March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By Gwyn Morgan
On Jan. 29, 2022, a trucker convoy headed down to the Coutts, Alta., border crossing with the U.S. to protest the COVID-19 vaccine mandates the Trudeau government had put in place. The protest turned into a full-scale blockade that lasted 17 days.
Two of the protest leaders, Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin, were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and mischief, accusations that were hard to credit given the context of the event. They remained in custody for 723 days, with Morin spending 74 of those in solitary confinement. Finally, after their lawyer filed a Charter of Rights application to examine the case, the Crown suddenly accepted a plea deal on minor firearms charges.
They were released early last month.
Contrast this with the recent case of a mother and her child fatally stabbed in a horrific random attack outside an Edmonton school. Despite a long history of violence, the accused killer had been released on bail 18 days before their murders.
In addition to the two Coutts truckers, the federal government has been persecuting Tamara Lich, who had journeyed from across the country to serve as an organizer and spokesperson for the trucker convoy protest in Ottawa that began on Jan. 29, 2022, and ended with the Trudeau government’s implementation of the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14.
Lich, an Indigenous grandmother from Alberta, was arrested and charged with “obstructing police, counselling others to commit mischief, and intimidation.” It’s hard to imagine how this petite, soft-spoken woman could “obstruct police or intimidate” anyone.
Handcuffed between two towering federal police officers, Lich was put in solitary confinement in a dungeon-like cell with a tiny window five metres above her head.
She spent two weeks in jail and was then released on bail with orders not to communicate with anyone associated with the convoy.
Later that summer, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms selected her as the recipient of its annual “George Jonas Freedom Award for advancing and preserving freedom in our country.” At the awards ceremony in Toronto, she was photographed with another person associated with the convoy and, as a result, was re-arrested. After serving another 30 days in prison, she was again released on bail after a different judge ruled there had been “no significant interaction” with the other convoy member.
Meanwhile, in Ontario, Randal McKenzie, a habitual offender charged with weapons violations and assaulting a police officer, was set free on bail with no conditions other than periodically reporting to his parole officer. He was subsequently charged in the shooting death of Ontario Provincial Police Constable Greg Pierzchala.
The Canadian Criminal Code states: “Persons who are charged with an offence are constitutionally entitled to be released from custody unless Crown Counsel is able to justify their continued detention … including consideration of the background of the accused and risk to the public.” It’s inconceivable that Lich could be considered a risk to anyone.
The trials of Tamara Lich and convoy co-organizer Chris Barber finally began in September of last year. The federal Crown Prosecutor, presumably aware the government wanted to teach the trucker convoy protesters a lesson, had already stated he would seek a prison sentence of 10 years – a sentence given only for very serious violent assaults by habitual criminals.
The trial was originally expected to finish Oct. 15 but is taking much longer. After adjourning in December, it restarted in January, though for only one day. A shortage of available court time makes its completion date uncertain.
Tamara Lich, Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin spent a combined total of 767 days in jail – despite not having been convicted of anything. Meanwhile, Canada’s bail laws continue to allow habitually violent offenders loose after just a few days in custody.
One of the fundamental cornerstones separating a democracy from a dictatorship is the prohibition of government interference in the judicial process. But what else can explain the stark discrepancy between the Crown’s treatment of the non-violent convoy leaders and its pervasive and persistent empathy for habitual criminals and even murderers?
Even Canadians who didn’t agree with the trucker convoy’s message or methods should be concerned by the obvious disparity in their treatment at the hands of the legal system. It’s something to ponder as we await the news of yet another murder or egregious assault by a violent offender released on bail that we all know will come only too soon.
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By Brian Lockhart
Who doesn’t like pizza?
It’s round, easily transported, and has the distinction of being probably the only hand-held food shaped like a triangle when you slice it.
It’s also one of the very few foods where you can mix and match ingredients at your pleasure. You can go with the standard pepperoni, cheese and tomato sauce or add olives, mushrooms, green peppers, bacon, tomato, and Italian sausage, as you like it.
For the real adventurous, you can ask for anchovies. However, other than myself, I’ve never seen anyone else ever order anchovies on a pizza.
There is also the great debate about whether pineapple is an acceptable topping. Some purists claim pineapple on pizza is an abomination.
However, I like it and routinely order Hawaiian pizza with bacon.
If you need to feed a group of people, there’s no need to spend considerable time in the kitchen. Just order pizza and everyone will be happy and well fed.
It’s also one of the few foods that is just as good the next day when you bring out the leftovers from the refrigerator.
While your local pizzeria makes pizzas to order, there is a huge industry that makes frozen pizzas that are available in any grocery store.
I watched a ‘how it is made’ type of video that showed how frozen pizzas are made in a factory setting.
It wasn’t a whole slew of pizza makers kneading dough and throwing on toppings. The entire process from start to finish was automated.
No one touched the pizzas. Everything from the dough being flattened and shaped, to the spreading of cheese and adding toppings was done by some kind of machine.
The fact that you can buy a frozen pizza that was made with mass production techniques and not even touched by human hands, is a direct result of the Industrial Revolution that began around 250 years ago.
It was an age that saw an unprecedented leap forward in human civilization and changed the world dramatically.
The invention of new machines to do the work for you changed the way industry was conducted, and a new age of history began.
Not only were new methods of production being put into use, allowing for more products to be made, but the effect it had on the general population was to raise the standard of living. That was followed by a massive growth in population.
Historians consider the Industrial Revolution to be the most important event in human history since the domestication of animals and plants.
Prior to this period in history, you would pretty much live your entire life, and not see a single change in the way things were done. If there were any advances in technology, they were so slow to appear, and most people would never see them at all. You would spend your entire life doing the same repetitive things and no one would ever come to your village to show you a new invention to make your life easier.
This age of enlightenment got an added boost with the first workable steam engines.
Every time an advancement was made, it caused a positive ripple effect. With more production, there was a requirement for more raw materials. Materials had to get there, so ports to take in ships would get busier as well. So did mining operations.
People started making money and living better than ever before.
Once things got underway, it inspired other inventors to look for alternate ways of doing things that matched the progress of other industries.
There are few times in history that have had such an impact on the world. I think we may now be living in an age that will go down in history as super important.
The digital age has transformed our world in such ways that only a few years ago would have been considered science fiction.
Digital technology has impacted everything from communications to military weapons. It has changed everything from music and the arts to children’s entertainment and automobiles.
Digital technology has changed the way we work and live, and it is still relatively new. Who knows what else it may change in the future?
Years from now, I think the introduction of the digital age will be in the history books as one of the most important advances of all time.
But there’s still no better way to make a pizza, than to put it in the oven by hand.
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By Keith Schell
Newspaper editors have a wicked sense of humour. I think it’s probably because they have to deal with the same routine news stuff day after day, week after week, and year after year.
For weekly publications, it’s always pictures of Boy Scout jamborees or kids hockey games, who won the darts tournament at the local Legion, the local 4-H club winners, who won free oil changes for a year at the local garage, the local slow-pitch scores, and so forth. Things like these are the lifeblood of the weekly newspaper, all very nice and wholesome, and certainly very newsworthy for the average small town. And it makes the readership happy. After all, everyone likes to see their picture in the local paper.
But all these things might become very routine and humdrum over time for an editor who might like to sink their teeth into something a little more substantial on occasion. So the times when an editor does come across something a little out of the ordinary they can use, I imagine they do so quite gleefully.
For better or for worse, they say timing is everything. And that’s very true in the newspaper business. For a newspaper photographer, taking a picture at just the right time and in just the right way can produce a classic photograph of award-winning proportions. Or, by the same token, taking a picture at just the wrong time and in just the wrong way can similarly produce a classic picture with unexpectedly humourous results.
Before I moved to the city for work, I was a member of our local small-town badminton club, playing every Wednesday evening throughout the winter.
Our local newspaper back then decided to do a human interest story on the badminton club, a kind of ‘what’s happening around town’ feature in an attempt to garner more interest and possibly draw more members into the club. A reporter was sent out to take a few candid snapshots of the action at the club one Wednesday evening.
The reporter spoke with the convenor of the club and then went around the gymnasium and took various action shots of different matches from different angles. I noticed the reporter but didn’t pay much mind to him and just kept on playing my matches.
The next week when we brought our local newspaper home from town, our Mother sat down in the living room and started to read it in a quiet moment.
Was there a photo of the local badminton club in the paper that week? There sure was.
Did they print the picture of the classic flattering action shot or the smiling group picture of the entire club assembled in one spot?
No.
Our Mother burst out laughing and called me over to look at the newspaper. She told me I was in a picture. I knew what the picture was probably about. Hey, I got my picture in the paper this week playing badminton! COOL!
I looked at the picture. The badminton club photo our local newspaper ultimately printed that week, for all the town to see, was an action shot of a heated game in the foreground of the picture. But in the background of the shot was myself playing in my own match. The action in my game had stopped momentarily and I had to call a temporary ‘time out’ to adjust my personal accoutrements.
And there, in the background of that newspaper picture, as plain as day for the entire town to see, was me pulling a wedgie out of my crotch.
I was mortified.
OMIGOD! When everyone sees that picture, the whole town is going to think I’m ‘lousy’!
If our Mother was any indication of the general reaction to that picture, I’m sure that anyone who knew me got a bit of a chuckle out of seeing that photo when it first came out.
Looking at me with a smile, our Mother asked me if I wanted to save the picture. Still embarrassed, I gave her an emphatic “NO!” and I threw the picture in the trash. Out of all the multitude of action shots taken on that night, our local newspaper editor, in his evil infinite wisdom, decided to go with the one-and-only picture of me in the background pulling my unmentionables out of my nether regions. Sigh. And while it was a less-than-flattering shot, I still got my picture in the paper that week so I guess I can count that as a win, I think. Hey, even though I didn’t think so at the time, any publicity is supposed to be good publicity, right? Maybe so, maybe not. I’m still kind of on the fence over that one.
With hindsight and maturity, I actually wish now I would have saved that picture. It would be good for a laugh nowadays had I kept it. When I have the inclination, I might have to go through the town news archives someday to see if I can actually locate that picture.
So beware the newspaper editor with the wicked sense of humour. You never know what kind of picture they might put in the paper at your expense. But keep your sense of humour about the whole situation and save your picture should it happen to you. You will survive the embarrassment and it will pass. And down the road you will have a good chuckle when you look back at it.
After all, as we get older it’s kind of nice to reflect at times on the things that happened to us when we were younger and enjoy the occasional good laugh!
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By Gwynne Dyer
Good news! The U.S. logistical support ship General Frank S. Besson Juniorhas just sailed from Norfolk, Virginia carrying the equipment needed to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza. That will enable the US to deliver food to the starving (yes, literally starving) Palestinian population of the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip
Once President Joe Biden finally decides to do something, it happens fast. Only three days after the White House’s announcement the General Frank etc. was at sea, and in only 15 more days (at an average speed of 16 knots) it will reach the Gaza coast.
Then it’s only a question of time until the floating pier is in place, because the US Navy is very good at this sort of thing. The Pentagon says 60 days max, so with luck the surviving children of northern Gaza should be tucking into scrumptious American hamburgers by mid-May.
This is, of course, a far better solution to the problem of starving Palestinians than the current US practice of air-dropping meal packets to them. A total of 112,896 meals in the past week divided up among several million Palestinians doesn’t go very far, and when the parachutes don’t open the heavy pallets tend to squash unwary Palestinians.
When White House officials announced this brilliant plan to build what will probably be called the “Pier of Hope,” there was only one possible hitch. They were very clear that under no circumstances would there be any American “boots on the ground”. So how will the American Seabees (naval Construction Battalions) connect that pier to the shore?
Speculate no further; a solution is at hand. They will not dangle Seabees from hovering helicopters to put the final few metres of the roadway in place. Neither will they build a sort of reverse drawbridge that they can lower from the pier onto the beach. That would be ridiculous.
Promises must be kept, but all the White House said was that there would no American “boots” on the ground. The Seabees will finish the job themselves, but they will do it either barefoot or in stocking feet. Or in ballet slippers, if that’s their preference.
Forgive the sarcasm, but this cruel farce has nothing whatever to do with saving Palestinian children from starving to death under the Israeli siege. It’s about saving face in Washington, where a wave of sympathy among potential pro-Biden voters for hungry, helpless Palestinian civilians is breaking on the rocks of Joe Biden’s lifelong love for Israel.
There is no need for piers, ships or aircraft to get food into the Gaza Strip. There are lots of roads available, most of them a bit cluttered with debris at the moment but the Israelis have lots of bulldozers. If they wanted the Palestinians to have food, then the Palestinians would have food.
More to the point, if Joe Biden really wanted the Palestinians to have food, he would order the Israelis to let them have it or face losing American support with arms, money and the regular loan of the US veto at the UN Security Council. But he can’t bring himself to do that, no matter what Israel does.
In late January, before the International Court of Justice agreed to consider genocide charges against Israel, an average of 147 trucks a day were delivering food into the Gaza Strip. That’s only a third of the peacetime amount, but it was enough to feed two and a half million people at bare survival level.
Nothing else has changed, but since the Court’s ruling food deliveries to Gaza have collapsed: only 57 trucks went in between 9 and 21 February. Why did Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu order that cut? It could just be anger at the Court’s decision – or it could be a strategy for driving Palestinians out of the Strip by an artificial famine.
That’s clearly what the Egyptians think, because they are clearing a 16-square-kilometre area just across the border from Gaza and building a wall around it, presumably to contain a flood of starving refugees from the Strip. (Cairo claims that it is a ‘logistical hub’, but that is palpable nonsense.)
Yet President Biden ignores all this and goes along with the fiction that there is some sort of undefined problem causing a famine in Gaza that must be solved by this elaborate charade about delivering food by sea. Various NATO/European Union countries are launching their own equally nonsensical plan to ship food into Gaza by sea.
They are either fools or poltroons – whereas both the Hamas leadership and Netanyahu’s government definitely belong in both categories at once. They are both determined to continue the war until the other side caves in, and neither has any hope of achieving that aim.
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By Frank Stronach
Back in the 1980s, when Artificial Intelligence (AI) was still the stuff of science fiction and computers and automation were changing the way we worked, a number of futurists and economists predicted “the end of work” and rising living standards.
Not only would we not need to work, according to these experts, but incomes and living standards would rise due to the wealth these new technologies generated.
Clearly, it hasn’t quite turned out the way – at least not for the majority of Canadians.
When I was CEO of Magna International back in the late 1980s – the time when robotics first began appearing on automotive production and assembly lines – I publicly raised the issue of who would be the chief beneficiaries of these new technologies and what would happen to the assembly line jobs being replaced by robots.
It’s hardly mentioned anymore nowadays, in part because most of our manufacturing has either been shuttered or offshored to countries where workers are still cheaper than robots.
But without a doubt, many jobs will disappear in the years ahead because of technological advances.
In the decade ahead, everything from self-driving transport trucks and taxi cabs to elder care robots will cause the loss of millions of jobs around the world. And that’s not counting the job losses that will happen once AI becomes deeply rooted in the offices and workplaces of our country.
A report published last week by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that AI – the most transformational new technology to emerge in our lifetimes – has the potential to increase incomes for high-income earners while also accelerating income inequality.
On the other hand, the IMF report also warned that AI could displace a large number of high-income workers performing white-collar jobs in finance, communications, and law.
But even if AI ends up wiping out a large number of jobs, we can’t blame a technology for our society’s growing income inequality. That’s the fault of our system.
The fact remains, Canada’s economic fundamentals are unsound and are not conducive to fostering economic growth.
If we want to insulate ourselves from the coming wave of job losses that AI will inevitably unleash, then we need to once again start making things. We need to stop exporting our abundant raw materials and importing finished goods made elsewhere.
We need to start turning our natural resources into value-added goods that the rest of the world wants to buy. And we need to unchain our entrepreneurs and small business owners so they can create the innovative new products that will generate added wealth and increase the size of our economy.
If we created the right conditions for start-ups and small businesses to thrive – by removing business income tax, for example – then we could spark an economic boom that would add hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
But small businesses across Canada have to unite and make their voice heard, because right now no one is listening to their needs, and unless they band together and become a force to be reckoned with, nothing will change.
Small businesses can revive our manufacturing sector – if we dismantle the red tape and create the right environment for them to grow and prosper.
That would be a guaranteed solution to raising the incomes and living standards of millions of Canadians, regardless of what AI or any other disruptive technology has in store in the years to come.
To learn more about how we can “Regenerate Canada”, email me at info@economiccharter.ca.
Author Bio
Frank Stronach is the founder of Magna International Inc., one of Canada’s largest global companies, and the Stronach Foundation for Economic Rights (www.economiccharter.ca).
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By Constance Scrafield
Is it unkind to say of a person or to a person that they are “full of hot air?”
Talking nonsense or from a very ill-informed point of view, it means. There is a lot of that these days.
There are many different seats of power and I think a number of people reckon the seats that matter most, that carry the heaviest influence do not necessarily reside in government. An age-old story is blackmail. Thinking of ancient regimes, the king and rulers were followed by crowds of tempters offering to influence their own underlings to serve, offering services themselves; offering treasures, whatever was ill-gotten. They wanted in return land or power and prestige; to be the friend of a king was to have many false friends, with their own wants and hopes.
Mad psychological circles – who can do how much for whom and who winds up on top? By and large, so it seems in this world where reason and justice are such rarities, the top must be protected by mindless brutality, like Russia, Afghanistan, China, and North Korea, where a constant eye is on the people, ready with quick retribution and punishment for the slightest gain-saying.
Yet, what powers a democracy such as ours?
Elsewhere, where the common populace is defeated and weak, they likely regard us as extremely lucky to live in such a balanced and democratic land. They are quite right: so we are. Taking our lot for granted, understanding that it is given to us, this privilege without fear of losing it, we are at risk of a slippery slope and a long fall. Because we are complacent and therefore lazy when it comes to who actually runs the country, there is the steady danger of a deteriorating fair and democratic government. Because democracy comes in many packages, there are plenty that we wouldn’t like here.
Russians are going to the Poles, as are the people of China. If you are pressured by fear of being beaten or other abuse to vote in a certain way; if you knew for certain that nothing you do can help elect a government you can trust; if you were sure that the tyranny that dominates your life will continue indefinitely, would you want that for your children’s future?
Luckily for us, Canada may well be as good as it gets.
We mustn’t gloat, for just south of the 49th Parallel, democracy is in trouble. I really cannot grasp that the next president of the United States might be the man who sincerely tried to overthrow his government at the end of the election of 2020. That same man, just as sincerely, flatly lists at length the revenge he will take on detractors, how he will change the government of the United States; his plans for deportations are extensive and when he was last president, he talked about being President for Life. He was not kidding then and he will not have forgotten the idea this time around.
Just have a look online at: “Trump’s second term plans.” There are many news feeds describing those plans in very strong terms, in his own words and all of it is bad news.
When he was first running for president in 2020, one of the things he said and meant was: “If we have those [nuclear] bombs, why can’t we use them?”
In an election that is fair and accurate, which the one in the U.S. is – 2024 may absolutely not be. It is really important that we pay attention to what our perspective leaders are saying. Like it or not, the poison that rules the new laws in American states against abortion and the return to the end of gender freedom and hay rights does seep over the internet onto the screens of potentially like-minded people here.
Canada is one of the leaders in the world on this matter, with there being no restrictions on abortion at all. In this fair land, women have absolute rights over their own bodies. This was hard won and must be left as it is.
You know, there is a strong representation amongst the disabled in this country, much of it coming from within their own ranks. The hideous treatment here in Ontario at least, of how the disabled are punished by a lack of support and the difficulty there is to access fair and reasonable resources in this very rich land. That they are too often proffered MAiD instead of protection and support is outrageous.
I hear about it all the time. But they remind us all that we are each susceptible to becoming disabled ourselves, even if only as a result of aging.
Don’t take anything for granted. We had to march against Doug Ford to make him back off developing the Green Belt but he is far from finished.
We have to pay attention to what our potential leaders are saying. When it comes time to vote, get out there.
Truly, every vote counts and it is up to us to maintain that.
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By Sam Odrowski
The Orangeville Blues and Jazz Festival is again among the Top 100 Festivals and Events in Ontario for 2024.
The provincial organization, Festivals and Events Ontario, released this year’s list late last month, determined by an independent panel of judges.
Orangeville Blues and Jazz Festival has made the top 100 list for the past 11 years, excluding the years it didn’t run due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Festival founder and artistic director Larry Kurtz said with roughly 2,500 festivals held annually in Ontario, it feels great to be recognized year after year.
“It’s a testament to all the volunteers and the board. It’s called Orangeville Blues and Jazz Festival because it is put on by volunteers, and this is just a testament to how enthusiastic people are in this town and how supportive they are of the festival.”
He noted that the community’s unwavering support of the Orangeville Blues and Jazz Festival has made it such a success over the years, from its sponsors to the Town of Orangeville and, of course, the attendees.
“The support, even among Town Council, is great. Not every town has this much support. I’ve seen it with other festivals, and some of them don’t last because they just don’t have the support,” said Kurtz. “I feel like our community as a whole has the back of the festival, and it feels good.”
After taking a two-year hiatus from the festival due to COVID-19, there was a chance that it wasn’t going to return.
Kurtz said, “We’re proud of the way that we were able to navigate that because we basically laid off all our staff immediately, but our staff kept volunteering anyways.
Sponsors continued with financial support even when the festival wasn’t running to ensure it would continue.
“We had enough goodwill built up that we were able to get through it,” said Kurtz.
He shared that the Orangeville Blues and Jazz is in good company on the top 100 list as it includes other festivals that are his favourites across Ontario.
Kurtz is inviting all residents of Orangeville, and surrounding areas, to stop by the Orangeville Blues and Jazz Festival, held May 31 to June 2, for its 20th edition, and see why it’s a top 100 event.
“So many events – music festivals – have fallen by the wayside because it seems like events have a certain shelf life, and after a while, they just kind of play themselves out,” said Peter Ross, the festival’s director of development and marketing. “It’s amazing that Larry’s been able to keep this thing fresh and relevant for 20 years.”
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By JAMES MATTHEWS, LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER
With summer around the corner, kite fighting in the sky above Mono could return.
And the lack of progress on a bylaw to curb litter from battling kites has Mono’s town council concerned.
Deputy Mayor Fred Nix revisited the subject during council’s regular meeting on March 12 as part of council’s unfinished business items.
“My only concern is, of course, if we don’t get that done soon, we’ll be into the summer season without any regulations on that,” Nix said.
Fred Simpson, the town’s clerk, said staff have looked into the issue and completed the required research. They were hoping the Town of Orangeville would address the issue with a bylaw that could be mirrored by Mono.
But that hasn’t happened.
“There is one example bylaw out there and we could use it as a model,” Simpson said.
He had hoped to have a draft bylaw for council’s consideration that more broadly dealt with airborne littering, he said. Oakville has a bylaw specifically against kite fighting. That’s the only jurisdiction in which there is such legislation that Mono staff could find.
“Unless council wants to pursue that broader solution,” Simpson said. “I can bring back the basic bylaw fairly quickly.”
The issue stems from a South Asian festival that involved flying kites in July 2023.
Basant Mela is the spring festival of kites to many people in northern India and Pakistan’s Punjab province. It traditionally welcomes the spring season. But it was a little more than watching a few kites take flight in the sky above the Orangeville Agricultural Society’s Fairgrounds.
“We were sandbagged over the kite-flying, combative kite-flying,” Mayor John Creelman said in July 2023.
Based on the fallout from the event, council discussed the need to ban flying kites in the municipality. Property owners complained about the debris that fell from the kites that battled in the sky. Island Lake Conservation Area staff pulled hundreds of kites and kite strings from its waterway as well as surrounding trees and trails.
But such a wipe-sweeping kite ban would cause problems for a child who wants to fly a kite in his backyard.
“First of all, who would complain about a kid flying a kite?” Nix said during the July meeting. “I’d doubt anyone would. Even if they did and it was frivolous, our bylaw officers have the ability to use discretion as to what they enforce.”
Otherwise, Nix said, nuance of language could be used against mass kite-flying or kite fighting.
Simpson said on March 12 that a basic bylaw is ready for consideration.
“I think we should stick with a basic bylaw,” Nix said. “In the next year, if you find something better, we can always amend it.”
The draft bylaw could be tabled as soon as next month.
“It is ready to go,” Simpson said. “I’ve just been sitting on it for a while.”
Council decided to have the issue considered at its upcoming March 26 public meeting.
Councillor Melinda Davie commended Simpson on writing a broad bylaw to deal with an issue and not something that will have to later be amended however it suits council, “which seems to be a flavour of what we do and I’m finding disappointing,” she said.
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By JAMES MATTHEWS
Mono council found itself in a tight spot regarding a monetary donation, given an earlier decision to refrain from donations this year.
Tight finances complicated the process this year to ink a municipal operating and capital budget. In order to lessen the tax increase to residents, it was agreed to not give donations this year.
Council agreed during its March 12 meeting to put the decision to donate $1,000 towards the 2024 Headwaters Farm Fresh Guide in the hands of the town’s climate action plan committee.
“You’re putting the town staff committee in a very interesting situation,” said Michael Dunmore, the town’s CAO. “We set our work plan for the year. We provide presentations to council at budget time.
“If I summarize and simplify this, you’re asking us to pull from the reserve contribution that you’ve created or change our work plan. It’s putting staff in a very interesting situation, to say the least.”
The farm guide has been pitched as a means of supporting the Mono Climate Action Plan, agricultural sustainability, and food security.
A letter from the Headwaters Food and Farming Alliance asking for the donation states that the funding, by way of the guide, will support local farms and promote sustainable food practices.
Eleven of the 34 farms featured in the guide are in Mono, “showing the town’s central role in regional food production,” according to the letter.
Costs for the guide’s production are shared with another publication.
Mono’s contribution will be funded from its climate change and environment budget as council had eliminated any type of donation in this year’s municipal operating and capital budget.
Councillor Melinda Davie asked what was the “point of going through the exercise for weeks and weeks and months, actually,” of striving for the lowest tax increase as possible for residents?
And now council is giving away tax dollars that were in such short supply just a short time ago.
Council had taken to shaving small expense items from this year’s municipal budget, she said.
“We removed small, little things that were irritating that they were little, but little things add up and so it made us be able to balance (the budget),” she said.
Climate initiatives are indeed important, Davie said. But is giving money to a farm guide the best use of the climate budget?
“With respect to our climate budget, we whittled that down,” Davie said. “We had all sorts of very great initiatives that we had spent a great deal of staff time finding.”
Coun. Elaine Capes questioned how the farm guide fits with the climate committee’s goals.
Dunmore said there’s $1,000 in a reserve fund that was for the preparation of a climate change action plan.
“It was a reserve for outside consultants with respect to that,” he said. “There also is a living snow fence budget line.”
There’s about $3,000 set aside for snow fencing.
“There is funding in there,” Dunmore said. “However, as Coun. Davie has said, these are all set up and we’re trying to reserve for the future to do things in 2025 and 2026.”
Capes said she encouraged money to be put into a fund for climate change initiatives.
“We are ignoring that and we have been and we need to pay attention to that,” Capes said. “You can’t have human wellness without climate and environmental wellness.”
Coun. Ralph Manktelow said Mono has much to gain through supporting the farm guide. Orangeville, with a single farm, even donated $1,000 to the publication. There are 11 farms in Mono.
“We get a huge bang for the buck here,” he said. “I think we need to rethink this.”
“Yes, it’s a small amount,” Davie said. “But we really learned during our budget discussion that those small amounts can add up.”
“I think we need to differentiate between donations to organizations because they come, they ask, we give them money versus the amounts that we give to something like this where we actually get something in return,” Mayor John Creelman said. “We get a direct benefit.”
“When you sit here and say we’re making hard decisions, then you have to follow through on those hard decisions,” Davie said. “And the hard decision was that this is not a year and a time for us to be giving away money that we don’t have.”
March 14, 2024 · 0 Comments
By JAMES MATTHEWS, LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER
The Dufferin Community Foundation brings the power of many to charitable work.
There are a number of organizations that contribute to important endeavours throughout the county. But those efforts can be hampered at times by staff and volunteer hours spent raising funds and various administrative tasks.
That’s where the Dufferin Community Foundation (DCF) and its “power of many” approach comes in.
From the DCF website: “Creating a local community foundation was a way to help support local charitable work in a more sustainable way. The benefit of a community foundation is that they support the charitable efforts in a community for the long term by setting up and administering endowment funds. The investment income is then dispersed as grants for projects and services that enrich the community forever.”
Mono council heard during its regular meeting on March 12 that the DCF is dubbed the forever fund of Dufferin County, tasked with funding charities and building communities forever.
The DCF is part of a network of more than 200 such foundations across Canada that, as of 2020, were managing endowed assets of about $6.3-billion, said Shirley Boxem, the group’s vice-chairperson.
“A little bit of that is in Dufferin County,” she said of the managed assets.
The group’s goal is to generate $10 million in its first decade of operation. That’s about $450,000 annually for local charities.
“A lofty goal initially, but it’s actually slowly becoming a reality,” Boxem said. “Seemed unattainable almost at times but, in fact, we are over $3.5-million on deposit as of this year.”
Of that purse, $35,000 was distributed in 2022. They doled out $54,000 last year and expect to deliver $75,000 this year. They’re looking towards $115,000 next year.
“It’s really exciting for us,” she said.
As a local community foundation, the DCF is entrusted to locally distribute funds for the government and grants from national corporate programs. Those funds are distributed to more than 150 non-profit organizations that serve Dufferin County. They range from food banks, sports groups, child development efforts, environmental causes, and mental health groups.
“They’re just pivotal to our quality of life here,” said Michele Fisher, the foundation’s executive director. “A lot of people don’t know that they’re also a major contributor to our economy.”
That’s a contribution to the tune of $65 billion, or about eight per cent of the province’s gross domestic product from its non-profit sector.
“That is more than a lot of industry sectors,” Fisher said.