A Bus Stops Short

I work in claims for the insurance business. I spent today at the offices of a large community that we insure, near Toronto. As I have been in the business for 25-years, I have slowly graduated to handling mostly larger claims. Most of the day was spent listening to a recitation of minor accidents when a city bus stops too quickly. There was an endless repetition of minor claims from bus accidents. My attendance was required for two much larger losses that involved catastrophic injuries. Lawyers spent no more than 5-minutes updating the status of dozens of these minor claims. Even 5-minutes was tedious. My mind started to wander and take a fresh accounting of where we're all headed. It was not a pretty picture.

While I was driving back home along a major highway, weaving between traffic, I thought about the instantaneous nature of horrific accidents. The momentary inattentiveness, or inadvertent negligence of others, that would change lives forever. At that point I did not make a connection, as this was a repeat of countless other days I have spent in this industry.

I returned home and read a Michael Harris article, in The Walrus magazine, about the work of constitutional lawyer Joseph Arvay, himself in a wheelchair from a long ago motor vehicle accident. What struck me was that Arvay took on cases from the most marginalised people and challenged well funded government lawyers to expand rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He took cases often pro bono to the Supreme Court of Canada and won over and over again.

When Trudeau introduced the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the government established a legal fund to assist vulnerable groups to take on Charter challenges. The cost of the fund was under $3M a year.

The Harper government abolished this fund. They did so because they are dangerously sick Neo-Cons that want to drag us back to the 1950's. Stephen Harper is a less successful, outside of politics, version of Mitt Romney. Expanding rights for people in the margins was a hallmark of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Harper and his henchman want access to justice in the hands of their base of the rich and business elite.

It all came together for me soaking in my Doak Oil bath. Listening to Mitt Romney writing off the 47%, the moronic mayor of Toronto thinking that Winnipeg, Manitoba was across the river from Detroit, the Harper government taking foreign policy marching orders from Tel Aviv and slowly dragging us back into their Leave it to Beaver fantasy world. The bus stopping too quickly. It is not the major accidents that we have to worry about, but the accumulation of minor ones. The slow steady stripping of our rights, or government services for the needy, by well funded Neo-Cons.

We are busy paying attention to the big issues of the day, but there is a hidden agenda, a well funded elite trying to change the rules to protect their interests. They are stripping away at our rights like hundreds of buses stopping short.

The sensible, silent bare majority of us need to take back the reins of political power. Let's get rid of the Neo-Cons and put power back in the hands of middle class.