Information

Tuesday January 24, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 24, 2017

Welcome to the White House website, home of ‘alternative facts’

In just one weekend, the website has posted false statistics about rising crime, when crime has actually gone down over the last eight years and has ripped down sections about climate change, civil and LGBT rights

If the reader needs evidence that the White House is shifting towards a dictatorial, opaque administration, look no further than its own website

US Presidential Wall Chart by Graeme MacKay

Peruse the site at your own leisure; no need to access this evidence via the “dishonest” media.In just one weekend, the website has posted false statistics about rising crime, when crime has actually gone down over the last eight years. It has ripped down sections about climate change, civil rights and LGBT rights. It has also failed to update its website in a timely fashion, including the executive order section, despite the President having already signed several, including “easing the burden of Obamacare” which threatens millions of Americans with no health care coverage.

The President, his press secretary, senior adviser and chief of staff have all attacked the media in the last three days, saying they have been “deliberately dishonest”.

Press secretary Sean Spicer walked out of his first press conference on Saturday after an angry speech about how the media reported the crowd size at Donald Trump’s inauguration. He did not take a single question. The press briefing part of the website has not been updated.

Senior adviser and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway defended her colleague, saying he provided the media with “alternative facts”.

The gaffes continue. On the White House’s official page of First Lady Melania Trump, staff added the name of her jewellery brand and then swiftly deleted it after they were accused of promoting her commercial venture.

The same page also reads that Melania Trump “paused her studies” at university to pursue modelling, whereas the campaign’s previous website said she had completed a degree in Slovenia.

Selective curation to advance a right-wing agenda is also being carried out on the website of the US government’s supposedly independent House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In the “news section” there is an article by right-wing outlet the Washington Examiner, which accuses the director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, for making negative comments about Trump’s alleged conflicts of interest but failing to report alleged conflicts of interest under Obama. (Source: The Independent) 

 

Thursday August 22, 2013

Thursday August 22, 2013

Information watchdog blasts bureaucrats who ‘misled’ her

Information commissioner Ann Cavoukian has tabled a scorching addendum to her headline-making report on Liberal staffers illegally deleting gas plant emails.

Cavoukian on Tuesday released a 30-page supplement to her earlier 35-page report castigating Grits for apparently destroying emails related to the $585-million cancellation of controversial power plants in Mississauga and Oakville before the last provincial election.

In June, the legislative watchdog blasted Craig MacLennan, a former chief of staff to past energy ministers Brad Duguid and Chris Bentley, and David Livingston, former premier Dalton McGuinty’s last chief of staff, for failing to preserve records.

“In light of the information I now have, I would have arrived at a different conclusion regarding the ability of MGS (Ministry of Government Services) staff to retrieve the relevant emails from Mr. MacLennan’s email account,” she wrote Tuesday.

“However, the other findings in my report were not affected and remain accurate.”

In her appendix, Cavoukian maintains that bureaucrats “misled” her when they claimed MacLennan’s email account could not be retrieved then later found 39,000 emails either sent or received by him on a backup computer drive.  (Source: The Toronto Star)

 

KATHLEEN WYNNE CARTOON from wes tyrell on Vimeo.

 

Thursday January 5, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday January 5, 2012

Hospital CEOs get salaries in retirement

Hamilton’s hospitals will pay their CEOs a full salary for at least one year after they retire.

For Hamilton Health Sciences, it means they will pay the equivalent of two CEO salaries next year as Murray Martin hangs on to his full contract — pay, benefits, perks and retirement compensation — for one year after handing over the reins to the new CEO when he retires at the end of 2012.

“This isn’t just a handout to him,” said Mark Rizzo, chair of the HHS board. “There are certain skills that he has that we want to keep in place.”

There is no minimum amount of work required next year by his contract — created in 2009 with his retirement in mind. But Rizzo says it will be a “significant” job helping the new CEO transition and acting as a special adviser to the board, requiring at least 100 days of work and an office in the hospital.

Kevin Smith, CEO of St. Joseph’s Health System, gets paid whether he resigns or retires. The agreement in his contract is meant to entice him to stay until at least the end of 2015, when he will be 53 years old.

Right now, he gets 12 months’ salary if he resigns or retires, in return for 75 hours of consulting service that adds up to nearly $7,400 an hour.

If he leaves next year, he gets 14 months’ salary for 125 hours of consulting.

And if he stays until the end of 2015, he gets 18 months’ salary for 200 hours of consulting, at a rate of about $4,100 an hour. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

 

Friday January 31, 2003

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 31, 2003

The Excess Information Age

Imagine a Canada in which every citizen is finger-printed and retina-scanned.

Imagine massive government databases that use these biometric identifiers to catalogue people’s travel habits at home and abroad, their Internet usage, their e-mail and cell phone conversations and even videotapes them as they converse on a street corner. Such a nightmare scenario was tabled Wednesday in the staid House of Commons by the federal ombudsman appointed to safeguard Canadian privacy. And George Radwanksi says this Orwellian society could be the natural evolution of the Liberal government’s “unprecedented assault” on privacy rights. 

“A year and half ago, if anyone had described the measures now being introduced, no one would have thought it would happen,” the federal privacy commissioner told a news conference after he submitted his report. 

“It’s easy in a country like Canada to say bad things don’t happen, nobody would intrude on our rights … (but) all we have to do is look back at history.” 

Whether it be the internment of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s or the RCMP opening mail and torching barns in Quebec in the 1970s, “we’re not immune from excesses by the state,” said Radwanski (Source: Injustice Busters)