IN DEFENCE OF GRETZKY. SORT OF.

Sometimes I genuinely dislike my work, if that’s what this is.

Sometimes, in an effort to be as completely true to yourself and to your values, you have to say things, even do things that may come across as distasteful but, at the end of the day, are recognized as the proper thing to do.  To satisfy your conscience.

To witness the pillorying of Canadian hockey great Wayne Gretzky in his own country was, at first, something that didn’t bother me at all.  It was more with a sense of schadenfreude that I observed the pummelling The Great One was taking from his Canadian compatriots, that this was something he deserved, that he had brought it upon himself.  Serves him right kind of thing.

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EMPLOYEE MONITORING / RIGHT TO DISCONNECT

Technology plays a huge role in just about any endeavour, and that holds true with the administration of corporations and how they go about their day-to-day business.

It’s not just limited to correspondence, financial spreadsheets, word and number processing, and the creation of snappy graphs and other visuals for presentations.  Technology also has a significant role in the area of property and employee management and supervision.

It may sound a little Orwellian, a bit Big Brotherish, as in the novel 1984, and it kind of is, but it’s also kind of necessary given the number of employees and the number of tasks those employees are charged with carrying out.

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THE ROAD TO 2035

“Seventy-five percent of this job is half mental.”

I think it was that great American thinker Yogi Berra who came up with that line, in all seriousness, when asked a question by a reporter.  This from a man who said when you come to a fork in the road, you should take it.

It’s why, maybe, we shouldn’t hang our hats on philosophy laid down by tobacco-chewing baseball players, although Berra himself was more of a cigarette and cigar kind of guy.

Yogi is my inspiration today, although I’m not sure his utterance is a true fit for my commentary, but honestly, any time you have the opportunity to quote such a sage person as he, you go for it, whether it fits or not.

The Town of Renfrew, at least the administrative side of it, is in the middle of a journey, as all corporations are, along with other institutional entities, like schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.

Entities cannot remain static, that much is true.  They are living beasts that need to keep abreast of, or remain relevant to the ever-present requirement for change and nimbleness against a backdrop of near universal and enduring uncertainty.  In English, that means that things are constantly changing, and to remain relevant in the face of that fact, corporations like our town need to respond and adapt.  

So standing still is not an option.

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COUNCIL TO PICK UP COY SLACK FROM CHAMBER

My congratulations in advance to the winner of this year’s Citizen of the Year Award.

Whoever it may turn out to be, the selection for such a prestigious award, and I mean that, is reflective of the fact that you’ve had a tremendous positive impact in your community, and for your community.  And unlike hockey rinks where you can just “buy” your name recognition, the Citizen of the Year accolade is awarded by others, hopefully objective others, who see and witness the impact of your efforts on things, movements, and people.

It represents positive recognition to a person who wasn’t hell bent on getting the recognition in the first place.  And so, in that sense, it’s a terrific and legitimate honour.

But it won’t have the stamp of approval from the local Chamber of Commerce.

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COUNCIL SCRAPS OVER HR COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP

The background to this is fairly simple.

Council, until recently, would receive reports from the various committees and departments that undertook the business of the municipality.  One of those committees was an HR Committee.  The head of that committee would be part of any employee grievance process.

When Council transitioned to a Committee of the Whole format, those individual committees went by the wayside.  As for human resources matters, Council still had an HR Liaison in place, but that person wasn’t formally designated as being the replacement for the “committee” that made up the town’s part of a grievance complaint.  That’s a requirement in the collective agreement that exists between the town and its employees, and a requirement that’s not currently being fulfilled after the disbanding of the committee structure.

Staff recommended that, to close this gap, a motion was needed designating what this grievance team might look like, and several options were tendered to Council, and one of those options was recommended.

In my opinion, the staff recommendation was flawed in the first place.

It may have cemented or concretized the protocol as it currently exists, but that’s not a good enough reason to hammer forward with it.

I’m talking, again, about what form of council/staff representation takes the reins in a human resources situation involving a contract grievance brought forward by an employee.

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RECORDED VOTES THE NEW NORMAL?

Renfrew Clerk Carolynn Errett is going to find herself busier than she currently is.

During the last Renfrew Town Council meeting, no fewer than three councillors requested recorded votes.  Usually votes sail past without this technicality, but when they do, anyone beating around the bushes for voting records of politicians would be stymied by the fact that the vote would be recorded as passed or defeated, and the vote count, but not the names of the individual councillors, nor the names of the mayor or reeve, would be attached to those votes.

It appears the campaign machines of three councillors have cranked up, and the sage advisors behind those campaigns have advised their boys to request recorded votes with names attached.

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POILIEVRE “NOT A MAGA GUY”

“He’s not a MAGA guy.”

That’s what U.S.President Donald Trump said this week about Canada’s Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative party and assumed next prime minister after the next federal election, something that can happen sooner rather than later if the political environment versus the United States remains hot or heats up even more.

All razors have two sides, and that’s what makes them dangerous, especially in the hands of little kids, who have a better chance of hurting themselves than others, I guess depending upon what they do with the thing prior to inflicting damage upon themselves.

Things have not been going well recently for Poilievre, as his fortunes appear to be tied to two large things that he may not have accounted for, but really ought to have seen coming:  the resignation of Justin Trudeau and the ascendence of Trump as a de-facto dictator wannabe in the United States.

I can’t understand how theres’s not a 4’ x 8’ bulletin board in the war room over at Fort Tory that prominently features two big-idea questions:

What would we do if Trudeau were to resign?

What would we do if Trump came out swinging at us (Canada) like he intends to cause harm?

I guess those questions somehow eluded the big-thinkers in the Tory War Department, that hothouse of Conservative campaign-fighting, complete with its own rhyming section and slogan machine.  

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AMERICANS FIGHT BACK

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Some of our neighbours to the south are starting to find their heads again.

It’s a little late, maybe even too late, but as the saying goes, better late than never.  

I guess.

They’re starting to wake up to the fact that they’ve elected a monster as president for all the wrong reasons.  Many of them wanted a firmer border.  Some wanted to stop the flow of fentanyl, others the flow of immigrants, many the flow of both.  Some others wanted a crackdown on crime.  And then there was the business of chasing the woke and DEI — Diversity/Equality/Inclusion — crowd out of town.

Instead they’re getting the sellout of Ukraine, the sellout of NATO, musings of takeovers of Greenland, Canada, Gaza and Panama, and tariff wars with major allies and trade partners.

But that’s not what’s got them really mad, although any number of those listed things could cause some serious discomfort for the average American.

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CARS AND CAMERAS

Did you realize that the Town of Renfrew was part of a conduit operation whereby cars stolen in Southern Ontario, primarily the Greater Toronto Area, are transported through the town en-route to Montreal before being shipped overseas?

Drivers of these stolen vehicles are paid to get them to Montreal.  With the heat rising in terms of law enforcement along Highway 401, the back highways have become more attractive to these Pony Express types, and a lot of those secondary routes will take these drivers, and these vehicles, right along our very own Raglan Street and O’Brien Road, or Burnstown Road.

The thing is, we’re on to the dirty little bastards.

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CORRESPONDENCE GETS THE DRIVE BY TREATMENT

If you’re in Renfrew, and you’d like to see the concepts of openness and transparency in action, you might best be advised to look somewhere other than your local municipal politicians and senior administrators

Taciturn comes across as too complementary.  This group, or its leadership anyway, are among the most secretive and close-to-the-vest-types I’ve had the opportunity to observe.  And this, by no means, is like bird-watching.  It’s an excruciating act of prolonged witnessing of the need to pull teeth over the most minute of topics, where nothing of potential risk can be discussed in the light of day, and where Council and select staffers retreat behind closed doors to do, and to discuss whatever it is that they do and discuss in there when the cameras go dark and the annoying public is shut out.

One thing that is seemingly fact beyond argument is the notion that you could write your local political representatives, or municipal administrators, and have your questions and commentary considered.  But instead, the process seems to be to completely ignore correspondence such as this.  Of, course, you could always write a follow-up letter, and carbon copy other councillors and administrators to broaden the scope of accountability, but then you just find yourself ignored by an expanded circle of people, not something a lot of us would find conducive to building up personal self-esteem.

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