Once again, Rankandfile.ca readers have produced a disgusting shortlist for Scumbag of the Year.
We’ve narrowed the field down to 8 candidates. There are 4 public sector and 4 private sector scumbags. As usual, past Scumbags of the Year have been excluded from the competition. That means Galen Weston Jr., and Doug Ford aren’t on the list!
Voting is at the bottom of the page.
Meet the Candidates
Private Sector
Greg Aziz – CEO of National Steel Car
The CEO of NSC since 1994, Aziz has overseen a horror show at this Hamilton freight car manufacturer. On June 6 2022, welder Quoc Le was killed on the job – the third employee to be killed in 21 months during which NSC was collecting the corrupt federal CEWS “wage” subsidy. NSC was charged a paltry $140,000 for the 2020 death of Fraser Cowan, crushed to death by a collapsing 20-ton crane. The workplace is so unsafe, even Aziz himself fell off a ladder while touring the shopfloor in 1997. Aziz was also arrested in the United States in 2013 for securities fraud. The case was privately settled to the tune of $21 million.
Mark Little – (former) CEO of Suncor
Little resigned as Suncor CEO in July 2022 immediately following the second 2022 worker death at Suncor’s Alberta oil sites – and the fifth worker death since 2020. Little was appointed CEO in 2019. A dozen Suncor workers have died in the past eight years. Little’s salary was $11.7 million when he resigned. Little tried to make a big deal of his voluntary halving of his subsidy in 2020, but he also presided over Suncor collecting a reported $358 million in corrupt CEWS “wage” subsidies (shortly after Alberta’s UCP government gave Suncor a $1.1 billion tax break).
Michael Medline – CEO of Empire Company Ltd (aka Sobeys)
Not be outdone by Galen Weston Jr.’s corrupt Loblaws empire, Empire (aka Sobeys) CEO Michael Medline opened his yap this past September to whine about the “reckless” and “incendiary” comments from “armchair quarterbacks” who dared question the price-gouging profiteering of the poverty-wage grocery industry. While a large majority of Canadians see their incomes whittled away by skyrocketing food prices, Medline took a 15% salary increase to now enjoy $8.6 million a year.
Tony Staffieri – CEO of Rogers Communications
Claiming to have Canada’s “most reliable network”, the Rogers cable and wireless networks crapped out on July 8, leaving 12 million people without phone service, as well as 911 emergency services, Interac payment systems, as well as numerous municipal, provincial, and federal workplaces and services. Just like the standard shitty smartphone and laptop, Staffieri blamed the outage on a system upgrade. The Rogers monopoly faced no legal consequences and by the end of the year, the Competition Tribunal greenlighted the Rogers acquisition of Shaw. Job losses are on the horizon with the merger. Yes, Rogers also collected at least $82 million in “wage” subsidies during the pandemic.
Public Sector
Tiff Macklem – Governor of Bank of Canada
Appointed the BoC’s governor by Trudeau’s finance minister Bill Morneau only weeks before Morneau resigned in disgrace over the WE scandal, Macklem has declared war on Canada’s working-class majority under the guise of “fighting inflation”. By raising interest rates faster than almost any other country, Macklem is committed to triggering a recession and causing high unemployment in order to break up the tight labour market that is, for the first time in decades, favouring workers. Macklem has also peddled employer-class bullshit by warning of a fictional “wage-price” spiral when wage increases are in fact far below skyrocketing prices and climbing profit rates.
Blaine Higgs – Premier of New Brunswick
After public sector workers across the province defeated Blaine Higgs and his government’s attack on workers in late 2021, it was inevitable that the former Irving Oil executive and Premier would retaliate. Doing nothing in 2022 to address the crumbling healthcare system, Higgs wrapped up the year with Bill 23 which amends the Public Service Labour Relations Act. The law allows the government greater power to use scabs to fill “essential service” jobs and empowers the government to limit picketing and protests by striking public sector workers.
Sylvia Jones – Ontario Minister of Health
Jones is presiding over the engineered collapse of the Ontario healthcare system, while for-profit day surgery clinics open and tens of millions in taxpayer money is being handed over to blood-soaked long-term care profiteers. Despite healthcare staffing shortages in the tens of thousands, little has been done to remedy the problem. Instead, private employment agencies are being allowed to serve the shortages at costs often triple that of direct hires. Healthcare wages continue to stagnate in the wake of the 3-year Bill 124 wage cap (ie: wage cut!) as attrition and burnout continues at a rapid pace causing major and fatal delays in emergency and scheduled health services.
Scott Moe – Premier of Saskatchewan
Moe’s latest attack on workers includes the decimation of 400 good union jobs by selling off the SLGA’s liquor stores. Following the same healthcare privatization playbook being used in other provinces, Moe has also refused to invest in healthcare despite frontline workers pleading for more resources and increased staffing levels, and major hospitals in Regina and Saskatoon reporting Emergency Rooms at 200 and 300 percent capacity. Rural health services are also facing their worst crisis since the advent of cooperative clinics and medicare. This union-busting scumbag also called for immediate back-to-work legislation against locked out CP railway workers in March.
Their agenda has nothing to do with civic duty or service. Ms. Jones is one of many Public sector personnel gone awry.
They think that they have a license to be self-serving
The Real Scumbags of the Year are all those pro-mandaters who denounced The Truckers as FreeDumbers and still dare to call themselves Progressives. Honk Honk From The Left
The so-called truckers are a right-wing anti-democratic scab outfit. Did you see their role in Co-op refinery lockout? Their manifesto to dissolve the House of Commons and install the Governor General and Senate as the new executive? You don’t have to support mandates or Trudeau to point out what a bunch of scumbags the Freedumb Convoyers are.
There was nothing “progressive” about the Convoy. It was an anti-democratic, right-wing protest, designed and orchestrated by western separatists who wanted to replace the Liberal government with an administration controlled by the oil/bitumen industry. In the end, all the Convoy did was damage the economy even further.
You are 100% right!
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
They weren’t truckers they were attempting to overthrow an elected government. They are the scumbags of the year, ask anyone who lives in Ottawa
you missed a a lot of scumbags
Sylvia Jones doesn’t even pretend to act in the interest of Ontarians, just predatory privatizers.
As far as I’m concerned. They all qualify for scum bags of the year. Along with many others.
100% correct!
Doug Ford would certainly win again, hands down if his name had been submitted. Thanks for the opportunity to vote. So many choices and all so deserving of making the list. I cannot wait to see who wins.
All of them listed qualify, difficult to choose just one to go down in history with those that have gone before and are still still practicing scum baggery.
Doug Ford definitely deserd a nomination and win!
Not sure why Doug Ford isn’t on this list. The ultimate scumbag of the year.
He won in 2018 and after someone wins we “retire” them from competition.
Where’s the spot for Doug Ford on this list? That clown is destroying Ontario quickly.
Ford PP HARPER,they definetly missed a few .
A noticeable omission was Doug the Slug Ford.
He is building highways to reduce emissions. He said it, I didn’t. Coincidentally some of his backers own the land the highway will be built on.
He’s opening up the greenbelt to development to reward those who fund “Ontario Proud”. Ostensibly a solution for the housing crisis it’s primarily single family homes that most can’t afford. Public meetings were held to allow input and were almost universally against it.
He’s directing Jones assault on the healthcare system. First they break it and then they’ll fix it with privatization.
He’s advocating for evehicles after taking out charging stations at Go stations.
There’s lots more too.
Scott Moe. While other provinces have used federal healthcare funding elsewhere, he’s done that and did the same with senior housing. He puts federal projects and funding in the Provincial budget and takes credit. Have lowest funding for education, lowest in the last 10 years too. Didn’t just end all Covid regulations first, even the infected didn’t need to isolate. Most deaths per capita but has hid data for a year now. Multiple times caused hospitals to overwhelmed with triaging and patients airlifted to other provinces. Only Province with a negative GDP despite Russian war causing price increases & booms for Oil & Gas, fertilizer and grains. Have the most residents moving to other Provinces.
Gotta be Scott Moe. As our health care system crumbles (along with health care in every other province, admittedly) he doesn’t spend any time thinking of solutions – he calls our health care workers liars. saying they are exaggerating the situation. First he played politics with our elderly during Covid (currently nearly 2000 deaths) and now he’s playing games with our children in the midst of a respiratory illness surge. I guess given his own history (DUI conviction and a second driving incident causing the death of another driver), we shouldn’t be surprised that he can’t see the value in individual lives, unless they hold personal value to him.