Janet Bagnall Needs Math Lessons

Janet Bagnall is by far my least favourite Montreal Gazette columnist. She's even more annoying than the Gazette's in-house separatist, Josée Legault, who's vapid missives are about as interesting as is a 100 page PQ policy paper.

Mizz Bagnall is the Gazette's resident whining womens libber, who is ever prepared to blame men, successful men, unsuccessful men, male politicians, rich and successful nations run by men, big companies run by men, big government run by men, male bullies and finally, men in general, for all the world's ills.

Her latest missive, Blame the U.S. and France for Haiti's woe is true to form, with 'Blame' being the central theme of yet another column that would get a 'F" from any journalism professor in the country.

In her heavily 'borrowed' piece from assorted journalists and activists, she blames the United States, France and the World Bank for all of Haiti woes. It's the interfering and scheming western world that sought to enslave, rape and dominate this island paradise which has led Haiti down the path of mediocrity.
What else is new?

While proffering all sorts of facts and figures, Mizz Bagnall seems to have little understanding of the math involved.
Here she complains, pirating citing an article in the ultra-left wing THE NATION, that Haiti is saddled with a burdensome debt load.

"Haiti spent $57.4 million to service its debt, Richard Kim reports, a sum that dwarfed the $39.2 million it was given in foreign aid for education, health care, and other services...."

58 million dollars does not "dwarf" 40 million by any stretch of the imagination, perhaps a billion would. Using the 'dwarfed' adjective gives the false impression that there is a wide gap between what Haiti owes and what it gets from the international community. It's a sin of omission not to include in this aid number, donations provided by NGOs, private charities and church groups. (not all aid comes in cash from sovereign governments)

While Mizz Bagnall intimates (quoting Mr. Kim) that this 58 million dollar debt is crushing, it is anything but. Using the figures that she quotes herself, the total amount of debt comes out to under eight dollars per Haitian per year, not a game changer, even for the impoverished Haitians. If you subtract from this number a revised aid figure that accounts for all foreign aid, there isn't any gap at all.

"An economically "reformed" Haiti has seen its 1990 per-capita GDP of $617 fall to $425 by 2004."

This statement is the one I object to the most. Why use outdated statistics (2004) other than to mislead? In 2009 Haiti's per capita GDP was US$660. Link
It's funny how you can make figures dance according to your own agenda. One could safely conclude that Haitians income rose by more than 50% since 2004.

Let's put this whole debt issue into context. The Haitian national debt is somewhere between 600 and 700 million dollars. This number reflects the fact that $1.5 billion of debt has been written off by the international community, quite recently. The money that Haiti does owe, is a relatively small amount even considering Haiti's impoverished condition. It's probably that small because no legitimate banker in their right mind would ever lend the country a dime. At any rate, when apportioned to the 9.6 million Haitians, it works out to less than $70 of debt per person or about one and a half months of salary. By contrast each Canadian owes approximately one and a half years of salary, as their portion of our public debt.

"No sooner had Haiti's slaves declared their freedom and established Haiti as a republic, than France imposed reparations of 150 million francs - under the threat of a trade embargo. Haiti had to borrow from the U.S. to pay the French. It took Haiti until 1947 to pay off about60 per cent of the loan, valued in 2003 dollars at more than $21billion."

Even if it's true, so what? The debt was paid off in 1947. What have they done since then?

Many countries have overcome hardship and adversity and lived through circumstances much worse than Haiti. Germany and Japan are example of countries that have emerged from the dust heap, their people humbled and discouraged, their homeland reduced to a pile of rubble after World War Two, to emerge as powerhouse nations in just twenty or thirty years.

"When the International Monetary Fund extends a helping hand to Haiti,as it did this week, strings are usually attached. According to information posted by Kim, the IMF's conditions include switching from domestic consumption to exports, devaluation of local currency, a sell-off of public goods and services, and a reduction in the salaries and size of the civil service. Haiti's public-sector employment is the lowest in the region at less than one per cent."

Like all apologists, shilling for struggling nations in need of cash, Mizz Bagnall repeats the complaint that the World Bank imposes harsh rules and restrictions as a condition of securing a loan.
I don't know which world she lives in, but in this one, bankers always exact conditions when lending money.
Does she honestly believe that the World Bank imposes these conditions in order to be cruel and vindictive?

Without conditions, is there any doubt that the money would go down the same sinkhole as before? The Haitian economy is so badly mismanaged and corrupt, that any rules would be a positive step.

Haiti ranks 150th out of 180 countries in terms of business climate. It takes over three years to get a construction permit. Does Mizz Bagnall really think we should give them carte blanche?
Here's a report on the basket case that Haiti is:
Doing Business in Haiti

The logical conclusion of Ms. Bagnall's column is that out of guilt, we should send gads of money to Haiti and leave them to sort things out.

It is without a doubt, the very worst of ideas and one that would insure that future generation of Haitians will be doomed to live in the same misery and squalor as Haitians find themselves in today.

Sometimes, Mizz Bagnall, the fault lies within. Sometimes blaming others is not helpful.
What Haiti needs is more interference, not less.
If ever there was an example of a country in need of an intervention, it is Haiti. The United Nations should step in, dissolve it's government and create a trusteeship.

It isn't something new, the UN has run mandates before. For the sake of future generations of Haitians, the world organization needs to take this drastic step.

Like drug addicts and alcoholics that have hit bottom, sometimes an intervention is the only reasonable course of action. Anything else is time, money and effort wasted. Lives are at stake.

Sometimes, you just have to take stock of yourself.... and stop blaming others.....

Listening to apologists like Janet Bagnall will only exacerbate the hopeless situation.

SAQ Conspires With Union to Raise Salaries 30%

If there's anything unionized employees of Quebec's liquor monopoly, (Société des alcools du Québec) learned from their ill-fated strike four years ago, it's that it's a lot better to cooperate with their employer than fight.

Throughout the three month strike the employer managed to operate about 10% of it's 400 retail locations with management personnel. The stores operated at full capacity with customers seemingly unaffected, except for the longer drive, lineups at the checkout and the diminished selection. Customers were inconvenienced but not to the point of supporting the strikers, after all booze is booze and those in need will make the effort and suffer the inconvenience. Amazingly the SAQ made more money during the strike then before or after, thus providing us with the lesson that the SAQ has too many locations and employees.

At any rate, the days of confrontation between the union and the SAQ is over. A brand new collective agreement calls for a massive raise for employees.

On Thursday morning Jean-Luc Mongrain (TVA) interviewed representatives of both management and the union and it was as if they were brother and sister, singing in harmony.

Mongrain has a very particular way of interviewing. While remaining deferential and polite, his acerbic and well researched inquiries are to the point and quite disarming.

Throughout the interviews, Mr. Mongrain continued to pound home the point that the new deal provided an experienced SAQ cashier/clerk a salary of, wait for it---- $28.71 an hour.

No it's not a typo, $28.71 an hour for punching the cash register and pointing the way to the Chablis aisle.
What are the qualifications for this job? A high school diploma.
A first year medical resident, a doctor, is paid about $20 an hour. A clerk in your average retail store makes between minimum wage and $12 an hour.

How good is the salary? Well, during the negotiations, the union was offered performance bonuses which they promptly voted against. After all who needs to work hard for a small bonus when you're already making $29 an hour?

Both the union and the company representatives tried to explain away the increase based on a pay equity settlement which was mandated by law and with which they had no control over.
The pay equity law forces companies to match salaries in categories of jobs that are traditionally manned by females to those of comparable male dominated groups. To read more about the ridiculous lengths that this law goes to, read my post.

And so the SAQ employees who man (or woman) the registers got a big salary boost because of the interpretation of law that declared the women discriminated against, in terms of renumeration.

But a closer look and a rigid application of the law shows that employees did not qualify at all for this pay equity settlement.

The law provides that when a certain job description or type is occupied by over 60% females, those employees (both male and female) are subject to the pay equity legislation and may be eligible for compensation (an investgation is required.)

But in the case of the SAQ, the cashier/clerks group comprises of only 57% females and thus does not qualify for pay equity!

When pressed on the issue, an SAQ spokesman spokeswoman, Isabelle Merrizi explained that even though the employees didn't technically qualify, the number of woman in the catagory was growing and that within a couple years would breach the sixty percent line. They decided as a company to face the issue early. Arrrggghhh!!!!!!

What company in the world would make such a stupid decision? Could you imagine a boss in private industry doing the same?

The whole story stinks to high heaven.
Instead of giving the employees a pay equity settlement based on future projections, wouldn't a prudent employer just hire an equal number of men and women and maintain the status quo?

The fact, that the SAQ is increasing the amount of woman in this category is in itself discriminatory. Isn't it against the law to announce beforehand that more women than men will be hired?

The truth is that the bosses at the SAQ don't really care. They are lazy and don't want another strike, they had to work too hard during the walkout. Working the register is something they hadn't bargained for and they'll do anything to avoid it in the future, including giving away the candy store.

The SAQ produced $800 million in profits for the government last year. If that profit fell to $750 million, it's no skin off management's nose. Nobody ever gets fired for non-performance and hey, labour peace has a price....

Latent Racism in Quebec a Sad Reality

What can you say when even those who write newspaper articles in sympathy and support for Haitians and their plight, descend into antisemitism without even thinking about it. The reference below is from an article in the Quebec daily LE SOLEIL, that reinforces the stereotype that Jews are exploiters of the poor, a myth that is so ingrained in Quebec culture that it even passes unnoticed by editors, who should keep this kind of stuff out of their newspapers.

"...On one certain Christmas Eve, I volunteered to bring the poorest families in Montreal-Nord, some of those famous food baskets that we received from generous donors. I remember entering an apartment, as big as my hand, where two or three families lived in close proximity, their many young barefoot children dressed only in underwear and who threw themselves upon the gift boxes as if they were full of treasures. I also remember that the living rooms were small sewing workshops, where women spent long hours sewing clothes for Jewish entrepreneurs from Saint-Laurent Boulevard and who were obviously underpaid with cash paid under the table........" -Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, Trois-Pistoles

Of course the writer offers nothing but assumptions in his piece, assumptions that are unfortunately widely shared in Quebec society. The fact that the article made it to print without any editor asking if the writer verified his facts that the Haitians were working for a Jew or if they were underpaid or if they were paid under the table, but whatever, it must be true!

Imagine if a Toronto paper wrote a similar piece in which the writer described a scam in which government departments had been defrauded by unscrupulous companies and then went on to speculate without any proof at all, that the companies are run by Quebec Francophones... OUCH!!!!

Most of us older types remember the rampant racist generalizations that were made about all ethnicities and religions when we were young, regardless of our own heritage.

You know the ones - Jews are cheap and dishonest, Blacks are indolent, Spanish people are lazy, Chinese people-inscrutable. etc. etc. etc.

"Eeeny-meany-miney-moe, Catcha nigger by the toe..."
"Wops, Spicks, Shvartzes, Poofters, Hymies...."
It wasn't pretty, but happily, those days are gone.
Francophones had their own myths and expressions about others as well, but are much slower to shed these archaic and hurtful stereotypes.

There was a time when Anglos would describe getting cheated as being "Jewed." Today that term has largely disappeared, only a brave and foolish soul would dare use the term at work or in mixed company.

But in Quebec today, it is still acceptable to use the term "BON JUIF"(a good Jew) to describe a Jewish person who has acted decently or one who had done them a good turn.
It infers that the rest of the Jews are.......well, not so worthy, to be polite.

We all went through a process of purging our own language, prejudices and preconception. Polite society taught us which terms and preconceptions were no longer acceptable and although it seemed stupid at the time, in hindsight, it set us straight.

There needs to be some sort of similar process in Quebec...

Quebec: We Don't Want More Haitians.

No one can deny that Quebeckers have been the most generous Canadian donors in relation to money raised for Haitian relief. In fact, the Quebec telethon in support of Haitian relief was more than twice as successful in terms of per capita donations as compared to that of the Canadian effort.

It's quite understandable, the Canadian Haitian community is almost exclusively a Quebec affair, as more than 90% of them live in Quebec and even more specifically, Montreal. Because of this close relationship there is a strong desire to help the earthquake ravaged island.

That being said, there are voices in Quebec, growing louder and louder, that are demanding that immigration from the stricken island be limited to family reunification (including orphans) only, and that the disaster not spark any sort of mass immigration.

Here's a particularly nasty article (in French) concerning this very question entitled "Non à l’immigration haïtienne"

Interestingly, Ottawa has seemed to back up that point of view, declaring that they won't loosen rules that would expand the definition of 'family' to include a wider circle of eligible immigrants.

The Feds remain sensitive to the fact that if they allow an influx of Haitians, they will end up in Montreal and it would quite rightly be an intrusion into Quebec's sphere of responsibility.

Canada and Quebec have had immigration agreements since 1971, but in 1978 the "Cullen-Couture Agreement" gave Quebec the absolute right to select it's own immigrants under it's own criteria.

Ever since then, the most important criterion to becoming a Quebec immigrant was the ability to speak French. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of Frenchman and Belgians who wished to come to Quebec. Of those who did, many returned home, citing discrimination (if you can believe it!). Suffice to say, there's no love loss between Quebeckers and Frenchmen from Europe.

And so Quebec was left with the choice of seeking immigrants from Haiti, various African banana republics and from the Arab countries that had a French colonial past, including Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria (known collectively as the "Mahgreb,") as well as Lebanon.

Most of these immigrants moved to Quebec with little understanding of democracy or modern western beliefs. They were poorly educated and few had skills that could be put to use in modern society.
To the utter frustration of Quebeckers of all stripes, the immigrants failed to integrate into mainstream society and insisted on maintaining their customs, religion and traditions and worst of all- their apartness.

Notwithstanding that the immigrants spoke French and were absorbed onto the French side of the English/French divide, they largely remained apart and disconnected from mainstream society.As in the case of Europe, they have settled into ghettos and created their own little home away from home, or country within a country.

While immigrants claim that their failure to succeed is based on unequal opportunity and discrimination, most Quebeckers believe that the problem is the immigrants failure to adapt to the realities of modern Quebec.

Quebeckers have also largely come to believe that it is they who are slowly being assimilated, instead of the immigrants.

The disillusionment over the immigration influx, is reinforced by alarmist news reports indicating that certain districts of Montreal are out of control and under the influence of immigrant street gangs. Coupled with Arab immigrants refusal to give up their veil and religious orthodoxy in the name of Quebec secularism, a clash of culture seems to be brewing.

Many are calling for a moratorium on immigration, lest Quebec turn into Holland or France, where ethnic and religious conflict has exploded with increased immigration.

Positions are no doubt hardening and the concept of 'Reasonable Accommodations" (the policy of making cultural allowances for immigrants) is all but dead, whether the politicians realize it or not.

Quebeckers are taking a serious look at the benefits versus the cost of immigration, with the tide turning decidedly against a policy of open doors.

And so, immigration is the new hot topic in Quebec. The issue transcends traditional linguistic and language alignments and is explosive on so many different levels because many see it as the defining element of a future Quebec.
More next week.....

Quebec Debt Growing Out of Hand

Quebec debt is piling up faster than one can imagine. I found this nifty tool over at the Montreal Economic Institute website. The province is piling up debt at a rate of 9 billion dollars per year, $25 million per day, $17,215.27 per minute, or $287.00 per second.

The federal government is piling on debt at a rate of $153 million per day.

Quebec's population is about 7, 800,000 people and divvying up the debt means every Quebeckers owes about $27,630. Wow! By the way, that debt is going up that a rate of $1,100 a year!

Add to that debt, about $15,000 more, which represents each citizens portion of Canada's debt and the average citizen's debt load is over $42,000

Here's a link to the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation's Debt Clock.

Bad as it is, we better off than the Americans, who owe an average of $40,000 at the federal level. Add state debt to that and the average American owes well over $50,000.

That  being said we are in a much worse position than any state or province.
Our ability to repay the debt is severely hampered by the fact that we are the poorest province (per capitia) in Canada. Although the Americans owe more than us, they generate a lot more income and even though they owe more money than us, are really in a better financial position.

An excellent conservative Quebec blogger named DAVID is particularly adept at deconstructing  numbers. Even if you don't speak French, his well prepared charts transgress the language barrier.  Here is the LINK.

Out of the ten provinces, Quebec families bring home the least money both before and after taxes and we owe the most...Ughhh!!!!....

Here is a link to the US Debt Clock which is quite fascinating...