Rick's Rant

As is usual Rick Mercer hit the nail squarely on the head....

I like it when light shines on the Canadian Senate. Because there's no doubt about it, it is a very strange and unique place. And let's face it, it has been a dumping ground for political hacks and bagmen since Mackenzie King was in short pants.

We all know it needs reform. So why is it such a big deal that Tory senators killed a bill? I mean the senate has killed bills before, right? Well not really, not like this. Because they didn't just kill a bill, they killed a bill without any debate. And that is the entire reason the senate exists. They are, despite the fact that Mike Duffy is a member, the chamber of sober second thought. And the Tory senators took a bill that had been voted on and passed by a majority of the duly elected members of the House of Commons – the people we actually vote for – and killed it without a debate. To put that in perspective, the last time it happened was the 1930s.

Think about this: Jean Chretien, who we all know, would have sold his own mother to get his own way and embarrass the opposition, he never tried this.


It’s one of those things; it's so undemocratic nobody actually believed any Canadian Government would do it. It's one of those things that’s just not done. And so when Marjory LeBreton, the senate leader, was asked about this, she just laughed and said, “Ha, it's legal."

Oh, that's a great defense there Marjory. It’s legal. It’s also legal to walk up to a veteran, stick a quarter in his poppy box and take all the poppies. But people don't do it. Because most of us, we like to think about what’s right, not what’s legal.  And if you're dealing with people who go through life and don't care about right or wrong and don’t care about democracy as we know it and only care about what they can get away with? All the reform in the world won’t make a difference.

http://www.rickmercer.com/Rick-s-Rant/Blog/November-2010/Kill-Bill--No-Vote.aspx

The Superhighway to nowhere!

“It's the superhighway to nowhere if you don't live in a city or town” So says Connie Woodcock in the Toronto Sun , having written about this issue in the past in my blog here and here it was good to see this article published in a big city newspaper. The comments it gleaned showed the enormous divide that exists between rural and urban citizens, something that was also raised in the senate report on rural poverty referenced here . I will let Connie take it from here:-

“In six months of house hunting in rural Ontario, we’ve come to one conclusion that has become more inevitable the more we look: We have to move into town. We’ve looked and looked and looked but not a single rural property for sale in our area has the one essential without which we can’t work — high-speed Internet access.

That puts us on the wrong side of Canada’s digital divide.

Virtually all urban Canadians can access broadband easily and inexpensively. Thousands of rural Canadians — and not those who live in remote areas — can not. Urban Canadians can use their cellphones wherever and whenever they want. The rest of us can’t.

The CRTC held hearings last week into the future of broadband in rural Canada and whether it should be a basic service that must be regulated and available to all. The first people the CRTC heard from, naturally, were those who don’t want to do it — the big telecommunications companies like Telus and Rogers and Bell. You can guess what they said: Can’t be done; too expensive; market forces will take care of it … blah, blah, blah.

Several service providers said it was impractical, unnecessary and would cost $7 billion. A Telus vice president said the cost was too high and there are other alternatives. It’s enough to make you laugh, unless you don’t have service available and then it’ll make you cry. It’s the kind of argument which, in an earlier age, would have kept rural folk from having electricity or telephone service.

Indeed, Bell Canada, once the only phone service provider, dragged its heels offering private service, leaving many rural residents with party lines as recently as the 1980s. Having tried to do my job as a reporter doing fire and police checks on an eight-party line, I can tell you it was all but impossible. Bell finally finished upgrading just in time for the Internet age to begin.

And nothing much has changed. Now the big companies think I can get along without the kind of Internet service 95% of Canadians expect as their right. My house does have high speed access but I’m one of the rare lucky ones. Few others in my area do. Satellite service is available but it’s costly and unreliable and experts say it’s unlikely to improve significantly. Cellphone technology is even more expensive and unreliable. Yet we’re only a two-hour drive from downtown Toronto.

Ironically, the Internet is probably more important to people in rural and remote locations than it is to urbanites who have easy access to the whole gamut of cultural experiences. It evens out the playing field. Some kid in Iqaluit isn’t ever likely to see the inside of the Art Gallery of Ontario, but with broadband, he can tour the best in the world or get access to the same vast store of information urban kids take for granted.

This is also huge for rural people who need to be able to have the same business opportunities everyone else has. My husband and I couldn’t do our jobs without high speed. If you want to know just how desperately it’s desired, all you have to do it go into town to my local library any afternoon and watch the librarians refereeing use of the free wireless service.

This week, Liberal MP Marc Garneau, with whom I’m amazed to find myself agreeing, told the hearings if rural people aren’t guaranteed access, they’ll be second-class citizens. “All Canadians should have equal opportunity to succeed, no matter where they live,” he said.

He’s right. The CRTC must regulate broadband access and force compliance. Government subsidies would help and the sooner the better. Broadband needs to become the same basic right telephone service is to make sure everyone can access the future.

connie.woodcock@sunmedia.ca

Republished by permission of the author.

Biodigester online soon

The Chatsworth and Georgian Bluffs biodigester, the first of its kind for a municipality in Ontario, is now producing gas and the hydro produced is expected to begin to feed the grid later this week This seems to be a win - win for local residents, not only does it provide a safe method of disposal of septage and other wastes but will, through tippage fees and hydro feedback tariffs, pay for itself and eventually make some money for the townships. Way to go Councilors, once again the little guys show how it should be done!

The Owen Sound Sun Times says:- The organics-to-energy facility was originally intended to be a solution to septic sludge disposal, which the province planned to ban from being spread on agricultural fields. Municipal officials now plan to quickly expand the list of acceptable waste to ensure a reliable supply of raw material. Fat, oil and grease from restaurants, leftovers from slaughterhouses and vegetable and fruit scraps from kitchens are expected to be added to the list.

Georgian Bluffs council authorized the township to take out a $1.2-million, 15-year debenture from the Bank of Montreal to pay for its share of the project's cost. Chatsworth also secured a $1.2 million loan. Revenue from the biodigester, expected to be at least $322,000 a year, will be used to pay back the debenture, township officials say.

Earlier they reported that :- Chatsworth and partner Georgian Bluffs will receive two-thirds of the money needed to build a biodigester for waste disposal. The municipalities are getting $1.66 million of the $2.5 million needed from through the communities component of the Canada Builds program.

The other $833,333 will be split equally between the two neighbouring municipalities. The biodigester will be built just south and east of Kilsyth, at a Georgian Bluffs-owned property about four kilometres north of the boundary with Chatsworth. The location was chosen because Georgian Bluffs had a ready site.

There seems to be a little confusion as to exactly how much the townships are on the hook for but either way its a great initiative and may actually help to reduce our taxes in a few years.

Where to draw the line?

The following was a response to a blog post by E May on the Green Party web site...

With municipal elections over and many having taken place using “alternative” voting methods, some of which enabled voters to make their choices over a period of a week prior to closing, I recently mused whether, should this trend ever get to Federal voting, whether opinion polls should be banned during that period. It seems that like political party advertising, opinion polls have a overly strong effect on voter preferences, particularly in the last few days before the polls close.

We SHOULD be voting for the best person to do the job, bearing in mind the overly strong influence that party politics has upon the actions of that individual after he or she is elected, that is not however how it works. Negative advertising, strategic voting based upon the latest polls, and Party Politics has a far greater influence than it should, but can we eliminate or reduce these things? In an open and democratic society (and I am starting to wonder if we can continue to describe Canada as such) can we dictate who says what and when?

Drawing the line between free speech and political interference with election processes is a very difficult line to draw but given the direction that such things are going is one that perhaps needs to be defined. When the ability to blast the airwaves with advertising has a measurable outcome as to the results (even if that outcome is to not vote) it is time to reconsider the rules, if for no other reason that the less affluent amongst us may well be disenfranchised by not being able to heavily fund those partys that may better represent our interests. Recent revelations that publicly funded utility companies are funding political campaigns reinforces my belief that we must look at restricting the manner in which such advertising is used and funded.

You reap what you sow.

By Elizabeth May on 12 October 2010 - 5:03pm

It was reported on CBC this morning that in a last ditch effort to win over votes for a seat on the U.N. Security Council, Canadian diplomats were giving out maple-leaf shaped bottles of maple syrup.
Maybe our government’s grasp of the concerns of the world’s nations is a bit lacking in substance.  Maybe it would have won some votes if the Harper government had sent any member of federal cabinet to the emergency meeting on the food crisis in Rome in June 2008.  Instead, we let our Ambassador to Italy sit there without instructions, speaking volumes about Canada’s concern for the world’s poor and hungry.
Maybe it would have helped if we answered the call for peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  We were once the world’s number 1 contributor to peace-keeping.  Now we are 56th.  From over 3,000 soldiers deployed in the past to this year’s compliment – 57.
Maybe it would have helped if we had lived up to our commitments to fight poverty in Africa.  Or maybe it would have worked better than maple syrup if Prime Minister Harper had not ignored the special meeting on climate at the General Assembly, leaving for an event at Tim Horton’s instead of staying to deliver a speech.
I remember once, a long time ago, when I was at Sierra Club, speaking to a Conservative MP when Stephen Harper was Leader of the Opposition.  I won’t use his or her name.  I wouldn’t want her (or him) to feel the PM’s wrath.
I was pushing for any kind of commitment that, in power, the Conservatives would reduce Greenhouse gases.  The answer stayed with me.  Regardless of how achievable Kyoto would be, the MP saw no chance of the Conservatives being able to support action, because Stephen Harper would “always see Kyoto as one of those U.N. things.”
So, no matter how much we give out last minute bottles of maple syrup, and no matter how sincere the pitch for membership from the PM to the General Assembly seemed two months ago, actions speak louder than words.  The actions of the Harper government led to this outcome  --  not their words, nor the words of Michael Ignatieff in saying what everyone knew, that our reputation in the world was tarnished after four and a half years of Harper government policies.
You reap what you sow.  Let us hope that this is the nadir in Canada’s world reputation.  Let us commit to be the country we once were, with a Prime Minister and a House of Commons that understands what it takes to be a constructive member of the family of nations.

From http://greenparty.ca/blogs/7/2010-10-12/there-s-not-enough-maple-syrup-world

Milk is Hazardous to Your Health

News flash, BC community Health board declares Milk a hazardous material.

Not that thin highly processed stuff with all the rich cream and much of the taste and goodness removed that you buy in the store, but the stuff that comes from cows.

Now that may come as a shock to some city folk and indeed some lawmakers, not the bit about it being hazardous but the fact that milk actually comes from cows and actually contains rich cream and tastes wonderful. We here in Canada are in fact one of the few places in the world where we cannot buy Real Milk, pretty much all of Europe has it available, in the third world many get it direct from the cow as has mankind for thousands of years. Even the Queen of England drinks it! But our lawmakers have decided that not only must all milk sold to the public must be “processed” and pasteurized , thus giving a defacto monopoly of milk distribution to a few large “milk Processors”, but that we individuals are so uninformed that we must be “protected” from the very small risk of drinking “contaminated” real milk by a total ban the sale and distribution of same. Not only that but now it would seem those knowledgeable folks that choose to enter into a “cow share” in order to protect their right to choose what they consume and those that share the work of caring for said cows are now criminals distributing “hazardous substances”. Say What! Has The World Gone Mad?

If one was to use logic, not a talent one often finds in government, one would ask “given the numerous heath scares from contaminated meat products, after processing one might add, how is it the cow its self is not declared hazardous material,” or the beef cattle, pigs, sheep and other food products issuing from the gates of farms across Canada. Mind you the government is working on that one, the farmer that butchers his own cow and GIVES a roast or chop to his neighbor or relative is now also breaking the law (at least here in Ontario) and can be charged. Should he want to have his local abattoir do the work for him he had better get it done soon as the regulations put upon those massive operations, from whence all the contaminated meat comes, have also been put upon the little one or two man operations that have been producing uncontaminated meat for eons. Some of them for longer than some of the big boys have even existed. The result? All the small abattoirs are closing unable to absorb the costs of all the regulatory hurdles intended to keep the big boys in line, but are in fact further cementing the big corporations monopoly on our food supply.

That my friends is what this is all about, it has little to do with health issues, but a lot to do with the mega corporations desire for a food monopoly, and the governments total lack of support for the small supplier and the family farm. It is a policy that may well come back and bite us as the corporations both domestic and international get more and more control over our food chain from farm to plate.

A Tip o the Hat to Bruce on the Bruce for this one!

Chatsworth Wards for 2010 Municipal Election.

Have just been told much to my surprise that I am in Chatsworth ward not Sullivan as I had thought, I requested a map of the ward boundaries for clarification. My thanks to Will Moore at the township office for his assistance with this.

Ward 1 (Chatsworth) consists of the village of Chatsworth PLUS all the surrounding areas south of Grey rd 16, east of Con6 and north of Side rd 5 in the former Sullivan township PLUS the area south of the Holland-Sydenham townline, west of Veterans rd N and north of 20 sideroad in the former Holland township.

Ward 2 (Holland) consists of all of the remaining township to the east of Hwy 6

Ward 3 (Sullivan) consists of all the remaining township west of Hwy 6.

The map is pictured below, I have added a few place names and road names to make it easier to tell where the boundaries are. Click image to enlarge.

For a list of those who are running for a position on council see my previous post or the Chatsworth Municipal web site.