Good morning. My name is Janet Money. I’m a Toronto resident and a volunteer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. During the week of the G20 I was a CCLA “monitor”. That role meant that I was asked on certain shifts to observe G20 activities impartially and take notes, particularly of law enforcement and civilian interactions.

The reason why I have come forward to speak when my experience pales in comparison to that of so many who were brutally traumatized is that :
• What happened to me was, I feel, symptomatic of the policing problem of the weekend.
• And I hope that by giving my account and expressing my views, maybe some things can be learned.

It saddens me to admit that I’m talking about Canada.

Here is what happened to me:
• I was accosted on Friday afternoon, June 25th by Toronto Police officers A. Annetts and R. Court, when I was taking photos across the street from the Eastern Avenue detention centre. I was questioned and spoken to by Annetts with insolence and sarcasm.
• I can’t emphasize enough that the scene on the street was utterly peaceful at that time. There was nothing going on.
• I was asked for my name, address, date of birth, occupation, all of which were written down.
• I was grilled about where I was coming from, going, why I had various things with me.
• I was asked, “Have you ever been in trouble with the police before?”, and when I objected to that question, was told it was standard. I replied that it was designed to intimidate.
• We spoke for about 10 minutes until I asked if they were detaining me, they said no and I took my leave.
• I was left feeling disturbed and upset to be treated with what I felt was suspicion and even contempt.

Here is how my experience was symptomatic.

There are two ways to look at G20 policing.

One is to suggest that police were very unprepared to deal one-on-one with people informed about their rights. Their usual tactics, like asking “have you ever been in trouble with the police before?” were ineffective. So I suggest a focus on reforming the following:
• the usual tactics. One wonders whether the deplorable and degrading conditions inside the Eastern Avenue detention centre are the norm in every lockup in the city? I think this is a question that should be investigated;
• We need to look at more and better training for police (to equip them to deal with a broad cross-section of the population)
• And we need to look at — and we’ve heard this so often, a more diverse police force. What I am describing is in fact a class-based lack of understanding. During my conversation on Eastern Avenue, I was even asked, “Why are you talking like that?”

Police may be used to treating their ‘clientele’ like so-called ‘common criminals’ long before trial or conviction has occurred. Of course they should not do that, but work with me for a moment. The people they interacted with during the G20 were vehemently unwilling to accept that treatment. At marches and gatherings throughout the week, what were demonstrators to make of unwarranted bag searches and demands for identification? At the Saturday afternoon so-called family friendly protest march, what were families to make of armed-to-the-teeth commandoes in riot gear posing in combat position in front of the U.S. Consulate?

The second way you could look at G20 policing is that police and governments were well aware of who would be on the streets (predominantly peaceful political protestors), and just as aware that this population would not respond well to being herded, kettled and attacked. These tactics nonetheless deliberately used by police under government direction.

The result? The focus of the weekend was diverted completely from the actual G20 meeting to the activity outside.

Later in the summer I assisted the CCLA as a volunteer by working on the organization’s database of written complaints that were submitted from the public. So I have read several dozen accounts from people who were severely physically and mentally traumatized by their experiences at the hands of the police during the G20. I found that work was very difficult because of the nature of the material. But that discomfort pales in experience to having gone through those horrific ordeals.

I often find myself thinking about those people, wondering how they are doing. It was quite some time before it dawned on me that standing outside that facility just a few blocks from my home on that Friday afternoon talking with two officers, I could have easily been dragged inside, joined that group and held indefinitely.

It saddens me to admit that I’m talking about Canada when I say that.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak and for your attention.

We have a No Soliciting sign on the front porch window right beside the front door. To us, that means just about everybody. So we hardly ever answer the door. We hardly ever even go and look to see who it is anymore, either. Unless we are expecting someone.

That’s because we read about home invasions, including in our neighbourhood. In the past, we’ve had people wanting to look at our hot water heater (you’ve gotta be kidding, right?), wanting to reroof our house which has a perfectly good roof, wanting to talk to us about religion, wanting us to support their particular good cause. (As for the last, I might even buy those chocolate products but 99% of the time they contain almonds. You can get these products nut-free now, you know? And anyway, kids should not be knocking on the doors of strangers.)

But ironically, I would not mind talking to candidates. I was glad to run into Liz West on our street when I was coming home from the grocery store a couple of weeks ago. And did I miss some other candidate last night? Maybe not, because no flyer was left after the doorbell rang at 8;15 p.m.

Would it work for candidates to publicize a canvassing schedule, “I will be on this street on the afternoon of this day.”? Or put up notices on poles a few days ahead? “Coming soon, Cathy Candidate’s canvass of Main Street, on Oct. 4th between 2-4 p.m. “ Or are these schedules considered trade secrets; would we end up with multiple candidates in the same location?

Can’t say I’ve read them yet, but one of them shouldn’t take long: 60 Seconds & You’re Hired! by Robin Ryan. Both titles are by Ryan, whose website has, thankfully, not placed her in a glamour pose. I think this is a good sign. Over 40 & You’re Hired! is the other title that I picked up from the reserve shelf today.

No, I am not linking to Amazon, Indigo or any other bookstore for these titles. You can find those websites easily, and you might prefer to check your public library.

What I’m about to write will probably scupper the job application I sent you a few weeks ago for the election training position. But I have to speak up.

Just got off the phone with a nice, helpful person (NHP) at Service Canada who facilitated my changing an Employment Insurance Report I filed that included the by-election day I worked for you at the beginning of February. You remember, the Toronto Centre by-election that attracted so much media attention?

I’ve had to go through this twice now thanks to you, which is why I’m writing. From my first conversation with your staffer who invited me to a training session, I tried to find out the pay for the election day and the training day. I knew I would need this information before the cheque arrived, to file an accurate report with EI.

To say that your staff, then and later, was evasive would be an understatement. Responses ranged from “Oh, I’m not sure exactly,” to “I’ll have to find out,” to changing the subject. A couple of times I was referred to “the website,” and I tried in vain to locate pay rates for extended staff on the Elections Ontario site.

In contrast to the Employment Insurance personnel, these people were nice but NOT helpful.

But one day I thought of e-laws, the provincial site on which all provincial statutes and their regulations may be found. I looked up the Elections Act, and its regulations, and found a pay rate that included $175 for the election day for a Deputy Returning Officer, which was the role I was assigned. (It’s a fun role, you are in charge of one little table, a stack of ballots, one ballot box and, I guess technically, one poll clerk.)

So when my cheque arrived not long after the election, and it showed a payment of $196.04 for election day, I had mixed feelings. I was glad to get a bit more money than I expected, but not happy that I would have to amend the EI report I had already filed using the $175 figure. I had already amended the report for the period of the training day.

So it’s no wonder I put it off a bit. However today I had everything I needed. I was on the Service Canada site filing a report, I had the cheque “stub” handy and the Saturday phone number to speak to someone about reporting issues, all at hand. As I poked around the website I realized that the higher dollar figure was going to put me over the threshold of allowable earnings for that reporting period.

I would have to pay some money back. Sheesh!

And indeed, the NHP confirmed this was true. I will be receiving a letter requesting payment, but I was told that in fact, the amount (about $20) will be deducted over a couple of future payments, so I should ignore the letter’s threat to throw me in jail if I don’t pay immediately.

A stint in debtors’ prison would hamper my job search considerably, so I was glad to have some advice around that.

Now, getting back to my application for training people who apply to be election day staff,…I would take an NHP approach, and I think this would distinguish my work from some others.

Don’t you?

Peter Fonteece was kept in custody in Thunder Bay for 70 days, then released to a halfway house. He pleaded guilty to the very serious charge of criminal negligence causing death, even though suicide is not illegal in this country. Was this necessary? Hasn’t he suffered enough?

As the editorial writer put it,

“This is the all-powerful state punishing the poor for having constrained choices. It is the state acting with neither humanity nor mercy.”

How did he and his wife Yanisa get to the point of a potential double suicide? The answer to that question is what gets this couple into my blog.

She had been laid off from her supply-chain analyst job with Loblaws in Waterloo; he didn’t work. She could not find another job; it was said in media reports that his legally blind status kept him from working (which I find odd, but that’s another story).

They decided to drive to British Columbia to start a new life, but the heater in their car stopped working at Thunder Bay and they learned that repairing it would cost more than they could pay. In despair, Yalisa took an overdose of sleeping pills, instructed Peter not to alert anyone until she was dead, and eventually passed out and died.

You can read more details in the Globe’s news story. The sentencing that was to occur last week has been postponed until May.

Here’s hoping the Crown comes to its senses by then and decides to help, not further punish, Peter Fonteece. It is probably too much to expect that systemic changes might occur.

An appropriately timed Valentine’s Day article by Lily Garcia in The Washington Post explains that while it’s important in the interview to describe and illustrate your qualifications and to indicate strongly your enthusiasm for the job, it’s even more crucial to provide specifics about how you can meet the employer’s organizational goals.

The applicant who anticipates the needs of the employer and is able to convincingly articulate how he or she plans to meet those needs makes it infinitely easier for that employer to envision him or her in the job.

I was already adding “benefit” to all of my PAR (problem-action-result) stories but after reading this column, I plan to include this angle in my opening (tell us about yourself) and closing statements as well and be as specific as I possibly can.

There were a LOT of people at the EI info session I attended recently at a large Service Canada facility in the north end of the city.

I do understand that the government keeps track of clients receiving EI benefits, by using Social Insurance Numbers. It makes sense since they are working with income. Still, it had seemed a bit disarming, when I phoned up in response to a snail mail summons, to find out dates and locations for the cattle call, to be asked for my S.I.N. to confirm that I was going to attend.

How likely was it that an identity thief would want to attend in my place? Oh well, sigh, here’s the number.

I arrived just as the session was getting underway, and gave my NAME to a person seated near the door checking attendance. Since I was anxious to find a seat, it barely registered with me at first that on the multi-page printout on which he checked off my name, there were a lot of numbers.

But as the session droned on (I’ll write about its content in another post) the realization sank in that those numbers probably included S.I.N.s, and I made up my mind to find out after the session concluded.

As I approached the table where the list and list-keeper were, I saw another attendee seated there, and the list lying on the desk beside her, unattended. The list-keeper was chatting with another attendee as I picked up the list and quickly and easily confirmed that, indeed, it was a printout of the people invited to the session, identified by name and Social Insurance Number. Mr. List Keeper soon noticed that I had his booty and reached out to recover it. I relinquished it with the comment that those numbers should not be on a list like this.

“We need those numbers,” he sputtered.

“Not for the purpose you’re using the list for here,” I retorted. “It wasn’t necessary to print that field.” Especially, I thought, when it was being left unattended at a table with general attendees around. He said something about how he was keeping it safe at his table, but I was walking out the door by then.

We may be cattle, but we don’t need those numbers branded on us.

Nor do we need all those name and number matches printed out unnecessarily and left lying around for anyone (like me) to pick up and worse, walk off with. That printout would provide a wealth of data with which to start stealing identities, opening accounts and who knows what else.

On the website of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada you can read a fact sheet about identity theft and learn more about what can happen and how to reduce your risk.

First was The Mystery of the Sore Feet. This was solved by a wild guess backed up by deductive powers. My feet got very very sore in the initial weeks of time spent not at the office, and even when I switched to running shoes indoors instead of slippers there was only negligible improvement. Finally in desperation I tried my orthotic inserts in my runners. Instant, blessed relief! Later I confirmed my findings with a physiotherapist, who said this is a common phenomenon with people away from their normal routines for extended periods. If they have come to rely on orthotics in their usual work shoes during the day, their feet, legs and even back will suffer from suddenly not having them. What you might get away with for a weekend, is not sustainable in the long term.

Second was The Outlook Intrigue. In mid-December Outlook 2003 stopped working properly on my laptop; it was repeatedly downloading the same emails over and over. This had previously occurred on my desktop but I am not using the desktop computer much these days, so it was simple to use web-based mail when I found myself in its vicinity.

Last week I set out to solve the repeating download problems on the laptop. After two or three re-installations of the program, I was successful, only to discover the program would not download any emails subject to my Email Rules sorting some incoming mail into topic-based folders.

During the few weeks I was using webmail exclusively instead of Outlook while I stewed over how to fix the downloading problem, I had set up rules for topic-based folders in webmail. Yesterday I found a personal email in a webmail folder I’d set up for a particular project and realized I hadn’t seen it before. A tiny light bulb went on in my brain and I realized that the folders in webmail were likely part of the folders problem in Outlook.

Why? That’s for more email savvy brains than mine to understand. But I deleted all the email rules in my webmail program, and a few minutes later the first email subject to a rule arrived in Outlook and was swept over into its subfolder.

Success!

Any honest person who has driven a car while talking on the phone, even a hands-free model, will admit that one’s focus on driving suffers. C’mon, you know it does. And anyone who has tried to talk to a spouse who is watching a favourite television show, or emailing or texting, knows that multitasking is not a skill, it’s a fraud. In one place I worked, people would deliberately tell the easily distracted boss important things when he wasn’t paying attention: a resignation, or looming financial shortfall. Later, when he was surprised and outraged about the situation, they could honestly say, they had warned him.

At home, while my current job is job-searching, the clutter challenge is immense. Luckily, the EI system is nearly all electronic so this bureaucracy has not added much to the paper burden. But the existing piles need to be wrestled into submission pretty quickly because of a major project looming. Hope you’re not paying attention when I write those three little words:

Income tax returns.

Sort of.

Unfortunately, I also had it a week ago before receiving a call inviting me for another interview. So I was a bit sluggish preparing for one I attended this past week. Keeping my fingers crossed now for the outcome of this competition, that involved preparing a presentation in advance that I delivered at the interview, the interview questions themselves, and a post-interview writing test.

“Whatever happened to just showing up and answering a few questions?” is what friends and family ask me. Employers can’t afford hiring mistakes, and I can understand the interest in seeing a candidate actually perform some of the duties of the job. These tests are far more relevant, I think, than how well I can remember old yet relevant examples from my past work and articulate them orally under pressure.

Doesn’t this remind you of school, and complaining about how exams were not valid assessments of learning? These interview prep periods do feel like exam times, but with more at stake, I must say!

On this theme, have a look at The Headhunter’s “Tell ‘Em What They Need to Hear” column. Except for referring to a period of incredibly low unemployment, which indicates the column is NOT current, it is spot on, I feel.

If you decide to explore Nick (he’s The Headhunter) Corcodilos’s site, you’ll need to wince and put up with the horrible home page which makes my cluttered home work area look tidy. You can subscribe to his every-two-weeks newsletter delivered by email.

Closing out the year with three interviews in six weeks has been good. It makes me feel I haven’t lost momentum. That MAY be it for the year except for a few posts to apply for in the next few days. I also have some assigned tasks from my job search coach, about which I’ll blog in another post.