11:55 p.m. - 2004-03-09
The Deeps
Arrrrgh. I had arranged to talk with the VP at the company I work for in my other life about renting one of their buildings for an election office today. He was hedging somewhat, because they are trying to get the whole thing renovated and leased. Fair game. Now I'm still operating - per direction from Ottawa - on the timetable of the call being very soon. That makes it imperative I get a place lined up now. He kept asking if I was certain it was going to be before the fall and I explained what I had been told. I understood his reticence later, when I checked the newspaper only to find headlines declaring that it was fairly certain the timing would be delayed by at least one month and maybe even more. I think I'm a very flexible person - not much has to be written in stone for me to function - but when Ottawa demands we go into negotiation with various service providers and land owners, it would be nice if our credibility with them wasn't undermined by the constant reversal of positions that are seen in the paper almost every day. The people we are dealing with can't know, nor would it seem reasonable, that as those responsible to administer the election we wouldn't be advised of the dates give or take a week, but we truly are one of the last to be told for certain. I realize that Elections Canada has no control over the timing either - only the Prime Minister knows for sure - but why ask us to carry out the same task three times in a year, bothering the same services to the point where they won't even talk to us anymore. I talked to one of the other ROs later and she said that is what is happening to her - no one will return her calls. Frustrating.
I did an analysis of the demographics for my electoral district today. Just the changes in population over a period of years. The reason? Twofold. First, I think it will be important in order to justify the amount of door to door enumeration I am asking to do. Secondly, the number of staff and our office budget is calculated based on the population in our riding. Elections Canada based their estimates on the 2001 Federal Census. That will work for low growth areas, but not for ones like mine. They used a base number of 109,000 to set my budget. Using the data from the city census - collected exactly one year ago - the real time population then was well over 117,000. Since that time, I've added a minimum of thirty entirely new streets to my database because that is how much growth there was last fall. That also doesn't take into account all the new infill high-density housing that was thrown into the mix at the end of last year either. Sent another spreadsheet in to both the co-ordinators and finance. They may be upset by my requests, but I want to be certain our citizens are treated equally with other Canadians. I left a voicemail for the woman I had e-mailed my assistant's payroll information to as well. Maybe I'm misjudging the mindset at Ottawa and they really are pleased that the information is arriving for them, but one doesn't get that feeling very often. There was a call at the end of the afternoon from one of the nice young guys who often finds answers for me, just letting me know a request I had made for some statistical data on my ED had been turned down because the material wasn't ready yet. He sounded quite uncomfortable and I'm not certain why. No point getting upset with the messengers - they don't have any more control than we do.
Ended up talking with one of the other Returning Officers after that. Chewing over the federal labour acts and regulations. A lot of the experiences we have with Elections Canada are not allowed under the law or the regulations, but how assertive does one become. Pay is witheld as is information and supplies, and it often seems to be connected with any time one protests one's treatment, but I could also be paranoid I guess. The pattern of behaviour seems to be fairly consistent though. Then again, we are talking about a massive organization that has to address the very diverse needs of a huge geographic land mass with no continuity in the populations settled here and there. I keep telling myself that's the real source of the problem - really. However, in the course of the conversation I did hear my peer mention he would quit if this carried on much longer and so has my assistant within the past week. Turnover is very high among us and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's a wonder the voting day process comes off as well as it does, all things considered.
Interesting article in the newspaper today. Ice floes off the east coast of Canada are threatening to shear off the off-shore drilling platforms extracting gas from the seabed between Nova Scotia and Maine. All hands had to be evacuated as a precaution. Because I live in "oil" country I know a lot of people who have worked on those rigs both off the east coast and in the Arctic. There have been some very scary incidents and there have been deaths from other capsizing derricks. One gentleman was recounting his eyewitness experiences for one such disaster that occurred about a decade ago near where the current trouble is. He still flinched when he spoke of watching the rescuers haul the body bags to shore, knowing that they contained the bodies of some of his friends and co-workers. It still haunted him. James Keelaghan wrote and performed a really evocative song about an accident at sea called "La mer ne pardonne pas" (The sea doesn't forgive)on his CD Roads. I always hear him singing it when I think of those rigs. Guess this time the company in question decided that their workers lives were more important than some dead old dinosaurs - good choice.
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