Tag: canada

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?

Child Prodigies of Hungary

March 21, 2023

The Hungarian piano prodigy gave a sensational concert at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Center in Ottawa, on March 15, celebrating the anniversary of the Hungarian revolution of 1848. The Hungarian Embassy sponsored the event with the Ambassador from Hungary introducing Misi Boros, a twenty-year-old virtuoso pianist, his first time in Canada. A reception preceded the concert with Hungarian wines served. The red was the popular Szekszardi Voros, and the white the equally popular Jaszberenyi Riesling. I had never heard of Misi Boros, but the Center was full. I heard Hungarian spoken frequently walking in.

Besides pieces by Bach and Beethoven, Misi played Debussy’s Clare-de-Lune, in a fashion that brought tears to my eyes with its melody and lyrical expression. And he showed his technical virtuosity by playing Liszt/Paganini’s La Campanale. It was a tour de force.

Misi was a child prodigy, defined as someone under ten years of age showing talent in a field way beyond his or her age. Since age four, Misi spent most of his time at the piano. Since age eight, he won all national piano competitions in his age group and won competitions in Rome, Milan, and Paris.

As of today, Misi has performed over 300 concerts around the world; I wonder how much time he spends at home in Hungary.

During the introduction, the Hungarian Ambassador talked about the significance of music in Hungary and the number of internationally recognized musicians Hungary has produced. Among composers, she mentioned Bartok and Liszt. Among known conductors, she mentioned Solti.

George Solti showed his musical talent early, attending the Franz Liszt Academy, a well-known musical educational institution in Budapest, by the age of 12, and subsidizing his education by teaching piano. He worked in Frankfurt and Munich in Germany and ended with an illustrious career with the Chicago Symphony, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I found it interesting to learn that he has the second-highest number of Grammy awards, at 31, after Beyonce, who has 32. Queen Elizabeth knighted Solti in 1972.

The ambassador did not mention other well-known Hungarian conductors, such as Eugene Ormandy, who had a forty-year career with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Ornandy’s musical talent showed early; his father taught him to play the violin at age three and a half and he entered the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at age five, the youngest ever student the Academy had.

Another well-known Hungarian conductor was George Szell, who spent over twenty years as musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra. At age eleven, he began touring Europe as a pianist and composer and made his debut in London. He was, clearly, a child prodigy.

But there were also pianist prodigies, similar to Misi. One was the incredible George Cziffra, a gypsy or Romani, to use an accepted term today. Cziffra came from a very poor family, and he listened to his sister’s piano practices, and learned to play the piano by mimicking her without sheet music. He played in a circus when he was five years old, for money. The Franz Liszt Academy invited the young talented boy to attend the Academy to gain his classical musical education. Later, he played in bars playing jazz to make some money; some jazz aficionados compared him to Art Tatum for his improvisational skills and technical virtuosity. I listened with amazement to his interpretation of the Duke Ellington song “Sophisticated Lady” on YouTube; his technique and free-flowing melody lines reminded me of Art Tatum.

Unfortunately, the Hungarian army drafted him during WW2 to fight on the Russian border. Cziffra hated the racist Nazis, deserted, and successfully convinced the Russians who captured him that he wanted to fight with the Allies against the Nazis.

After the war, he tried to escape from Hungary but was captured and sent to a labor camp, where he did not play the piano for three years. Once freed, he returned home, regained his piano skills, and gave concerts until his successful escape from Hungary after the 1956 revolution. He settled in France, where he became a citizen and established himself as a concert pianist.

I thought child prodigies were born with talent; it is in their DNA. Not so, according to Laszlo Polgar, who, during his university studies in Hungary, reviewed the bios of 400 famous people in many fields and concluded that anyone can become a genius provided they educate a child in one field from age three. He decided on an experiment to raise his children at home and teach them a specialty. He found someone agreeable to marry him and share in his experiment. They had three daughters whom the parents home-schooled, and Polgar started teaching his first daughter to play chess when she was three years old. The little girl bested his father in chess by the time she was five. And Polgar brought up all three girls to become grandmasters in chess; the middle girl has been the world champion for women for years and defeated ten world champion men during her career to date.

According to some studies, there may be one child prodigy among five to ten million people; and they are characterized by knowing one field at the adult level before they are ten years old. They also have photographic memories, are extremely curious, and have a passion for a field they are interested in.

Child prodigies are similar in characteristics to autistic children. And in most cases, child prodigies have parents who strongly encourage and push their children in improving their skills in a subject.  

Hungary has had its fair share of child prodigies, not only in music and chess but also in science, and mathematics as well. For example, John von Neumann was a child prodigy; he could divide five-digit numbers by five-digit numbers at age six and could converse in ancient Greek by age seven.

As a mathematician and physicist, he moved to the US to further his career, where he led the Manhattan project developing the atomic bomb. They often describe him as the father of the atomic bomb. He ended his career as a Professor at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study..

So, are child prodigies born with their talent, or are they educated to become so?

I came across an interview with Misi Boros’ father, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pecs, the birthplace of Misi. When asked how he brought up Misi to become a child prodigy, he said that children need a lot of love and time spent with their parents, which he gave to Misi growing up.

The interviewer further probed whether Misi was told to play the piano several hours a day. The father said no, Misi was happy to practice up to five and six hours a day when he was young. That was not my experience. I took piano lessons when I was young, but when practice time built up to three hours a day after school and doing homework; I rebelled. I preferred to play with my friends. The time came when my parents just gave in; I was not to be a concert pianist. So, can you predict who will be child prodigies?

I believe that child prodigies have it in their DNA to excel in some field, but they also have supporting parents and a burning desire to work hard to achieve perfection in their chosen field. Just my opinion.

My Love of Music and Black History Month

March 2.2023

When Beau Dixon came to town, I had to go and see him at the Meridian Theater in Ottawa. The ninety-minute show promised Beau’s music, blues, rock, and soul, my favorites. I must have gotten one of the last tickets on the balcony in the last row. But I did not complain; the back row has good acoustics and Beau’s music is loud.

It is Black History Month and Beau had a scripted, fast-moving show displaying black music at its best, playing songs from Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and others. I came to listen to and enjoy my favorite type of music and ended up learning about the contribution of black music to North American culture.

Beau showed his multi-talented musical genius by playing the harmonica, and keyboard and singing. It was a tour de force and brought back fond memories.

My first job after finishing graduate school at the University of North Carolina was in Norfolk, VA, and I just had to build a stereo system to listen to my music. I still remember the high-quality Harman-Kardon component system, that I built. Testing the system, I played my favorite pianist, Oscar Peterson, at full blast when there was a banging on the door of our rented apartment. Scared that management might throw us out for being too loud, I cautiously opened the door to discover a black pastor. I turned the volume down and asked him to come in. Before explaining that he was looking for donations for his church, he congratulated me on playing “excellent religious” music. I had Oscar Peterson playing his composition “Hymn to Freedom”, an ode he wrote for the freedom marchers in the 1960s. With such an introduction, I had no choice in my mind but to offer a large contribution to his church.

Listen to Oscar Peterson playing his composition in Denmark, in 1964.

The other memory took me back to when we went to listen to Oscar Peterson playing at Norfolk State College in 1973. Oscar gave a rousing concert with mostly spirituals, and the audience was rocking along with his playing. We may have been the only white folks in the audience that I found a bit eery but in those days there was still much segregation by skin color and this was a black college.

Beau drew a mixed audience in Ottawa. A large percentage of the people were black and their enthusiasm showed in the tapping, stomping, and singing along with many of the songs. It was an appreciative audience and I also could not help myself but start stomping with my feet. My neighbor was swaying from left to right, nudging me constantly. Some in the audience jumped onto the floor and danced while others stood up and clapped to the sound of well-known songs like “Hound Dog”, popularized by Elvis Presley in 1956, but originally recorded by “Big Mama” Thornton in 1952. As Beau explained, many famous songs originated from black people but were popularized by white folks.

Listen to the first recording of the song by Big Mama Thornton in 1952.

Throughout the meticulously curated show, Beau engaged the audience with his charm and infectious energy. And his singers not only performed well-known songs but also talked about black Canadians’ contributions to our society, such as Viola Desmond, a civil rights activist from Nova Scotia; Lincoln Alexander, the first black member of Parliament and Lieutenant Governor of Ontario; Drake, the rapper, Michaelle Jean, previous Governor General of Canada.

One highlight of the program was when Beau’s singers performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, which is the hymn of black people; a song I have not heard before. The audience responded by standing up and singing along with the band; it was a highly emotional experience.

Listen to the hymn performed by the Amanah AME Zion Church choir, from Knightdale, NC, in 2022.

Although I went to hear my favorite music and I was not disappointed, I learned much about the contribution black culture made to Canadian society.