Thursday, January 31, 2008

What. The.


Fuck? In related news, none of the Blogging Tories see a problem here.

That last sentence was so unnecessary.

5 comments:

thwap said...

I'll be waiting breathlessly for Raphael Alexander to explain it for me and make it all better.

Ti-Guy said...

We should all give up on the Harpies doing the right thing about this and insist on the following:

1. Those opposition MP's who brought up the issue in the House have to get to the bottom of this; it's not enough to always have incomplete information about these cases.

2. Why is the civil service carrying out these directives so uncritically? I can understand a point-of-service worker not really thinking about it, but these changes are being passed through a chain of managers who know very well they're responsible for keeping political activity out of the civil service. It was never a difficult thing to do before...why has that changed?

thwap said...

because they don't want to be fired for doing their jobs the way Keen was.

It's difficult now because Harper's repug-inspired CPC government is the first gov't brazen enough to attempt this since a century ago.

900ft Jesus said...

thwap is right on that - fear of being fired. I know only one person in the PS who stood up to his manager and refused to ad partisan crap in a speech. I've read about others refusing - the scientist at NR who got the boot for refusing to write "Canada's New Government," (later re-instated), the guy from Environment Canada (a bit of a goof, but still) hauled off in cuffs for his comments exposing the lies his department was saying...

The whistleblower section of the Acc. Act is bull shit. Nice on paper, but no use when higher ups can bury info almost indefinitely and fighting things like that take years. Literally. Then try getting another job in the PS without that bit of your file following you.

Public servants should not be put in that position. It is wrong to ask them to do partisan crap, so they shouldn't be blamed for giving in to pressure from a powerful boss. Nail the ones violating legislation - the ones giving the orders.

Ti-Guy said...

because they don't want to be fired for doing their jobs the way Keen was.

The nature of her position permitted her to be fired the way she was. I hope she cleans their clocks with a wrongful dismissal suit.

The civil service is highly unionised. You can't lose your job that easily, although I'm sure the number of contract workers coming and going probably doesn't do much to foster job security.

In any case, I want more information. I'm not accepting widespread "fear of losing one's job" at face value, since it was never my experience when I worked in public service.