Yesterday I had dinner with a visiting cousin of mine. He was born in 1950 and grew up on a farm in central Saskatchewan. In more recent years he has lived in suburban Alberta and has built a successful career as a contract maintenance supervisor. My cousin is a big, burly guy who might best be described as “salt of the earth” and an absolutely decent, down-to-earth fellow.
He’s not particularly political but we did delve into the subject because of this story in the newspaper: B.C.’s retiring MLAs to hit pension jackpot thanks to taxpayers’ generosity
This morning I was checking out the latest videos at Sun News and watched this segment: LCBO staff vote to strike
Tying these two disparate news items together, what’s the underlying message to private sector workers in this country? Might it not involve the word “suckers”?! When even normally apolitical taxpayers are upset, surely change has got to be coming.
I grew up on a farm in this province in a very conservative, very capitalist family. I have an MBA, live in the province, and I work in government and believe I always will. This province is still and looks like it will always be a government province (proved by Sask Party). If you don’t get a job with one of a very small handful of private corps then government is the place to be for the best wages, benefits and standard of living. Sad maybe, but undeniably true.
But most of the BC MLA’s gave up lucrative careers in non-government enterprises to serve us ungrateful peasants,so we should consider the pensions just payback for all the money they lost looking out for us little people. That’s in the linked article,btw.
For example, Christy Clark would undoubtedly be CEO of Molson’s,with her related experience in the beer industry,and most of the rest would also be CEO’s of private companies making Michael Eisner type salaries.
I believe this.
Really.
No,really.
Have another puff and it won’t seem so real. Maybe take a trip on reality altering drugs. Get some crazy doctor to put it in the water…everybody will be happy.
/sarc
Private sector workers are nothing more than pension serfs for these people…
Look. All Liquor Control Board of Ontario outlets are good for is attracting the scum of the town to one location, like moths to a lamppost. If an LCBO strike will make it that bit safer to walk down the main street of my town (cursed with one of the largest outlets in the region), I’m all for it.
Back in the real world, Ontario’s convenience stores are now lobbying for the right to sell rotgut beer and wine to any beggar with filthy, trembling hands and correct change, because selling Notre Vin Maison in every seedy depanneur in Montreal makes the streets so much safer at night. As it is even walking past the supermarket in my town is a risky proposition, thanks to the supermarket’s renting space to a Wine Rack in a room past the cash registers (so they can say, under oath, that they don’t sell wine). No prizes for guessing where the beggars go for their Bright’s Canadian Sherry.
Alcohol should be served only at licensed pubs and restaurants, limit two drinks per customer per evening. Give the staff the right and duty to refuse admission to anybody they consider a nuisance. Close the LCBO outlets, and the Beer Stores and Wine Racks along with them. Replace them with nothing.
If the Toronto wine snobs complain, ask them again what they did to prevent the plain people’s have to pay ten times what anybody ought to pay for a pack of cigarettes or their being banned from smoking in public places, whether there was a good reason for it or not. Lift the ban on smoking in pubs and it’s only alcoholics who’ll see the need to drink at home.
Great sarc,don. What I do when this is brought up,I just tell the eedjit gubermint leech that no,he/she could NOT get a job in the private sector,as they are actually expected to work and serve people civilly. Usually shuts them up pretty darn quick,as they slink away.
Ontario is fully “zombified” so a liquor strike will cut the supply of reality dulling fluid which the power structure relies upon to keep the zombie hordes anesthetized to reality and in a state of obliviousness to the sever rogering the government is giving them.
Booze, drugs and BS are paramount to the kleptocracy operating in Ontarislobovia. Premier Mom better get the booze flowing before the election.
Ontario’s liquor monopoly is integral to it’s political class pogrom of dulling down the population. It will never be privatised and it will never be allowed to strike longer than a week.
Meanwhile I sit in a government office, where we are told we don’t have any funds for the operational mandate, but year before last they forced new cubicle furniture on us that we didn’t want or need, on the claim they are rationalizing space, then last year surplus a whole bunch of the people who sat in those new cubicles, which now sit empty and they can’t downsize the floor space as the lease agreement does not run out till 2018. what’s new for this year, still no money for operational mandate, but French training is still important….
You want to save money in Federal government, raze most of Treasury Board and give lower level managers more say and responsibility for their budgets.
Aren’t those pensions front & center in the NDP platform & their war on inequity? No? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
“… neither party has plans to scale back the benefits if they win the election.”
So, the voters/tax payers, who evidently have no say in the matter, are described as “generous”? I just need to remind myself how generous I am the next time I’m mugged.
Imagine the price of cottages and the traffic conditions if gubment trough suckers were paid and fired accordingly.
Let’s face it, we law-abiding, hard-working Ontarians are being robbed blind by the damned unions. Where do they think the money for their demands is going to come from? Families are already hard-pressed to pay all of their monthly bills.
Most of the LCBO employees I’ve encountered are overweight with pasty complexions who shuffle around their outlets, not serving their customers with the alacrity and courtesy their obscene salaries and benefits would seem to warrant. They don’t even have rudimentary knowledge about what wine goes with what, but just unload the trucks, fill the shelves, and take our money.
If the public sector workers continue to expect blood from stones, they’ll deserve a backlash when/if Ontarians finally shout,”I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYOMRE.”
“…When even normally apolitical taxpayers are upset, surely change has got to be coming.”
Change will only come when taxpayers go away beyond being ‘upset’ and become %^$#$@g angry…really angry.
But I have seen absolutely nothing to indicate that the private sector is anywhere near this point. As a matter of fact, dull, mute acceptance seems to be the norm.
Oh, I’m sure the people at the Wine Rack (owned by Vincor, makers of most Ontario wines) are perfectly nice and courteous to everybody, including the Indians with trembling hands who come in for a bottle of Bright’s. The Wine Rack rarely bother asking anyone embarrassing questions. The drooling idiots in charge of the cash at most Montreal deps never do.
The service isn’t the problem. The problem is that off-licences are a nuisance to society no matter who runs them. How it is the best interest of the Queen of Ontario to make it easier for people who have no business drinking at all (we all know who they are) to saturate themselves with alcohol, raise Cain in public places, beat their spouses and children at home (if they have a home at all) and show up for work drunk or hungover (if they have jobs at all) is beyond me.
The tax money can’t possibly cover the cost of cleaning up after them.
All honourable members of the Official Gravy Sucking Pigs Club.
It would be nice if change were coming, but I have my doubts. I think it more likely that your cousin is afraid to be called racist/homophobe/whatever, and that when the invective start he would back down and toe the line just like the rest of us.
In Alberta we got rid of the Alcb. It has saved us a lot of money. It was so easy to.
I believe Hudak in Ontario can win the next election, whenever the Dippers decide not to support the Liars, on a platform of restraining the public sector unions. Maybe even a Right-to-Work plaltform, although that may be a bridge too far.
I too was a government slave for a number of years. From the sounds of your missive, I do believe we were co-workers. Colin G?
LOL no you don’t.
An LCBO strike before or during the election! Great for Hudak, if he has the balls to exploit it.
“If the Toronto wine snobs complain, ask them again what they did to prevent the plain people’s have to pay ten times what anybody ought to pay for a pack of cigarettes or their being banned from smoking in public places, whether there was a good reason for it or not. Lift the ban on smoking in pubs and it’s only alcoholics who’ll see the need to drink at home.” Dick Slater
The smoking taxation is EVIL. The anti-smokers are evil. When society becomes insensitive to right & wrong practices such that they tax those less fortunate more than others in society under an OLD and stupid rational of SIN Taxes. Who determines what is a Sin in a society that uses taxation to punish some but not others!
“Maybe take a trip on reality altering drugs”
Like alcohol???
With all due respect for Mr slater’s temperance rant, a strike at the LCBO will only force your rummy neighbours to the cleaning supply aisle to stock up on Lysol. Not everyone who opts to buy a beverage at the liquor store will throw up on your shoes.
While the employees at the LCBOs in town are generally helpful and courteous, I think the path Alberta has taken is one Ontario should take. If nothing else the increased revenues will help offset the monies flushed away with the bird beaters.
I’ve seen the standing idle that batb refers to but they were standing in a group at the back of the last Alberta Liquor Board store that closed to make way for private enterprise.
Above was in response to stradivarious
Sorry
That’s only TV talk, batb. You’ll never see that in real life Ontariowe. We do as we are told!
Robert of Ottawa: “I believe Hudak in Ontario can win the next election …
… but only if he genuinely wants to win. ‘Last election, there was no fire in his belly. It’s like he wanted to lose. Hudak’s got to get into the ring, dukes up, wanting to win the fight. He’s got to be vocal, he’s got to propose solutions to our union-induced impasses, and he’s got to reflect the quiet anger of many Ontario voters. He’s got to be on our side. He’s got to name our anger and frustration, otherwise mere conservative platitudes and opposition to the damned Liberals’ policies will not defeat the Liberals, who will have the MSM on their side.
Hudak’s heart and soul have got to be genuinely in the race, or nothing changes.
An LCBO strike sounds great. Sell off the booze and equipment. Get rid of the real estate. Ta da, no more LCBO. Meanwhile, private liquor stores would be doing the job they should have been allowed to do decades and decades ago.
I often provide a particular safety training program. Twice in the last month, I provided services to larger, private sector employers. Their employees showed up on time and acted professionally while participating in the program.
A few days ago, I provided the same program to a bunch of city employees. The program started 15 minutes late due to stragglers and while they did okay on their exam, there was considerably more kibbetsing and joking around.
Meanwhile, city councillors keep insisting that…. if you want good people, you should be happy to pay a 15% premium.
I thought Harper was going to save the country if he only got a majority. Fat chance.
Hudak’s heart and soul have got to be genuinely in the race
Hudak has neither. He is a born loser he will never win. Ever. Even if he does win, he’ll still lose. He can’t not fail.
I thought Harper was going to save the country if he only got a majority.
And slowly, they wake up and smell the ashes.
Their employees showed up on time and acted professionally while participating in the program.
The only reason for that is they want to keep their job. Mickey Mouse safety courses aren’t looked highly upon by anyone.
In fact, the only reason anyone takes them is they are mandated by, you guessed it, government. Or one of their, so-called, arms length agencies.
The parasite safety industry is part of that extra expense mandated by government.
The Manitoba government liquor monopoly is raising taxes on booze. Their laffer curved asses are about to get homebrewed.
Having been a bartender, I know the damage drinking does to the personalities of over drinkers and to the families of those who spend all their time and money on alcohol. Cigarette/pipe smokers do not cause heartbreak to those who love them; annoyance perhaps, but smoking does not alter personalities. Smoking only hurts the health of the smoker if the smoker does not take vitamins and does not exercise on a regular basis.
Facts are fiction in the PC world of zealots and self righteous, self proclaiming ‘do gooders’ who feel that their opinions are the only ones that count. People in Canada are not allowed to sit in a patio restaurant and have a smoke but they can drink as many alcoholic beverages as they wish…fanaticism gone too far, IMO. Most people who smoke entertain at home.
When a person travels to less hostile places, like anywhere but Canada and parts of the USA, smokers are treated with courtesy and accommodation; for example, in the Cancun edition of the notorious anti smoking Courtyard Marriott hotel chain smokers are welcomed in a covered courtyard overlooking a beautiful garden and all of the stairwell landings have ashtrays and comfortable chairs for ‘midnight smokes’. A pack of smokes costs three dollars in Mexico.
Canada’s fanatical response to concerned overtaxed, over regulated tobacco smokers is as brutal as that of the wee mustached lunatic in Germany who started a war that my tobacco smoking parents fought for 4 years. It was a war against Totalitarian rule by a fanatic; today they wonder why they fought; they cannot even smoke in the Legion! We do live in strange times.
Good points Dick Slater and Slap shot.
I’m reminded of Margaret Thatcher’s approach to these questions. While she said so many good things, the one that has always seemed the most strategically wise and realistic to me is that government can only influence the big things, and that it absolutely cannot control outcomes (or words to that effect).
I don’t know what to do about legislator pensions, etc.: Mike Harris actually did something about that (abolished them, essentially), but I’m not sure we’re any better off in Ontario as a result of that. I do, however, feel that trying to “rein in” public sector unions, whatever that means, is tantamount to trying to control outcomes: government has no bottom lines when it comes to money or productivity or service levels, and that as long as all of the current public service, broadly defined, remains in, you know, the public sector, reformist politicians, however well-intentioned, will always be locked in a war of attrition they cannot win (the audaciously self-absorbed play of the LCBO workers in the current political environment, as well as the likely short-term outcome of that (which Occam has correctly identified), is only the latest case in point). There are no political solutions to public service costs; the only thing government can do is get as far away from all of that as possible.
Which is why I believe that we should be trying to influence the big thing in this case — which is the state of public finances, particularly in Ontario, which has an enormous reserve of commercial, near-commercial and commercializable state-owned enterprises, assets and activities, which, with a little creativity, could easily be monetized, the proceeds of which ought to be used to try to reverse and reduce the pattern of unsustainable indebtedness into which we have now fallen.
Whether these enterprises, assets and activities are purchased by the public sector pension funds (which is a really good idea, because it alludes to a bit of a “grand bargain” outcome) or by other investors, real bottom lines will be created, resulting in much of the cost and productivity issue being rectified in private, rather than in front of the pro-union and statist media. But the first order of business is to get these things into the hands of investors, thereby shrinking the sheer size of government. Whatever regulatory structure people think is necessary to curtail excesses or influence behaviour is a secondary consideration, and may or may not occur concurrently with privatizaton. In this way, solutions to the “public sector union problem” would be a sustainable long-term by-product of privatization, rather than the periodic confrontation we see today and which is always greated with knee-jerk revulsion from the public, who generally fall into a pattern of “social peace” appeasement.
I know that commenter cgh will completely disagree with me on this, but the biggest mistake Mike Harris made on electricity was to proceed with regulatory reform without first privatizing the whole mess. As we know, electricity regulation and manipulation is the biggest boondoogle in Ontario today — to the point of the ridiculous smartmeters, which was a program run directly out of the premier’s office and which essentially lets the government see and keep track of how you use electricity (George Orwell’s “1984” lives in the hearts of Dalton McGuinty and his ilk). Margaret Thatcher documents in her memoirs how she had to smash through all of the arguments about how such and such industry is ‘not ready for privatization’ or that ‘now is not the time for an IPO’, etc: her point being that there is no time like the present.
Those elements of the public service that cannot or should not be privatized will have to be by-passed in the first instance, until reform-minded politicians have the necessary greater leverage, which will result from the public sector being much smaller. That’s what Maggie did with the coal miners: by the time she took them on, not only did coal represent a smaller proportion of electricity generation (thanks to private investment in other forms of generation), but the miners could no longer count on the support of a broad public sector union front to shut the country down.
I think it’s time we got on with it, and the only chance we have of that is to vote for Tim Hudak. My compliments to contributors above: the comments have been very good on all sides.
$50,000 to bag a bottle. $100,000/annum to pay a TTC guy sit sleeping in his chair while you deposit a token. Cops paid $70 to stand around watching guys dig holes. Government workers paid their salary by taxpayers while they take leave to ‘volunteer’ for their favourite charity.
The pitchforks are comning. Hope the politicians, bureacrats and p.s. unionists are ready for the taxpayer blacklash.
Carmen Reinhart: “No Doubt. Our Pensions Are Screwed.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-11/carmen-reinhart-no-doubt-our-pensions-are-screwed
Default America: Entitlement Albatross
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpfi0MAq38Y
Are you serious Dick? A responsible adult shouldn’t be allowed to buy a bottle of wine?
“I believe Hudak in Ontario can win the next election …
… but only if he genuinely wants to win. ‘Last election, there was no fire in his belly. It’s like he wanted to lose.
Yup, Tiger Tim (TT) has a hard time doing anger. But the PCs problems are much, much deeper than that. They hopelessly compromise themselves at every turn.
I saw TT on TVO a month ago going on about McGuinty’s billion-dollar gas-plant cancellation and the need for an enquiry commission. Then the interviewer punched him in the head with, “But I seem to recall you, Mr. Hudak, standing in front of the gas-plant site prior to the last election, demanding that the Liberals cancel it!”
And now, they’ve done it again. TT has been (quite rightly and correctly)ranting on about the economic devastation that The Dildo’s green energy stupidity has visited on this province, but now the idiots have lost any moral authority they might have had to trash The Dildo and his successors by coming out with a 2% mandatory bio-diesel policy of their own!
Fools. *&^%$#g Fools.
Bill Gates on State Budgets, Entitlement Spending and Education Cuts
…Gates cites unfunded healthcare benefits and public pensions as the primary contributors to the pending budget crisis, which boil down to a “young versus old” competition for scarce taxpayer dollars. And, he says that decreased funding for education means it will be more difficult to fund “bold experiments, teacher effectiveness measurement and incentives for excellence.”
reason.org/news/printer/bill-gates-state-budgets-education
Oct 1 2012: Let’s see. The student population has increased 8.5% while the number of teachers and administrators has increased by 400%. And there has been a continuing decrease in scale scores on national tests. Someone is getting taken for ride. $$$$$$$$$$$$
http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_how_state_budgets_are_breaking_us_schools.html
The LCBO shovels huge amounts of money into the provincial treasury.Years ago David Petersons Liberals were elected on the promise to privatize the LCBO,but then they discovered what a cash cow they had absolute control over.Control being the operative word here,they control sales, distribution,licencing and prices.This is every private corporation CEO s wet dream,even a brick like McGuinty could make a huge profit under these circumstances.
So do the stores in Alberta as the province controls the liquor warehousing but is not saddled with the unions, personnel, stores and all the other costs of running the liquor business. There are now far more employees of the liquor business and more profits flowing into the Alberta government and many, many more stores for the public to access.
the only chance we have of that is to vote for Tim Hudak.
Oh ho hee hee…oh wait you were being SERIOUS?!?! Now that is funny!
Hudak will NEVER privatize the LCBO. This guy thinks a biofuel mandate is a good idea. The OPC will NEVER roll back government. The OPC is a big government party end of story. They must be destroyed.
That’s a great comment: everything you just said is more or less exactly what can be expected in Ontario, not just in alcohol retailing, but across the board in all areas of potential privatization.
So far as alcohol retailing reform is concerned, David Peterson’s promise (1985) was to allow the sale of beer and wine in convenience stores (which he didn’t do in five years in office). It was Mike Harris who promised to privatize the LCBO and Ontario Hydro (The Common Sense Revolution, 1995; he didn’t, er, precisely keep his promises, either).
As it happens, you don’t have to drive too far in rural southwestern Ontario to see a sign on a Foodland, Knechtel Grocery Store, Mac’s Milk, etc., indicating that they serve as The Beer Store AND LCBO outlet in their respective communities (and making their businesses all the more viable for it). In fact, you don’t even have to drive at all in small urban southwestern Ontario to find a Zehr’s or a Sobey’s that has a wine store in it. This all started in 1998 when Mike Harris created the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (moving, thankfully, the regulator to North York out of the same offices on the Toronto waterfront as the LCBO) — and your point about the cash streams still flowing into the province is entirely correct: alcohol tax and levy revenues are still due and payable (a point which seems not to be too clearly understood, even by folks around here; Harris seems to have understood all of this this; why can’t the rest of us?)
All of this demonstrates that alcohol retailing reform is already well underway in Ontario: the attendant costs of retailing in smaller communities are now being borne by the private grocery and convenience store sector — not only by The Beer Store (which has always been, so far as I know, a, you know, private corporation owned by the breweries, not a government outfit — another point that is not too well understood). In this regard, The Beer Store itself today apparently doesn’t even see the value of its being involved in at least some retailing — and they were the ones who were most aggressively opposed to Mr. Peterson’s proposals (recall their “It works!” campaign of the late 1980s, when it was still called Brewers’ Retail — it’s legal name, I believe, is still Brewers Warehousing Inc.).
So, why, exactly, do the LCBO’s traditional operations and its union(s) deserve special status? We’re already engaged in privatization, segmentation, specialization and competition by baby steps and a thousand cuts. Would it be too much to ask that we just, please, get on with it all?
Now, if people were dying en masse on the street due to alcohol poisoning because of these reforms, don’t you think that the Toronto Star and the CBC would be ladling that down our throats?
Hmmm…come to think of it, the traditional LCBO and its unions may actually now be in the same position as the coal miners — if they go on strike, the booze will still continue to flow.
“Hudak will NEVER privatize the LCBO.”
Probably not.
“This guy thinks a biofuel mandate is a good idea.”
Yes he does.
“The OPC will NEVER roll back government.”
Certainly not voluntarily
“The OPC is a big government party end of story.”
Yup
“They must be destroyed.”
I think they’re doing that to themselves.