Richer than you think
I don’t blame Scotiabank. It is responding to the incentives that Canada’s regulatory system has erected to protect the big six banks. These protections helped establish a solid and towering financial system, but they have done so at the cost of deteriorating service to communities and to their employees across this geographically vast country. Canada’s […]
Economic dementia
There was a time when I would open the hood of my car, confident that I could fix whatever was in there. I could adjust something. Turn a screw. Tap a solenoid. No longer. I don’t know anything in there anymore. Once there was air around the oily motory bits—some room to move around. Now […]
Baseline
How do we know? Is the County economy healthy? Sickly? Or just stumbling along? How would we know? More to the point, how do we know the resources the municipality spends on nurturing/stimulating/promoting economic development are working? Helpful? Worthwhile? Road needs are generally apparent. Leaking pipes signal a waterworks issue. But an ailing economy is […]
Decade of excess
Shire Hall tends to go through phases in which it forgets what it is. Who it serves. Where it exists on a map. It uses terms like “sustainable finances” and “affordability” as if it knows what the words mean. Yet Shire Hall repeatedly demonstrates that it doesn’t know—or doesn’t care—that it is part of the […]
County man
I didn’t know Steve Campbell well. We chatted occasionally over the years. Argued some. Good-natured poking and prodding. About things that seemed important at the time—but surely were not. We laughed often. We shared a fondness for this place—though his connection was always more deeply rooted, more plaintive, more profound. I mostly knew Steve through […]
Emergency cancelled
There is no urgency. There never was. The folks who said the County had to move quickly to massively expand waterworks for an “imminent” wave of population growth were wrong. Dangerously so. They would have blithely, arrogantly and confidently propelled County residents into a financial abyss. Many of those voices have moved on from municipal […]
Paid in full
Abright spot has emerged on the landscape of broken roads, disintegrating buildings and melting clocks last week. It’s been clear for a long time that municipal assets are falling apart. Upkeep isn’t keeping up, and a reckoning was overdue. A new leadership team at Shire Hall decided, earlier this year, that it could not put […]
Obedient servants
Bad decisions are made by folks who believe they have no choice. There is no need to explore alternatives. No need to measure the impact of doing anything other than what they are told to do. When you feel you have no choice, the decision is made for you. It is much easier on the […]
Cost to complete
The pipes were expected to be in the ground by now. The Millennium Trail was to have been restored. Perhaps some raking and planting. Clean up. That was the prediction when the contract was approved by Council in January 2024. Construction of the water and wastewater trunklines was to be finished by June 2025. That […]
What to do
Our economy is in trouble. The County wine sector has been the engine of investment, job creation, and economic vitality for the past 25 years. But today the sector is in crisis. The founders are aging out. Potential bidders are put off by rules that squelch expansion or opportunities to diversify. Those who persist face […]