Good News CUPE Fans

[Tom O'Donnell]

Justin Trudeau has tweeted:

"I spoke with national union leaders this morning about the Ontario government’s inappropriate preemptive use of the notwithstanding clause, which undermines the fundamental rights and freedoms of workers. Our government stands firmly with our country’s workers."

Justin Trudeau is certainly a leader I think of as a defender of freedom and fundamental rights.

[Bob Armstrong]

But will the Canadian government join in the coming court application to declare the Ontario PC government's "No Right to Strike" legislation invalid?

~ Bob A (T-S/P)

[Dilip Panjwani]

Justin Trudeau has tweeted:

"I spoke with national union leaders this morning about the Ontario government’s inappropriate preemptive use of the notwithstanding clause, which undermines the fundamental rights and freedoms of workers. Our government stands firmly with our country’s workers."

Justin Trudeau is certainly a leader I think of as a defender of freedom and fundamental rights.

Ha-hah! :-)

[Tom O'Donnell]

I think the words "freedom" and "fundamental rights" don't mean the same for Trudeau as they do for many people. Freedom of assembly, freedom to travel in-country, freedom to keep your business open, etc.

I'm going to assume the anti-freedom people are okay with what Ford has done. After all, it's an emergency, as defined by ... Ford.

People love big government until that same government does something they don't like. Hypocritical governments voted in by hypocritical individuals.

[Dilip Panjwani]

I think the words "freedom" and "fundamental rights" don't mean the same for Trudeau as they do for many people. Freedom of assembly, freedom to travel in-country, freedom to keep your business open, etc.

I'm going to assume the anti-freedom people are okay with what Ford has done. After all, it's an emergency, as defined by ... Ford.

People love big government until that same government does something they don't like. Hypocritical governments voted in by hypocritical individuals.

Ford's emergency or not, workers have a fundamental right to stop working after a reasonable notice period... what they do not have is the right to prevent employers from hiring others to replace them in that scenario...

[Tom O'Donnell]

Agreed. I think of working as mercenary. As a self-employed person, I get paid to work and can get terminated at any time for any reason. Or no reason at all. So should everyone else.

[Frank Dixon]

The right to collective bargaining, along with opening up the voting privilege, began to be established in the Western world in the 1800s. It was future Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King (1874-1950; PM 1919-21, 1923-26, 1926-30, 1935-1948) who assisted the extraordinarily wealthy Rockefeller family with a horrendous labour situation in their Colorado mines in the 1910s; unsafe working conditions, low wages, high profits, no collective bargaining rights, and several worker deaths were all the central features of that dispute. King, one of the very first practitioners in the emerging field of industrial relations, had been the first Canadian minister of Labour circa 1909, in the Wilfrid Laurier government, and was a civil servant in the same department before that. King put his ideas together in his dull but very important 1918 book 'Industry and Humanity'; still important today, perhaps never so much as now. The book set forth progressive policies which became reality during the following 50 years. mostly enacted by Liberal governments, spurred at times by the CCF and NDP.

While the so-called 'Notwithstanding Clause' is enshrined in our 1982 Constitution, it was never intended for the use which Ontario Premier Doug Ford is putting it to now, with the CUPE crisis. He has been known as anti-union for many years, but suppressed this during the COVID pandemic, and then until after he was re-elected in June 2022. He may be getting more than he bargained for with his tactics.

[Tom O'Donnell]

That's very detailed, Frank. How about one for the Emergencies Act?

[Frank Dixon]

Upon request from IM Tom O'Donnell:
The Emergencies Act was created to deal with 'Emergencies'. The only previous legislation to handle these was the 'War Measures Act', last invoked in 1970 to deal with the FLQ crisis in Quebec. Although retrospective criticism was directed to the Pierre Trudeau government for overreach on that crisis, AT THE TIME, no one knew what was really happening, and it turned out there were TWO distinct FLQ cells operating terrorism, one kidnapping British Trade Commissioner James Cross, and one kidnapping and murdering Quebec provincial minister Pierre Laporte. Cross was freed almost two months after he was taken.
We didn't have complete information, as distinct from a chess game, where complete information exists at all times during the game!!
Returning to the 'complete information' theme, for 2022, no one in Canadian authority had complete information on the strength of the convoy blockaders in Ottawa, nor in Windsor, nor in Coutts, Alberta. Did some of them carry guns? This was shown true at Coutts, where blockaders were in contact with those in Ottawa and Windsor.
With the Ottawa city police force at about 1,000 sworn officers for a population of about 1 million (New York City has 35,000 sworn officers for a population of 8 million, and Kingston has about 200 for a population of about 130,000), the Ottawa force was under strength for the problem it faced. It needed reinforcements, which it got when the Act was declared by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, some three weeks into the blockades. They were cleared within a few days.

[Sid Belzberg]

Upon request from IM Tom O'Donnell:
The Emergencies Act was created to deal with 'Emergencies'. The only previous legislation to handle these was the 'War Measures Act', last invoked in 1970 to deal with the FLQ crisis in Quebec. Although retrospective criticism was directed to the Pierre Trudeau government for overreach on that crisis, AT THE TIME, no one knew what was really happening, and it turned out there were TWO distinct FLQ cells operating terrorism, one kidnapping British Trade Commissioner James Cross, and one kidnapping and murdering Quebec provincial minister Pierre Laporte. Cross was freed almost two months after he was taken.
We didn't have complete information, as distinct from a chess game, where complete information exists at all times during the game!!
Returning to the 'complete information' theme, for 2022, no one in Canadian authority had complete information on the strength of the convoy blockaders in Ottawa, nor in Windsor, nor in Coutts, Alberta. Did some of them carry guns? This was shown true at Coutts, where blockaders were in contact with those in Ottawa and Windsor.
With the Ottawa city police force at about 1,000 sworn officers for a population of about 1 million (New York City has 35,000 sworn officers for a population of 8 million, and Kingston has about 200 for a population of about 130,000), the Ottawa force was under strength for the problem it faced. It needed reinforcements, which it got when the Act was declared by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, some three weeks into the blockades. They were cleared within a few days.

Frank, you left several important details out of your eloquent summary.

1)The protestors had reached an agreement brokered by the Ottawa authorities to discuss a resolution with the Federal Government that they reneged on the very day they decided to invoke the act.
2) The emergency act was rescinded when it became clear that the Senate would not allow it to pass.

3)The Federal govt steadfastly refused to meet with the protest organizers from the beginning, thereby unnecessarily extending the duration of the demonstration.

4) The recision of vaccine mandates after the protest ended did not apply to Truckers, demonstrating that this had nothing to do with health and everything to do with politics.

5) The Prime minister chose, instead of holding talks with the protestors, to label this group of Canadians from all walks of life as far-right Nazi sympathizers and, on that basis, refused to hold talks.

6) As it turns out, the protestors were proven 100% correct when a Pfizer executive at a recent EU hearing admitted that they did not test for whether or not the injections prevented transmission. Any legal basis to mandate these were proven wrong at that point.

7) The rationale that these injections reduced hospitalizations and severity of symptoms and deaths was also proven to be false, as per my post here

https://forum.chesstalk.com/forum/ch...208#post221685

8) The evidence of harm for these injections I posted here
https://forum.chesstalk.com/forum/ch...871#post221871

These were experimental gene therapies that Pfizer et al. knew from the start were harmful and ineffective, and Govt coercing its citizens to take this violates international law, including the famous Nuremberg Code with respect to informed consent and coercion.
The Trudeau Government is the first time in Canadian history that we have a genocidal dictator in charge. I am pleasantly surprised that the protestors were as peaceful as they were.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/Pyl8e6qdvnJJ/

https://peterhalligan.substack.com/p...own-causes-and

[Tom O'Donnell]

Next time someone goes on strike I will point out that "some of them may have guns". Because hey, in any situation anyone could theoretically have a gun. I hope people who think it's okay when Trudeau does this will be equally okay when say a Conservative PM does it. Me, I think both Trudeau and Ford are human pond scum.

[Sid Belzberg]

Next time someone goes on strike I will point out that "some of them may have guns". Because hey, in any situation anyone could theoretically have a gun. I hope people who think it's okay when Trudeau does this will be equally okay when say a Conservative PM does it. Me, I think both Trudeau and Ford are human pond scum.

[Dilip Panjwani]

So true!
It is indeed sad that most people do not think twice before giving the government a lot of power, despite knowing that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely...

[Frank Dixon]

I could also have added:
The Ottawa 2022 winter blockades were eventually resolved peacefully, and without loss of life, after some three weeks; those are the main positive outcomes. That might not have happened in many dozens of other nations around the world, where a premature storming of the blockades could have killed and wounded dozens if not hundreds, including police personnel and innocent bystanders. Hundreds of businesses in the neighbourhoods near the blockade had to close for three weeks or more, leading to large financial losses for those businesses and their employees. It was in the downtown of a busy city, all apart from being the centre of the government district, during problematic weather conditions. The blockaders had ZERO permission from the City of Ottawa to allow them to occupy the space they did, as they did. I have family living near the blockaded zone, whose lives, and those of thousands of other residents, were disrupted for weeks, through no fault of their own. Honking of horns 24 hours a day in Ottawa made it difficult to impossible for anyone to sleep or carry on a normal existence. The losses in Ottawa are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Canada suffered lost and / or delayed international trade of an estimated billion dollars a day, with the Windsor blockades, as well. The blockaders weren't even officially representing any group; these rogue truckers were a distinct small minority of their trade, virtually exclusively Caucasian, who protested being vaccinated, when some 90 per cent of truckers had been vaccinated against COVID. Their unions supported the COVID vaccine mandates!! Nazi and Confederate flags were prominently displayed in Ottawa by more than a few hard-core fringe rightists; this was recorded by media for posterity. We have also since learned, during the ongoing Inquiry, that certain rogue members of law enforcement decided to take it upon themselves to leak operational plans, to the blockaders, on a regular basis! Lawyers for the blockaders admitted this openly in testimony; do you feel comfortable having these leaking people still in government employment? Many countries would have them discovered, and then jailed or executed for treason. We are talking about thousands of legal violations, committed by a comparative few lawless redneck dim bulbs. I am proud to be a Canadian, when firm action by elected Canadian leadership resolved a problem which had made headlines around the world. And I am certainly not a Justin Trudeau admirer, in general; Justin has committed more significant ethical violations during seven years at the top than any other previous Canadian PM (improper Aga Khan visit, SNC Lavalin legal case improper intervention, WE Charity funding disaster, backtrack on voting procedures promises, just to name a few). He could have been criminally indicted for his Lavalin misdeeds.

Also, bombings in Quebec from the separatist, violent, tiny minority FLQ group had carried on during the 1960s, with many recorded incidents. With the War Measures being federally invoked in 1970, for the October Crisis, that proved to be the swift end of the FLQ!!! No more bombings.

[Dilip Panjwani]

I could also have added:
The Ottawa 2022 winter blockades were eventually resolved peacefully, and without loss of life, after some three weeks; those are the main positive outcomes. That might not have happened in many dozens of other nations around the world, where a premature storming of the blockades could have killed and wounded dozens if not hundreds, including police personnel and innocent bystanders. Hundreds of businesses in the neighbourhoods near the blockade had to close for three weeks or more, leading to large financial losses for those businesses and their employees. It was in the downtown of a busy city, all apart from being the centre of the government district, during problematic weather conditions. The blockaders had ZERO permission from the City of Ottawa to allow them to occupy the space they did, as they did. I have family living near the blockaded zone, whose lives, and those of thousands of other residents, were disrupted for weeks, through no fault of their own. Honking of horns 24 hours a day in Ottawa made it difficult to impossible for anyone to sleep or carry on a normal existence. The losses in Ottawa are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Canada suffered lost and / or delayed international trade of an estimated billion dollars a day, with the Windsor blockades, as well. The blockaders weren't even officially representing any group; these rogue truckers were a distinct small minority of their trade, virtually exclusively Caucasian, who protested being vaccinated, when some 90 per cent of truckers had been vaccinated against COVID. Their unions supported the COVID vaccine mandates!! Nazi and Confederate flags were prominently displayed in Ottawa by more than a few hard-core fringe rightists; this was recorded by media for posterity. We have also since learned, during the ongoing Inquiry, that certain rogue members of law enforcement decided to take it upon themselves to leak operational plans, to the blockaders, on a regular basis! Lawyers for the blockaders admitted this openly in testimony; do you feel comfortable having these leaking people still in government employment? Many countries would have them discovered, and then jailed or executed for treason. We are talking about thousands of legal violations, committed by a comparative few lawless redneck dim bulbs. I am proud to be a Canadian, when firm action by elected Canadian leadership resolved a problem which had made headlines around the world. And I am certainly not a Justin Trudeau admirer, in general; Justin has committed more significant ethical violations during seven years at the top than any other previous Canadian PM (improper Aga Khan visit, SNC Lavalin legal case improper intervention, WE Charity funding disaster, backtrack on voting procedures promises, just to name a few). He could have been criminally indicted for his Lavalin misdeeds.

Also, bombings in Quebec from the separatist, violent, tiny minority FLQ group had carried on during the 1960s, with many recorded incidents. With the War Measures being federally invoked in 1970, for the October Crisis, that proved to be the swift end of the FLQ!!! No more bombings.

Hi Frank,
Don't you think that a simpler way to resolve the issue would have been for Justin to show respect to the Canadian citizens protesting by meeting them immediately, and removing the unnecessary and autocratic mandates that he had imposed upon his own fellow citizens?