Principles of our parents
There are no more easy options. In fact the notion that we had easy fixes and painless solutions to over-consumption and declining competitiveness, compiled over decades, has likely contributed to the scale of the challenges financial markets are grappling with this week, and we are all likely to endure for the next couple of years. […]
Five years later
Fran Renoy called this week to say that Scott Rowand had passed away. Readers will remember Scott Rowand as the consultant hired by then-Health Minister George Smitherman to paper over Quinte Health Care’s plans (at the time) to gut the hospitals in Picton and Trenton in order to shore up resources at Belleville General Hospital. […]
One option remains
The health risk posed by industrial wind turbines is not a legal issue—it is a political one.This is what Ontarians have learned from an environmental review tribunal (ERT) decision rendered this week. Ontarians now know for certain they can’t rely on the mechanisms of the Green Energy Act to protect them or their families—if they […]
Creative financing
How does a $65 million courthouse bear a $270 million price tag for Ontario taxpayers? (see story here) Forgive me, readers, for I stray off the County this week in an attempt to understand how the province is spending your tax dollars and mine across the bridge. Let’s first describe the problem we are trying […]
Talking trash
The contract to pick up County garbage comes up for renewal in a few days. The new deal is predicted to cost the County and its ratepayers a bit less than last year, partly because a fuel surcharge added in recent years has been negotiated away. A committee of council agreed last week to extend […]
Tunnel vision
Some files need more attention than others. As a rule the ones requiring a more focused eye are most easily identified by the vast sums of money that flow through them—yet for our municipal council, it doesn’t always work this way. Council will meet this week to discuss once more how its two economic development […]
Science
Beware of folks who come to tell you the end of the world is near—they are inevitably trying to sell you something. While Harold Camping’s Judgment Day prediction, for May 21, didn’t pan out quite the way he figured, the U.S. radio preacher was lucky enough to fall back on about $80 million in donations […]
Knowing the law
Our relationship with the police is a complicated one.We ask them to do a job many of us wouldn’t do and we complain they aren’t as friendly as we would like. While the rest of us are asleep in our beds, police officers are being called to a dilapidated apartment down a seedy lane to […]
Safe
It has been 11 years since seven people died drinking municipal water in Walkerton, Ontario. Twenty-five hundred more got sick from water that had been contaminated by E. coli bacteria that May day in 2000. Run off from nearby farms was found to be the cause of the outbreak. It had been known for years […]
Unravelling
It was another tough week for Dalton McGuinty on the energy file. First the European Union jumped on board the effort to force the Ontario government to open its renewable energy market to international suppliers. McGuinty understood all along that if his dream of wind turbines on every horizon and solar panels on every pasture […]