Columnists
Beware the watchdogs
Let me start with this: The Empire State Building in the heart of New York City took 18 months to build. Think about that. The tallest building in the world, at the time—a year and a half.
What has happened since then? Lots. Bureaucracy, and tons of it. Maybe way too much. I understand that we need to be aware of possible problems, but guess why we need housing in the County, but we don’t get it?
It’s on, then it’s off. Big development, then no. We’re all come on and then get lost. It’s like a bad date with nothing to show but the bar bill.
The simple fact is that we can’t get anything done in Canada anymore. While we were trying to get things done, everything says we shouldn’t. Empire State Building in a little over a year? Homebuilders can spend twice that time getting severance, environmental surveys, building permits, water assessments and a pile of stuff that could be put on an agenda in a couple of months. Try it. It’s true.
This does not have anything to with “doing it right and safely.” This has to do with a honkin’ big stack of paper, in which you are six months down on the list. Building a house is no longer simple. Your dream home is months away from approval.
IT’S NOT US, IT’S THEM
My mother died. Someone told me I should turn in her driver’s licence since, well, she was unable to drive, being deceased and all. So I went to Service Ontario to turn in her card. But no. I needed an appointment.
Being me, I said: “I have her card in my hand. I can pass it to you, and we’re done here. I don’t need a receipt or anything.” She said: “You need an appointment, I can get you in on Friday.”
“Wait, wait. I’m here right now … all you need to do is reach out and take this card. That’s it. Done.”
“I have an appointment for you on Friday at 1 p.m.” I pointed out that there were no other people in the room, except for me. All she had to do was take the card. But no.
“You do understand that someone told me I needed to turn in this driver’s licence to you. I’m doing this for you, not for me. Cancel the appointment. If you need it, come find me.” They never did.
LET’S LOOK AT BUREAUCRACY
I know I bandy this term around freely, but it is a serious problem. To describe it, people take charge. The County takes charge, but their focus on the future is not necessarily ours. We are all County-focussed, but we don’t see the threat beyond our borders.
NEW WAYS TO DESTROY US
The point of the previous story is that there are people who have a way of doing things. It’s probably in a 450-page manual somewhere. And it describes a whole pile of ways to make you not get what you want. No matter what simple things you want to do. Uh-uh.
The County does what it does. We often disagree, and they pretend to listen to our concerns. But there’s another world out there which has nothing to do with us—until they do.
PEOPLE WHO HATE PEOPLE
I’m a big fan of preserving our land and our wildlife. I’m also keen on history, and our traditional way of doing things. We are now victims of other groups, who have their own agenda, and don’t give a damn about ours.
Let’s start with the Sandbanks. It used to be a place to go. You pay at the gate. You go to the beach. Granted, lots of people went to the beach in the summer, and this became a problem. The powers didn’t give a damn about the visitors, because they made a big deal about people walking around and ruining the native plants.
Sandbanks was no longer a fun place to visit, it was a ‘protected environmental site’. This means everything changed. Sandbanks hates visitors, because they get in the way of protecting their land, what with people with flip-flops roaming all over the place.
I kinda get this, as I often say to my colleague Jan: “If it weren’t for our clients we could get a lot of work done.”
The point here is that the original role of Sandbanks as summertime entertainment is no longer valid. Somebody changed the rules. I’m sure you’ll agree that getting into the Sandbanks is harder than smuggling drugs into your deadbeat brother’s jail cell.
AND MORE PEOPLE WHO HATE PEOPLE
This brings me to the Canadian Wildlife Services. They’re kicking the butt out of Point Traverse. I hope you read Monica Alyea’s Times letter, because I couldn’t have said it better.
Point Traverse? What the hell? Even locals have to look on a map to find it! It’s as remote as you can get in the County without falling into water! Suddenly, it’s a big deal. Forget the people who live there. Forget the long heritage of commercial fishing. For what? To return it to its natural state? Its natural state is shallow dirt covering limestone and dressed with mounds of cormorant droppings.
This makes no sense to me. I do have an issue with the Canadian Wildlife Federation, which is possibly the papa of CWS. I contacted them during the industrial turbine conflict, to point out the plight of the nationally- recognized endangered Blandings Turtle. The reply was basically: “We don’t do turtles. We do pandas.” Since pandas are not a regular problem in the County, I took this to be a kiss-off.
So why go after a forgotten point in the County? There are no pandas there, so I struck that off. It’s because somebody, somewhere, decided to. It has nothing to do with us. Somebody, somewhere decided people at the Point were a problem, so they had to go.
How many times in your life have you said: “Everything was working just fine; then it wasn’t.”?
PEOPLE ARE THE PROBLEM …
… according to the nameless, faceless power groups. They are saying: “This is earth. We have ground, and we don’t want humans ruining our ground by walking upon it.”
Fences go up. Rules are put in place, and we are locked out of our own land. In the case of Point Traverse, people are actually evicted, perhaps because the CWS has found a use for mounds of greasy cormorant poo, and want to save it for a rainy day.
Time to rewrite that old folk song: “This land is our land; this land is your land; this land is not technically our land, or yours, pending decisions by people who took our land in a position of pretended authority, though we did not give it to them, so now we can’t do what we want, and they don’t care, because humans walking the earth and living their own lives is a big problem.”
I know it doesn’t rhyme, but it seems to me it’s too true.
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