Seeking a Hybrid Car Sooner Rather Than Later

It's going on two years since I bought my Chevy Cavalier. The car suits my needs in every way except one -- I can no longer afford to drive it. Fuel prices are heading in only one direction, though they'll sputter with corporate coyness. Well, I'm going to try something; I'm going to approach the dealership where I bought my car and see if I can turn it in for a hybrid. I have three years worth of payments left on my Cavalier, and I'm curious how my request will be received. I'm also going to write to General Motors Canada to see how my request will be recieved on the corporate level -- there's sometimes an enormous difference between dealing with a local branch of a company, and those lurking in the highest reachers of the ivory tower.

Since Canadian politicians admit their own woeful impotence and unwillingness to waive taxes on gasoline -- quoting the most fatalistic line of bullshit reasoning I've recently heard: that the gas companies will simply raise their prices as much as the tax relief amounts to, swallowing up any savings automobile owners might have enjoyed. So, as one motorist, I'm taking the situation into my own hands. Let's see what happens.

No Nail in the Coffin

Advertising executive Paul Coffin -- one of the people charged and convicted in the "sponsorship scandal" -- has been sentenced to a conditional sentence of two years less a day, to be served in the community, for defrauding Canadian taxpayers of $1.5 million. How did Justice Jean-Guy Boilard of Quebec Superior Court arrive at this extraordinarily light sentence? Via clarvoyance (Justice Boilard looked into the future and ascertained that Mr. Coffin was not likely to reoffend), and by taking into consideration that Mr. Coffin is incapable of time-travel (saying "Mr. Coffin is genuinely contrite but unfortunately he cannot turn the clock back"). Is this what budding lawyers are taught in law school? Also taken into consideration was the fact that Mr. Coffin has repaid $1 million to the federal government -- enjoying a $500,000 profit for his misdeeds -- and the fact that he feels bad about having been caught.

Would it be asking too much of the Canadian justice system to have made Mr. Coffin pay back all of the money he earned fraudulently, and possibly pay a fine on top of that? The vengeful side of me would love to see this white collar criminal go to prison, but I believe non-violent criminals should be sentenced in alternative ways. However, I don't believe criminals such as Mr. Coffin should be spanked with feather dusters. There is nothing about his "sentence" that suggests punishment or justice. This sentence suggests only that the case against Mr. Coffin is closed, and he will be inconvenienced no further. We should expect much from our judicial system than this -- if only it were up to the task.

We Want Your Soul

More than ten years ago I took a break from university thinking I would find a job as a copywriter in a public relations or advertising firm; get out and see what the real world of work was all about. A few months and several hundred resumes later, I found myself working midnights for a pharmacy chain, tearing up old carpeting, moving shelving units around, or cleaning out long-neglected cellars. Another month and several dozen resumes later I scored a job as a "management trainee" at a sports store in the mall. Glad as I was for the steady pay cheque, it was one of the most demoralizing events of my life. And I had yet to attend my first company meeting.

The thing that galled me most about that dead-end sports store job was how the corporation that owned it sought to insinuate itself into my very soul. To anyone who has never worked such a job, this certainly will sound overwrought, exaggerated, and ridiculous. But it's true. I suppose I should count myself lucky that corporation didn't have its own cheer. The quite possibly do by this date.

Yeah, I was hired to sell merchandize, and God help me, I did my best. Yeah, I know I was there to absorb all those company-published binders filled with selling techniques, product information, and miscellaneous motivational tracts. I read it all. What I couldn't handle was the constant unspoken pressure to never take a full lunch-hour. You see, I'm one of these weak, flawed people who needs time to himself. After a morning of straightening shelves and racks that didn't need straightening, trying to sell shit to the odd parents who straggled in, I need some time to recoup my sanity from the crushing boredom -- to use my lunch-hour to read in the food court. This was openly ridiculed, but being a writer and booklover, I was used to how anti-intellectuals viewed books as though they were stink bombs. Worse, woe to anyone worked their eight-hour shift and went home. It was "understood" -- the same way bullies make themselves understood without raising a hand -- that "motivated" workers put in the extra time. Sure, we were paid on commission, so the longer we hung around and sold shit, the more money we'd make. Again, I'm one of these wrongly-programmed, faulty human beings who is tired by the end of eight hours of sheer boredom. Being a writer, I looked forward to an evening of writing, watching movies, or reading, or seeing friends.

In the end, the beancounters at head office asserted themselves and workers such as myself found their base salary cut, and our commission raised ever-so-slightly, so that we had to work twelve hours to earn what we used to make in eight hours.

That was the end of my tenure at the sports store.

A person close to me recently took a job at "big box" store, and quit within weeks of being hired. The "big box" store -- not Wal-Mart -- has its own cheer. It also has a tangled bureaucracy that would make jaded old Russian desk jockeys misty-eyed with nostalgia and envy. The "lifers" -- and there were many -- the people stranded in this place for life, joked that when cut they bled "orange." At least they admitted to bleeding at all when cut -- more than any corporate vampire from that old sports store's head office could claim.

And like virtually every business under the sun, this big box store was run by a conflicting meld of personalities who coalesced to create a united front of people who don't know their asses from holes in the ground. Their approach to employer-employee relations seems to be an amalgamation of Mein Kampf and The Dao of Pooh; setting all employees in a cast to be viewed as recalcitrant high school kids.

Interestingly, the managers of this store selected the person close to me for some specialized training, which no one else in the store received. This was a good thing. However, after a number of scheduling SNAFUs -- that touched the hands of nearly everyone in the store's revolving door of incompetence -- the person close to me simply chose to leave. So, this person leaves with that specialized training the big box store spent all kind of money to provide, seeming to have no thought about attempting to retain this person I know.

This is how the world runs, I know it. No matter how the economy lumbers along, I'm continually amazed that it performs as well as it does given the legion of gimps, assholes, incompetents, ego-maniacs, and just-flat-out-maniacs who man its ranks. Were the world's economy be distilled down to a single rowing team in a single boat, it would be mere seconds before every rowers' paddle snapped because they would be so out of synch.

And it insenses me to no end that this retarded, wall-eyed, lurching leviathan actually puts out its hand each time I take a job and believes I'm willing to put my soul into its sweaty palm. I have not, I will not, and never will.

The True American Pass-Time: Moving the Goal Posts

America the powerful. America the omnipresent, omnipotent, the omni-idiotic. America the unravelling. The United States lumber industry doesn't like the outcome of a recent court finding (in favor of Canada) with regard to the illegal tarrifs America has slapped on Canadian lumber, so they want a new process.

America is in the wrong on this issue and they can't stand it. Thing is, Canada should have known from the beginning what it was getting into when it signed the North American Free Trade Agreement: America wants out trade -- for free. Which opened the door to segments of Canada submitting to American freedom, which is: "You have the freedom... to agree with us." "You have the freedom... to do as we say." "You have the freedom... to roll over when we complain."

America the psychotic -- perpetually proclaiming itself to be the world's only Superpower (now that there is only one, maybe it's time to scrap that designation), yet undyingly portrays itself as the underdog in every face-off. You can't have it both ways, America. You're the sucky brute; the drunken businessman in the restaurant who feels he can duck out of paying his bill by loudly complaining about it.

Ain't gonna work this time.

2005 CBC Literary Awards competition

The 2005 CBC Literary Awards competition is now open. Put your talent to the test and send us your unpublished short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Please note that this year's deadline is November 1st, 2005.
What are the Awards?

The CBC Literary Awards competition is the only literary competition that celebrates original, unpublished works, in Canada’s two official languages. There are three categories — short story, poetry, and creative nonfiction — and $60,000 of prize money courtesy of the Canada Council for the Arts. In addition, winning entries are published in Air Canada’s enRoute magazine and broadcast on CBC radio.
What’s new?

This year we have replaced the Travel Literature category with a new category called Creative Nonfiction. Creative nonfiction includes memoir, biography, essay (including personal essay), travel writing, and feature articles. See the Categories section for more information.

Law & Blunders - Canadian Judas-prudence

One thing that troubles me beyond reconcilliation is the Canada justice system. To say that it's hopelessly flawed doesn't seem to grasp the enormity and thoroughness of its wrong-headedness.

An example from Windsor, Ontario illustrates my point down to the ground: a woman was brutal sexual assaulted in the city one or two years ago, her assailant caught and tried -- sentenced to 30 days house arrest. The victim was quoted in the newspaper as saying that every consideration had been given to the accused's rights, yet her's seemed never to enter the judicial equation. The lack of severity of the sentence was stunning. The sexual assault had been violent; not just some guy slapping a woman's ass in the concession line at the cinema.

What troubles and angers me most about Canada Judas-prudence is that it's based on clarvoyance: Is the accused likely to commit the crime in question again?

This is beyond ridiculous! Why does the law -- or, at least, those who are responsible for enforcing it -- interested in the "crime of the moment"? This is the most bizarre aspects of Canada law. No punishment is meted out for the infraction in question, our justices engage in a sorty of Minority Report-like scan of the future before handing down their sentences. And their sentences are always in sufferably light. Am I some "blood and guts" vengeance-mongers? No. But if my wife, mother, or sister had been sexually assaulted as the poor woman in my example above had been, I'd have been breathless and legless with outrage hearing the accused handed a sentence of 30 days house arrest. Who wouldn't.

And then there are the notorious cases of miscarriages of Canadian justice; stomach-turning, tear-provoking in their obvious injustice and base stupidity and incompetence. Today a former police officer apologized for his role in the 1969 wrongful jailing of David Milgaard. Thirty-six years late is better than nothing, I guess. Then there is the notorious case of Stephen Truscott, wrongly accused so many decades ago of the murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper. Truscott was fifteen years old when he was arrested, sentenced to death, and incarcerated in an empty prison. Somehow the authorities of the day, and of that place, felt Truscott was their "man" with regard to that murder, even though a pedophilic, alcoholic military man with a history of sexual assaults happened to be in the area during the very same time. He died without ever coming under significant suspicion. The Truscott story is a singular blight on Canada's embarrassing record of Judas-prudence. Not to forget other outrages, such as Ron and Linda Sterling of Saskatchewan operated a home day care in Martensville north of Saskatoon. And the phenomenally heartbreaking, gutwrenching story of Richard Klassen and his family. I can honestly say that while watching the Fifth Estate program on the Klassen case and its extraordinary miscarriage of justice, I have never, never been so aghast and filled with outrage.

I guess the lesson with Canadian law and order is the same as when Ontario Premier Mike Harris eviscerated the Ontario healthcare system: Pray you'll never need it.

If you're interested: Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted

Update:
Group says murder convict is innocent, calls for release

"He is a pathological liar. In fairness, I don't believe he knows he's lying..."

The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister.

Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney -- I hate the man. I mean, I personally, on all levels, despise this man. I came of age while he squatted in the Prime Minister's mansion. The first political outrage I ever experienced occurred when he implemented the Goods & Services Tax. It happened at a time when I was working a video store, just finishing secondary school. The position gave me access to scores of people -- citizens -- who had no trouble voicing their outrage that yet another tax had been slapped on to the Grand Dray Horse, known as the Canadian people. There were a few instances when people projected their outrage on to me, the humble clerk and purveyor of the bad news, as the GST became part of the price of renting movies. I recall deflecting the outrage, actually gaining a wry smile of agreement from these hotheads by saying that in my opinion the GST was a "legal crime."

Gosh, those naive days when I believed all it would take was to vote Mulroney out of office to get Canada back on track, and once more have responsive politicians in power. When the Referendum on Quebec occurred in the early 1990s, and Mulroney was all over the airwaves nervously pleading with Canadians that "This is not a referendum on my government," I voted in exactly the way I thought would harm and distress Mulroney most.

The first Letter to the Editor I wrote to my local newspaper was an angst-ridden missive decrying the Prime Minister's arrogance and detachment from the reality of Canadian citizens. I may as well have accused him of being sick with a disease called "Being a Canadian Prime Minister." Maybe the PM's mansion should be demolished and the land sewn with salt. Maybe an "arrogant asshole parasite" exists in the Ottawa water supply.

It was during Brian Mulroney's tenure as Canada's leader that I became so incensed by the news of his daily outrages, that I turned away. I'm embarrassed and chagrined to admit it, but I quickly found reading or watching Canadian news so intolerable, I just turned away. Since then, I've cultivated a frightening and abiding ignorance of the details of Canadian politics. I know what is happening in a general sense, but the Mulroney Government so triggered my gag reflex that I turned into exactly the sort of apathetic citizen I've grown to resent.

Mulroney supporters would rightly me accuse of scapegoating Brian Mulroney for my own human frailties and shortcomings in dealing with a situation I found fraught with affront. But that does not diminish the fact that Brian Mulroney was a disastrous prime minister. I hope that he's among the most hated prime minister's, as well.

When he skulked out of office, I was pleased. When the Progressive Conservative party was voted out of existence in the early 1990s, it finally seemed that Canadian democracy had worked.

Then we saddled ourselves with Jean Chretien, and I realized that there is a psychosis called "Being a Canadian Prime Minister." Surely, Canadian politics and its corrosive horde of corrupt practitioners is the result of some clever radical group tainting the Ottawa water supply with military strength LSD. The only answer to the problem of Canadian politics, seems to me, is for the entire country to move to Ottawa, breathe the air, drink the water, and maybe the madness that hobbles our great nation will at least finally make sense -- like watching Pink Floyd's The Wall under the influence of LSD.

But there will never be another Briam Mulroney. Crybaby extraordinaire, liar supreme, disconnected beyond the veteran disconnected. He is a crumb of a human being, and I'm pleased to see this new book about him, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister, provides him with more than enough rope with which to hang himself.

Ontario Premier rejects use of Shariah law

The premier of Ontario has finally done something that I think the majority of Ontarians believe was the right thing -- he said "No" to religious arrogance and encroachment denying those seeking "the use of a set of centuries' old religious rules called Shariah law to settle Muslim family disputes". The people who sought to make this change in Ontario law have demonstrated new heights in bad-neighborliness and social arrogance. And really, I they really ought to consider leaving this secular world and returning to the caves and sand and 11th Century societies they fled in the first place. Where Islam is the law of the land.

When my grandfather immigrated to Canada from Ireland, he came to contribute to Canadian society -- not turn his tiny corner of it into a miniature Ireland. He became a Canadian citizen -- even though pledging allegiance to the Queen caused him actual physical pain. He did not move to Canada to make other people Irish, nor did he come here to perpetually wave the Irish flag. He came to Canada to seek a new life, a better life than he might have had in 1930s and '40's Ireland.

Maybe it's a provocative thing to say, but I'll say it -- I'm tired of immigrants coming to Canada only to have them create their own little cocoon-like, isolated microcosms of the lands they fled. Particularly when they fled countries with horrific human rights records, arcane and hostile attitudes toward the treatment of women and children, or religions that require them to carry deadly weapons. I'm glad that Canada is know as a "mosaic" society rather than a "melting pot." Yes, people coming here from other cultures bring a richness that is welcome and necessary to our development. However, I draw the line when immigrants arrive in Canada seeking only to carve out a miniature version of the lands they left.

In the neighborhood in which I grew up there are now full-sized billboard signs that are completely in foreign languages. Am I advocating Quebec-styled language gestapos to skulk around my city scrutinizing and measuring such signs and issuing tickets and citations? Absolutely not. However, there's no denying that signs like these have an isolating, divisive effect on communities. It's not neighborly. That might sound like hokum to some people, but I hardly call Yuppie-condo-alienation a sophisticated alternative.

There is something utterly contradictory and provocative about religious fundamentalists coming to a secular nation like Canada looking to spread or deepen their fundamentalism. That's like me going to a vegetarian restaurant and clamoring to be served a T-bone steak -- rare. There's an inherent, off-putting arrogance at work in such a move.

To be clear, I group all fundamentalism and all fanaticism under one umbrella term: crazy. Like the comedian George Carlin, I believe that all religion is a form of mental illness. Sometimes benign, often malignant, sometimes injurious. I'd have to really comb through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to see if it spells out a separation of Church and State, but I think for any country to function -- particularly to function in the 21st Century -- this separation is crucial.

I write this fearing no fatwa.

Further reading on the subject: OPEN LETTER TO ONTARIO PREMIER DALTON McGUINTY: Don't ghettoize women's rights

Canadians beat U.S. Army to New Orleans suburb

Canadians beat U.S. Army to New Orleans suburb

08 Sep 2005 05:08:07 GMT - Source: Reuters

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 7 (Reuters) - A Canadian search-and-rescue team reached a flooded New Orleans suburb to help save trapped residents five days before the U.S. military, a Louisiana state senator said on Wednesday.

The Canadians beat both the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. disaster response department, to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans, where flood waters are still 8 feet (2.4 metres) deep in places, Sen. Walter Boasso said.

"Fabulous, fabulous guys," Boasso said. "They started rolling with us and got in boats to save people."

"We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere."

The stricken parish of 68,000 people was largely ignored by U.S. authorities who scrambled to get aid to New Orleans, a few miles (km) away. Boasso said residents of the outlying parishes had to mount their own rescue and relief efforts when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on Aug. 29.

The U.S. government response to the disaster has been widely criticized. Politicians and editorial writers have called for the resignation of top Bush administration officials.

Boasso said U.S. authorities began airdropping relief supplies to St. Bernard last Wednesday, the same day the Canadian rescue team of about 50 members arrived from Vancouver, nearly 2,200 miles (3,540 km) away.

"They chartered a plane and flew down," he said.

Two FEMA officials reached the parish on Sunday and the U.S. Army arrived on Monday, he said.

"Why does it take them seven days to get the Army in?" Boasso asked.

He speculated that the smaller parishes suffered because the focus was on New Orleans, the famous home of jazz and Mardi Gras.

As for the Canadians, Boasso gave thanks for their quick work.

"They were so glad to be here," he said. "They're still here. They are actually going door-to-door looking in the attics" for people to rescue, he said.

Real Tyranny Meets Flaccid Tyranny

"Hey, those guys in the tanks need toilet paper and cell phones! They're OK in my book!" So say the swinish corporations who bend the arms of governments to do business with the stunted, bloodthirsty jackals we know as communist China.

This week, East met West; real Tyranny of communist China met the flaccid tyranny of the Canadian Liberal party. And what a thumb-wrestling match it was!

Quote from The Globe & Mail: "Both countries [Canada and China] have expressed a mutual desire to see Canada-China trade — currently worth about $30-billion annually — double within five years." Which means doubling the number inhumane sweatshops in China and the number of jobs lost in Canada to those sweatshops. Why does this equation not have me doing a Samba-of-Joy-and-Good-Feeling?

The moment I see Canadian politicians and corporate leaders smiling and slapping each other on the back, all strength goes out of my legs. Something is not right.

And something isn't.

The world has been weirdly cow-towing to China for years, giving these genocidal communists the next Olympic Games, and lusting after those billion-+ consumers who all need cellphones and paperclips and whatall else.

Turn a buck, and turn a blind eye.

The Gross Flaw in Logic Award goes to International Trade Minister Jim Peterson at this event:

Mr. Peterson said Canada can court the Chinese market while simultaneously stepping up pressure on Beijing to bring about more civil liberties.

"We believe that the best way to impact human rights is through constructive engagement whereas in isolation, by cutting people off, you do not have the opportunity to make representations," he said.

Right, so by giving China everything it wants, we are then in a position to make demands of them. Here is one of the clearest examples I've evern seen how disconnected Canadian politicians are from their constituents, and from reality. China is clamoring to join the capitlistic, or, at least, corporate global gang-bang. You only have their attention for as long as you don't allow them in. You're only in a position to make demands -- let's call them requests because that sounds better -- while they've got their noses pressed against the window, looking in. Once you open the door, they've got their pants down, and any leverage you had to bargain with has vanished in a cloud of whore's perfume.

I can't, however, entirely fault Mr. Peterson, because perpetual corporate coitus has a way of blunting the mind.

With logicians like Mr. Peterson at the helm of this debacle, it seems the only ones who will have their noses pressed against the window awaiting admittance to the gang-bang is the Canadian people, whose jobs will soon start flying like ghosts to behind the Great Wall at the bottom of the world.

Bell Mobility is a Corrupt and Unethical Corporation Whose Business Practices are Sleazy and Possibly Illegal: Coda

It appears that Bell Slo-Mo-bility has gotten its chrono-synclastic infundibulum back online with regard to my wife's cell phone account -- the account she's been trying to cancel, kill, eliminate, cauterize by every means except silver bullets -- and has finally, gracelessly, seemingly, cancelled it.

In fact, after the advanced calculus of Bell's credit/debit/rebate enigma had the final word, it appears that Bell Slo-Mo-bility owes my wife $5.03. How she is to collect this, we don't know since she is no longer a customer and will not open a new account to avail of these peanuts -- peanut shells, really -- that Auld BM has scattered on the floor at her feet.

But it does appear the sun has risen on this Succubus cell phone account. It has been sprinkled with holywater, subdued by the Cross, and returned -- immobile -- to its sarcophagus. Never, please God, to rise again.

Bell Mobility is a Corrupt and Unethical Corporation Whose Business Practices are Sleazy and Possibly Illegal: Continued

The dutiful Bell Mobility customer service reps have replied to my email pleas regarding the seeming insurmountable task of cancelling my wife's cell phone account. My previous post about this frustrating, outrageous situation ruffled some feathers among the Bell Mobility ranks, and that's fine with me. However, reading the replies to my weekend messages that rolled into my Inbox a few minutes ago, it seems I've had Bell Mobility all wrong. There is no incompetence run amok there. They appear to be struggling with an overabundance of proficiency:

Message #1: "My name is Fiona and I have read your message with care. It is my pleasure to assist you in this matter. In response to your request, I have reviewed your account and would like to confirm that your account has been cancelled as of July 18th, 2005. Your final invoice will be printed on August 17th for your review."

Message #2 (arrived seconds after the first): "My name is Eri and I have read your message carefully. I am pleased to assist you in this matter. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and frustrations that this situation may have caused. Upon review of your account, I am pleased to confirm that the above mobile has been cancelled on July 17, 2005. As your account was cancelled on the 17th and your invoices are issued on the 17th, your account balance had yet to be adjusted for the cancellation. In addition, as you will be receiving credits for the June price plan, you will actually be receiving an August statement as well. Your August statement will be your final invoice and will indicate your final balance. I do apologize for any confusion that this has caused."

It's the cell phone account that won't die. Cancelled on July 17th, my wife's account rose from the dead at 12:01 a.m. July 18th to slouch through the Bell Mobility accounting system, a virtual bean-counter-succubus, communing with the other undead accounts in a shadowy, spider-web, red-tape-laden sarcophagus. It's the Bela Lugosi of cell phone accounts, the Christopher Lee, the Gary Oldman -- it's Bram Stoker crossed with Alexander Graham Bell; Poe and Edison; Vlad the Impaler meets Michael J. Sabia, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bell Canada.

The invoice we received dated July 17th is for $75.09.

This succubus hasn't fastened onto my cartoid artery, it's bleeding my household dry via our baby toe. This Venus-fly-trap cell phone account has clamped onto us like we're a sliver of balogna, and it'll feed off of us until we're white and useless as cadaver flesh.

How else do corporate executives afford their champagne colonics, chocolate-covered lobster, and paisley Roll Royces in a dying economy? Through the implementation of "mistakes"--wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You know, "unintended" happenings for which apologies can be made after the fact in those few instances when the "unintended" circumstance has been found out. In those instances when the "mistake" is not uncovered, the yachts, the alligator shoes, the sterling silver fencing sets become accessible to the supple hands of those who earn their livings off the backs of so many.

I will think of you every Bastille Day.

Bell Mobility is a Corrupt and Unethical Corporation Whose Business Practices are Sleazy and Possibly Illegal

Prelude to this madness.

A quick reminder of how I already feel about our corporate titans.

And I am not alone with my grievance against Bell Mobility.

Comments from other Bell Mobility Customers

Another complaint.

Update.

CBC.ca: " Bell Mobility clients hit by billing errors"

Let me begin my saga by stating that it is my opinion that Bell Mobility is Canada's Enron.

My note to Bell Mobility outlines my grievance [August 7th Addendum. After hearing feedback from a BM customer service rep, I must admit that he/she has a point in that the conflicting rules that lead to these types of SNAFUs come from the top. The executives make the big bucks and those rotters ought to take responsibility. This is why I have revised my letter to BM accordingly]:

You head a company that I consider to be disreputable, unethical, and whose business practices I believe might possibly be illegal. What would lead me to make such an outlandish accusation? My experience with Bell Mobility. Here are the details:

Since the middle of May my wife has attempted to cancel her Bell Mobility cell phone account (#X, for cell phone # X) on three separate occasions. She has fulfilled all of her contractual obligations to Bell Mobility and wishes to close the account. However, Bell Mobility steadfastly refuses to fulfill her request. Each time she phoned a customer service rep has assured her the account has been cancelled. Yet more invoices arrive at our house demanding more fees, accruing charges for services we don’t want and have not used.

At first, I chalked this up to incompetence. However, when an invoice arrived at my home after my wife’s third phone call to your customer service, I came to believe that this may well be part of a shady, uncouth, illegitimate, possibly illegal, and certainly unethical business practice on behalf of Bell Mobility to squeeze more money from us.

You see, Bell doesn’t get to be a leviathan telecommunications company, stringing high speed Internet access, cell phone towers, and space-age technology across the second largest land mass on the planet by being incompetent. No. Bell makes satellite technology available to ordinary users, but it cannot manage to cancel a single cell phone account?

I believe it is Bell Mobility’s unstated policy NOT to cancel accounts. Furthermore, I accuse Bell Mobility of unethical business practices that include continuing to send invoices to people wishing to cancel their accounts with the hope of bullying them, wearing them down, and badgering them into keeping your service when they no longer want it. You tangle customers who wish to cancel in red tape hoping to throttle them into submission, so you can continue squeezing money from them.

And here is where it all falls to you. Having spent more than a decade of my life working front-line customer service jobs, I know firsthand that CS reps merely follow the rules set out for them by management. So, my question is, who has made the refusal to cancel accounts your policy? If it is not your policy, then who is responsible for the training of your CS reps? You are the people in a position of responsibility, and I am writing this letter to ask you to take responsibility. If it’s a failure of technology—glitchy software, uncooperative hardware—then where is your Chief Technology Officer? In my frustration over this situation, I have succumbed to berating your CS reps, but logic and experience dictates that all problems emanate from the executive level.

To say that I am dissatisfied with Bell Mobility is a gross understatement. Please note that I am so disgusted with Bell Canada as an entity and a monopoly—at least, it still conducts business like it’s the only game in town—that I pay $10/month more for my non-Sympatico high-speed Internet access because I simply refuse to give another cent to Bell. This ridiculous experience with Bell Mobility has done nothing but solidify my antipathy for your over-sized, over-complicated, bureaucracy-laden corporation.

With any luck, others who are suffering this same fate will contact me, and we might unify to launch a class-action lawsuit against Bell Mobility.

This is just the beginning. You will hear much more from me very, very soon.

Misanthropically Yours,
Matthew St. Amand

Do you have a grievance of any sort? Got a bad hotdog from the corner vendor today? That squeak in your shoe still making you the laughinstock of the office? Have you been screwed by a cell phone provider?

Unleash Here!

My note to the Better Business Bureau:

For the past two and-a-half months my wife has tried on 3 different occasions to cancel her cell phone account with Bell Mobility, and Bell Mobility steadfastly refuses to cancel it. Instead, Bell Mobility continues sending us invoices with accrusing charges, seemingly with the the hope of wearing us down to the point that we'll simply pay them.

My wife has spoken to three different Bell Mobility operators, each of whom assured her the account was cancelled. Yet a new bill shows up weeks later with new charges.

My wife and I don't have an endless supply of free time to devote to this futile battle. Bell Mobility isn't listening to us.

Can you help?

And my note to Canada's respected news digest, The Fifth Estate:

As if Canadians don't have enough to worry about these days with the economy tanking, unresponsive government, and leviathan corporations making it their unstated policy to screw over private citizens.

I'm talking about every Canadian's favorite monopolgy -- Bell Canada and it's redheaded, left-handed, bastard step child, Bell Mobility. The first two times my wife attempted to cancel her cell phone account with BM, and it mysteriously didn't "take", I could chalk-up to incompetence. The third time it didn't take, I got to thinking, "I believe it is Bell Mobilitiy's unstated policy NOT to cancel accounts. I am accusing Bell Mobility of unethical business practices that include continuing to send invoices to the homes of people wishing to cancel their accounts with the hope of bullying them, wearing them down, and badgering them into keeping your service when they no longer want it. You tangle customers who wish to cancel in red tape hoping to throttle them into submission, so you can continue squeezing money from them."

To my thinking, Bell and its miscreant spin-off, Bell Mobility, are Canada's Enron -- with a silent, yet tangible, policy of unethical, shady, illegitimate, and possibly illegal business practices. All with the hope of squeezing a few more pennies out customers who don't want to be customers any more.

If you're doing any programs about corporate wrongdoing and the lack of ethics, competence, and logic in Canada's corporate desert, please keep Bell Mobility in mind. Surely my wife and I aren't the only people going through such a saga with them.

In Today's Windsor Star - Canada's Contribution to Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort

Convoy carries hope, supplies by Craig Pearson:

Thursday, September 08, 2005 -- The largest Red Cross convoy of Canadian aid passed through Windsor Wednesday on its way to Texas, bringing supplies to evacuees of flood-ravaged New Orleans.

The convoy of 19 trucks, carrying 20,000 cots and 26,500 blankets to help victims of hurricane Katrina, started in Quebec and stopped near Comber Wednesday to arrange the details of crossing the border to the southern United States -- complete with a federal government representative to help ensure easier flow through U.S. customs.

Goals of this Blog

Having lived in a border city next to the United States for most of my life, it's been very easy to become embroiled in American news, issues, scandals. It being my personal opinion that George W. Bush is a globe problem, threat even, is why I often feel compelled to voice my derision for the man and everything he stands for. But Canada is my country, and I think it's fair to say that I've focused on American news in order to distract myself from fully participating in discourse regarding the problems afflicting Canada. This blog is my attempt to correct that imbalance, and to serve as means to better educate myself in what's happening in my own back yard.

I credit former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his instituting the Good & Services Tax in the early 1990s for being the straw that broke this camel's back. Reading and watching Canadian news because such a day-ruining outrage that I decided to turn away. That's the coward's route, no doubt. Rather than let the corrupt in our country run amok, I'm jumping back into the fray.

Among others, the issues I am going to deal with in this blog are:

• Immigration
  
• Taxation
  
• Out of touch politicians
  
• An examination of each of the national political parties
  
• Bureaucracy
  
• Our governmental system and how it breeds corruption and contempt
  
• Healthcare

Anyone stumbling across this blog is welcome to raise their own issues.

I love Canada, I think it's the greatest country in the world. We have freedom, security, an excellent standard of living. There are innumerable reasons to be proud of being Canadian (for instance, after Yann Martel won the Book Prize in 2002, I read an article that compared Canada to Ireland as a country with a relatively small population being a home to so many world-class authors), and that's also what this blog is going to be about.

Most importantly, I'm after solutions. It's one thing to complain -- something I'm completely and ashamedly well-versed at doing -- but it's another thing to offer solutions to problems, and to bend the arms of those who could implement them.

Shortages & Price Gouging in Our "Just in Time" World

Letter I wrote to the editor of The Windsor Star, published September 7, 2005:

I'm fascinated how every increase in gas prices comes with its own narrative. Petrol for my car today, August 30, was $1.09/litre [$1.35/litre as of 9/7/05], and the story is "... because of Hurricane Katrina." Who can argue with a Category Five hurricane? But it made me wonder, are petrol companies shipping Wednesday's fuel on Tuesday? I thought petrol was shipped or moved or transported in large quantities -- you know, so if a tanker truck is delayed at a train crossing, whole cities won't shut down. I think of this as being as though my local grocery store stocked only enough food for a day's shopping by the public. If a highway accident caused the resupply trucks to be late, the grocery store could jack up its prices, saying with a shrug, "There was an accident." No, necessities like that are shipped in large quantity so hiccups in the supply chain don't grind civilization to a halt. And yes, I have seen the pie charts on the gas pumps showing me how gas station owners offer fuel purely as a labor of love; they're not making any money on it. But someone is. And they're circulating these ready-made stories to accompany every price hike. I liked it better when I used to get a free plastic drinking glass or steak knives with every fill-up.

All of this is beside the point, anyhow. You don't have to be a Hummer-hating, ozone-hole-tracking activist to realize that our petroleum based world is unsustainable, and teetering toward collapse in the next couple of decades. When I bought my house two years ago I made an honest-to-God effort to have it solar-powered. Not because of some deeply held philosophy -- because I wanted to save money. But in my research, I found solar-power vendors were completely disinterested in actually selling their wares. I was also surprised to find that there are absolutely no incentives for anyone to "go solar", such as tax credits or rebates or even advertisements saying such technology exists. At one point, a solar-power vendor actually told me that I would require permission from my local utility to go solar. That's like having to ask GM for permission to buy a Ford vehicle.

So, rather than our corporate scientists giving us new and improved mouthwash, toothpaste, detergent, or heartburn remedies, could someone devote even their lunch-hour to developing alternative energy sources for our vehicles and homes? I'm a willing consumer.