Serfs and slaves

I'm a fan of the BC Federation of Labour, but in my view their response is entirely inadequate. These people ought not to be merely banned from the province, they should be banned from walking around free anywhere.

Slavery is a crime. Not only here, but everywhere. A crime against humanity. Wage slavery should be no different. To say, 'well, we pretended to pay them" should be no defense against so serious a crime.

This company should be confiscated and its principals and managers should be arrested and tried publically. And whichever fool minister let the contract in the first place, along with whoever removed the oversight of contracts in the first place, need to be lined up and asked some very tough questions. They re certainly accomplices.

I think the unscathed success of the Skytrain fiasco, where Latin American workers were imported to dig up Cambie Street, kept in camps and paid almost nothing has encouraged those powerful interests who clearly believe that power is enough to protect them from the most horrible abuses.

As long as they can keep their freedom, and even keep the money, they will continue. If we rely on heir personal values or their consiences we lose and they win.

They don't have any, you see.

"BC, The Best Place on

"BC, The Best Place on Earth'?

same old, same old

So that company is banned for a year, nothing wil stop them from setting up another dummy front and start bidding all over again on government contracts!
I bet their names are well hidden and protected under some fancy lawyers banner.

A good question

Camero409 above makes a point.

Someone should check to see what contributions the principals of this outfit have made to the political campaigns and the Party. That's a pattern we've seen a lot recently.

This sort of crap has been

This sort of crap has been going on since I can remember. The forestry industry has more than their fair share of scam-artists who take advantage of people when the economy goes for a nose dive. What protects them? 1)they work in isolated areas. 2)workers are threatened with being fired and lose wages. 3)workers will be blacklisted and won't find another job. 4) Boss promises the worker the world but has some form of excuse of why he can't pay right now, but if you hang in there he'll make good in 2 weeks, which doesn't happen and the worker finally quits. I remember working for an outfit back in the early 70's who wouldn't pay me. I finally threatened the employer with legal action. The owner came after me and promised to do some physical action on me, but gave me cash, which wasn't the full amount owing, and told me to take it or leave it.

Charges and ultimately, jail

Charges and ultimately, jail time are what I would like to see come out of this investigation. Expose the people behind Khaira Enterprises. I see this as a natural consequence of Gordon Campbell's core values at work.

Van Isle is correct

I went through the same abuse when brushing that Van Isle reports. This stuff is not uncommon folks, lowest bidder and all that in part creates these conditions. Along with little to no oversight by WorkSafe BC and the (ghost of) the Employment Standards Branch. I also experienced this crap when I went logging and after two years I just couldn't face it anymore and left. Similar things occur in Construction mostly around safety where workers must compromise or face what Van Isle has described. There are few reputable Construction firms the majority are OSH deficient. Most companies get there COR or SAFE accreditation and flaunt the rules anyway (getting that accreditation is very easy, and the people who run these accreditation "partners of WorkSafe BC" SAFE and COR scenario's are empire and nepotism purveyors). WorkSafeBC is one of the most hypocritical org's going, but struts around like a righteous mf all the while turning a blind eye, hardly ever laying criminal charges, and screwing injured workers with alarming regularity. Hey WorkSafe BC when your call display reads Victoria Legislature calling, don't answer the phone!

How do these 'people' sleep?

Campaign Funds

The government of the day has seen fit to make sure the public's access to campaign funds information is as difficult and time consuming as possible. The data is in jpg format and is therefore unsearchable. One must painstakingly plod through it page by page. That said, I have no doubt they are a contributor.

had enough yet?

This is what you get when you elect a ideologically driven, laissez-faire free market capitalist cabal to govern. It's big tax cuts (which only benefit corporations, big business and the wealthy), downloading of service costs on to the rest of us, and de-regulation which aids and abets scum bags like this outfit. All of the above comments are right on the money. De-regulation of industry and business is akin to letting a pedophile run a youth camp. So BC, had enough yet?

Call to Investigate Forest Camp 'Nightmare'

Another great exposure article by the Tyee. Good work.

Now were is the NDP on this one???

Or is it too politically sensitive or not sensitive enough yet!!

We need a political party with balls to address the insane things happening these days under our governement rule and prevention is the key here.

We all contribute

to the culture of the 'lowest bidder'. I just had some major renovation done on my dwelling, and have had more than a dozen people I know, most of whom themselves work in decently paid and safe union-jobs tell me I was wet behind the ears, because the company from whom I bought the services wasn't dirt cheap, partly because they do quality work and accordingly enjoy a good reputation, but also because they give a damn about the folks who work with them and do not piss on safety rules and provisions. This was not mild-mannered in all case. There were a couple of people who told me, with discernible;e anger that 'they could have gotten me a better deal', as if I had broken some important social rule I never bought into in the first place. I was taken aback by the strength of that peer pressure and so I think we must acknowledge that as part of the culture of a LOT of people out there. Walmart is getting us in the back!

Google listing for Khaira

I just googled for Khaira Enterprises and found this listing:

Khaira Enterprises Ltd. - Home
Khaira Enterprises Ltd. Surrey, BC. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes ...
www.khaira-reforestation.com/default.html - Cached

The Khaira website is basically empty, with this message in bold type:

"This website is being currently updated,
we thank you for your patience."

If I was king of the world

What our increasingly corrupt situation seems to need more and more in these days of increasing technologically supported secrecy is some serious truth.

Lots and lots of it.

We see lobbyists and corrupted government types going to draconian lengths to prevent people from knowing the truth.

I've always believed that lies are the most profound kind of truth. They cast a shadow of deceit, and inside that shadow is the thing they most fear to have you know. Truth.

From time to time on this site there have been conversations about the nature of revolution, and the need for reform, and the ways to oppose corrupt power.

We see this need increasingly at conferences and meetings where the powerful display their fear of the people and of the truth by billion dollar security bills.

I think back to the revolutions of the past, the ones that worked and the ones that failed, and I think that the difference seems to be in the way they are carried forward. All revolutions start with high intentions and principles, and some even proceed by them. When they don't, failure ensues.

Examples are many. The French Revolution vs. the American offer good contrasts, since they were in so many respects different sides of the same story.

The French held mass executions of Aristocrats and their families, mostly innocent of crime. The executions were murders, and corrupted the noble cause fatally right at its infancy. The American did not, simply expelled the enemy and then opened trade.

France got Napoleon, America got a trade empire that prospered and fed the world until the Second World War, before it was in it's turn betrayed by the immoral powerful we see there today.

Same thing happened to the Russian one. It fell into the hands of monstrous murderers, and never recovered.

To succeed, I think, a movement for change must abide by the high principles it espouses, and punish properly all crimes committed, even by themselves and even for high reasons. It must abide by the principles it hopes to establish.

I think, if I were a revolutionary today, which I'm almost sorry to say I'm not, I believe I would become a network of hidden hackers, ferreting out all he secrets crouching in the shadows of all the big lies, and expose them without fear or favour.

Shout them out loud, with names and addresses intact, and dollar amounts and banking information would be my favourites. I cannot believe that this slavery could exist in Canada, a country of decent people in a decent society, unless money had changed hands.

Any information regarding the secret accounts of those whose duty is to protect that decency, and fail utterly to do so should be found and shouted out. All minutes of all secret meetings in every secret corner of our world should be made visible for all to see.

Only then will we have a chance to restore the decency for which we and our forebears have paid so dearly.

thanks for that post, Bailey

I enjoyed it. Just one thing I want to point out, and that is that we do not need the 'network of hidden hackers'. There is you and me, and all the other ordinary citizens out there with the tools and the will to carry on the public conversation...and make no mistake, the public conversation is making a difference. Aside from the hype about the internet age, there truly is the potential to reinvigorate democracy simply by begining to have this conversation.
I think you are so right, Dorothy, about the pervasivness of the Wal-Mart ideology ...I find it difficult to understand that someone would crow about getting the 'cheapest'...but perhaps it is also a measure of the hard times workers' face in making ends meet. What is so difficult about this story, is as someone else pointed out, that shoddy working conditions and dangerous lack of safety considerations and outright cheating of employees are going on in industry, and small business, and work places of every description across the entire spectrum of work. Think it isn't happening at your local restaurant? Think again.
I cannot say it better than Bailey: we need to bring decency back as something we endeavour to live up in all aspects of our lives.

There migh well be a case made......

......for hate crime, and criminal prosecution of the company and it's principals.

By the way...

Just an aside to the author, Ryan Elias.

Very nice work for your practicum piece. Well done.

Be proud.

Yes.... Well Done, Ryan Elias

Bailey wrote:

"Shout them out loud, with names and addresses intact, and dollar amounts and banking information would be my favourites. I cannot believe that this slavery could exist in Canada, a country of decent people in a decent society, unless money had changed hands.

Any information regarding the secret accounts of those whose duty is to protect that decency, and fail utterly to do so should be found and shouted out. All minutes of all secret meetings in every secret corner of our world should be made visible for all to see.

Only then will we have a chance to restore the decency for which we and our forebears have paid so dearly."

Yes, very much agree with VivianLea, thanks so much for that post, Bailey.

http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Canada

Bailey

Well said