Whatever else one can say about the rights-wrongs of the current Metro Transit strike, it is clear city negotiators were never interested in negotiating with its 760 bus drivers, ferry operators and support staff.

The contract between Metro Transit and the Amalgamated Transit Union expired Sept 1. There was just one face-to-face session—essentially a presentation of proposals—before the city applied for conciliation. That’s unusual. According to the union, the city and its police and water commission unions are still negotiating new contracts two and four years after the previous ones expired.

From November to January, the two sides met with a conciliator eight times before the city walked away, triggering a conciliator’s report, a strike vote and the countdown to the now ongoing work stoppage.

City negotiators twiddled their thumbs until 30 minutes before last Wednesday’s midnight strike deadline. Then they offered the union—which had a 98.4 per cent strike mandate—an either-or, take-it-or-leave-it offer.

The key sticking point isn’t money but scheduling.

The city blames a century-old rostering system—which allows senior drivers to pick their schedules first—for $1 million in un-budgeted overtime. (A city report, however, acknowledges those cost overruns include covering for vacancies, sick leave, holidays and special events, and represent only one factor in Metro Transit’s $3-million deficit.)

The drivers say they need rostering because of the split-shift nature of their jobs. A driver, who is required to report for work at the Transit garage 15 minutes before a 6 a.m .shift, drives for four hours and may find herself ending her shift far from the transit garage—and her car. She then has four hours to kill before beginning her 2 p.m. shift somewhere else. An eight-hour day suddenly becomes more than 12.

Surely, there are ways to make the rostering system more efficient for Metro Transit without eliminating its obvious lifestyle benefits for long-time drivers.

But in order to accomplish that, the two sides would have to talk.

There’s no sign that will happen soon.

And no sign either of leadership from city hall to make that happen.

Why would the Canadian Taxpayers Federation make a mountain out of the  minuscule? Why indeed?

So the sleuths at the Canadian (sic) Taxpayers Federation have uncovered the startling (to me, at least) fact I’m “on the CBC payroll.”

They appear to believe this is the only possible explanation why I—and other members of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting—could support public broadcasting in this country.

Perhaps that’s because the CTF assumes everyone else who supports a cause must be on the payroll of those with a vested interest in the outcome of the causes they support because… well, we’ll come back to that.

First some background.

I’m a volunteer—which is to say unpaid—member of the steering committee of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. It’s an independent watchdog group whose mission is “to defend and enhance the quality and quantity of Canadian programming in the Canadian audio-visual system.”

We do support public funding for the CBC, but we also often criticize the CBC for what we see as its failures to live up to its responsibilities as a public broadcaster. We criticize—and sometimes praise—private broadcasters for their roles in providing quality Canadian content to viewers. And we make presentations to the CRTC and parliamentary committees, arguing for more and better Canadian content.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation calls itself a “citizen’s advocacy group dedicated to lower taxes, less waste and accountable government.” It’s mostly run by ex-(or not so ex)Tory hacks and right-wing zealots who have never encountered a government expenditure (other than prisons and bombs) they wouldn’t bulldoze out of existence.

On its blog last week, the CTF wrote:

“Amongst the many Access to Information (ATI) enquiries we make each year was this tidbit relating to the CBC. Our National Research Director, Derek Fildebrandt got to thinking about the leadership of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, the group that advocates for more funding for the CBC. ‘What if these people are actually on the CBC’s payroll?’ thought Derek. If it were true, it would go a long way to explaining their passion for public broadcasting. And it would be very, very funny.”

So they went fishing, filing a request to the CBC for records, “in Excel format, if possible” of all payments— “regardless of the reasons they were paid”— to the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, its spokesperson, Ian Morrison, or any of its 11-member steering committee, including me.

“As it turns out,” the CTF breathlessly reported last week in a post entitled “Friends With Benefits,” Access to Information documents had revealed that “three members of the ‘Friends’ Steering Committee actually were on the CBC payroll.”

Including me!

“Stephen Kimber was paid $675 as a ‘freelance[r].’”

Whoah. Be still my beating heart.

I earn part of my annual income as a freelance journalist, and have done so for the last 40 years. I’ve written newspaper columns, magazine articles, books, commissioned books, occasional government reports (for Tory governments, I might add) and even the 1989 Report of the Royal Commission into the Wrongful Conviction of Donald Marshall, Jr.. I’ve also worked on occasion for the CBC—and for CTV, and for what is now Global TV.

What is interesting about the $675 figure the CTF touts on its blog—and which even it behind-the-hand mumblingly admits involved “quite small sums of money”—is what the CTF didn’t say about its initial request for information.

The CTF didn’t mention that it had asked the CBC for records of all payments made “from 2001 to present” because including that inconvenient fact would make those small sums reported seem even more minuscule, and its argument even more ridiculous.

The $675, therefore, represents all of the income I received from the CBC for 10 years! That works out to $1.30 a week.

I may be buyable, but even I’m not that cheap.

Speaking of being bought, what—aside from the usual ideological zealotry—would prompt the CTF to attempt to turn this molehill of non-information into the mountainous revelation that I was “actually… on the CBC payroll?”

Who foots the bill for the CTF’s federal office in Ottawa and its regional offices in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Altantic Canada not to mention its seven apparently fulltime spokespeople?

Whose interests does the CTF really represent?

One might answer that question by asking who else has a vested interest in getting rid of the CBC? Can you say Quebecor? Sun Media?

Surprise, surprise. Quebecor has created its own not so mini-industry churning out similar access to information requests of the CBC, desperately seeking ammunition for its goal of convincing a too-easily-convinced Harper government to shutter the CBC screens.

Do Quebecor, Sun Media, their executives or board members contribute to the Canadian (sic) Taxpayers Federation?

If so, how much?

Is the CTF… ahem.. “actually on the payroll” of those vested interests.

I don’t know. The CTF doesn’t disclose the names of its donors or how much they give.

But I’m guessing those corporate interests would be far more generous in putting CTF on their payrolls than the CBC has been with me.
 

Perhaps Halifax should adopt a kinder, gentler version of the American cage match, survival-of-the-sleaziest primary system to winnow our choices for mayor. Or maybe we need to consider some variation of the NDP’s upcoming advance preferential leadership balloting system to determine who we most—and least—want as next super mayor of our supercity.

Consider. Four candidates have already declared, and at least four others are teetering on the edge. The election doesn’t take place until October.

David Boyd—cab driver, perennial political also-ran—was first out of the blocks, vowing to make Halifax “the Vegas of the east” with strip clubs and casinos. In 2008, he received 1,791 votes for mayor.

Tom Martin—celebrated former cop, manager of Sheila Fougere’s 2008 mayoralty campaign—blames “the lack of accountability, the lack of transparency, the lack of consultation with councillors and the lack of public consultation” at city hall on a mayor “without the ability to lead.”

Fred Connors—hairstylist, entrepreneur, urban chicken farmer—threw his hat in the ring earlier this month, saying he wanted to get “some real change happening in Halifax.”

Matthew Wornona—Toronto native, Dalhousie student—is running because he disagrees with Mayor Peter Kelly’s handling of the eviction of Occupy Nova Scotia protestors.

Meanwhile, restaurateur Lil MacPherson said in December she was “considering it for real,” but hasn’t formally announced. Neither has environmentalist, current MLA and former city councillor Howard Epstein, who would be a formidable candidate.

The race’s certain-to-be front-runners—former MP Mike Savage and current mayor Kelly—haven’t officially declared, but both have campaign teams and money in place.

So many candidates—all but Peter Kelly running against Peter Kelly.

Under our current first-past-the-post system, the unintended consequence of so many wannabes may be four more leaderless, wished-we-hadn’t years.

While we can’t change the system before October’s election, we can ask our preferred alternatives-to-he-who-should-not-be-re-elected to give it their best shot between now and official nomination day—Sept. 11, 2012—and then realistically reassess their chances for success.

Not to forget the chance that they may be responsible for four more years of…

As Canada Post prepares issue a new stamp next month to celebrate the life of Viola Desmond, our own government seems about to quietly take a pass on the opportunity to honour the Halifax woman whose personal courage remains a symbolic inspiration in the fight for human rights in Canada.

Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged

In 1946—nine years before Rosa Parks’ refusal to get off a Montgomery, Alabama, bus helped trigger the U.S. civil rights movement—Desmond refused to give up her seat in the “whites-only” section of New Glasgow’s Roseland Theatre. She was hauled out of the theatre, thrown in jail, charged, convicted and fined $20. She fought her conviction and lost, but the embarrassing publicity helped galvanize the fight against Nova Scotia’s state-sanctioned segregation and led to changes in the law.

Nova Scotians have only recently begun to acknowledge Desmond’s significance—and suffering. Two years ago, Premier Darrell Dexter publicly apologized for the “injustice” she’d suffered and his government issued a rare posthumous pardon.

In 2010, Tory MLA Alfie MacLeod introduced a resolution in the House of Assembly calling on the province to declare Nov. 8—the day of her arrest—Viola Desmond Day.

Some in the black community argued that date was inappropriate; others complained they hadn’t been consulted.

Fair enough.

The Dexter government consulted, but the question it asked— “how to establish a lasting form of recognition that would honour the contributions and experiences of African Nova Scotians”—seemed blandly beside the point of Macleod’s original motion.

No surprise its final report doesn’t even mention Desmond. Or that the idea for the Day now seems dead. “People,” explains a government spokesperson, “have been saying they want something that recognizes the broad scope of African-Nova Scotian accomplishments.”

Is there some reason we can’t have both?

As Desmond’s sister Wanda wrote in a recent letter to the government: “Naming a day after a popular and iconic figure does not lessen the larger ambitions of creating such a day… In fact they give the day an identity and create an entry point into an issue that otherwise may be ignored with a more generic title.”

It’s time we celebrated Viola Desmond Day.

Related links:

• Viola Desmond Will Not Be Budged Facebook page
• Sister to Courage: Stories from the World of Viola Desmond, Canada's Rosa Parks
• "Past Time for Nova Scotians to Honour Viola Desmond"
•  "Community Consultations Report," Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs

The lesson from last week’s reversal of council’s decision to sell the former St. Patrick’s-Alexandra school to a private developer? Even when our councillors finally, belatedly get it right, they bungle the process so badly everyone walks away more than slightly soiled and embarrassed by the whole exercise.

In December, over angry objections of north-end residents—who already believed they were being squeezed out of their own community by urban redevelopment and gentrification—council voted to peddle a local community school site to a private developer.

The problem—as quickly became apparent and should have been clear before the vote—was that council hadn’t followed city policy for disposing of surplus property. They were supposed to consult the community first.

Not that it mattered. City staff had stacked the evaluation process to make it virtually impossible for proposals from non-profit community groups to compete with those from private developers.

There were rallies. Hundreds protested. There was a petition. Close to a thousand people signed.

Last week, the issue made its way back to council. After four-and-a-half hours of “other business”—before a packed gallery present only for the school issue—councillors finally got around to debating a motion to rescind.

Coun. Jennifer Watts had barely moved her motion when city manager Richard Butts advised councillors to go into secret session to talk the motion over with city legal staff. Another secret meeting to discuss public business? Where was this city manager when Occupy Nova Scotia protestors got turfed? Oh, right. He was home in Toronto.

Council voted down the secret meeting, then voted down a motion to adjourn, then met in secret anyway, then—it’s now closing in on one in the morning—finally voted 17-5 to rescind their original decision. And they asked city staff, who, of course, had devised the flawed process in the first place, to report back on whether the process had been correctly followed.

As usual, nothing is settled.

Once again, Council has managed to alienate the community, the developers who submitted bids in good faith and average citizens who expect better.

Let’s hope there’s a lesson in that too.

My assignment: “Explain the Occupy Wherever Movement in 15 Minutes.”

The occasion was a recent luncheon at the Halifax Club to mark Global Ivey Day, an annual opportunity for alumni of the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business to come together to celebrate their Iveyness. I’d been invited as the post-lunch speaker, even though I’m neither an Ivey graduate nor a business person. (I did once pile-drive a business into the ground, but I’m sure that’s not why they invited me. Besides, that’s a story for another day.)

My guess is the organizer, a thoughtful Windsor, N.S., lawyer-politician-businessman named Jim White, had been reading about the Occupy movement, fretting those Wall Street tenters were on to something important and wanted someone else—me—to jolt his fellow Iveys into confronting the question too.

I was happy to oblige. But I wasn’t sure I would require 15 minutes.

Just as Bill Clinton had used his it’s-the-economy-stupid mantra to become U.S. President in 1992, the essence of Occupy boils down to four words: It’s the Inequality, Stupid.

Thanks to the three g’s—go-go globalization, government de-regulation and corporate greed—the traditional gulf between rich and poor is becoming an unbridgeable chasm.

Consider. The Conference Board of Canada—hardly a hotbed of socialist radicalism—reports the top 10 per cent of the world’s population now gobble up 42 per cent of its income, leaving the bottom 10 per cent with one per cent of their crumbs. That gap has widened dramatically since the mid-1980s. In Canada, the divide is growing even faster than in the United States.

If you made $3 million in 2005—lucky you!—you paid, on average, 25 per cent less in taxes than you did in 1990. Luckier you! The poorest 20 per cent of Canadians, by contrast, paid a higher percentage of their income in tax in 2005 than they did in 1990. Unlucky them.

Luck, in fact, has little to do with it. Capital gains, the mother’s milk of the better-off, is taxed at just 50-cents on the dollar. Why is a dollar earned speculating on the stock market taxed less than income earned educating children or caring for the sick? A hint. Child care workers and nurses don’t have powerful lobbyists to write tax rules for them.

Governments tell us we’re in a fiscal mess. We can no longer afford basic, opportunity-leveling services like health and education.

Meanwhile, those same governments slashed corporate taxes from 28 per cent to 15 per cent between 2000 and 2012, and promise more to come.

No wonder we can’t afford public services. The rich can pay for their own health and education, thanks. And their legacies.

A few days before I spoke at Ivey Day—the business school is named for Richard Ivey, who was rich enough to give enough to get the place named after him—Nova Scotia businessman Ken Rowe donated $15 million to Dalhousie University’s business school.

I respect Rowe. He’s a business builder and signifcant employment generator. But let’s look at his generosity through other lenses.

How many years would it take the average Nova Scotia worker to earn what Ken Rowe chose to give away in an instant?

Three-hundred-and-nineteen plus!

How much of that $15 million—thanks to tax benefits the giver gets—will ultimately be paid by the rest of us?

More than you’d probably guess.

So why does Rowe alone get to choose which good is greater? There are 59, mostly generously endowed business schools in Canada. Why a Ken Rowe School of Management, but no Ken Rowe School of Social Work, or Education, or Child Care?

No wonder people are frustrated and angry—and not just the Occupy tenters. Look around. At the race to the bottom that only benefits those at the top. At skyrocketing education debts and youth unemployment that is robbing the next generation of a future...

Even if the Occupy Movement’s tents get flattened, the issue they raise will not go away. And the consequences of not righting that balance will only get worse.

It really is the inequality, stupid.

(From the January-February 2012 issue of Atlantic Business Magazine.)