Well, start bailing, this ship’s goin’ down.

Late yesterday afternoon word came out that Munir Sheikh, the head of Statistics Canada the body responsible for the national census, had canceled a town hall meeting, previously scheduled as an information session for StatsCan employees about the scrapped long-form census. The fact that the meeting was canceled at the last minute raised more than a few eyebrows, and we all waited to see what would happen next. Then, later into the night, the news came: Sheikh was resigning his position.

And now, the boat begins to sink in earnest.

My first issue with the Conservative move to cancel the mandatory long-form census was that it would mean that those that use this data—businesses, municipalities, charities—would no long have access to reliable, accurate data. Canadians would lose good data on their country’s population. My second concern was that the move to scrap the long-form census was a political decision, by a political party, and should never have been made to begin with. Statistics Canada should be at least an arm’s length organization, meaning that the government shouldn’t be able to interfere in it’s business by, for example, scrapping a super important national survey.

But it’s for the first reason I cited, the bad data concern, that Munir Sheikh tendered his resignation and it’s unclear how the Conservatives are going to proceed from here. Truly, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Early in the debate over the termination of the mandatory long-form census Ivan Fellegi, the former head of StatsCan for 23 years, became a vocal critic of the government’s new plan. Sheikh, the country’s top statistician, now adds how voice to the growing chorus of the concerned.

How can the government proceed with their plan to end the long-form census when there are so many critics lining up against them? One really has to wonder. But how did we even get this far to begin with? The timeline is interesting.

When Industry Minister Tony Clement says, as he often has, that their plan was based on the advice of Statistics Canada what he is doing is not really called lying but I think, rather, it’s called not telling the truth. As we’re hearing now, the real timeline is a bit different than he suggests. Clement approached StatsCan with the decision to scrap the long-form census already made. What he asked, then, was what would the best course of action be to take from there. Out of the list of suggestions provided Clement chose the voluntary census option. He has subsequently admitted that the experts within StatsCan would have preferred just to keep the mandatory long-form census. According to an article in the Toronto Star their inside experts at Statistics Canada argue that the voluntary long-form will produce data that is “less reliable and may even be useless.” We already knew that, of course, but now that their chief has stepped down it seems like the rank-and-file are ready to speak out, too.

The ship is sinking and if the government under Stephen Harper thought that they could quietly sneak this through in the middle of the night then they were wrong. It’s clear that the majority of Canadians, including those in the most important places, don’t agree with this move and Tony Clement, who has been obnoxiously vocal about this issue on his Twitter account, has suddenly gone silent. For what it’s worth, the rumour mills are turning out talk at top speed suggesting that Clement never really supported the plan to begin with, he was merely towing the party line, as is often the case in Harper’s government.

At any rate, I imagine that the Conservative caucus is hauled up in a little room somewhere in Ottawa deciding who’s going to man the life rafts, and who’s going to go down with the ship.

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I love it, the debate surrounding the long form census. It’s exciting, it’s engaging, and if nothing else it’s great to see (and hear) that this kind of discussion can be had in this great country of ours. It can be, right?

If you’ve read my blog for more than a little bit then you know that I try my best to present a non-partisan view of things. Really, I try, but sometimes honesty can be mistaken for partisanship, I think, if you read me the wrong way. For example, I could say something like, “Stephen Harper runs a tight ship, giving little to no control over to his Ministers, with even the smallest governmental details passing across his desk,” and you could mistake that for a pot shot at our Prime Minister. But, truly, I’m not one for pot shots and when I say something like that I mean it as more of a fact than an opinion. The sentence following that one will be an opinion, but that’s more obvious. And why is this so important? Because I believe that a discussion about scrapping the mandatory long form census should be one that transcends politics altogether, let me tell you why.

Stephen Harper runs a tight ship, giving little to no control over to his Ministers, with even the smallest governmental details passing across his desk. I don’t necessarily agree with his style, but that’s why I didn’t vote for him. Still, while a lot of the time this kind of control factor can be nothing more than bothersome for policy makers and politicians it can be, at times, detrimental to our national health and identity. There are examples of this in the national housing strategy, our international agreements, and key pieces of criminal justice legislation. Harper has the final say and sometimes the only say, it seems. Discussion be damned, and for certain issues this simply does not fly; in my opinion the long form census is one of those issues.

The long form census and Statistics Canada fall within the portfolio of Industry Minister Tony Clement but it’s never been a politicized piece, it’s meant to not be. Stats Canada has the job of collecting information on the Canadian population to improve our quality of life and to protect our democratic society not to bolster the ranks of any particular political party or cause. It’s arms-length from the governing parties and it’s objective. So when a political party, nay, a Prime Minister, decides that the mandatory long form census is too coercive and too intrusive it does tend to rattle the cage a little bit. And the birds no like.

Remember, it wasn’t Statistic Canada that spoke out about abolishing the mandatory census, it was the Conservatives. It wasn’t the minority governing party along with its opposition that agreed that the survey was an unnecessary intrusion, it was the Prime Minister’s Office. It wasn’t a consensus of Canadians that raised their voices in support of such a move, it was a man. And if the firestorm of protest against canceling the long form census is any indication, there won’t be anyone raising their voices in support and if they are, they’re going to be awfully late to the party. Indeed, the list of long form census supporters is long in itself and it isn’t merely political groups that are raising their concern (the majority are non-partisan). Included on the list are municipalities, cities, towns, charity groups, businesses, think tanks, and even some of the most conservative newspapers in Canada. All agree that scrapping the long form census is wrong.

The political argument against the mandatory long form census is that it’s too intrusive and that Canadians who receive it can face jail time for not completing it. That does sound scary but we live in a liberal democracy and we have to make some choices. Do you want the government to build a school in your neighbourhood to accommodate all of the new, young families moving into the area? Do you want proper and decent health care services available within a short drive from where you live? Do the working poor in the impoverished area across town need more suitable housing that they can afford? Are these things important to you because the information that drives these decisions is what we lose if we lose the long form census.

But there is a sensible solution to the census situation, and it’s simple: revise and revisit the census questions.

From the sounds of it I can agree that some of the questions on our last long form census were a bit ridiculous and, sure, a bit intrusive. I’m not sure the government needs to know how many hours a week I spend doing housework, so there’s room to improve, but should the whole thing be scraped because of some poorly-conceived questions? I don’t think so. Is that decision to be made by a political party in a minority governing situation? Certainly not. Do national statistics organizations need to exist far and away from the political government itself? I would say, yes indeed. Forget the political sensationalism, forget the partisanship, and focus on making decisions and having discussions that deal with the fundamental values of Canadian society. The census does not need to be scrapped, at most it needs to be fixed. That is all I’m saying.

But anyway, maybe that solution is a little too naive. No fear, I have another. Make the long form census mandatory for all Canadians but add a bonus question on the end: Does this seem too intrusive to you?

Let democracy decide.

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I apologize to readers who are bored to death by two politically-minded articles in a row, I promise to provide you with the lighter stuff tomorrow.

A little over a month ago I warned you of the upcoming copyright reform proposed by our politicians. I warned you that it imposes certain restrictions on how you own things and what you can do with those things. I mentioned, too, that it wasn’t the first time that the Conservatives tried to pass this kind of reform legislation,

The last time the Tories tried to pass new copyright legislation was two years ago. Jim Prentice was the Minister in charge back then and he was widely seen as being in the pocket of American interests. In fact, the Bill he originally introduced was so backward, so heavily favoured towards huge American media conglomerates that the public outcry was simply impossible to ignore. As a result of the outcry, the Conservatives put the legislation on the back burner and, last summer, went on a whirlwind tour across the country soliciting public opinion and feedback on copyright.

That Bill died, on the table, after Parliament adjourned for the summer because it had no support, because it wasn’t the result of consultation with the public, because it was seen as merely pandering to American big media, and because the government clearly underestimated the powerful and vocal grassroots fair copyright movement in Canada.

Well it appears that this second attempt at copyright reform is also going the way of the Dodo.

After declaring war on the “radical extremists” who were opposed to the new reform bill, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore is now refusing to comment on the legislation according to copyright watcher, author and blogger Cory Doctorow.

Is this a sign of what happens when an unpopular bill is introduced, and introduced again, largely ignoring public consultation?

Like many, I agree that this most recent reform bill included some of the aspects that came out of the public consultation but at the same time it ignored many important aspects as well. The legislation, like its predecessor, still includes significant rights-impeding digital lock provisions—the same kind of provisions which were protested in the last incarnation of the bill. But despite all that consultation, the Conservative government chose to ignore the rights and requests of the Canadian population and again include those provisions. And again the ground swell of support for fair copyright reform has grown and immediately after announcing the bill, and in the time since, media focus has largely centred around the controversial digital locks.

But, if Moore’s refusal to comment is any indication, this bill is fit for the same destiny as its fore bearer. Let’s just hope that, if this is truly the case, the next time around the government will get things right. This second time around, the media was well informed on how and what to report—they got their focus right by honing in on the digital lock provision—and, as a result, the public has been kept up to date, and kept well informed themselves. If the Conservatives tried to sneak a copyright bill through the House of Commons the first time, they failed. This second time the media and copyright watchers the world over were ready, and they spoke loud and clear. If this bill dies there will be a third attempt, no doubt, and maybe then they’ll finally get it right.

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If there’s one thing that Canadian politics is good for (and maybe there is just one) it’s the introduction of new and fun terms to our collective lexicon. Remember our pre-Olympic love affair with the stodgy term prorogation? Ah, those were good times, listening to newscaster fumble over that unnecessarily complicated word, grasping at straws to try and explain how in the heck it was even legal, nevermind moral to just up and cancel Parliament.

But if you’re a political junkie like me you love these kind of moments in the Sun. Your heart skips a beat when the popular press picks up on a new polispeak word and runs with it. Well, friends, it’s happened again.

This time in the news is the long form census. What a beautiful thing! But what isn’t so beautiful is why it’s in the news.

If you follow the 90’s TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation then you’ll know that the gentleman in the picture above is Data, an android that features prominently on the USS Enterprise, the spaceship on which the show is based. Like any good android, however, Data has an evil side, too.

When tackling a topic like the long form census, there is a lot of talk around good and bad data and this is really what it all boils down to: Bad Data.

See, up to the present, the government has issued the census in a couple of different forms: the normal census form that everyone completes which asks things like age, sex, language, etc. and the long form which asks things like country of origin, income, education, and housing status. In the past, about eighty percent of Canadians filled out the normal census form while a select group of twenty percent filled out the long form.

From both forms comes a wealth of good data and information which the government uses but the long form is especially useful. Information from the long form census helps the government to plan things like schools, hospitals, child care programs and to better direct funding. The reason why the term long form has been in the news recently? The government wants to make this form voluntary.

Indeed, up until now those that received the long form census to complete had to complete it, by law. But citing too much involvement by the government in the affairs of Canadians, Industry Minister Tony Clement has decried the long form census and moved to make it voluntary.

The problems with making the long form census voluntary are quite easy to discover. Any statistician will tell you that with a voluntary survey the results will be highly skewed. Libertarians and the anti-big government people who support this kind of a move won’t be represented on the census. Neither will people who are busy (read: all Canadians) and don’t have time to fill out a voluntary form. And if voter turn-out is any indication of the sense of civic duty that Canadians have then we’re in trouble. Who would take the time to fill out a long form census—out of a sense of duty to their country and their community—if they don’t even vote on a regular basis.

In my opinion, scraping the compulsory long form census is a bad idea. My friend who’s an Urban Planning student assured me that the reliance on the long form census data is no small thing. How are we going to know where to put fire stations? He asked. And if misuse of the information is part of the government’s concern, my friend assured me that he has to sign his life away to access census data, as does anyone who wishes to access that information.

I don’t think it’s political to say that Prime Minister Stephen Harper likes to govern from the hip. In his Canada, the puck stops on his stick and its his decision whether or not to shoot for goal. And it’s clear that decisions like this are made by him and directed by him and these kinds of decisions—made in the middle of the night behind closed doors—are his preferred way of doing things. I’m trying not to make a value judgment on that, it is what it is. But in a liberal democracy Canadians can demand more, if they choose. By all rights the decision to do away with the mandatory long form census was a political decision. It was certainly not a decision made by Statistics Canada nor by any other well-informed and education group responsible for collecting or using this kind of survey data. I’m writing this article because I think awareness needs to be raised and discussion needs to be had—because that’s where I stand.

If you’re interested, there’s a lot you can do. The Facebook group Canadians for Good Data is alive with options for recourse and discussion. You can follow Industry Minister Tony Clement on Twitter and respond to him there, he’s very active and approachable. And you can write a letter to him, postage free:

Office of the Honourable Tony Clement Minister of Industry
C.D. Howe Building
235 Queen Street
Ottawa,  ON K1A 0H5

I do, indeed, love learning a new political term but I wish it wasn’t always on such poor terms. If you’re like me and support good Data, then get informed and take part in the evolving discussion.

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Watching the FIFA World Cup this year I’ve sometimes been struck with a bit of a nagging feeling. A feeling that something isn’t quite right. I’ve felt it watching a team like North Korea or the Ivory Coast or Nigeria. The feeling that the presence of these countries, these teams, on the world’s stage isn’t entirely a presence that ought to be celebrated. It was a feeling that I’d been wondering about, and I think I can finally put my finger on it more precisely.

According to the guidelines of FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, political interference in a nation’s soccer team is grounds for being kicked out of the league. That is, the government has no business involving itself with its soccer team. It seems a bit counter-intuitive at first but if you give it some hard thought, it makes sense. Of course, governments fund these teams, they sponsor them and pay player salaries, they construct facilities for them, pay for them to fly around the world and play but the teams aren’t intended, according to FIFA, to represent their respective governments—they represent countries. And the distinction is very important to make.

The intention of this rule, I think, is to serve a couple of purposes. First, it prevents a soccer team from being used as a government prop. A ruling party can’t fund the heck out of its nation’s soccer club only to hold it over the heads of its opposition party. It can’t use its nation’s team’s successes as political leverage within the country or outside of its borders. Soccer should be bigger than even the biggest of intranational and international politics or policies. A government can’t play the soccer card.

The second purpose that I think this rule serves is to prevent governments from punishing its team’s failures.

I said earlier that I finally figured out precisely what was bothering me about watching certain teams play soccer at the World Cup. I put my finger on it after reading a couple of articles about the Nigerian soccer team, the Super Eagles. Following their pretty poor showing at the World Cup—despite initially high hopes—the President of that country has declared that he’s suspending Nigerian football for at least two years. It’s a blatant punishment for poor playing. At the same time, rumours have been circulating surrounding the fate of North Korea’s soccer team. According to some, as punishment for their own poor showing in South Africa, national team members have been sent to do hard labour in North Korea’s coal mines. It sounds like something out of a bad novel, but it could very well be true.

It’s these kinds of interferences that make the FIFA guideline all the more practical and defendable but can you really have soccer without the state?

Can I feel decent about myself—can I cheer on a team like North Korea—when I know full well all of the human rights abuses taking place in that country? When I’m aware, in part, of the plight of the poor and destitute that live there? Can we really separate ourselves from that and say it’s just a game, that sport can and/or should stand outside of politics? That said, can we blame the North Korean players themselves for the state of their country? Should we boo them because of their poor policies?

Not just soccer, these kinds of questions apply to international sport in general. At what point is a team just a team? At what point does a team represent the idea of a nation instead of the nation itself, with all its shortcomings and problems.

I do have a problem watching a soccer team play when I know that they’ll be punished if they lose so I appreciate FIFA’s attempt to prevent that kind of thing, to separate soccer and the state, but does it go far enough? Is it ever really possible to do? The other solution is to just say that teams from countries that have known human rights abuses simply can’t take part, but then FIFA has to become judge and jury. Would Canada be allowed to play? The United States?

I don’t have answers, clearly, but as the tournament kicks into high gear for the final matches it’s certainly a question I’m still asking myself.

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This afternoon the Conservative government introduced a new copyright bill in the House of Commons.

The last time the Tories tried to pass new copyright legislation was two years ago. Jim Prentice was the Minister in charge back then and he was widely seen as being in the pocket of American interests. In fact, the Bill he originally introduced was so backward, so heavily favoured towards huge American media conglomerates that the public outcry was simply impossible to ignore. As a result of the outcry, the Conservatives put the legislation on the back burner and, last summer, went on a whirlwind tour across the country soliciting public opinion and feedback on copyright.

Lots of us spoke out, hundreds of thousands, during these public hearings and it seemed like the government was truly listening. However, today’s Bill indicates that while some of what we said got through, serious and fatal flaws remain in the law.

Today’s Bill renders a lot of things in a much better form that its predecessor. There are much-needed provisions for education, parody and satire. There’s special “YouTube” protection and a pledge to revisit the Bill every 5 years. There is more appropriate and reasonable provision for copying CDs and time-shifting media on PVRs. But the fatal blow comes in the form of the “digital lock”.

The concept of the digital lock was primarily what sunk the Conservatives copyright ship the first time around. In the many rounds of hearings which they held last summer this was the major complaint that Canadians voiced, but it was somehow ignored.

The idea of a digital lock is that a piece of media, which you buy from a store (whether online or retail) can be “locked” preventing it from being copied or reproduced. This could be in the form of a copy-protected CD, for example. You bought the CD but since it has a digital lock, this new law would make it illegal—a criminal offense—to copy that CD onto your computer or your iPod. No matter how flimsy the lock is, or how easy it might be to circumvent it.

In my opinion, and in the opinions of lots of other Canadians, the concept of the digital lock is a step backwards. iTunes, the be all and end all of online music purchasing, has done away with digital locks on their music because it was doing their reputation and their sales harm. Other online retailers have taken similar steps. Consumers don’t want to purchase a song or a book or a movie that they can only access in one form, in one place, or only during a certain time period.

The digital lock provision of the proposed copyright law is nearly a fatal blow because it circumvents all other provisions. None of the education provisions, none of the fair dealing provisions, none of the consumer protection provisions apply if the piece of media has a digital lock.

Don’t get me wrong, from all accounts this Bill is much improved from the last one we saw. It’s a far-cry from the American DMCA which opened up the door to multi-million dollar lawsuits against poor students, grandparents and babies down South. This is a much more Canadian piece of legislation than the last attempt at copyright reform, but it’s still broken. Maintaining the digital lock regime means perpetuating a culture in which the consumer doesn’t own the music or movies or books that they’ve bought, they’re simply borrowing. If that’s the culture you’re interested in living in then carry on.

But for the rest of us, it’s time to start paying attention. A good place to begin is by following Michael Geist’s blog. He’s a very well-respected and level-headed law professor from Ottawa. He writes extensively about copyright and Internet law and he knows what he’s talking about. He has a Facebook group and a very informative website called Speak Out on Copyright. We need to let our voices be heard by writing to our Members of Parliament, to the Heritage and Industry Ministers, to the Prime Minister, and talking about it. The last time we were on the cusp on copyright reform active Canadians made sure it was going to happen the right way. Those people haven’t gone away, and aren’t going to, until copyright reform is done properly.

I’ll be keeping you up to speed and writing lots about this here, as it progresses, so stay tuned.

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My friend Luke, who doesn’t have a website to link to, tipped me off to an incredible website called Open Parliament.

In a nutshell, Open Parliament aggregates data from around the web to let you know exactly what you’re elected Member of Parliament has been doing on your behalf. It trolls the government Hansard (the official record of the House of Commons), MPs twitter accounts, and other various media sources and lays it all out for you on a very easy to read page. You can see, at a glance, what your MP has been voting on—and what they’ve been voting. You can see where they’ve been, what they’ve been up to and every time they’ve spoken from the floor. In fact, you can even set it up to get an e-mail every time your Member of Parliament speaks. You’ll have a pretty empty Inbox if your MP is a back-bencher though.

Open Parliament is the kind of thing I love about the digital age; it’s the kind of thing that gives me faith in technology—in a technology like Twitter, especially. Here is a great use of that particular medium, for all those naysayers.

Now I know, I’m a bit of a politics junkie and it’s hard not to get all worked into a fit about this but isn’t it the coolest?! Doesn’t this have the potential to revolutionize Canadian politics?!

I mean, I can see, at a very quick glance, that my Member of Parliament, Peter Braid voted Nay on Bill C-241 to remove the waiting period for Employment Insurance. Now this is a topic that interests me, being ostensibly unemployed for a total of 3 months of the year. With this knowledge I can petition Braid to reconsider similar votes in the future. More than that, I can now closely follow his position on this and other matters by following what he says from the floor. I can let him know what I agree and disagree with. We all can.

Remember, these are our elected representatives. While information about what they were doing, how they were voting, and what they were saying in the House of Commons was never secret, even from its inception, it wasn’t always easy information to find. Open Parliament makes it easy and the easier something is, the more likely people are to check it out. Being able to more closely follow what our MPs are doing invites us further into the process of democracy. We’re more engaged, we’re able to be more engaged and that’s a good thing.

In addition, Open Parliament also gives you run downs of what topics were talked about recently in the House of Commons. You can track Bills as they’re introduced, and follow them every single time they’re mentioned with a record of who said what, when, and what they said. You can also track Debates, too.

I whole-heartedly applaud a democracy-strengthening endeavor like Open Parliament. This is truly the perfect marriage of technology and democracy in the digital age. I encourage you to check it out.

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That said, whenever the name “Adam Giambrone” came up in the news, the first thing I thought of was The Rock. And the name came up often: as the head of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) that tends to happen. But this week Giambrone’s been in the news for another reason, for being a “jambroni,” as The Rock would say.

Only nine days into his bid to become the next mayor of Toronto, The Star broke the news of an affair. Giambrone conceded that it was true, he’d cheated on his live-in girlfriend with another woman, and shut down his campaign for the mayor’s office. An admittedly short campaign.

Over the past couple of days, opinions have been swirling. I was OK to sit back and listen, to draw the obvious parallels to Tiger Woods (where’d he go?), until I heard a comment from Current Toronto Mayor David Miller.

Miller became by quoting Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau who said that “government has no business in the bedrooms of our nation.” “I think, frankly,” said Miller, “there are areas where the media have  no business as well.” And then I became out-raged.

Let’s put aside the fact that Miller is completely misappropriating a quotation from Trudeau, let’s not even touch that, his perception that the media has no business in the personal lives of public figures is abominable.

I’m a teacher, and one thing that I teach my kids every day is that integrity and honesty are important, admirable and necessary qualities to be a good person and to be a leader. Let me underscore that: we’re teaching our children that these are important qualities to have. Now consider our jambroni. A public figure, in a very important office, making a very huge mistake but, according to Miller, we have no business talking about it, the media has no business proding around there and, even more, Miller says he won’t ask him to resign. What kind of example does that set?

If you’re a public figure, then your private life matters. If you’re running a city, a province, a country, then mistakes you make in the privacy of your home—or the home of your 18-year old mistress—are the business of the city, the province, the country. You cannot cordon off parts of your life or your personality: if you cheat in your relationships, how can you be a credible person in your business dealings, in your professional life? It’s not possible. Your personality is that unshakeable thing.

And what example does it set? How does it even make sense? If I had a chance, I would like to ask David Miller one question. How am I supposed to go into the classroom next week and tell my students—in all truth—that integrity and honesty matter. I understand, Mayor Miller, that a personal life is a personal life but when you’re a public figure, it isn’t. Because no matter who you are, the choices you make in private, impact who you are and what you’re capable of in public. If you’re a public figure, even more so, you’re a public figure, you’re an example. Do we really want to teach our children that those kinds of behaviours are acceptable? That you can be socially dishonest and lack integrity, but no, that doesn’t translate to how you do your job. Just back-stab and cheat in your own spare time.

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Criticism of Toronto’s transit authority began when a picture, and then another picture, of a sleeping TTC employee surfaced online. The picture showed a TTC ticket-taker asleep in his booth, feet kicked back, having a grand old nap. Following that, videos, pictures, and anecdotal reports began appearing online depicting TTC employees engaging in all manner of bad behaviour. Some were sleeping, some were rude, and some were taking ten to twenty minute coffee breaks with a bus load of passengers.

To me, some of this behaviour is excusable: if you’re working a ticket booth at 3 in the morning and had a rough sleep the night, or day, before, maybe you’ll doze off for a bit. In my opinion, so what, life goes on; that isn’t a big deal. I have a bit harder time understanding and accepting an extended coffee break with a bus full of passengers, trying to get to or from work in a reasonable amount of time. In one video that I’ve seen, the driver actually enters a Tim Horton’s, orders a coffee and sits down to chat with other patrons while the bus idles for fifteen minutes.

The TTC excused some of this behaviour: drivers sometimes miss their scheduled coffee breaks, drivers have to pee, etc. But they wouldn’t stand behind a twenty minute coffee break, nor should they, and in a memo to their employees over the weekend, prohibited this kind of behaviour and encouraged all TTC employees to pull their socks up and to shape up (I personally would’ve used the pun get in gear!).

Well, today the head of TTC’s union, Bob Kinnear, spoke out against the terrible Toronto population for being so incredibly mean to his members. Here is a bit of his speech to the press,

“Listen folks, stop harassing people who are doing their jobs. Stop insulting them. Stop waving your phone cameras in their faces as you get on the bus or streetcar. Stop spitting on them. Stop calling them lazy and overpaid.”

Now no one—pretty much no one—deserves to be spit on. No one deserves to have something shoved in their face. But I get the impression from these comments, that Kinnear believes the people of Toronto have no good reason for the frustration and resentment they feel towards TTC employees. Kinnear doesn’t seem to get it. “Stop harassing people who are doing their jobs,” he says.

Bob, these people were caught not doing their jobs, that’s why they’re being harassed!

I don’t support spitting, I don’t support waving cellphone cameras in people’s faces but I do support getting the service that you deserve (and pay for) when you ride public transit.

If I were suspected of being a poor teacher, if I were caught sleeping at my desk while the kids ran wild or leaving the room for twenty minutes on a break, I would suspect I’d be under strict surveillance. I would be upset, and unnerved, to have parents coming into my classroom with video cameras, watching my every move but if I’m not doing my job, then I’m not doing my job—I’ve gotta face the consequences.

Of course, a few bad apples ruin the whole bunch but whatever. We applaud the TTC employees who are doing a great job—who are doing their job—and we publicize those who aren’t. These are the realities of living in a consumer-oriented, technology-drive society—and living in a big city. I know that Bob Kinnear said what he said because he has to, because he has to defend his members, but come on, Bob. Be real. He could have apologize, he could have admitted the wrongs that some of his employees have committed but he chose the path of complete denial. Stop harassing my people, they’re working hard. Yeah, OK, Bob.

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