Favourite Books

  • The Green Mile
  • Animal Farm
  • Lord of the Flies
  • Lord of the Rings
  • To Kill a Mockingbird

Monday 14 July 2014

Letter to Les Dube

O.K. this may be a little different than usual. I understand this is just my little old blog, and it doesn't go far, but, I tried to find the proper channels to get this where it was suppose to go, with no luck. I am afraid you folks will have to bear with me, and either read this, or...let it slide. Apparently when you become so insanely rich with massive corporations of your own, getting in touch for the average human being, becomes difficult, couldn't find an e-mail for anything besides the many charities that extol this man's name. Hey, I could have sent this off to them, but..not likely they would give a crap about someone bad-mouthing their sugar daddy.So, here goes, my letter to Mr. Leslie Dube
Dear Mr. Dube,
  We have never met, and unless you fix the mess you created, it is likely for the best we don't cross paths.I have spent countless hours for the past few months reading up on you, like my husband was told to do by your good friend Mr. Martin Carsky (through the mouth of his supervisor). See, my husband worked for Maple Leaf Loading Ltd. before and after all your stock market shuffles, and even after 28 years, he still doesn't listen to my insane nattering when I start to get an irritating itch from things I can't scratch. I started to itch around about December. You remember, that's when you moved all the guys out to camp. Now, the word out there was the move became necessary because the costs rose for the apartments. Hey, might be true. But then, you even moved the offices out of town. Hummm...Oh, I brought this up to my husband, I told him something was fishy, you don't decide all at once to drop 40 apartments, have them cleaned and empty in one month, because of costs. You have some well-educated folks in your financial department with all kinds of letters behind their names, they must have seen the associated costs long before the last month of the year.Oh ,hey, he gave me the reasons he got, I didn't believe a word of that dribble. Those reasons included the fact that the Walter Energy Coal haul had to help carry the Stewart haul along with everything else, because Maple Leaf Loading (or Pro Trans Ventures,doesn't really matter what name you use) wasn't getting paid for that haul. Seemed pretty strange at the time, and....perhaps one day soon, we will learn the truth in that matter.
  Then you switched to C.O.D. on a ton of your services. Again, that itch started. One question I have to ask, if indeed you went C.O.D. how the heck did you manage to rack up so much debt? Now we hear through the paper work filed in the receivership, your books are not up to date. Really?
  So, lets fast forward to Walter Energy's announcement that they were going to Idle the Brule. Holy cow, when I heard that, I told my honey he had better get his resumes out, and we had to get all our ducks in a row. Ahhh..again, that itch I was scratching, he didn't feel at all, because....that is when your partner Mr. Martin Carsky came up with the best idea of all. There was nothing to worry about, the employees were told, Walter Energy had lots of coal stockpiled, and promised to customers. This coal had to be hauled, and good old Maple Leaf loading was going to haul steady until October. Oh, even better, word about had it, if they upped their production the mine might even restart, and we wouldn't even notice a bump in the road.
  Funny, Mr. Dube, I think, even though we have never met, I know you pretty good. I could read between all your lines, perhaps you didn't personally think them up, but, if you were doing your job properly, like you must have with the Concorde group of companies, you would have put a stop to them if they were not acceptable, so guilty by association.
  Then of course we get to the really good stuff. The day you decided to request that 5 million dollar loan you handed out at "arms length", that almost gags me..arms length, and sitting on the board of directors, knowing full well you are not getting your due interest payments on that loan. On May 21st, the itch became a nasty rash. I was up and down from my computer like a Yoyo. Pro Trans Ventures was all over the stock reports. They suddenly ceased to exist, because you got this overwhelming urge to get your loan, and all those other folks who sat down at board meetings with you, decided they couldn't pay you back. How does something like this happen? Why didn't you pick up the phone when you missed that first payment in January? How did you manage to make billions when you let 5 million slide? See, Mr. Dube, you are a good business man, you have to be to get where you are today, and turning a blind eye to something like this, can't be anything but premeditated. Hey, I was reading between all the lines. I noticed that Don Watt was given his position for a period of 3 years..funny, that's pretty much the same amount of time you folks let this company exist.
  So, with my nattering in his ears, my husband went off to work to find out what the truth was. You were suddenly the owner of Maple Leaf Loading, Pro Trans Ventures board of directors had all resigned, oh, including yourself...(when you asked for your loan back). I kept telling him this was a farce, something was up, and I think this time, he actually heard me. Imagine my surprise when he called to tell me, your buddy Mr. Carsky had told everyone there was nothing to worry about, they were now owned by someone with deep pockets, who wanted to make the company viable. He told me the guys were all told to look you up on the internet..and they did, what an awesome man! You handed out 30 million to charities, they certainly had reason to believe the message from Mr. Carsky. Even more telling, you apparently requested my husband make up a schedule with all the drivers, including their holidays, for the months of June and July. Well, gee, maybe my itch was caused by something besides my uneasiness with the goings on in Maple Leaf Loading.
  Do you know, there were guys who trusted the lies you allowed to be fed to them so much, they put all their savings into a down payment for a home?No surprise, when they were suddenly unemployed(and I do mean suddenly) the lenders pulled out, and..they lost all of their savings because down payments on homes(as someone in the real estate business, you know this)are non-refundable. Do you know folks relaxed and felt they had months left to work, so there was no need to put off vacations? Guys purchased tools. My son, well, he got screwed over twice by you and your friends. He was promised a mechanic apprenticeship. He filled out all the paper work with help from the office staff and wanted patiently for his number. Surprise, that number never came, not a single piece of that paperwork went beyond Prince George..just one more in the list of lives screwed by your game. Your arrogance, and ignorance caused hardship in most of the families you were the sole employer of.
  All of your lies or perhaps your disregard of those spread by those you kept on in management, were nothing less than criminal. I for one feel like vomiting when I read all the wonderful things you do for others, and I am feeling the utter desperation of losing a full month wages, and holiday pay. I wasted my time trying to convince my husband this was a disaster in the making. His supervisor, only days before this hit the fan, assured him that when the job ended he would get all kinds of pay-out (by the way, this was one of those who stayed on with Ernst and Young, perhaps he got all that he claimed my husband would?). Well, instead you allowed all of these people who had been fed lie after lie to cover all the stuff I questioned, to continue supplying someone with money. At this point after looking at the Receiver's list and seeing Pro Trans Ventures listed as a creditor, even though they no longer exist, and Darby Kreitz another creditor, who the heck gets this money? It's definitely not the ones who worked for it!
  What you allowed to occur makes every penny you have handed to charity null and void. Are you Robin Hood? You know take from the workers to give to the poor? You certainly did not take from the rich. Not a single person who left your company on June 27th, walked away with the ability to forget a full months pay. Your disregard for these people will affect them for months to come, to climb out of a hole like this is difficult. Do you know that events like this cause rifts in families because of stress? For all you know, you may be the reason some couples break up. For someone who apparently cares for their fellow human beings so much, you build hospital wings, you seem to have no consideration for those who are in your employ.
  You can sit back and claim this is now in the hands of Ernst and Young, but, like Shakespeare's Lady MacBeth, that spot will never come out for you. Each time you stand for the photographer, after handing out another tax write-off, may the 200 families haunt you, 200 men and women who have lost not only their jobs, but their quality of life. 200 employees with children who will watch their parents struggle, all because of your actions, or lack there of.
  Those who sat with you playing the board game of Pro Trans Ventures and Maple Leaf Loading, those who have offices for another company that wins prizes from Ernst and Young for being such great profit making businesses, those who hand out insane interviews to the media from their homes in Vancouver, not accepting any blame, instead spinning it to seem like this was Walter Energy's fault. Those who just traded in their vehicle for something nice, bright and shiny new, although , they haven't been paid for a month..or...were they?
  So now, Mr. Dube, at 58 years old, I have gone back to my back breaking job cleaning hotel rooms. I am not working 3-4 days a week, as I would like to do because the job is not exactly easy at my age. No, I am working every single day I can, to try and stay out of the creditors bad books. I realize I am lucky. We sold our travel trailer a few days before all of this happened, with plans to purchase a smaller one, to enjoy vacations in the bush. Instead, we have to use that money to cover up the money you stole from us, and any thoughts of vacation have evaporated. The loss of a vacation, and a travel trailer, are small in comparison to the loss of a down payment on a home, so, we are lucky..sort of, thanks to the most charitable man in Saskatchewan, and..the most uncharitable in British Columbia!
Yours (gosh just can't say sincerely)
Debbie

Wednesday 2 July 2014

Living in the Free World

Fasten your seat belts. My world has been hit by a freaking meteorite shower, and I am so pi$$ed right now, I am on the verge of going postal.
  Hey, all you folks who wonder why those people suddenly go bat sh*t crazy and start shooting, well, I for one think I understand. I bet they have been bashed one too many times by stuff that they couldn't possibly dream up, and then they find out, there is diddly squat they can do about it the "normal" way. They have no recourse to right the wrongs that have been done to them. They have Googled till their eyes popped out, sat on hold, heard electronic messages , been sent on wild goose chases, that do nothing but cost them money, and then leave them with no answers. They have learned the very hard way, trust absolutely NO one. They have, as one person put so vividly, been raped in the A$$. Hey, certainly doesn't sound pleasant, and no doubt extremely painful...
  Well, this is, sadly, not the first time we have experienced this, and trust me, we have never recovered from the previous one. So, when this latest clump of cow dung smacked us up side the head, it was sort of, kind of, the straw that broke the camels back.
  My Honey has worked for the same company for some years now. Heck, I don't care about legalities, the name of this company was Maple Leaf Loading Ltd. Now, a little back ground on this company. It was the brain child of one Darby Kreitz. Mr. Kreitz, from what I can gather, is a Saskatchewan boy, or if he is not, he sure has a ton of connections down in the flat lands. He built this other company sometime around 1995, it is some sort of engineering company..that does a whole whack of business. It does so much business that Mr. Kreitz has won tons of awards, one of those awards was the Ernst and Young entrepreneur of the year. Oh, he is an amazing man, handing out mega bucks to charities all over the country, Children's hospital, Fishing for Kids, Cancer fund raising..just a good ol' boy!
  Now Mr. Kreitz has, what appears to be lots of businessy friends too. When he decided to start a trucking business, he called a few of these guys up, and asked them to help out, they are all listed (well maybe not anymore) on his Board of Directors. He put this trucking business on the stock market, and one of the requirements was that they stated not a single one on that board had been involved in a bankruptcy. If you read his application (and I did) to get his sorry buttocks on the stock exchange, he has a tiny little blurb saying how the company has an "arm's length" loan of 5 million buckeroos. There wasn't a name on the application, but now we know that was Mr. Les Dube of the Concorde Group of companies. This agreement with the 5 million stated that if, heaven forbid (O.K. those were not the words) something should go wrong, and they couldn't pay back the loan, this arms length lender would get the company.
  Ahhhhh..something did go wrong, although they had all these businessy friends apparently watching out for the companies best interest, many of them experienced in finance, they decided they couldn't pay the interest on the loan in December. Of course no one knew that information that worked for Mr. Kreitz. Then their big contract with the coal haul suddenly flickered. The mine decided they were going to shut down. "Oh, don't worry" said those running the show "we have so much coal stockpiled, we have to haul that, and you will all have work till October, at the earliest". "Oh, drivers are quitting and going off to look for more secure work? Well, then, you go on and hire some more". "Oh, we lost mechanics? Well, hire another guy to fill the spot, he can drive here from hundreds of miles away, leave his family, haul his tool box, and settle in". Just a little over a month ago, we hear the truth..ooops, no, I'm wrong..we hear the new spin. Mr. Les Dube decided to accept the company, debts and all. He is going to make this company viable..these were words from the President and CEO of the company. No worries folks, things will continue on the same. If we work really hard, maybe the mine will reopen, and all of this will be a bad dream.
  FML!!! What a pile of propaganda! On June 27th, as we walked out of a lovely Graduation ceremony, my son got a text from a co-worker who was at work. He informed us that Ernst and Young, had showed up at the camp, informed everyone that they were done! Yep, finished!! Oh, and guess what? No one is going to get their pay cheque due July 1st. Not enough shock? Well, let's add just a little extra, that 15 day hold back the company decided to implement last year, well that's just not going to find it's way into your pocket either. You have holiday pay coming? Sorry, that's out of the question. Severance...well, sorry Receiver's don't do severance. Plus, you best get your butts out off the property by noon the next day.
 Holy Cow, something like this is just not an event that the average person could even dream up. When companies go under, you get some sort of clue, these folks found a way to get their employees to work a whole month for free, promising months more work. They found a way to get new folks to sign on, and work for free.
  Now, I am not a legal expert, but, I know companies do not go into receivership in 24 hours. I know Ernst and Young got the ball rolling long before June 27th, and they certainly had to know (because they are businessy) that 200 people were still working up to the last minute. They certainly had to know that these people were owed, in the least 2 pay cheques. However, they picked a couple of folks, and I really have to wonder why these particular folks were chosen, to continue working to get things locked down. I hear stupid crap about how the woman in the head office is working for free to ensure employees get their ROE's, and others appear to believe this pile of horse doodoo. Really, get a grip!! This woman is chosen by Ernst and Young along with the few other goonies. They, unlike almost everyone else, will walk away from this smelling like roses. Ernst and Young can hand them what is owed to them, for being scabs!Really, I know a lot of really wonderful people, and none of them would work for free, after finding out they lost a months wages.  Don't care what anyone thinks,I think these people are benefiting at the expense of everyone else, and making statements they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Kiss my butt!! Ernst and Young would not allow anyone on the property that is in receivership unless they are employed by them! Case closed on that matter! Look closely, the ones that passed the false information on, are the ones who are likely getting paid. Duhhhhh....FYI..my take on things..just an assumption, no proof.
  Mr. Les Dube, lying sack of sh*t that he is, is all over Google. What an amazing man he is. He has given 30 million away to charities. He appears to love the Catholic church so much, he pays for a position for a Bishop's assistant. Wow, he is certainly ensuring a spot when he gets to the Pearly Gates. He has a whole wing at a hospital named after him and his wife. Well, it must be pretty damn easy to hand millions out to Charities when you steal a months pay from 200 people! Hopefully he will consider giving to a charity he caused..unemployed, homeless, broke Ex Maple Leaf Loading employees!
  You would think in this country there would be laws to protect tax paying workers. Nope!!Gave the legal world a try, set us back $300, only to be told if we paid $5000, they would spend some time and see if we had a legal case. Helloooooo...yeah, $5000 to see if maybe we can fight this, and a months wages down the toilet..can't really afford that gamble. Keep hearing from folks that we should go to the government who will hand over up to $3000, but......we must pay 6.82% of that as a fee to the government, and then, we must sign a paper that ensures we don't bother the company for the other 10 thousand or so they owe.
  The bank is going to make sure they get every penny they put into this company. They apparently are way above the employees that actually worked a month for the bank for nothing. That's pretty much what happened, the company knew this was happening, the bank knew this was happening, and Ernst and Young knew this was happening. They all decided not to inform the employees, so which one of them got paid for 200 worker's month's wages?
 This whole things is a crime. 200 people have been defrauded out of their wages , not a word on the news, it's like it didn't happen. But..I know it did. My a$$ is so sore, I have run out of "normal" and, now I understand "postal". I am keeping busy with my toilet scrubbing, trying desperately not to take a drive to Saskatchewan, and maybe have a confession with that Bishops Assistant that likely gets some of the wages my Honey worked so hard for.
  So, to keep my sore A$$ from getting anything else rammed up it, I will say, this is my personal opinion. This is how I feel, and, see things...I bet this is how at least one or two others picking up a pack of Preparation H feel as well. Apparently this was a voluntary receivership, well planed, well designed , to let the businessy folks walk away from their mess, and go back to their other companies, wiping their hands, and hoping for an award for their amazing business savy! Watch...bet you one of the F*ck ups are in the next list of Ernst and Young entrepreneurs.
#MapleLeafLoading #DarbyKreitz #MartinCarsky #LesDube