10:36 p.m. - 2004-04-10
Contrasts
I hadn't intended it to be, but it was a busy day. My original strategy was to stay in bed, rest and read, because I want to get rid of this stupid cold/flu thing. Sensible decision, right? However, the deadline for the last assignment we got from Elections Canada was supposed to be this weekend. The problem, of course, is that the people who's payroll information I need to collect aren't available to me at the moment. Does that mean I should just sign up any old person just to please Ottawa, oh yes and so I get paid? Nope. I want the best available people I can get. One person did drop by around suppertime, so her paperwork is complete. I'll wait for the others until everyone gets back from their Easter holidays/spring break. It did mean, though, that I was sending out a bunch of e-mails just asking for estimated times of return. That way, when I start getting calls from Ottawa next week, I have my defense lined up.
I spent some time trying to complete my time sheet for my last assignment for Elections Canada so I can get paid. Right now I'm using the credit card I just got - thank goodness, I was finally able to get one - but I shouldn't be forced to live on credit in order to do my job. The delay in submitting the timesheet has been two-fold. First, there were some tasks assigned where we didn't receive the information required until Tuesday this past week. Now the deadline for returning all our completed material was mid-March. Uh huh. The other problem was the hours allocated to complete those tasks. I ran out of approved hours at the end of February, but I wasn't able to get all of the tasks completed until mid-March. My choices were: to choose between working for half a month free, so that I would get paid for the approved hours, or not getting paid at all and being given "you know what" for not getting my material in.
I know that the best thing would be to send everything that's completed in at the end of the hours for which they are willing to pay me, then not do anything more. The difficulty was it was March 10 before I even got a response on some of the critical questions I had to have answered, before I could proceed with some of the projects. Predicting the additional amount of time necessary to complete the tasks was impossible without those answers. Also, most of the tasks are so intertwined that it is impossible to break them down into smaller chunks that could be done within the hours and time given, without compromising the rest of the work.
In addition, there is an assumption, on Ottawa's part, that we are only going to have to make one phone call or send one e-mail for each service we are engaging and that we will receive an affirmative response for each query within a day or two. Contradicting that is the direction in our manual whereby we are told we MUST send each item or service we require out for tender to at least three and, preferably, four bidders. Right. It is very disheartening.
One of the other Returning Officers runs their own company and has for years. They said that Elections Canada is violating Federal labour laws in several ways - not the least of which is that EC is deducting source deductions like tax and cpp, ei, but don't pay us on a predetermined or predictable schedule. Apparently that Returning Officer has written to Elections Canada to point that fact out in addition, to our being short-changed on a regular basis for our hours, so he's now officially in the dog-house too. Oh well.
Four of my sons came for dinner tonight. Because my brother-in-law's father died last weekend - on my brother-in-law's birthday too - my family decided to wait a few weeks before we do the usual group gathering. I had told number three son that I would call him with an alternate date for when I would have all of my sons over, after I had verified all his other brother's plans. You know - their Dad's family and their spouses' families. My son heard - "come to dinner on Saturday". Mercury retrograde. I didn't find that out until I called him this morning. He told me he and number five son would be by around six. No groceries in the house, but no big deal. I'm used to cooking for a dozen people on a regular basis, so I just zipped over to the grocery store after I had done the election work mentioned above. I cheated a bit and bought some of the goodies pre-made - won't kill them to have store-bought once in a while I guess. Supper was ready by 6:30 pm. Ham, mashed potatoes, finger food (cheese, veggies), salad, strawberry ice cream, and pumpkin pie for dessert. No one was complaining. I had treats from the Easter Bunny ready to go for the two who don't live at home to take with them too.
Our visit was entertaining too. The four of them helped me figure out how to make that darned cell phone Elections Canada sent me do what it should. I didn't know that I had a headset that I could use nor did I know how to make the text messaging or the voicemail features work. Everything was tested using their cell phones as backup. I can do what I need to with it now. Next up were tax returns for the two I hadn't done yet. The online service is great and one has an electronic record to boot. No digging around in boxes for paperwork a couple of years down the road.
Two interesting stories of note in my e-zines tonight. The first was cool, in a James Bond kind of way. A Calgary pilot's plane lost it's ability to remain airborne- this technology saved him and his passengers. Parachute. The second story was disturbing and yet instructive about why one should read the news from more than one source. One family from Canada, of Pakistani origin, apparently had very close ties to Al Qaeda. They took their sons back there to fight for "the cause". In a fire fight the father was killed, one son was captured and is imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, another is in custody here (I think) and one - a 14 year old - was partly paralysed in the battle that killed his father. The family has been insisting that the Canadian government was obligated to pay for the boy's health care in Pakistan and also for his trip back to Canada. The response was, of course, "no we don't want any of you back".
Teaching a child from birth that it is acceptable to murder others because of their faith is child abuse, in my mind. So is taking an adolescent into a war zone for the purpose of using them as a "soldier". One can't blame the child for the parents' actions. Turns out the child was born in Canada and so he only has citizenship in this country. He was returned to our country this week with his Mom and female relatives. The fact that the boy was Canadian born and raised, and the fact that Pakistan deported him back to his country of origin, because he was engaging in terrorist activities makes sense. However, that part wasn't reported in any Canadian newspaper or through any media outlet here. I didn't find that information until I happened on it here el_kadri while looking for other information.
The plight of the boy is no different than that of other Canadian born children whose parents engage in the drug trade. Those children are inculcated into the drug culture from birth. As soon as they are old enough, they are trained as drug mules and for whatever other "minor felonies" the parents find useful. The parents do so because they know that we have very little legislation or judicial precedence whereby the adults exploiting the children are properly charged and incarcerated for the abusive treatment they load on their own children. Usually what happens is that the children are sucked deeper and deeper into the lifestyle as they age, so that by the time they are old enough to be tried as adults they are incorrigible. And the beat goes on.
So in this case of inculcating a child to act as a terrorist, what to do? Well Mom is unrepentent. Her comments about western culture demonstrate a desire to promote her own personal brand of willful ignorance (and she is that) and hate. She openly encouraged crimes against readily identifiable segments of our population. She advocates crimes against others based on their race/faith. If she is a naturalized Canadian, she and the other family members involved, should be stripped of their citizenship and sent back to their country of origin immediately, just like anyone else who has lied to obtain that privilege. There is an oath of loyalty to our country that is not breakable. We have enough homegrown criminals to deal with. If she is also Canadian born, then we have legislation that should be invoked to put her in jail for a long time. There is also the warning that needs to be made to other people like her, and there are far too many, who believe that they should be able to enjoy all the advantages our society offers yet at the same time try to destroy the people who make her privileges possible.
At the same time, it is important to remember all the New Canadians who have worked very hard to make the best of the opportunities our country offers them and have, in fact, turned around and made certain to pass those benefits on. There is a young Canadian man among the hostages in Iraq who has been there with a US humanitarian organization trying to help the children hurt in that war. He is also from a family of Middle Eastern descent, but he wishes to heal not kill. All his family is hoping for is that he will survive to his 34th birhtday on April 18.
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