When ‘mentioned in dispatches’ it means a Brit or Canadian soldier has been written up by a superior officer for conspicuous bravery in the face of the enemy. We mention this (somewhat sarcastically) as our Member of the Provincial Parliament (MPP) had a jolly extensive write-up this week in the local tabloids for finding the enemy and vanquishing her. In his quest to find cost savings for Babel families in the battlefields of Queen’s Park, our MPP has sought to replace a part-time paid staffer with an unpaid volunteer.
It could have been good news for the MPP but the part-time staffer has fired back. She has filed a complaint with the Ministry of Labour that questions whether an employer can replace a paid worker with an unpaid person who works in a voluntary or intern relationship. One would assume the MPP, who used to be a human resources consultant, would have known about that question.
It is not as though the young lady had not proved willing and able to do the job. It was a routine administrative job in the MPP’s Babel office. She had served as an unpaid intern originally and then accepted an offer to be paid to do the job on a part-time basis. Her work must have been satisfactory since her contract was renewed for the past summer.
If it was not for the MPP’s background in human relations, this might have been an honest mistake. Here we have all been waiting breathlessly to hear what our fledgling MPP is accomplishing for us at the Ontario Legislature in Toronto and this is the best we get. We do not even know if he is going to vote for Timmy Hudak to continue as his party leader in the party gathering later this month. Will he challenge Timmy’s continued tenure or will he not?
With his background in human relations work, you would also think the MPP might be taking a stand on the private member’s bill that one of his caucus colleague’s has proposed that will end the union shop at the very successful Ontario-based EllisDon construction company. We have not heard what he is doing about that either.
Frankly it seems somewhat unfair that Babel is represented by two seemingly useless Conservatives in Ottawa and in Queen’s Park. The federal member has all kinds of staff and is constantly in our face with everything except information about his individual contribution to our Canadian government. The provincial Conservative stands (or sits) somewhere out of the limelight at the Ontario Legislature. Neither one appears to be doing us any good!
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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