By Gazette Staff

August 8th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

We live in a very delicate world.

Change is taking place wherever we look.

The unexpected is everywhere.

What a treat to look out the window in the morning and see these two animals – innocence is the word that comes to my mind.

By Joseph A. Gaetan BGS 

August 6th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

The following is an excerpt from an information package prepared by the Landlord Tenant Board (LTB),

“Your landlord has applied for above guideline rent increase for one or more of the following reasons listed on page two of the attached application.

1 Extraordinary increase in municipal taxes.

There is no limit on the percentage rent increase above the guidelines allowed for an extraordinary increase in the cost for municipal taxes and charges”

Municipal tax increases fall on renters as well as property owners. Landlords can apply for permission to increase rent that is Above the Guideline Increase amount.

The close to two hundred renters in this rental building could soon see their rent rise well beyond Ontario’s legislated 2.5% cap. Under Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act, landlords can apply for an AGI (Above Guideline Increase) if their municipal taxes or charges increase by an “extraordinary” amount, defined as exceeding 1.5 times the annual rent increase guideline.The 2025 total residential property tax increase in Burlington including city, region, and education levies was 5.82%. Landlords of rental properties are eligible under Ontario law to recover such costs through rent increases that exceed the annual guideline.

Landlords Also Feel the Pressure of Tax Increases

While renters are understandably concerned about the possible rent hikes, many landlords argue they are facing a financial squeeze of their own. With operating costs rising, including maintenance, insurance, and utilities, the significant jump in property taxes has left many with no option but to apply for rent increases.  Landlord advocacy groups have long argued that Ontario’s rent control system makes it difficult to keep rental housing financially viable, especially in cities like Burlington where municipal tax hikes have outpaced inflation for a number of years. This year, the rent guideline is 2.5%, meaning landlords can apply for an AGI if their municipal taxes rose more than 3.75%. Burlington’s increase of 5.82% surpasses that threshold, and rental property owners are already signaling that they will seek rent hikes to recover their rising costs.

If approved, AGIs can add 3% or more to the regular rent guideline, meaning some Burlington tenants could face rent increases of 5% or more in 2025—and potentially again in 2026, when a further 4.49% tax increase is forecast.

To impose a rent increase above the guideline, landlords must
– Give tenants at least 90 days’ written notice;
– Await approval at a hearing before collecting the higher rent.

This now annual event is an opportunity for you to talk to your council member.

Tenants do have a right to challenge AGI applications including
– Attending and speaking at the LTB hearing (in person or remotely);
– Arguing whether the tax increase truly meets the “extraordinary” threshold;

Time for Burlington to Tighten Its Belt
As Burlington continues to increase property taxes to maintain services and infrastructure, renters could become the unintended financial shock absorbers The ripple effect is especially concerning for seniors, students, and low-income households who already spend a disproportionate portion of their income on rent.
Some Burlington residents say the city must also be held accountable for the financial pressures cascading onto landlords and tenants alike. Local taxpayer advocates, including long-time resident Eric Stern, have been vocal about the need for Burlington to control its spending and reduce future tax increases, “You can’t keep taxing your way out of structural inefficiencies,” Stern said during a delegation to City Council. “It’s time Burlington starts budgeting like households do—based on what’s truly affordable.”

Following are the year-over-year Burlington tax increases:

Time Frame            Increase

2022 – 2023            15.57%

2023 – 2024            10.21%

2024 – 2025            8.9%

2025-2026               ??

The Bottom Line for Renters:
Renters in Burlington should brace for potential 5% rent increases in 2025 and beyond particularly if they receive a formal notice from their landlord. Staying informed, engaged, and prepared to respond at a hearing may help protect household budgets from steep new housing costs tied to rising municipal taxes.

All Taxpayers and Renters
With residents on all sides of the rental equation feeling squeezed, calls need to made asking for the City to revisit its fiscal priorities before more people are priced out of their homes or the housing market altogether.

Renters, you may not have much of a voice at the L.T.B. but bear in mind you have the following options:
1 Delegate at a City Council Meeting as they are now looking at the next level of increases that will hit your pocketbook one way or the other.
2 Attend upcoming public town hall meetings, starting in September:
Sept 13- Budget Booth- Food for Feedback- Central Park
Sept 18- Ward 6- Haber Community Centre
Sept 22- Ward 1-  Lasalle  Park Pavilion
Sep 23-  Ward 2- Burlington Senior Centre
Sept 24- Ward 3- Brant Hills Community Centre
Sept 29- Ward 4- Tansley Woods Community Centre
Oct- 2-    Ward 5- Appleby Ice Centre
Nov- 5-   Telephone Town Hall

For further details see link:

2026 Budget | Get Involved Burlington

On top of that, let your councilor and the mayor know what you think by sending them an email.

Joseph A. Gaetan BGS is a Burlington resident who writes frequently on matters that concern the citizens of the city.

By Pepper Parr

August 4th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

“History is best told as a story of organised crime,” said Luke Kemp, who studies at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

Doomsday – the day the world was supposed to end, or more colloquially, the day something really big was going to happen.

“We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.  “I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.”

Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.

Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.

“It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.”

Kemp uses the word ‘Goliaths, instead of civilizations which he maintains contain the seeds of their own demise.  “They are cursed, and this is because of inequality.” Inequality does not arise because all people are greedy. They are not, he says.

Instead, it is the few people high in the dark triad who fall into races for resources, arms and status, he says. “Then as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change.”

History shows that increasing wealth inequality consistently precedes collapse, says Kemp, who uses the Western Roman Empire as an example. He also points out that for the citizens of early rapacious regimes, collapse often improved their lives because they were freed from domination and taxation and returned to farming. “After the fall of Rome, people actually got taller and healthier,” he says.

Collapses in the past were at a regional level and often beneficial for most people, but collapse today would be global and disastrous for all. “Today, we don’t have regional empires so much as we have one single, interconnected global Goliath. All our societies act within one single global economic system – capitalism,” Kemp says.

He cites three reasons why the collapse of the global Goliath would be far worse than previous events. First is that collapses are accompanied by surges in violence as elites try to reassert their dominance. “In the past, those battles were waged with swords or muskets. Today we have nuclear weapons,” he says.

Second, people in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. “Today, most of us are specialised, and we’re dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall,” he says.

“Last but not least is that, unfortunately, all the threats we face today are far worse than in the past,” he says. Past climatic changes that precipitated collapses, for example, usually involved a temperature change of 1C at a regional level. Today, we face 3C globally. There are also about 10,000 nuclear weapons, technologies such as artificial intelligence and killer robots and engineered pandemics, all sources of catastrophic global risk.

Kemp says his argument that Goliaths require rulers who are strong in the triad of dark traits is borne out today. “The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator.”

“Our corporations and, increasingly, our algorithms, also resemble these kinds of people,” he says. “They’re basically amplifying the worst of us.”

Kemp points to these “agents of doom” as the source of the current trajectory towards societal collapse. “These are the large, psychopathic corporations and groups which produce global catastrophic risk,” he says. “Nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, are only produced by a very small number of secretive, highly wealthy, powerful groups, like the military-industrial complex, big tech and the fossil fuel industry.

“The key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all [the risks] up.”

‘We need dramatic social and technological changes’: is societal collapse inevitable?

The global Goliath is the endgame for humanity, Kemp says, like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result. He sees two outcomes: self-destruction or a fundamental transformation of society.

He believes the first outcome is the most likely, but says escaping global collapse could be achieved. “First and foremost, you need to create genuine democratic societies to level all the forms of power that lead to Goliaths,” he says. That means running societies through citizen assemblies and juries, aided by digital technologies to enable direct democracy at large scales. History shows that more democratic societies tend to be more resilient, he says.

“If you’d had a citizens’ jury sitting over the [fossil fuel companies] when they discovered how much damage and death their products would cause, do you think they would have said: ‘Yes, go ahead, bury the information and run disinformation campaigns’? Of course not,” Kemp says.

Escaping collapse also requires taxing wealth, he says, otherwise the rich find ways to rig the democratic system. “I’d cap wealth at $10 million. That’s far more than anyone needs. A famous oil tycoon once said money is just a way for the rich to keep score. Why should we allow these people to keep score at the risk of destroying the entire planet?”

If citizens’ juries and wealth caps seem wildly optimistic, Kemp says we have been long brainwashed by rulers justifying their dominance, from the self-declared god-pharaohs of Egypt and priests claiming to control the weather to autocrats claiming to defend people from foreign threats and tech titans selling us their techno-utopias. “It’s always been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Goliaths. That’s because these are stories that have been hammered into us over the space of 5,000 years,” he says.

“Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bullshit. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. This is what we’re built for.”

“There is nothing inherently left-wing about democracy,” he says. “Nor does the left have a monopoly on fighting corruption, holding power accountable and making sure companies pay for the social and environmental damages they cause. That’s just making our economy more honest.”

He also has a message for individuals: “Collapse isn’t just caused by structures, but also people. If you want to save the world then the first step is to stop destroying it. In other words: don’t be a dick. Don’t work for big tech, arms manufacturers or the fossil fuel industry. Don’t accept relationships based on domination and share power whenever you can.”

Despite the possibility of avoiding collapse, Kemp remains pessimistic about our prospects. “I think it’s unlikely,” he says. “We’re dealing with a 5,000-year process that is going to be incredibly difficult to reverse, as we have increasing levels of inequality and of elite capture of our politics.

“But even if you don’t have hope, it doesn’t really matter. This is about defiance. It’s about doing the right thing, fighting for democracy and for people to not be exploited.

And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn’t contribute to the problem.”

By Pepper Parr

August 4^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

In the past few weeks there has been comment on how available or unavailable Burlington MP Karina Gould has been.

There are changes taking place in the job she has had for almost ten years.

As a Cabinet Minister, Gould had to delegate most of the constituent communications.  That wasn’t always well understood.  Gould was quite good at getting out and meeting people ut there wasn’t much time to meet with people at her office in Burlington.

Now that she is no longer a Cabinet Minister, Gould is able to spend more time in the community and listen to what people want to talk about.

Burlington MP Karina Gould meeting with a constituent – smiles everywhere.

Some of that work, setting up a meeting, getting the details so that she can respond intelligently, takes time.  Gould has always been responsible about the job she has.  One doesn’t hear her talking about closing her constituency office for security reasons.

Serving as a politician is harder now than it ever was.  The concerns people have are significant and serious: being able to handle the mortgage is a major concern for some, the idea of ever having a mortgage is a concern for others.

Trying to figure out what is going to happen to the economy of the country and how the Prime Minister is going to manage a president that is exceptionally hard to deal with keeps politicians awake at night..

The very foundation of the country is at risk.

These are troubling times for everyone.

Take a deep breath and believe that there will be changes, but in the fullness of time, things will work out.   Canada has more going for it than the United States will ever have in the next decade.  We just need to make sure that our boat doesn’t get sunk from the waves created by our neighbours to the south.