Month: April 2023

Where to Ukrainian Refugees?

April 30, 2023

Ukraine is preparing for a major attempt to recover some of the territory lost to the Russians. It is over a year ago that Russia initiated an unprovoked war on Ukraine, calling it a “special operation”, a euphemism by any stretch of the imagination for what it is, a war. This “special operation” displaced over fifteen million people in Ukraine, and over eight million people left the country.

Under the Canada Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program, Canada offered to take in an unlimited number of Ukrainians seeking shelter from the war. To date, close to a million applications have been received under this program, of which two-thirds have been approved, and 150,000 have already arrived in Canada.

This new immigration program  (CUAET) was developed for, and with, Ukrainians, and it provides temporary residence status for three years for successful applicants, with $3,000 for each adult and $1,500 for each child. After three years, those Ukrainians who want to stay in Canada can apply for permanent residence.

A major benefit of CUAET is that the newcomers can work immediately in Canada. A major disadvantage of the program is that people arriving under the CUAET do not receive many of the social adjustment programs that refugees receive, such as housing assistance.

The Ukrainians prefer this new program to the refugee program because it allows them to work immediately while the latter takes much longer to gain resident status that permits work. And many Ukrainians want to go home, hoping for an end to the war in less than three years. Many left families at home, including husbands, who could not leave because of their obligation to serve in the military.

Thinking about the Russian invasion, which started during the Covid pandemic, I wondered how the virus affected Ukrainians. Only thirty-five percent of Ukrainians were vaccinated against Covid in 2022 (compared to the eighty percent vaccination rate in Canada). War is tough during a pandemic; people escape to refugee camps where the crowding provides the perfect environment for the spread of the airborne virus.

The numbers bear out the damage Covid wrought on Ukraine; five million people got infected and 100,000 people died out of their population of thirty-two million (compared to Canada where also five million people got infected, and fifty-one thousand people died out of a population of forty-eight million people).  

The adversities faced by Ukrainians forced many to leave their country, and it reminded me of my experience escaping from Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

Hungary was under Russian occupation from 1944 when the Russians defeated Germany. The spontaneous uprising of 1956 provided a window to escape the prison-like existence in Hungary. Many people left their families behind but those who left had no intention of returning home, in contrast to the recent Ukrainian exodus.  

We came to Canada as refugees, which was a new program developed for the Hungarians by then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. Over 35,000 Hungarians arrived in Canada following the uprising in 1956.

I remember what we had to do to adjust to Canadian life: learn  English, acquire usable skills, go back to school, and secure a job to make a living. It took a few years to start a modest life in an apartment and a few more years to buy our first car. Father had to redo his university coursework in medicine and certification for a medical license, including residency with twenty-four-hour shifts at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. My older brother and I attended university and worked part-time as well as full-time during the summers to cover university costs. Mother worked at a store. Immigrants go through multi-year adjustments to settle in a country new to them.   The first few years were not easy, but my parents were determined they would not return to Hungary.

Many of the recently arrived Ukrainians have a different goal; they hope to return home after the war. A worthwhile wish but is it reasonable? Negotiations between the two warring parties have not been initiated and are unlikely to be successful since both sides have firm and non-negotiable positions. Militarily, the two sides are at a standstill, Ukraine assisted by NATO and Russia assisted by North Korea, and other countries with weaponry. A resolution seems elusive. It may take years. 

And in time, immigrants embrace the new country they settle in and get to like it. I remember a handful of Hungarian refugees who decided to go home after a few years.  They could not acquire a workable knowledge of the English language mostly because of sticking with family members and speaking Hungarian all the time. They could not get used to Canadian culture, especially gender equality in Canada. They also missed their family back home. And they were all older. But the great majority of the Hungarian refugees stayed and prospered in Canada.

I do not believe you ever go home and feel at home in the old country you left. You have changed and your old country has changed and going home is a disappointing experience. And this will be especially true of Ukraine with the devastation of its cities by the Russian bombing. Reconstruction will take years.

I think most Ukrainians who have come to Canada over the past year will stay and prosper here.

Is Covid Over?

April 26, 2023

Is Covid over? Is it time for a post-mortem? No, not really; although President Biden announced that COVID is over, the World Health Organization (WHO) is still to announce it. And I just saw many people at my local grocery store with masks. It is over but let’s just wait until the masks disappear.

Although the pandemic was formally introduced by WHO on March 11, 2020, it was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The pandemic in Canada triggered lockdowns and the government called for masking and distancing. And vaccinations would become the go-to weapon with which to fight it, whenever Canada could secure a supply of it. Do you remember?

But we did not have vaccines and a major pharmaceutical company was to be built. We were told it would take over a year for its construction to be followed by production and distribution in a couple of years! Fortunately, we did not have to wait for a Canadian vaccine.

By late summer of 2020, Pfizer and Moderna developed and began to distribute vaccines and our Minister responsible for procurement announced that she had ordered up to four hundred million vaccines without telling us when they would be ready. I was amazed that Canada would order almost ten times the number of vaccines required for our population, but we began to import and receive the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines before any vaccines were produced in Canada. The provincial government set up what turned out to be a cumbersome and slow vaccination process through community centers and schools.

The stores painted lines for one-way traffic to avoid crowding between shelves, and symbols appeared on the floor indicating where one should stand at the cash, six feet apart. The same was done outside of stores, markings were painted six feet apart and we lined up often in terribly cold weather, waiting to be let indoors, limited by the store’s capacity, based on its square footage. Attendants at store entrances monitored our entry.

My bridge club at the community center closed dictated by the local health authority. Subsuequently, when it was allowed to open, the club could not figure out how to” “distance” around bridge tables and how to clean cards for each hand to be dealt.

My gym closed.

And we hoped for a reopening of facilities in a brief period that did not materialize, and when it did, another lockdown was instituted caused by the next wave of the virus.

Vaccination has become the major instrument of defense against the virus. While most people receieved the vaccine volunarily, some vehemently opposed it based on faulty science.

Looking back three years since the pandemic started, I think that its consequences have been significant. For example, the combination of masking, distancing, and lockdowns has resulted in isolation. You stayed at home and avoided people; the government encouraged it. That, in turn, has brought about a need for socializing, for meeting and talking with people in person and not only on the phone.

Yes, ZOOM has blossomed, and many people were happy with the technology and continued with their bridge and book clubs. But after a while, many felt isolated and bored staring at the computer screen; at the fast dealing by the computer for bridge hands and lack of friendly conversation; at the truncated discussion of book clubs using ZOOM, without the personal get-together, supplanted by coffee and chit-chat.

People’s isolation was further exacerbated by private industry, and public agencies sending people home to work, in an attempt to reduce physical proximity among people. But in many businesses, people could not work at home and were laid off, with an enormous impact on the hospitality and service industries; coffee shops, and restaurants closed.

To avoid a cratering economy, the federal government started pumping out money, like water through a fire hose, to assist businesses and people to survive the effects of the pandemic. It has taken some time, but the long-term consequences of the infusion of enormous amounts of government money resulted in inflation. And surprise, surprise: inflation caused unionized people to push for higher salaries and as an example of this trend, we have the largest public service union in Canada on strike today.

In its ultimate wisdom, the federal government closed the border for most people to enter the country, even though the spread of COVID in Canada was internal from people having the virus already. The US responded in kind to the closure of the border by Canada, and that created a bit of a hardship for us, having all of our children and grandchildren in the US.

With a gradual easing of travel to and from the US, the government introduced the ArriveCan system, a computerized entry system that one had to fill in a day before the entry into Canada, requiring proof of vaccination. The US responded in kind and required vaccination from Canadians. This border entry control system often led to unpleasant experiences, such as getting tested for Covid in time on both sides of the border. And it has also led to a new and flourishing Covid-testing industry.

Reflecting on the past three years, I realize that I need a measure of social interaction and the number of such interactions may vary with people, but it is something that I need for my sanity.

 Yes, I participated in many ZOOM meetings. For example, we set up a group of friends and presented to each other, in turn, our travel experiences. We ordered a take-out dinner and ate and drank together with friends via ZOOM. But in the end, we concluded that going out together was much more fun.

This is where I am now; I shed the use of my mask but carry one in my back pocket should a medical institution or other agency require one (such as the Ottawa Hospital). When I go shopping and see masked people, I ignore them but respect their use of it. Hopefully, it will not be long before vaccinations become an annual affair similar to the cold vaccine and we’ll be able to forget about the last three years.

My Thoughts on the PSAC Strike

April 21, 2023

Driving by the Post Office I observed hundreds of civil servants clutching coffee mugs and walking back and forth for their four-hour strike duty a day for which they get $75 from the union. It was cold and they were bundled up.

About 150,000 civil servants, a third of all federal employees, are on strike, and the already long waiting times for passports will get longer.

I remembered the time working for the federal government when I went to work at five in the morning to avoid crossing picket lines and avoid potentially rough altercations with striking union members.

As always, the major item of contention is salaries. The two sides are not far apart and although the union’s demand is not way out of line, in my opinion, the sudden frugality of the government surprised me. In the past few years, this government has spent money like it was coming out of a firehose.

In all union negotiations,  the discussion focuses on how salaries should track or not, inflation, and cost-of-living increases. The examples brought forward by both sides include public and private unions. The trouble I have with these discussions is the lack of debate on job security and the benefits packages that the various organizations provide. I worked in both public and private organizations and there are no questions in my mind that job security is pretty well 100 percent in the public sector (anecdotal evidence shows it can take up to two years to fire someone in the government for incompetence) while much, much less in private groups.

When I worked in the federal public service, my job security was never in question with an attractive benefits plan, including a pension. In the private sector, I lost my job when an international company bought the company. And the contribution to my pension by the private company was much less than what the federal government provided. On the positive side, though, the shares in the private company were offered as bonuses at year-end, which could fluctuate in price reflecting the fortunes of the company, a significant risk factor.

So my question is: should federal employees be compensated less than private company employees performing comparable duties because of the benefits of a secure job with full benefits?

My friend who ran an architectural office downtown told me years ago that he always had an awfully tough time hiring a secretary, at what he thought was a competitive salary, because the federal government paid so much more for similarly employed people.

And my other question is: should federal employees who choose the work-at-home model be compensated less than those who go to work every day because of the financial and other benefits of working at home?

Consider the savings on transportation; whether one uses public transit or a private car, the savings are substantial in dollar terms as well as in time. Commuting times range up to a couple of hours a day depending on where one lives. And gas for the car, parking (civil servants have to pay for parking), and depreciation of the car add up to a tidy sum. Neither is the cost of public transit a bargain.

And many people buy coffee and lunch at work. When I worked for the federal government, I tried to get some fresh air and went for a short walk during my lunch hour. I often ended up in a bookstore buying a book which I would not have done while working at home.

I also have to mention that the informality of working at home saves money on clothing, which, although casual these days in the office, still require decent clothing.

But beyond the financial and time savings working at home are the incredible benefits provided by the flexibility of being at home. Think of a young family where the work-at-home spouse can take the children to the school bus stop and pick them up upon return. Or, doing away with a nanny, should both parents work? Or, going on a two-hour bike ride at lunchtime. Unless the employee has to be on the phone during working hours, the work can be done at any time during the day or at night.

The work-at-home model has tremendous benefits but also costs; depending on the personality of the employee, some may miss the camaraderie with fellow workers, and miss learning what is going on in the office. Others are quite happy to work alone. And, of course, there has to be space for an office in the home, which may not be available for all.

The adoption of the work-at-model is a major negotiating item although I have not seen a study on what percentage of federal civil servants would like to do it. But if it is a bargaining chip, I think that those who work at home should get less remuneration compared to those doing the same job at the office. The financial savings have a dollar value and the flexibility of working at home is also a benefit that should be costed out.

My considered view is that the job security and benefits package enjoyed by federal civil servants, combined with the option of working at home, should be fully costed when compared to other union agreements and the inflation rate.

The Good Life in Canada in Peril

April 9, 2023

I walked into the garage and stumbled in the dark towards the garage door handle to release it from the cable so that I could push up the garage door by hand; the power was out. We had an ice storm yesterday and the local hydro was still fixing the lines. It was getting cold in the house when we woke up in the morning without power.

When I pushed the garage door up, I saw our neighbor walking towards me up the driveway with a cup of coffee in his hand. And I heard a loud generator working in his driveway, explaining his coffee. He came to offer coffee or whatever we needed. That was nice of him. I told him we were just going to find an open restaurant to warm up and enjoy our coffee and breakfast.

Over our meal, I wondered what a nice lifestyle our neighbor has living in a five-bedroom house with one child. And he works at home allowing him to take a bicycle ride for a break and do chores around the house during working hours.

Canada offers a charmed life for many people, educated here and with a job. I socialize with them and enjoy their company most of the time. They are relaxed and enjoy the good life, although some are smug.

And their smug attitude in believing they deserve what they have bothers me. They truly believe that they worked and earned their status in life. And their good life makes this generation comfortable, less ambitious, and more complacent. Less achieving. I think that this is sad. This attitude, in my view, has pervaded the way Canadians and government look at issues.

I thought of the immigrants coming into this country and fully understand why they want to come here when they see what some people here have. But the immigrants have challenges. They do not speak the language fluently, if at all; they are not familiar with local culture; they have no local experience. And no local contacts.

And now the country allows half a million immigrants a year into the country for the next few years; bumping up the population when a recession threatens, there is a housing shortage and affordability gap, on top of a healthcare crisis. All these issues affect immigrants.

Although we identify these issues with some recalcitrance,we resolve them slowly, if at all. Often, we ignore them, thinking it doesn’t affect us, so no need to do any planning.

Potholes on the streets? No problem, it is the weather. This view is nonsense. The northern states in the US have similar climates with excellent roads.

Healthcare crisis? No problem, we’ll let in more foreign nurses and doctors, ignoring the fact that they have to be locally licensed, a time-consuming exercise that can take years.

Housing crisis? No problem, we’ll let in more construction and tradespeople, forgetting that they also need local licensing, and we also need land to build on.

No land to build on? No problem, we’ll just make our cities denser. We’ll let three units be built on single-family lots in Ontario, starting this summer, which will destroy some older, attractive neighborhoods.

Food price inflation? No problem, the government provides a subsidy; prints money, and just increases the national debt. Debt is for future generations to resolve.

It may be only me but methinks we do not solve problems but delay them, thereby creating fresh problems.

I think the country has become too complacent and downright lazy. We havelost our edge, our dynamism. We sloganeer about equity, diversity and inclusion, and LGBTQ…., matters, and forget that these ideals are impossible to materialize without creating jobs and opportunities and investing in technology and the future. You cannot have equity, diversity, and inclusion in the abstract, it exists in organizations employing people.

So, let’s get back our work ethic and get off our collective fat butts and build the economy by providing the opportunity for future generations.

What Drives Me Nuts…

April 5, 2023

A hoax perpetrated by the media but originated by City Hall Councilors in Ottawa drives me nuts. It is that Ottawa is a city for cycling; for commuting to work on bikes. This idea is insane considering the climate in Ottawa. Half of the year one cannot comfortably and safely commute to work on a bike: it is too cold for cycling, down to minus 20 centigrade, and with the snow and ice on the roadbed, it is extremely hazardous.

This is the end of March, and we still have plenty of snow piled up on two sides of our local streets, making it nearly impossible to cycle on the snow-narrowed roadway. Plus, the car traffic makes it dangerous, especially when you hit a patch of ice cycling on the road.

But it is not only during the winter months that bicycling is treacherous, during the shoulder seasons, the weather is cold, and you need gloves and layers of clothing to keep your core warm. Some people wear a mask. I have done it and I did not find it pleasant to ride during the early spring and late fall.

OK. Let’s talk about the summer months; you would think that it is a pleasure to cycle between May and September. And it can be. If you take a ride along the parkways or the Rideau Canal, when these roads are reserved for cyclists on the weekends, then it is a pleasure to ride in peace without cars.

But consider going to work on a bike during the hot summer months that I had done. In my case, I worked up a sweat and had to shower and change upon arrival at work. So, I needed a change of clothing that I could take with me or store at a locker when available, and I needed a place to change. Some of the larger employers provide change rooms. Smaller employers do not have the space for such facilities, making it very difficult to commute to work and feel and look decent during work.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that office workers are more likely to cycle to work than others.

But think about it: you need much more time to commute by bike instead of driving your car to work because of the additional time you need for showering and changing, as well as the slower speed of a bicycle compared to a car. If you have a family with children and are needed at home after work, time is precious, and the obvious commute is by car to get home early and help with family activities.

Our city is trying to make Ottawa a cycling city. The city planners push the idea and in fact, one mayoral candidate at the last election ran on a platform to make the city a haven for cyclists by spending millions of dollars building bicycle paths. She lost, but the official plan recently approved for Ottawa heavily emphasizes cycling to get around in the city.

They brought up Amsterdam as a model for cycling; it is a city with a moderate year-round climate. As well, it occupies a much smaller area, with a denser population than Ottawa, making cycling distances small. In Ottawa, the inner suburbs range up to ten kilometers, while the suburbs are ten to twenty kilometers from downtown.  

I searched for some metrics on cycling in Ottawa and found that perhaps two percent of the people commute to work by bike, while over seventy percent use their cars and seventeen percent use public transit. The rest walk to work or work at home. These numbers do not provide a ringing endorsement for cycling.

The adult population cycles for exercise and recreation, mostly. I have not seen many people shopping on a bike. We have students cycling to schools and then, of course, the hardcore, who cycle to work. If the purpose of the city planners is to wean away people from using their gas-powered cars to save the environment, then I would suggest that the priority should be on increasing public transit use.

And the city attempts to do that by reducing the requirement to provide car parking in multifamily residential buildings while increasing the requirement for bicycle parking. This is a no-cost solution for the city, but it does nothing for making public transit more attractive to the public.

Public transit would become more attractive to the public through reduced fees, more routes, and more frequent bus service. And that is not happening, so people will keep on using their cars that will adorn our local streets, lacking garage space in residential buildings.

As an example of what is happening, the city approved recently a sixteen-unit, four-storey apartment complex on a single-family residential corner lot, with no parking. The footprint for the building occupies the entire lot. The justification for the approval was that the building is on a “planned” major transportation route with good public transit. But there is no timeline for making this road a major transportation route, and there is no budget as yet for its construction. Would it not have been more responsible to delay the approval until after the “major transportation” route is completed?

Another factor bearing on cycling is the recently increased popularity of working from home, which reduces the need to commute to work. The pandemic encouraged this trend and, now up to twenty percent of the working population enjoys working at home in Ottawa.

This work-at-home trend reduced the demand for public transit; the volume of the local public transit system is still only at seventy percent of pre-pandemic levels. Accompanying this trend is a growing budgetary deficit for the system that the upper levels of government have not helped financially. Is there a message there? We keep talking about the value of public transit but provide no funding to improve it!

And home workers like larger homes with an office, which are more available in the less dense outer suburbs. And with larger distances to get around to schools, and shops, cycling becomes less attractive.

I think the city’s promotion of cycling is a hoax but presented as virtuous behavior by twinning it with saving the environment.

Being bombarded with messages that cycling is key for the future of the city of Ottawa is an outright hoax that just drives me nuts. It makes no sense to me; it is a surreal wish. Does it make sense to you?