Christy Clark accused of interfering in local band election to aid brother’s deal, Mark Hume, Globe and Mail, December 9, 2015Premier Christy Clark has been accused of interfering in a local band election to help a candidate who supports a $10-millio…
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In-Sights: Loyalty rewarded
UBC Board of Governors elects Stuart Belkin as new chair, UBC News, December 7, 2015:UBC’s Board of Governors has elected Stuart Belkin as the board’s incoming chair. Belkin is chair and chief executive officer of Belkorp Industries Inc., a private…
Continue readingScripturient: In Search of Kant’s Categorical Imperative
I have not read Immanuel Kant. Until recently, I did not feel at all apologetic about that statement. But when I watched the video above, I realized how much I was missing. A remarkable thinker, he proves to be, whose thoughts about society, religion, …
Continue readingScripturient: The End of Integrity
Collingwood Council has apparently decided it is better to be viewed as hypocritical than as unethical. Following a year of investigations of council behaviour by the Integrity Commissioner, Robert Swayze, council decided that, rather than reform their…
Continue readingIn-Sights: Orderly, efficient and accountable
Mainstream and alternative media have given a fair degree of coverage to Clark Government efforts to ensure few papers document its activities. Rather too little attention has been paid to the motivation for this blank public record. For almost three years, the Information and Privacy Commissioner has been providing advice
Continue readingIn-Sights: Truth does not serve needs of crony capitalists
SNC-Lavalin Inc. is the kind of ethics-light corporation that BC Liberals likes to have as a partner. With considerable public flourish, after departure of Chairman Gwyn Morgan, the company announced an amnesty program, effective from June to August 2013, to encourage senior employees “to report potential corruption and anti-competition matters
Continue readingIn-Sights: "Throw him some work"
Regular readers know my complaints about corporate media found-ins taking payments from parties affected by media coverage. People taking the cash don’t feel need to explain or excuse and indulgent colleagues seldom raise the conflict issue. Vancouver Sun political pundit Vaughn Palmer might believe the practice does not influence reporting,
Continue readingPolitics Canada: Can I be friends with a Harper supporter?
I have always prided myself on my ability to separate work/business from personal. I am very adept at removing emotion from an issue and looking at the issue in cold logical terms. This is very much related to my ability to separate political from personal as well. I have had
Continue readingScripturient: 17 Pages of Blather
Zero point zero zero zero three eight. That’s the percentage of the population of Collingwood who made the effort to comment on council’s much-touted, revised, 17-page code of conduct before it was approved, Monday night. That’s 0.00038%, based on an estimated 21,000 residents. In other words: eight people. Only eight people
Continue readingScripturient: Team Assessment
Following my last piece on the relevance of Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, to Collingwood Council, I felt I should explore some of Lencioni’s ideas, as well as look at how a team’s performance is assessed. Teams (or groups) can be assessed several ways: the best
Continue readingScripturient: The Horns of a Dilemma
Poor Borg. One almost feels pity for their confusion. The members of Collingwood’ Council’s block-thinking collective were faced with a difficult dilemma on Monday: should they stick to their pettifogging ideology or break from it and support one of their own? Dogma versus friendship and loyalty. Monday night, another report
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Winning on Golden Balls – Is it Game Theory or just How much of an As*hole are you?)
This is what happens when you combine game theory, psychology and sociology on a gameshow you get the phenomena called Golden Balls. I have not watched an entire episode, but merely some outcomes of the final decision in which two people are given three possible outcomes for splitting, usually, a
Continue readingScripturient: Time of Use Billing
Until I sold my business, a few years ago, and started working from home again, I didn’t realize how much of an aggressive assault on many Ontarians – especially seniors and stay-at-home parents – our hydro time-of-use (TOU) billing is. I had a naïve belief that it was fair. A user-pay
Continue readingScripturient: Another Secretive, Self-Serving Committee
This week, Collingwood Council passed a motion to appoint the Block Five to a new standing committee. The standing committee system, you will recall, is a system of secretive committees that operates predominantly out of the public eye, with limited council attendance, and often without even media presence. Committees conduct town
Continue readingIn-Sights: Patronage, corruption and cronyism
July’s sale of BC Petroleum and Natural Gas Rights realized little more than a million dollars, bringing the seven month total in 2015 to $8 million. In the year before Christy Clark became Premier, the total for the same months was almost $664 million. During January to July of 2008,
Continue readingMind Bending Politics: Big Media Influencing Canadian Election For Political Favoritism
As the debates over the debates has raged on over the past several months, one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Journalists in Canada seem to be throwing out their duty of independence and holding our political parties to account for political favors; thus Canadians can’t rely on the media to do their traditional role of […]
Accidental Deliberations: On teasers
Yes, this will do nicely as the trailer for the long-awaited film The Fall of the Harper Conservatives: But let’s make sure people know where to find the full screenplay. (And putting some more of it in front of the camera may not hurt as we approach the election campaign
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Rick’s Rant – Canadian PM either Psychotic or Lying.
Remember when the PMO was actually accountable to Canadians? I do, and I can certainly remember when it stopped…oh hello there Canadian Conservative Party… Filed under: Canada, Ethics, Humour Tagged: PM either Psychotic or Lying, PMO, Rick Mercer Rant
Continue readingScripturient: What’s Up With Tim Fryer?
Fledgling councillors may be excused for gaffes, gaucheries and solecisms they make in their first month or so in office. They’re new, inexperienced, dazzled by their recent election success, so we cut them some slack. And there are all these shiny things to distract a councillor: procedure, voting, reading, motions,
Continue readingIn-Sights: Liberal strategy emerges to contain health scandal
Rob Shaw’s article in the Liberal Party’s urban newspaper of record indicates a search for new scapegoats in the Health Research Scandal is underway. It is reported that departed ministry advisor Alana James is still worried about “conflicts of interest, contracting, privacy breaches, data handling and financial matters involving ministry health research and contracting.”
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