HR ISSUE RESOLVED

If I’m not mistaken, there appears to be some sort of resolution to the HR Liaison issue that’s proven to be a difficult piece of policy-making for Renfrew Town Council.

It appears that Council is willing to move forward with the idea of an elected councillor being involved in the Stage 3 grievance protocol, meaning that when an employee grievance reaches that stage, a councillor will be present representing the town.  In fact, it appears that Council as a whole actually put forward the idea of three councillors possibly being present as part of this process, which may well be a little bit of overkill, but if it’s staff accountability we’re trying to ensure here, then we’ll certainly get more of our money’s worth.  What may elude a single councillor could not possibly get by three of them.

For the record, Stage 1 of the grievance process involves an employee attempting to reconcile the issue at hand with their immediate supervisor.  Stage 2 involves filing a grievance and having the discussion over the issue elevated to include the Director of the department involved, along with the immediate supervisor.  At Stage 2 there’s likely to be union representation in support of the employee  involved.  It’s Stage 3 where Council got hung up on who represents the town.

Continue reading “HR ISSUE RESOLVED” →

SPEAKING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

I don’t know if it’s because of the impending budget, or if it’s merely a matter of coincidence, but Renfrew Town Council meetings are becoming longer and longer, marathons really, with last night’s gathering consuming five and a half hours before going into closed session, which is pretty wild given the fact that I left at about 11:15 PM.  That means the closed session extended beyond that, which has me feeling entirely sympathetic to the plight of a local municipal politician and municipal administrators.

That the agenda was chock-full was evident from the 400-plus pages of agenda materials released last Friday.  Also last Friday, a Renfrew staffer gave me a bit of heads-up that Tuesday’s meeting was going to be on the brutal side in terms of length.  I remember laughing somewhat at that piece of fore-knowledge, because I’ve sat through a lot of sessions of people  hot air and gassing for hours at a time, so I felt I was up to the task.

But for the love of God, almost six hours?  And again, that’s six hours before being chased out of the room so they could talk among themselves.  You can throw a hood over a guy’s head and waterboard him all day and it would be like a light swim compared to this exercise in democracy, both time-wise and often content-wise. More meetings like this one may trigger a Geneva Convention investigation.

Continue reading “SPEAKING TO BE UNDERSTOOD” →

BONNECHERE TRAIL PROPOSAL MAY BE READY BY CANADA DAY

To me, it seems that this is the first, or opening phase of a really good idea that provides a ton of value without needing a ton of cash.

The Bonnechere Trail will be an addition to the trail network here in Renfrew, but with significant differences that separate it from the existing Millennium and Algonquin Trails.

First, it’s not going to be a ready-made former railway bed leftover from the halcyon days of rail here in this part of the County.  Second, it will be a more winding trail, less an affair of straight lines that trains love, but more in the way of bends and curves and elevation changes.

And third, it will be people-only.  Not to people on snow machines, or people on four wheelers, or people on bicycles or dirt bikes.  It will people-only in the sense that it will accommodate foot traffic only.

Continue reading “BONNECHERE TRAIL PROPOSAL MAY BE READY BY CANADA DAY” →

THE BAFN MYSTERY

Who are the Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation, or BAFN?

To the uninformed or less-informed eye, the title suggests an aboriginal group of some sort, more than likely a First Nation.  The word Bonnechere suggests a group who calls elements of, or the entirety of the Bonnechere River watershed their home, their ancestral home.  And if you’re from around this part of the 613, you might understandably conclude that they have some affiliation with, or are actually part of the Algonquins of Golden Lake, or Pikwakanagan.

And although BAFN and Pikwakanagan are both listed as members of the AOO, or Algonquins of Ontario, the two barely talk to one another, if at all.  Phone calls to the Band leadership in Golden Lake were initially warm and friendly, until I mentioned BAFN as my point of enquiry.  

There’s been no communication since.

So who are these mystery people and what’s the reason for my interest in them?

Continue reading “THE BAFN MYSTERY” →

COUNCIL EXHIBITING HR PERPLEXION

Town Council has been struggling with the composition of an HR — Human Resources — committee, or panel, or tribunal, or whatever other term they might come up with to adequately describe a small group of people tasked with representing the town in grievance procedures involving town employees.

There are a plenty of big-ticket, red-seal, five-alarm topics and issues that our seven elected politicians can grapple with, and disagree over, some involving millions of dollars, even tens of millions of dollars.  But it’s this HR issue, a veritable fart in a mitten, that has them contorting themselves with lines of reasoning that shift as easily as the tall verdant grass in a jaunty spring  breeze.

Ma-Te-Way, the Town Hall renovation, construction overages, lights for ballfields, integrity investigations, demands for resignations, demands for defenestration from committees, all of this pales in comparison with the steep and rocky slope that leads to the top of Mount HR.

Continue reading “COUNCIL EXHIBITING HR PERPLEXION” →

CANADIAN WOMAN ARRESTED TRYING TO RE-APPLY FOR U.S. VISA

Jasmine Mooney is a Canadian actress and sometime entrepreneur.  The thirty-five year-old woman from British Columbia, while born in Canada, has spent the last several years working in the United States, in California to be specific.

Then they arrested her.

They being federal U.S. agents — U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents — as she attempted to renew an expired work visa.

Her previous visa was now invalid since the health beverage she was promoting contained hemp, and that’s verboten in America, where they cling to the notion that cannabis and its derivatives are threat to national security.  This in a nation where you can buy milk, guns, and ammunition at the same store.

Jasmine persevered though, getting another job, this one located as well in the United States, and representing another health beverage of some sort, this one hemp-free.  With optimism at what she considered to be a routine visit, she arrived at U.S. Customs with the job offer and her visa paperwork to get herself a revised and up-to-date visa.  Piece of cake.

No such luck.

Continue reading “CANADIAN WOMAN ARRESTED TRYING TO RE-APPLY FOR U.S. VISA” →

CANADIANS SHOW DISPLEASURE WITH TRUMP

You may have noticed recently that there are a fair number of people expressing their displeasure with U.S. president Gotfried Schitzinpantz and his whole gang down in Mar-A-Lardo, Florida.

Displeasure is too polite of a word, of course, but we’re Canadians and being polite is supposed to be a national trait.  That said, it appears Canadians are really really mad with the president, and rightly so.

And we seem to have our own way of exhibiting this anger, unique to us, and somewhat Canadian to a core.

I was driving along the highway last week and saw a black flag fluttering from a flagpole along the side of the road.  It looked to me to be one of those F**k Trudeau flags, although it did cross my mind that maybe the owner of the property hadn’t heard yet that Trudeau had stepped down.  Maybe he was just being prudent and attempting to get the full value for the flag, since he paid good money for it on Amazon, and by Christ he was gonna fly it nevertheless.

Continue reading “CANADIANS SHOW DISPLEASURE WITH TRUMP” →

FEDERAL ELECTION APRIL 28, 2025

April 28, 2025.

Not long ago, I shared my thinking on the political lay of the land federally, and in my view, it was pretty bleak.

The wolves outside were huffing and puffing, puffing and huffing, and there was a very real prospect that they were going to blow the entire bloody house down.

Trump in the White House again, and a massive Conservative majority government led by Pierre Poilievre up north, where we are.

Poll after poll after poll as much as confirmed the scenario, until the polls started to change, and not even incrementally really, but dramatically.  But those changes in polling results are something I’ve seen plenty of times before, so I wasn’t ready to go out and buy party balloons and streamers.

And then poll after poll after poll started to come together to form what appeared to be a verifiable trend, that the Liberals were closing ground on the Conservatives, in many cases bouncing back from a 20+ point deficit to within 6-7 points of the leading Tories.

Continue reading “FEDERAL ELECTION APRIL 28, 2025” →

DID TESLA “GAME” THE FEDERAL REBATE SYSTEM?

Elon Musk is a lot of things, and almost every one of them is not a positive, at least in my mind.  Must I now consider that he might be a crook on top of everything else?

I’m not even entirely sure if the guy is actually human or some lab stunt that got away from the boys and girls who toil down in the Black Ops department.  That’s a gate we want to fix, real fast.

Comedian Mike Myers captures it best when he does his Musk impersonation on Saturday Night Live.  Like a lot of things with Myers, he sort of over-does it, and he may have as well with his Musk schtick, but there’s one part that he seems to nail bang-on.

The part where, in mid-impersonation, he suddenly stops, makes some unnatural body movements, and facial expressions, then says “glitch” followed by “buffering,” as if the insufferable little puke was some sort of Cyborg operating on Dollar Store AA batteries that just ran out.

Continue reading “DID TESLA “GAME” THE FEDERAL REBATE SYSTEM?” →

CANADA STRIKES BACK: SAAB GRIPEN INSTEAD OF THE F-35?

The Locheed-Martin F-35 is an impressive piece of technology.

The single-engine stealth fighter was identified as being an integral part of the future of the RCAF, or Royal Canadian Air Force.  So much so that the government has moved ahead with the purchase of 88 of the creatures, with the first sixteen of them due to be delivered as early as next year.

This, as presently constituted, is the Cadillac of warplanes, and there’s a reason why Israel bought a truckload of them, because Israel has no choice but have the most formidable airforce in its neighbourhood, if not the best in the world pound for pound.

But there’s a difference between Canada and Israel then it comes to air power.  Foremost is that the Israelis utilize a lot of attack missions, or offensive operations, in which the need for stealth — the ability to approach targets without being detected by enemy air defences — is absolutely essential.  Often, as in almost always, the Israelis need to sneak through hostile and contested airspace to even get close to their targets, let alone return successfully from missions.  The stealth package, therefore, is absolutely essential to their function and mission set.

Canada requires an attack capability as well, of course it does, but our mission-set is mostly air defence of our home territory and air superiority as part of a combined arms approach on the battlefield.  While stealth is an important component to those tasks as well (hell, it’s never a bad thing to be invisible when you’re a warplane), it’s not as vital as it would be to our friends in Israel.

But in the F-35, we’d have it anyways, so what’s not to like?

Continue reading “CANADA STRIKES BACK: SAAB GRIPEN INSTEAD OF THE F-35?” →

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑