglais ou en français. (Email addresses are not published.)
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