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Fears loss of local autonomy

September 24, 2018   ·   0 Comments

Thank you to the Orangeville Citizen for sponsoring the first ‘Town of Mono candidates meetings, which I attended last Saturday at Monora Park. 

I’ve never really been much for politics, either local, Federal or Provincial, given that much of the time I figured I couldn’t do much about what they decided anyway, but since I’ve had an issue recently with Mono’s lack of Property Standard Bylaws and the Bylaw officer. who will no longer come under the jurisdiction of Dufferin County, but under local municipalities themselves, meaning that we may or may not have a Bylaw officer at all to enforce Bylaws, Property Standards, etc.

I remembered the time when I was volunteering for a local OSPCA event at the Agricultural Centre some years ago.  With my head bent over taking money from the incoming public, I overheard a pleasant voice resonating in my ears and thought to myself, that sounds like a politician and then the thought “I can’t stand politicians” came to mind, which unfortunately became a reality as I muttered it under my breath only to hear “I can’t stand politicians either”. 

It was John Tory, who was then running to replace Ernie Eaves in the Provincial government.  Hearing John speak and how he was listening carefully to others, I committed myself to helping out in his offices here while he was running for this position.  I have since helped out in Sylvia Jones’s campaign, but given what Doug Ford is trying to do and likely will do in paring down Toronto’s City Council from 47 to 25 members, I am back to my original thought with the knowledge that the Ontario Provincial Government can and may take over all local municipalities, thus losing our autonomy in governing the areas in which we live. 

In other words, we will become nothing but a number on the sheet of local municipalities all lumped together in Ontario under the jurisdiction of governmental offices who likely won’t know where the heck we live as residents nor give a fig for what our local residential concerns or needs may be. 

One pressing example is the Aggregates Act., R.S.O. 1990-c.A8 which the Ontario Government has formulated for the allowance of gravel pits in local municipalities with an economical thrust in favour of gravel pit extractors. 

Thus, we would have no say in whether the Greenwood Gravel pit proposal will be allowed or not, in Mono, nor will we have any control over the huge impact this gravel pit will have on the 3rd Line of Mono with truck traffic emptying onto Hwy. 89, a turn in itself which can be hair-raising given the curve in the road coming east to west by the 3rd line. 

This was brought up by some of the candidates this morning, as well as other concerns so it’s well worth your time to attend one of these upcoming candidates meetings to hear what problems our council is facing and what the proposed candidates hope to do about it.

Leaving early in the question and answer period, I was unable to ask the one question I had of the proposed slate of candidates for our next council which is: “Do you make house calls? “

Sandra Small Proudfoot,

Mono resident


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