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Public service employment has grown by 31 per cent

growing the federal unions by piling on the people is a great way to ensure their votes...one of the reasons why almost every major provincial capital is a basking of far left BS.. (Redmonton for eg)

isn't it illegal for a union to tell you how to vote?
 
Although I don't really agree with some of her cause and effect beliefs, this is exquisitely infuriating nonetheless ;)

Renu Bakshi: Justin Trudeau needs an editor

Poorly worded government forms somehow justify additional resources​

By Renu Bakshi | July 19, 2023, 6:00am

The Trudeau government's way with words on its forms leaves much to be desired, writes Renu Bakshi. | Brian Zinchuk

Over lunch the other day, friends who just landed from Los Angeles queried me about Canada’s travel declaration form, the part that asks if the traveller has “visited a farm or will be going to a farm in Canada.”

“When you lived on a blueberry farm, what would you say?” they asked.

When I once answered “yes,” the Canada Border Services guard grilled me. At the end, I learned the question is about biosecurity, not blueberries. It pertains to farms with livestock.

Yet, the declaration card fails to mention that single clarifying word, which could save folks in animal-free agriculture from hassle and create some efficiencies at border entry points.

A few days later, I saw another basic communication failure on a federal form. The absence of two simple words on Service Canada’s death benefit application creates challenges for grieving loved ones and contributes to a system’s inefficiencies. I’m seeing firsthand a young man, barely an adult, who lost his mom and is now navigating a returned application.

A death benefit is available to only one person who must belong to one of four categories, but nowhere on the application does it make clear the categories are in priority sequence. In other words, if you’re the next of kin, you’re last. Three categories before you get the right of first refusal.
Service Canada will stall your application until you prove why other eligible individuals are disqualified or won’t apply for the benefit, and then you may have to prove your blood relationship with the deceased. None of this is stated on the application.

Searching for detailed instructions online makes little sense when two words, “priority sequence,” are all that are required on the application to potentially prevent a backlog.

There’s a reason bureaucracy is universally mocked. “Make work” creates inefficiencies and backlogs, advancing a narrative that civil servants are overworked, underpaid, and more hires are required to pick up the slack.

That’s just the kind of formula Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promotes because he can appear to rescue frustrated Canadians, while simultaneously building a happy voter base on the inside.

We recently learned that Trudeau increased bureaucratic jobs by a whopping 40 per cent since he took office in 2015. That’s an additional 98,268 public servants. And spending on public service operations jumped 32 per cent, hitting $115.9 billion in 2021-22. Of that figure, $60.7 billion was paid to personnel.

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, more than 100,000 public servants make over six-figure salaries, to say nothing of the 802,000 raises between 2020 and 2022, and $1.3 billion in bonuses since Trudeau took office.

These ballooning costs to taxpayers come despite an abysmal public-service performance record. Last year, performance failures happened 60 per cent of the time.

 
Myself and another team member wrote a application form and guide in about 3 days. We then gave it to some people outside our program who knew nothing about what we do to try to fill it out. They showed us where we made knowledge assumptions. We then let a couple of long term clients look at it and make suggestion. Then we posted it on our website. This was before the "Common Look, Common Feel, Common Suck" rules came into play. We were forced to take down our application and it took over a year for Ottawa to create a new one without a guide.
 
isn't it illegal for a union to tell you how to vote?

Not sure about federal or provincial. I was in the same "muni" union for 36 years.

Our battles were with City Hall. Not Ottawa or Queen's Park, so, THANKFULLY, party-politics were not typically a factor - if at all.

Our union NEVER controlled our votes.

The union makes its political endorsement decisions based on the core issues of concern to our members' health and safety, economic well-being, retirement security, right to collectively bargain and other aspects pertaining to the job.

We stand with the candidate who has a record of standing with us and whose policy decisions stand to benefit us when it comes to those issues.

Whether or not members use the unions basket of issues to guide their voting is up to them. The union never tells members how to vote, but because the union's job is to protect our interests and because politicians make virtually all the decisions that affect our job, we support the candidate who stands with us on our issues.

It’s the union's role and responsibility to make recommendations based on where the candidates stand on our issues, labor issues and issues important to the financial well-being of our members and their families.

To be clear, the union NEVER controlled who we voted for. Members were always free to vote for the candidates and party and issues that were important to them.

The three emergency services in our town unionized in 1917 and 1918 and 1918. They aren't going anywhere. They represent the members of just 243 square miles of our country.

We all knew that when we hired on.

YMMV in another jurisdiction of Canada.

Anyone who hates unions might be happier applying for a non-union job.
 
My experience is that while unions can endorse parties, they can’t tell individual members who to vote for.

As a municipal union, ours endorsed former Deputy Mayor Bailao in the recent mayoral election.

Even without their endorsement, I voted for her. 100%.
 
Myself and another team member wrote a application form and guide in about 3 days. We then gave it to some people outside our program who knew nothing about what we do to try to fill it out. They showed us where we made knowledge assumptions. We then let a couple of long term clients look at it and make suggestion. Then we posted it on our website. This was before the "Common Look, Common Feel, Common Suck" rules came into play. We were forced to take down our application and it took over a year for Ottawa to create a new one without a guide.
'Twas ever thus with government writing - no matter what colour jersey's in play in Ottawa (and I suspect in a lot of provinces, too) - hence my philosophy ....
Govt-ABC-Pick-Two.jpg
 
Preach man. I am very much involved and working with our 3rd line supply and the efforts to improve automation are pretty much stymied by our Byzantine system. Use of robotic automation or even handheld devices is just a pipedream cause we are so slow and have too many fingers in the pie. At this stage we consider consolidating our shipping and ammo systems into the greater supply system a great achievement.

Move the private sector forwards and ask for factory deliveries via Amazon and DHL?
 
Move the private sector forwards and ask for factory deliveries via Amazon and DHL?
Are you saying we should wait warehouse our material privately? Or get common items from Amazon. Not quite sure what you are saying here
 
Are you saying we should wait warehouse our material privately? Or get common items from Amazon. Not quite sure what you are saying here
Comes from not sitting down to type.

My thought was to exploit the civilian market to its full potential in parallel to the military logistics system. Instead of getting the civvies to deliver to a central military warehouse see how far into the field they are willing and able to supply. Change the delivery terms from FOB Factory to Point of Use. Don't destroy the military system. Keep that in place and use it to its fullest. But make better use of civvy options when appropriate and possible.
 
Comes from not sitting down to type.

My thought was to exploit the civilian market to its full potential in parallel to the military logistics system. Instead of getting the civvies to deliver to a central military warehouse see how far into the field they are willing and able to supply. Change the delivery terms from FOB Factory to Point of Use. Don't destroy the military system. Keep that in place and use it to its fullest. But make better use of civvy options when appropriate and possible.

Domestically this is already done to certain extent with our LPO (Local Purchase Order) system where we can buy directly off of the economy for mostly for no tech/spec goods/services. These organizations will deliver right to my ship in HMC Dockyard, if they have the right credentials to get in the gate, completely bypassing the second/third line supporting supply organization. There are rules around all this of course.

In an expeditionary environment (at sea) this obviously doesn't work. But we still action LPOs at sea. Some we hand off to our FLS or chandler to procure and have for us when we get alongside, or if required we send the requisition back to Canada where it is actioned and pushed forward to us by the supporting supply organizations ashore.
 
As I recall Finning used to have a very robust service and support network. Might be a good model to emulate and perhaps take advantage of?
 
As I recall Finning used to have a very robust service and support network. Might be a good model to emulate and perhaps take advantage of?
Where possible, we try and get equipment that comes with a good support network and global supply/support chain (like the GE LM2500 or the new Cat diesels, that run on a common rail system with suppliers all around the planet). That works for big things, but it's the 20,000 little things that is a big challenge.

In theory, we have a SAP system that has minimum levels that should trigger automatic resupplies. In reality, that function was turned off as soon as we saw the price tag for actually buying required spares, and now it's manually triaged. When we do our annual review, we now set the max levels at about 3 years of usage (or more) because that way maybe if the buy goes out it'll tide us over until the next one.

We also don't have things like bills of material (or BOMs) built into the PM routines, so if you want to forecast you have to go back to the original LSAR (which usually isn't up to date) or do it manually.

In a lot of cases we're past the end of life for stuff, so a lot of first time part failures coming up as CM, which isn't built in anywhere, so that's where experience comes in. So when somone retires after 30-50 years, with two years notice, and we don't look for a replacement until six months after they retire, end up learning things again the hard way.

The fun thing with LSAR data is that it assumes you are doing PM, so when completion rates are in single digits it's somewhat irrelevant. So we may save on small bits but then eventually have an entire unit fail, and that's essentially where we are now on the navy side, with it rolling up from the component level all the way up to super systems.
 
My experience is that while unions can endorse parties, they can’t tell individual members who to vote for.
So the Winnipeg Firefighters endorsed a candidate in a mayoral IIRC. I scratched my head (I had a lot of difficulty getting the slivers out) I thought "is it really right for a public safety body to endorse a candidate? "
 
So the Winnipeg Firefighters endorsed a candidate in a mayoral IIRC. I scratched my head (I had a lot of difficulty getting the slivers out) I thought "is it really right for a public safety body to endorse a candidate? "
That's a bit random, was some kind of building fire code thing part of their platform?

For example, there have been some pretty significant building fires in Montreal recently, a few that seem to have to do with buildings not up to code, so if the mayoral candidate was working with the FFs to figure out a plan to fix that I think a FF union endorsement of that part of their platform would make sense (and hopefully would mean someone else would pilfer it as well as a good idea).

Otherwise it's just sort of noise along with the rest of it, and would probably be annoyed if I was in the union that they were tying our credibility as an organization to a specific politician (as opposed to a good policy for a work related issue).
 
So the Winnipeg Firefighters endorsed a candidate in a mayoral IIRC.

So?

Our union endorsed former Deputy Mayor Bailao in the recent mayoral election in our town.

We support the candidates who support us.

I thought "is it really right for a public safety body to endorse a candidate? "

Nothing new about it.

International Association of Firefighters ( IAFF ) Endorses Joe Biden for President of the United States


, and would probably be annoyed if I was in the union that they were tying our credibility as an organization to a specific politician (as opposed to a good policy for a work related issue).

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIRE FIGHTERS

ENDORSEMENT PHILOSOPHY​


No one, including your union, has a right to tell you how to vote.

The IAFF represents more than 338,000 professional firefighters and paramedics in the United States and Canada.
 

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Where possible, we try and get equipment that comes with a good support network and global supply/support chain (like the GE LM2500 or the new Cat diesels, that run on a common rail system with suppliers all around the planet). That works for big things, but it's the 20,000 little things that is a big challenge.

In theory, we have a SAP system that has minimum levels that should trigger automatic resupplies. In reality, that function was turned off as soon as we saw the price tag for actually buying required spares, and now it's manually triaged. When we do our annual review, we now set the max levels at about 3 years of usage (or more) because that way maybe if the buy goes out it'll tide us over until the next one.

We also don't have things like bills of material (or BOMs) built into the PM routines, so if you want to forecast you have to go back to the original LSAR (which usually isn't up to date) or do it manually.

In a lot of cases we're past the end of life for stuff, so a lot of first time part failures coming up as CM, which isn't built in anywhere, so that's where experience comes in. So when somone retires after 30-50 years, with two years notice, and we don't look for a replacement until six months after they retire, end up learning things again the hard way.

The fun thing with LSAR data is that it assumes you are doing PM, so when completion rates are in single digits it's somewhat irrelevant. So we may save on small bits but then eventually have an entire unit fail, and that's essentially where we are now on the navy side, with it rolling up from the component level all the way up to super systems.

The Min/Max settings aren't turned off. They were working on FRE. Unless something has changed since '20. Or you mean something is shut off at the LCMM level, which wouldn't surprise me.

But we routinely had our warehouse levels restocked by the min/max settings.
 
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