Having just concluded a disappointing and most unprofitable discussion with a junior front-line employee (having a grand though utterly meaningless title of “Early Resolution Officer”) of the Ombudsman of Ontario, I am sadly though not at all unexpectedly reminded that the basics still apply. The basics I am equally distressed to observe are not in the least complimentary. To give them their most favourable sheen, the basics like those of the animal kingdom whence we “intellectual” humans derive are simply visceral. This endorsement is particularly unfortunate at this time of year when magnanimity (or at least the appearance of it) is most prolific. The Ombudsman’s clerk (who upon abrupt reconsideration and with discernible gusto accelerated our initial conference from next week to today) could not have been more eager to dispose of my “complaint” which by rote she skilfully directed to but a number of other bureaucracies cradled in the womb of deceit and deception called “government”. Meanwhile the transport of logic and palpability was conveniently for the Ombudsman sidelined and pushed over its edge onto the plate of yet another, a repeating occurrence throughout the past five months which paradoxically (and dare I say, circuitously or worse, circularly) began last July in the same office of the Ombudsman of Ontario. This then is the circle of life!
