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My Canadian quest for the American Dream

Like most immigrants, I came to Canada in search of the American Dream. The fact that I came from America to find it is purely incidental, because the America that I left had long been tossing in its troubled sleep.

Richard Nixon was trying his best to override the nation’s admirable principles and was simultaneously turning the dollar into a mere scrap of paper with no backing, controlled by some bankers instead of the U.S. Treasury.

His vice president, Baltimore mobster Spiro Agnew, was busily lining his pockets from influence sales, as was his wont.

They were amateurs compared to the recent Bush-Cheney characters, who perfected the now-fashionable Republican/Tory governing style of lying, cheating, scheming and thieving until they are driven from office by a swelling blister of victims.

Before Nixon, we had one of history’s most overrated nominal Democrats in the skirt-chasing persona of John Kennedy. He pulled frat-boy pranks like abandoning Cuban recruits to their deaths or capture in the midst of his plotted Bay of Pigs Invasion, appointed his kid brother Bobby who had no legal experience as Attorney General and started the Viet Nam War, which was eventually lost.

Fortunately for his legacy, he was assassinated and thus elevated to near sainthood by a stunned and grieving nation. His phatic inauguration speech line was widely quoted: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

As if people would eagerly do anything for a country that does nothing for them. Countries exist—in the American Dream—to do good for their citizens; then there is incentive for patriotism.

The Nixon regime was engaging in a war against the press (Agnew famously called us “nattering nabobs of negativism”) and the president was growing ever more threatening toward journalists.

So I sought the lofty American Dream in Canada. It’s based on the lately ignored U.S. Constitution which, when it’s adhered to, guarantees the right to life, liberty and “the pursuit of happiness.”

That’s a very broad brush. Canada doesn’t guarantee that in those words, but in spirit we do. And when the U.S. was weighted down by the totalitarian Bush regime, we retained our same spirit.

Using the 2001 attack against the World Trade Center as an excuse, the U.S. government violated its Constitution and abandoned its high ideals in what it falsely claimed were necessary atrocities to keep America safe. It created a police state.

It went to war in Iraq to satisfy the oil industry’s lust for illicit profits. It allowed itself to be ruled by monstrous corporations. When Bill Clinton deregulated the financial “industry,” the corporations set about lining their pockets and demolishing the U.S. economy with scams and toxic “assets.”

Flawed as he was, Jean Chrétien kept us out of the Iraq mess. And Paul Martin to his credit, refused to let the nation’s banks merge.

There’s absolutely no benefit to Canadians to have some colossal bank with a Canadian head office operating in foreign lands. National pride? Baloney. How about cutting the usurious rate on credit cards instead?

As for free trade, it’s a heartless swindle that serves the monster corporations with cheap labour. We lose jobs so foreigners can take them and CEOs can land multimillion-dollar bonuses. It’s no good for Canadians, only for the huge corporations. Sadly, they buy off many U.S. Democrats and Canadian Liberals as well their usual cabal of lackeys and lobbyists. So we lose our industries and livelihoods to “diversity.”

The American Dream, as most of us understand it, is a land where fair laws and fair play reign for all. Where you can become a billionaire, if you’re energetic, smart and provide true value.

Yet where billionaires can’t deprive others of equal opportunities through monopoly control or other unfair tactics.

We’re far from realizing the American Dream in Canada.

But for a long time we’ve been closer than America has been. Perhaps the Americans, with their new president and fewer NeoCons in Congress, will be able to renew that bright promise.

Perhaps, for a change, the Americans will light the way for us.

Frank Touby

Jury duty? Just shoot me

By James Dalziel
Maybe it sounds naïve, but I used to think being called up for jury duty was kind of an honour. Hey, it’s an opportunity to serve your community and the justice system.

Several years ago I sat on a jury-type “public institutions inspection panel” that got to drop in on places like the Don Jail and retirement homes – unannounced – and had amazingly free rein to check into how those places are run.

That was a worthwhile three-week effort that indicated, reassuringly, that those institutions were generally well run, without widespread abuse or waste. We told a judge exactly that in a detailed written report.

Sadly, my recent summons to show up for jury service at the provincial courthouse on University Avenue wasn’t nearly so beneficial to society or myself.

The experience was eye-opening in a very different way, as I sat around in a huge room with about 300 people for about four days – and didn’t get to hear a single case.

Quick at first

Starting on a Monday, things moved quickly enough at first. I was among the first half-dozen to get a chance to sit on a jury panel after names were drawn from a spinning drum.

But the defence lawyer in a cocaine-trafficking case declared “Challenge” and the Superior Court judge automatically sent me back into the big jury pool for future consideration.

One interesting wrinkle in my tryout was the initial selection of two jurors as “triers” – a concept I had never even heard of, though I’m told it has been around for years.

The triers first had a chance to give thumbs up or thumbs down, individually, on whether I and the others should sit on the jury panel. Not knowing me from Adam, they kindly gave me a free pass.

I was only asked whether I could treat the accused fairly, in consideration of his skin colour. I said something like, “Yes, I think so.”

The defence lawyer may have thought that was a lame answer. Or he didn’t like my looks. Or … who really knows? No reasons are required or given.

Now who’s prejudiced?

I suspect the lawyer and his client had a general idea of what sort of person they wanted on the jury from among the 20 initial prospects. Maybe it was even racial prejudice on their part. But I can only speculate.

Back in the pool, we had plenty of time to chat, read or stare at the wall.

I talked to one man who was accepted by the defence but rejected by his triers! Of course, his mind was racing, trying to figure out what the triers’ problem with him was.

Tuesday was a full day of reading books, old magazines and newspapers in the huge room. One group of about 70 potential jurors went through the hoops for another trial, and the rejectees dribbled back to the pool.

Wednesday and Thursday turned out to be half-day waiting sessions for everyone – again, just reading and chatting, some card-playing.

No TV, no free coffee or snacks for us 300 Spartans. No free lunch.

I began to think some prisoners were getting better treatment than we were.

Zero compensation

About a third of the jury pool had access to tables and carrels for their laptop computers. So they didn’t waste as much time as the rest of us.

Compensation? On a panel or not, jurors get nil for two weeks – not even bus fare. If you’re on a jury for 11 days, you start to receive all of $40 a day.

Someone has asked me if there are jury dodgers. Some of the courthouse staff people were like drill sergeants and they let us know early that failure to appear each day would result in an arrest warrant. Charming.

Still, they did seem open to hearing about severe hardship cases that would let some jurors defer service for a few months.

I really feel for those people who lost a lot of income during the week and had their private lives thrown out of whack. If the jury system is truly valued, I say we need to treat jury conscripts much better and more efficiently.

As it is now, it’s like having your name picked in a perverse kind of lottery. You lose!

Where’s the justice in that? If this system is so darned important, jurors should be compensated properly and be shown other forms of appreciation.

Tory thugs stack Island Airpork

Brutish John Baird, Stephen Harper’s transportation minister, has blessed a tobacco industry mouthpiece with a saddle on Toronto taxpayers’ backs as part of the disgraced Toronto Port Authority’s (TPA) board of directors.

Lobbyist Jeremy Adams, 36, a former insider in the disastrous Mike Harris provincial government, occupies a new seat Baird created to tilt the balance against Toronto taxpayers.

Adams was also campaign manager for Gentle Jim Flaherty, the ill-windbag from Oshawa, who’s hatred for this province was manifest when he was part of the Harris regime and given words when he told investors they’d be nuts to invest in Ontario.

Rightly dubbed the “Toronto Pork Authority,” the federal boondoggle passes out largesse to government insiders while holding down a key portion of our rightful parkland on Toronto Island and sucking the life out of Toronto’s struggling taxpayers.

It’s the only port authority in Canada that doesn’t cover its own expenses, contrary to federal law. It pays no city taxes and is tens of millions of dollars in arrears on paying its legitimate costs, according to city officials.

Started as a Liberal pork barrel by disgraced ex-MP Dennis Mills (dumped by voters in favour of Jack Layton), the TPA is an industrial mouse compared to the elephant-sized port authorities across Canada.

Mayor David Miller had early targeted it as ripe for takeover by the city to free taxpayers from the intrusion of first Liberal, now Tory, federal payouts to their loyalists and lackeys.

Baird merely responded by creating an extra board position to keep the pork flowing.

Bell hell: Phone company’s unsupportable support

While many Canadians are suffering from job losses and an uncertain economic future, homegrown Bell Canada is—some might say unpatriotically—exporting jobs to foreign lands. So unbeknownst to them, Canadians are unwillingly paying foreign aid by losing the chance to earn paycheques with a Canadian company in Canada.

You might more accurately think of it as Bell Philippines, or Bell India, because that’s where the jobs Canadians should be doing have been exported. And if they were doing a great job—better than Canadians could do—it might be understandable.

First of all, if you phone for help from Bell, you’ll discover thanks to a recorded message that there are an extraordinary number of folks needing help at this very instant and you’ll be next on a queue. You’ll be entertained by unwelcome orchestras, interspersed with gaily voiced commercials for Bell this or Bell that.

If you have a question about a bill, you’ll likely be sent to the Philippines where, also very likely, someone who speaks heavily accented approximations of English will take up an extraordinary amount of your time, not quite understand your question, and maybe not be able to explain Ma Bell’s mysteriously worded invoices.

If you get switched to another rep, as will probably happen, you’ll again have to go through the long dance of giving verification information to provide “security” you most likely don’t even care about.

If it’s a question about a charge to your credit card from Bell Credit Services, it could take the better part of an afternoon to get an answer—if at all. And if the Bell billing office rep happens to be in India, you also might hear rapid-fire explanations of various things you don’t ask about as if she/he is reading from a script. And you may be told there is no solution to your problem because you have failed to provide enough information, which of course is because you haven’t been provided with that.

Since Bell India-Philippines-Canada doesn’t know what any of its various tentacles are doing, you’ll find that Mobility has no idea about Sympatico and your phone service is oblivious to either of them.

If it’s technical support for Sympatico you seek, poor you, you’ll probably find yourself shunted off to India where another fast-speaker nicknamed Sidney or Elvis will gladly take up your time, explain things in strange terms and, if you’re lucky, NOT try and sell you some inappropriate additional service that you’ll have to spend another half-day trying to cancel and get removed from your bill.

Of course by that time, Sid or Elvis might have pocketed their commissions and moved on down the hall to another call centre on behalf on another hare-brained Canadian company that thinks cheap is all its customers deserve.