Gomery Overload

Today is a big day in Canada. No, it is not a holiday or national celebration. Nor is it a day of pause or rest for all those overworked and underpaid workers out there. No, today is a day that the national media has been salivating over for almost two years. Today is the day when John Gomery releases his first report into the Liberal corruption scandal in Quebec. The television networks and national newspapers are devoting most of their coverage to the release of the Report.

Its strange, while I think most people can acknowledge that a government in power since 1993 is susceptible to overconfidence and corruption (as the Liberal party clearly is) the role of the national media on this has been bizarre. The Globe and Mail has been especially self-congratulating on this issue, despite the fact that it was a dedicated public servant, the Auditor General, who unearthed the first inklings of Liberal Corruption.

Meanwhile, away from Ottawa the media more or less ignores battles that influence the lives of working people on a more or less daily basis. There has been two strikes raging in the private sector over the last few months that have been filled with high tension and have been shaped by battles over job protection, living wages and protecting the basic necessities of life. The first strike is the Lakeside Meatpackers Strike which you can read about here. This strike has pitted immigrant workers against their fellow Canadian workers and pitted an aggressive American employer against all of them.

The second strike is the Telus strike, which has been raging in British Columbia and Alberta for months. The company has been obsessed with contracting out work, thus lowering salaries and laying off workers. The workers have stayed off the job and yesterday, voted against a lousy contract. You can read about this here. Clearly, two strikes that are defying a common thread that we hear in the media today: that today’s workers accept the current social contract which gives employers so much leeway to lower wages, contract out work and destroy livelihoods. I wonder where the Gomery Report is on those questions?
(you can find more images by the cartoonist here)