In October, the province’s financial accountability office predicted a $1.5 billion funding shortfall for the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services in 2025-26, a $2.4 billion gap in 2026-27 and a $3.1 billion deficit in 2027-28.

Yet that same ministry says it has made “historic investments in the development services sector,” including nearly $4 billion this year, as well $407 million over three years for agencies delivering ministry-funded services.  Our very own Community Living Renfrew County South falls under this umbrella.

So who do you believe?

Another day, another email from the Executive-Director, sent as usual to a closed in-house email chain.  As she surely knows that email chain has had its security compromised, so must also be aware that the contents would be “leaked.”  In the biz we once called this kind of thing a “plant” because we knew it was going to end up in certain hands.

I can’t say if this is a plant or not, but there is some text that can be worked with, and so I shall make the attempt to comment on it, hopefully fairly.

Nine points are made by the Executive-Director to dispel the “myths” that are out there relative to her positions on a variety of things.  It’s not like she communicates publicly or anything, so all we have are these periodic emails that we’re not actually invited to.  So when it comes to the Executive-Director, what she might be thinking has always been a swing-and-myth proposition.

OPSEU Local 472 issued a media release late in the week, perhaps Thursday, and the release touched on two main points of contention:  the back-and-forth issue of mediation that seems to have energized everyone, and the Bill 124 remedy, which seems to have energized everyone as well.

On the mediation front, the union has offered to “front” the cost of a new private mediator, one William Kaplan, apparently the best of the bunch if you’re picking up what the union is throwing down.  Whether he is or he isn’t, it’s up to the employer to decide if they want to take the union up on this offer, and at the time of writing, I have no indication that they have or even intend to.  Management tends to pause when the word “private” prefaces the word “mediator,” mostly because they likely fear a loss of situational control if they move away from “ministry-provided conciliation officers” and mediators working for the Ministry of Labour, and therefore government employees.  Managers may feel that they’d be giving something up, perhaps leverage of some sort, by allowing mediation to happen out-of-house with a private mediator.

When your bargaining position is built upon a rickety foundation, I guess wanting to keep as much control over things represents a compelling strategy in the absence of any other strategies offering greater credibility.

It appears we’re going to be treated to a textbook example of how communications often deteriorate during a labour dispute as both sides dig into positions that run at cross-purposes to one another, sometimes to the point where you’re often driven to wonder if it’s intentional.

And sometimes it is.

People say things. They say half-things. They leave things out. They omit things. Sometimes it even carries the impression that people are not being entirely straight with us.

Nobody in their right mind would ever want a strike, although there are those who feast upon the opportunity to make money advising and facilitating the parties of a strike, or any other type of labour disruption.

Political consultants, labour consultants, communications and intelligence consultants, lawyers, private security, and private investigators would all fall into the category of the types of people who actually benefit from a strike.

There are also people out there with political agendas involving ulterior motives, and by no means are such people necessarily confined to just a single side of any argument or dispute.  Even if there were to be obvious good guys and bad guys in a dispute, the good guys are always going to have a bad guy in there somewhere, and even the bad guys will have a good guy somewhere in there.  So these terms can be interchangeable for either or both sides of any dispute.

But no matter what, no matter what your personal view is of strikes, work stoppages, lockouts, unions, or government underfunding, it really boils down to the same thing:

Any work stoppage, for any reason, represents a failure.

According to CLRCS Executive-Director Jennifer Lavallee, there’s no money to provide raises for her striking workers.  

So that got me thinking.  Maybe it’s time to take stock of how much this labour dispute has cost us, the taxpayers, in dollars and cents.

Although the strike has now reached its twelve week mark, I’ve arbitrarily selected a ten-week period to make a comparison between wages earned by replacement workers over that ten-week period and the earnings an OPSEU Local 472 member would have earned had they worked those same hours.

Documentation is important.  Recently, I feel I got some, albeit indirectly.  Nevertheless, it was Important.

An email from Executive-Director Jennifer Lavallee landed in the inboxes of clients and client families, people connected to Community Living Renfrew County South through active participation in agency activities and supports.  In other words, their children are the direct clients of the agency and its mandate.

The email was very sure of itself, and I don’t mean that as a criticism.  It was definitely addressing union talking points, and assertively countered those talking points in what struck me as a confident manner.  So the tone of the message sounded less defensive, at least that’s what I feel I noticed.

But what made things different for me was her attachment of a document that claims to be a Letter of Understanding between CLRCS and OPSEU Local 472 as to the remedy required after the repeal of Bill 124.

Ottawa Senators fans are mad at Brady Tkachuk and they have every right to be.  But not for a second should they bemoan his “loss.”

Tkachuk is a good hockey player, and I’d be happy to have him on my team, that is if he wasn’t such an asshole.

And that assholiness went full volume back during the Four Nations series a couple of years back where the rivalry between the Canada and United States hockey programs clashed twice, in the round-robin stage and in the tournament final.

His brother Matthew, an equally gifted asshole, decided he needed to fight Brandon Hagel right off the opening face-off in the round-robin match-up between the two nations.  Now make no mistake, Hagel was all for it, probably given that he’s a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team that absolutely hates their state rivals, Matthew’s Florida Panthers.

Say what you want, but from where I’m standing, it sure looks like that Jennifer Lavallee person has herself a great gig.

Jennifer, of course, is the Executive-Director of Community Living Renfrew County South, and she’s currently in the midst of a magic carpet ride.

Her empire continues to hum along, albeit with reduced or compromised services, but that’s no real impediment, so long as the money keeps flowing in.

She doesn’t have the hassle of dealing with a troublesome union always nagging at her about their supposed rights, whatever those are.  Inconveniences to running a tight ship, I guess.

She even has her own security force, of at least two guys anyways, but that’s two guys more than she had before, right?  So that’s pretty cool.  The money’s there for that too, I guess.

Professionally speaking, Jennifer appears to be living the dream.

Altruism is a wonderful thing and if not for its presence, a lot of what good happens in the world might not happen at all, or at the very least might not happen as much.

Unfortunately, in such an indifferent and sometimes cruel world, any help we can get from any quarter making the lives of disadvantaged adults better is considered to be a good thing.

To give of yourself for the betterment of others, even if by doing so, you put yourself in some degree of personal disadvantage.  That’s what altruism is.

It’s what lay behind the decision of most people to do volunteer work, sometimes even at their own personal expense.

To see a need, and to move forward with purpose and in a good-faith, attempting to address that need, and to make things better, or easier, for anyone struggling to meet those needs on their own.

But I’m going to put forth what some may consider to be a contentious argument.