Nuts and Bolts

Coffee and donuts: what a President dished out to a perceived (teaser) stupid Vancouver crowd

He was a picture of someone who just got off a long, long flight. A few strands of hair at the back of his balding head were standing. He was visibly tired. No one gave President Aquino a fresh style update. Even his voice sounded tired.

It was no surprise that his meeting with the Filipino community in Vancouver was a non-event somehow only made exciting by a leftist Migrante demonstration outside the convention center detailing his alleged human rights abuses.

I was starting to pity President Aquino when Conservative Filipino job killer Jason Kenny, now holding the defense portfolio, started to put lard all over. Kenny is an expert in multiculturalism, immigration and employment. He represented Alberta Southeast as Member of Parliament since 1997 under the Reform Party. He later joined Harper’s Conservatives.

Kenny was visibly courting another budding ethnic bastion. He even noted the fact that the Aquino family had two Presidents, something that can only occur, he observe, if one is royalty.

I’m calling Kenny a job killer based on data. The Association of Care Givers and Nanny Agencies in Canada (ACNA) just gave these figures. Local Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) statistics on the new caregiver program from Dec 2014 to March 2015:

1. December 2014: Total LMIA approved: 0 childcare and 3 High Medical needs (9 childcare and 12 High Medical needs)

2. January 2015: Total LMIA approved: 14 (2 childcare and 12 High Medical needs).Total LMIA received: 169 childcare and 26 High Medical needs applications

3. February 2015: Total LMIA approved: 32 (4 childcare and 28 High Medical needs).Total LMIA received: 367 (311 childcare and 56 High Medical needs applications)

4. March 2015: Total LMIA approved: 43 (16 childcare and 27 High Medical needs).Total LMIA received: 297 (262 childcare and 35 High Medical needs applications). It was even worse this month.

Executive Director Natalie Drolet (see our report at Metrovan Independent News) of West Coast Domestic Workers Association, said the recent changes to the live-in caregiver program “essentially abolished the program.” Along with four by four, (four years in, four years out) these are all Conservative job ploys initiated by Jason Kenny and the Harper Conservatives.

Kenny talked about some 25,000 Filipinos living in a community closest to the North Pole and marveled as to how they evolved as a solid community. He also donned the proper attire. He was the only one among the high rollers — in barong Tagalog – a testimony to the extent he would go to execute a deception.

He was actually campaigning for the disgraced Conservatives, booted out recently from their home turf Alberta, before a captive crowd of well-heeled Filipino-Canadians. I wished Albertans will also get rid of this scheming dropout. Even PNoy and his cabinet ministers were in suits including former SGV chairman Cesar Purisima, now Finance Secretary.

Brainless RCMP officers, meanwhile, were doing their best to keep media — earlier cleared by the Philippine consulate — at bay. I was told it was a joint operation with RCMP, some elements of the Presidential Security Command and Genesis, a local private security agency held largely responsible for the suicide of a female Mexican national earlier profiled by the useless Transit police, and placed in a holding cell by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). She hanged herself at the Genesis holding area in YVR Airport. PNoy was in real good company. Vancouver police were handling perimeter security as a Migrante demo was occurring outside.

RCMP also checked media’s usual equipments, cameras and stuff, by bringing in a scrawny police dog that sniffed but wasn’t interested in anything. It was totally an amateur show by what seem to be an RCMP contingent not experienced in handling a social event. We were then herded to the ballroom where some guys, pretending to be security, don’t even know how to do a proper Smith’s hand held metal detector screening. They don’t resolve alarms, missed a lot of body parts, and went about their job for show.

PNoy, as expected, added to the gruesome failure of the important gathering. He was in a monologue with his old tale about coffee and donut. The punch line was: How do you like your eggs? Christy Clark was attempting at discernment. CTV News and CBS were at a loss on how to capture an ethnic story with PNoy speaking mostly in Tagalog. There was no sound bite they could patch to their broadcast.

He also took pride in some weird traffic time reduction. It was a not at all presidential.
Ces Drilon of ABS CBN, an old beat colleague, asked if I liked PNoy’s speech. I said yes if I was in Tondo but the crowd that came was relatively educated. What the President gave in his rambling talk was pedestrian and soporific.

My friend, Bambi Fonacier, a radio personality, was emcee. Social loving Filipino Canadians of all stripes came.

Noel Cabangon, an old pukista (folksinger), was part of the Presidential entourage and entertained the restive crowd with 70’s and 80’songs that no longer resonate with anyone. He probably never heard of Uptown Funk, sung by another Hawaii-based US-Filipino Bruno Mars. Bruno’s late mom is from Cebu.

In the end, I think it was stupid of me to have attended that PNoy affair. He ignored everyone including media. The only redeeming part of the event was the food before and after. Total Filipino hospitality and graciousness underscored in bold.