Adopt Haiti

A letter to the editor last week brought up the issue of "14th century governance" in the poorest parts of the world that need the most aid. Freedom and functioning democracy bring more accountability, but even we Canadians have many governance issues, corruption and scandals within our massive wealth. Globally, we're far too tolerant watching a country like Zimbabwe sink to unimaginable depths under dangerous psychopaths like Mugabe, and that's just one of many examples. As a result, we've got billions of impoverished, malnourished and uneducated people around the globe without chance of a better life, and usually a tiny circle of leadership that's very wealthy and very corrupt. Aid in the form of cash or forgiving debt usually just makes the corrupt rich even richer.
Certainly the world at large has tended to accept such problems and ignore the dangers, until someplace becomes dangerous to those of us outside or the genocide becomes just too much for us to watch in silence. Then we bring soldiers, war and brute force to do a minimum acceptable cleanup of the dangers, whereupon we leave and later wonder why the problems always return. Whenever we wage war, there are always civilian casualties. I wonder if the average citizens of those countries we invade ever really understand that we see ourselves as benefactors trying to help, or do they just see a better dressed group of warriors arrive for a few years, only to leave them to deal with the next corrupt government that eventually emerges.
Driving down highways you'll often see a stretch of road charitably adopted by a local group or company that volunteers to keep it clean in exchange for a simple sign. Perhaps this is a simplistic model the world really needs for ongoing international aid to the poorest countries on the planet. I'm proposing that Canada adopt Haiti and show the world what well-managed reconstruction can do over the longer term.
No country wants to be dependent on aid. Haiti had nothing in the bank before the earthquake, no cushion or rainy day fund. Haiti has no functioning infrastructure. Haiti also needs an internal economy that can generate jobs, and either tourism or exports to bring future income. Haiti needs a total ground-up rebuild over the long term.
Canada currently falls far short of our own legislated commitment to funding international aid. Canada needs a good place to start spending the aid money we promised we would provide way back in 2005. In fact, we're currently falling short almost half a billion dollars annually. I say we should set an example by committing that amount to Haiti annually for the next ten years. We're committed to pulling our troops out of Afghanistan, and this amount is probably about a third of what we spend there each year.
I propose a plan that immediately brings Canada to the very front of the world stage in reconstruction, on the condition we manage the projects ourselves to allow them to benefit Canadian engineering, manufacturing and infrastructure technology. Let us take pride in showing the world what Canada can accomplish peacefully and efficiently.
We've heard estimates that in 2010, approximately 500,000 unemployed Canadians will reach the end of their EI benefits. We're a compassionate people, and one way or another we're going to help support those Canadians who run out of benefits. Canada still has a deep recession with many unemployed in the construction, engineering and especially manufacturing sectors. Canada can make much of the hardware Haiti needs to rebuild, so as part of my plan we must spend a significant portion of our aid budget right here in Canada to buy the products used in reconstruction. That will create Canadian jobs and manufacturing profits, all of which we'd tax in Canada, effectively reducing our net expense.
Thousands more unemployed Canadians could be hired or subsidized to work in Haiti for a year or more at a time to help install those infrastructure products, including supervising and training Haitians. By the time we build enough local skills so Haiti can begin to stand on its own, there would be a better recovery under way in Canada and more job opportunity, partly fueled by our own long-term aid projects.
With my plan, Canada would not send cash, but buy, deliver and install desperately needed infrastructure in a way that should be relatively corruption-free. Along the way, we buy Canadian products that would help restart our own struggling economy. Plaster the products with Canadian flags for the world to see what Canada makes. Everyone wins and we'd all be even more proud to be Canadian.
I call for Canada to adopt Haiti with a ten-year infrastructure commitment, just as soon as Parliament returns from its prorogation and finally gets back to serious work.
Comments to: AdoptHaiti@Weekly-Itch.com

Deregulate and privatize

Sitting here on my desk are three letters. Two are to the Hudson Parks and Recreation across the street. The third is from the Hudson Senior Travel Club to one of their members in Mountain Ranches, returned for whatever obscure reason.
Everywhere I go, I hear Canada Post complaints. At Monday's council meeting, one of the regulars was talking about Christmas cards just making their way back. This isn't new. I recall my dad and Ron Jones cursing a blue streak at the gross incompetence of our national mail monopoly when together they were publishing and editing the Hudson Gazette. That was half a century ago.
A generation later, we're still trying to get Canada Post to deliver our paper regularly and on time to the 10,000 or so readers who receive it in the mail. Half our delivery is now done by private contractors because they're more dependable, but in municipalities where door-to-door delivery is prohibited, we're condemned to using Canada Post.
We're not alone in our complaints. Are Hudson Heights residents finally getting their mail? Is Canada Post doing anything to correct the wrong J0P 1J0 data on its own postal code finder? Why are federal and provincial government agencies still returning tax returns, refunds, licence renewals, bank statements and credit card bills stamped 'Address unknown'?
We pay this country's business monopolies more for everything. Vehicles, cell phone service, high-speed Internet access - you name it, we pay more and get less. But nothing quite compares to Canada Post, a Crown Corporation whose primary concern is feeding its powerful unions and bloated management structure. Last month, it increased the cost of the basic stamp three cents, ostensibly to pay for new equipment. Did your income go up by six percent last year?
The privatization of Canada Post and the deregulation of the Canadian postal industry should be a top priority for the next Parliament.
· · ·
You want to hear my all-time favourite Canada Post horror story?
Canada Post's Xpresspost guarantees next-day service, which is why a friend's Mississauga accountant used it to mail him a package of cheques and documents to sign. The Xpresspost envelope clearly shows it was posted from Mississauga Sept. 2, 2009.
My pal, a long-time Hudson resident, received it Nov. 25 - nearly three months later - but only after running into the local postmaster. "She said 'Oh, by the way, we have an envelope that has been in the drawer for a long time'," he recounts.
"I said 'Why didn't you deliver it to me, or return it to the sender? After all, we're talking more than two months here.' She said 'I can't say why...this just seems to have slipped through the cracks." Everyone at the post office was very apologetic, but they were not even prepared to refund the cost of the bungled Xpresspost delivery.
"These people are off the rails," he told me. "[But] I'd rather stay anonymous because I have to deal with these people day to day as they slumber through life." A highly successful businessman and entrepreneur, he sees privatization and deregulation as the only cure.
He's not alone. Bill C-44, one of the pieces of legislation to have died on the order paper when Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament, would have ended Canada Post's monopoly on international mail. It's the first step in a long, long process that has already taken place in other countries that used to have a national mail carrier.
It took nearly 10 years, but Germany's Deutsche Poste was privatized in January, 2008. A study released last November by the Frontier Institute compares Deutsche Post's new efficiency with Canada Post's clunky, inefficient structure.
Before liberalization, Deutsche Post was characterized by limited innovation, poor customer service, below-average labour productivity and high postal rates. Sound familiar?
Unions and their political allies warned jobs would be cut and working conditions would worsen substantially. Instead, Deutsche Post has increased its staff by more than 100,000 workers worldwide (20 per cent of its workforce) since the privatization process began.
Here's what the report recommends for Canada Post:
· Turn it into a private corporation listed and traded on the TSX;
· Deregulate the postal sector, allowing competitors to offer niche services to segments of the market currently underserved by the national postal monopoly;
· Instal a watchdog to guarantee universal-service provision at prices similar to what customers pay in business hubs.
When you're seeing Canada Post logos plastered all over the Vancouver Winter Olympics, ask yourself whether the status quo is good enough. If you agree we need a change, drop a postcard to your favourite party leader or MP. I strongly recommend our own Vaudreuil-Soulanges MP, Meili?Faille. You can e-mail her at faillm@parl.gc.ca.

Sustaining the Fourth World

As I lie in bed with the flu and laryngitis, I ponder the events of the last few weeks. I'm sure all who read this have, at one point or another, been touched with some terrible cold where you couldn't lift your head off the pillow. Can you imagine feeling that way everyday? What brings you comfort when you're ill? Take a few moments to make a mental list of the things that bring you relief.
The new decade has arrived and with it an urgency to heed sacred truths. Will we love thy neighbour? For the holidays I was moved to start a campaign to help raise $5,000 for the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
The Foundation's suggestion was to aim high! I had grand ambitions of reaching the goal by Christmas. A tiny drop in the bucket considering the grand scheme of things we are being called to these last few weeks. After writing six columns dedicated to the dare, I'm almost at the 30% mark. I want to graciously thank all of you who have given generously. It's been an inspirational lesson. I've decided to continue for at least one more column to see if there is anything else that we, collectively, can possibly do to bring this campaign home. Can this be a part of your new year's resolution? Dare you donate a single dollar? Just one. Is there someone reading this willing to add to the amount already pledged? Go to adaretoremember.com. Click Find a sponsor. Type in LaRiviere. Donate. Please. If every person I've met who reads this column, who has written an inspiring thank you, could give something back, we could make our goal.
Can you imagine the difference we could make in the lives of thousands of orphaned children with AIDS by simply donating one dollar? We sometimes cut ourselves off from compassion thinking we cannot afford it, or that we've already given, or that we simply haven't enough. Like the ocean, our compassion can be measured by tiny water drops. Even though we may only be able to offer but one drop, coming together we have a wonder of the world.
Why start off with another request for generosity? Because, given the state of the world, it really is something we can't let up on. Much of the world's focus has been on Haiti in the last few weeks, and understandably so. Hopefully such clarity on one country's plea will help us realize the condition of the planet at a deeper level. Do we realize that, in order to have a sustainable world community, we need to work toward what some would call a level playing field? Can we give up the daily lattes to feed a child with AIDS thousands of miles away? Are we prepared to face our resistance to the inconveniences we must begin to experience in order to come to grips with the truth of world crisis? Are we to be a part of the change or are we part of the problem?
When you're sick in bed, coughing, sneezing and can't speak, what is it that nurtures you?
As I stay under the blankets on the mend, I recently find myself contemplating the ideal of communism along with sustainable living community and its possible utopian perfection. Dictatorship aside, what would it take for us to live in equality?
The well-known phrase 'It takes a village to raise a child' makes its way into our lives every now and then.
Those who live in the Fourth World, slumbering with parched, dust-filled mouths, bellies protruding for lack of food, don't know us. But we do know them. We see the world struck with poverty every day. How can we make it part of our daily spiritual practice to give, pray, question what we can do to make this a better world?
The next time you have a cold or flu, consider sharing your hot bowl of soup, your warm blanket and your medication with another. Sustainable living means a level playing field. It also means hugging strangers.
It takes time to entertain the idea that the gift of life is a privilege. The true gift is to understand that, in order for it to have purpose, we are to give it away.
Share your day with a child with AIDS. Today. Please. Thank you.
Namaste.
Peace,
Vivianne
(www.thesongroom.ca)

Halak of respect

Habs fans may never know the details of what really happened between Carey Price and Andrei Markov after 'Les Boys' suffered a 4-3 overtime loss to the equally mediocre St. Louis Blues Jan. 20.
It seems the all-star defenceman and young goaltender exchanged some choice words in the dressing room after the game, which came to an abrupt end when Blues centre Andy McDonald scored in OT. It was my buddy Tony Marinaro, host of Team 990's Montreal Forum and a regular panelist on the popular TV sports talk show L'Attaque à Cinq, who broke the story.
Now it's not unusual for teammates to butt heads, especially when the going gets tough. It happens at every level. But the news drew national attention, and it's yet another piece to the puzzle that is Carey Price, or as his teammates have sarcastically nicknamed him, 'The Superstar'. To have awakened a sleeping bear like Markov, a highly respected player known for being the strong, silent type, is telling.
Price has not fulfilled the hype the Canadiens marketing machine has been propagating from the moment he was drafted. Last year, it was reported the native British Columbian partied like a rock star. Not exactly the characteristics of someone who understands the gravity of the situation, particularly in a market where fans have to pay nothing short of a small fortune to attend a game at the Bell Centre. All of this is feeding a snowballing anti-Price sentiment throughout Habdom. And it's not, as some analysts declare, about disgruntled fans or because he didn't win a Cup in his first season.
The scuffle would not have been news if the club was winning. So there's a growing buzz that, barring a miracle, Carey Price isn't the goalie who will carry the team to the playoffs. Jaroslav Halak has some of the best numbers in the league right now, a top-five netminder based on his save percentage. Last year, Halak got us into the playoffs and he's kept us in the running again this year. That's measurable in terms of success and can no longer be ignored.
I'm glad people are finally giving Halak the credit he deserves. Price may have the goods, but he seems to lack the self-discipline, drive and mental focus required to play at this level. Perhaps he just wants to get out of town. There has been a man-crush phenomenon surrounding Price, much of that based on his performance at the junior level. But I can think of other goalies who had similar expectations based on their success in juniors.
You have to play Halak now. Never mind the fact he's been the better goalie for two seasons in a row ­ what type of message are you sending to the rest of the guys? Work your butt off, win games, behave like a pro, and you may still not get a break. But if you're management's sweetheart, you can give 50%, have an attitude, slack off at practice, lose games by letting in soft goals, and still have total job security. They can't have a team credo about hard work if they don't put it into practice ­ it's a contradiction of any franchise's philosophy.
So it's time to part ways with Price. You could acquire an NHL-ready top-six forward and a top draft choice, or perhaps even an elite blue-liner if you deal him now, whereas, oddly enough, despite his considerably better stats, you would not get the same value for Halak.
It's a little too obvious that Price is Bob Gainey's guy, and many fans have had enough. I respect Bob to no end, and have given him the benefit of the doubt throughout. But the goaltending situation has perplexed and infuriated me. How many more slaps to the face will the organization give Halak, who's been a workhorse for them in the darkest of hours? He also seems a lot nicer, more genuine and far more humble than the other guy. Doesn't this make Jaroslav the model player every organization dreams of having?
It's time that people stop coddling Carey Price. It hasn't worked out. Like defiant teenagers, many still refuse to admit that maybe, just maybe, they were wrong about Price. Of course, maybe there's still hope. After all, Bob once declared that Guy Carbonneau was his best acquisition.
As the great Stan Lee coined decades ago, "Nuff said."

Uncle Ginny

We've talked about the little man's godmother, Virginia, aka "Uncle Ginny" (don't ask ­ I don't even know!). She recently gave birth to Alexandra, a kind of miracle baby. Here's why.
During the first trimester, an ultrasound picked up a 10-cm mass growing near Virginia's ovary. The doctors elected to wait until early in the second trimester to remove it laparoscopically, to minimise the risk to the unborn child, test the mass for malignant cells and, assuming there was good news on that score, remove whatever was left after delivery.
The operation was a success and, while the cells weren't completely normal, they were not out-and-out malignant. Virginia is actually a GP and she couldn't even explain to us exactly what kind of cells they were: something quite rare and not cancer, exactly, not even what might be termed "pre-cancerous", but not normal and not something you'd want to leave inside if you were aware of them.
So she recently had the surgery to remove that, and while they were in there they fixed a hernia caused by the birth. So Uncle Ginny is laid up and ­ tragically! ­ cannot lift her baby for FOUR WEEKS.
This is a situation made for a best friend, if ever there was one. Carolina is therefore packing a little bag and driving down to Burlington for a few days to help out, leaving me with the three crazy kids and no car, even if I DID want to escape!
We're fortunate to live in the centre of Hudson, so everything is walking distance. Being half-way to Mr. Mom, as it is, I don't mind the extra responsibilities, especially as it's for such a good cause. Poor Virginia! That said, it's not going to be easy. I always think I'll be okay when I'm left alone with the boys but they seem to reserve their most trying behaviour for those moments.
Lately the babies have been (while undeniably cute) acting out a fair bit. They seem to be gauging how far they can push mummy and daddy's fragile sanity. At least, that's how it seems ­ even if we're paranoid, they MIGHT still be out to get us!
The old curse, "May you live in interesting times", may have had more noble roots, but I choose to apply it to the latter part of my week. Full report next issue! Sleep well.
Connect with me online! email: JaspersDad@live.ca Internet: www.python-printable-games.com.