By Pepper Parr
 BURLINGTON, ON September 19, 2011 – This Thursday, the Burlington Economic Development Corporation presents its fourth session of a five-part speaker series designed to connect, empower, and facilitate local companies through the changing economic climate, as well as share some insight for future growth. The event is part of the Mayor’s Networking Luncheon Series: Connect – Collaborate – Create 2011.
 Gordon Nixon, president of the Royal Bank will be the guest speaker at an Economic Development lunch this Thursday Nixon is a strong advocate for taking advantage of the economic diversity in Canada. Will Burlington hear him? The keynote speaker is Gordon Nixon President and CEO of Royal Bank of Canada – the country’s largest financial institution for the past decade. He is a recipient of Canada’s Outstanding CEO of the Year Award and the driving force behind RBC’s diversity journey. In 2010, RBC was awarded the prestigious Catalyst Award for its outstanding diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Nixon will share his insights on why diversity matters, the success behind RBC’s activities, how diversity can help spur expansion and innovation and the business imperative that all Canadian companies should embrace to succeed in today’s fast paced, ever evolving international economy.
Nixon was one of the forces behind the MaRs district in Toronto, a location where high tech and bio tech organizations are housed in what used to be the College Street part of the Toronto Hospital. Mayor Rick Goldring’s guest speaker at his Inspire series, Tom Rand, heads up the Cleantech Practice at the MaRS Discovery District. He is Practice Lead, Cleantech and Physical Sciences. This is not small potatoes. Many may not realize that the Economic Development Corporation and the Mayor’s office have worked together to bring some top level speakers who are leading the change that has to take place in this country if we are to experience the growth we want and need.
The Mayor has a clear vision for the city which is to attract new high tech and high paying jobs to the city. It is speakers like Gordon Nixon and Tom Rand who can lead us into this new territory.
Kyle Benham, Executive Director of the Economic Development Corporation worked with local Royal Bank people to get Nixon to the city. As Benham explained it: “We work with our local partners to develop both programs and development opportunities.” That local networking certainly worked for all of us this time.
MaRS was created in 2000 by a group of thirteen visionary individuals, organizations and companies concerned about Canada’s performance in the global innovation economy. It’s mission is to act as a catalyst in helping build Canada’s high-tech industries. Burlington would be well advised to get to know people down there – some of the start- ups that are toiling away at MaRs will experience a breakthrough and be looking for a place to set up their operations. They would love Burlington – we need to make sure they know exactly where we are.
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By Pepper Parr
 BURLINGTON, ON September 14, 2011 – The press release said “urgent” and the sender apologized for the short notice but there was going to be a press conference outside city hall. Wow – we thought, must be something hot. Burlington city councilors Craven and Meed Ward were going to be on hand.
Then we wondered – did the people organizing the press conference know that the plaza in front of city hall was being torn up while repairs were being done? Guess not.
Moments later there was an email from Liberal Media people in Ottawa with mention of a breakfast the Premier attended in Ottawa where he talked of the tax increase that would hit Ontario municipalities if a Hudak government were elected.
The picture was suddenly quite a bit clearer – this was a concerted effort by the Liberals to take their municipal message to every city and town across the province. The Liberals are well organized – they pump out several press releases every day.
So, the press conference was on – we gathered on the part of the city hall plaza that wasn’t being torn up and three media people, one photographer, two candidate staffer, the two council members who identify themselves as Liberals and the candidate and listened as Liberal Candidate Karmel Sakran read a prepared statement. And that was it – they are called photo ops and an opportunity for a candidate to communicate with the larger community. Democracy in action.
 Liberal candidate Karmel Sakran has a real race on his hands. Last week he held a short notice press conference on an issue that was being raised across the province What was it Sakran wanted to say ? Basically the same thing the Premier said to the people at the Mayor of Ottawa’s Breakfast – “we won’t down load anything on you.” We won’t do what those dastardly things the Tories did to you. But gosh guys – Mike Harris has been gone for some time and while you are working at pinning a “Harris Lite” label on Tim Hudak – and that isn’t hard to do, can we not get some balance in here?
The Premier said:
“We believe the provincial government should pay for provincial responsibilities — so municipalities have what they need to provide a great quality of life for their people. Ontario Liberals get that. The Harris-Hudak PCs didn’t,” said McGuinty. “Now the PCs are at it again. They want to go back to the days of downloading to balance their own books — costing taxpayers money and robbing cities like Ottawa of vital public services.”
The PCs have already proposed the first of their new downloads — making municipalities pay for hazardous waste disposal. Their scheme would make Ottawa property tax bills skyrocket by at least 6% — costing the average family about $186 per year.
The last PC government stuck municipalities with a $3 billion bill for provincial programs like seniors’ drug costs and services for the disabled or unemployed. This left less money in municipal budgets for other services like policing or snow removal, and made property taxes rise.
Ontario Liberals partnered with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) on a plan for uploads that would reverse the damage from the last PC government. When finished, it would put communities on stable footing so they can plan for the future.
Ontario Liberals are committed to finishing that job — and honouring that commitment.
Sakran was a little more blunt. He said the contrast between the Liberals and thhe Progressive Conservatives is pretty clear. They down load …. We upload
They cut – we build
They believe in the politics of division. We believe in working together to move Ontario forward.
Sakran mention a tax increase of $186 per household that would be needed to fund the plans the Tories have put out in the Change Book and refers to it as a “hardship”. Hardly! It amounts to less than fifty cents a day 0 a little perspective would help here.
Sakran adds this line: “Or the local library will be closed.” Really, there isn’t a hope in hades of this city ever closing the library. That kind of statement is divisional.
This election is about leadership and making alarmist statements isn’t leadership. They amount to scare tactics which we don’t need. Put the facts before the votes and they will figure it out.
 Councilor Rick Craven, thought to be a Liberal, let his colours show when he appeared at a press conference with Candidate Sakran to decry any possible end to the funding agreement the municipalities currently has with the Liberal government. Downloading costs to the municipality in the Harris years did a lot of damage to Ontario municipalities and the Liberals deserve credit for reversing a lot of that damage. McGuinty deserves credit for what he is doing for education and his green energy initiative is admirable. Does he have it right? We don’t know that yet but he is doing something positive and showing that he is working his way through difficult times.
The municipalities, through their organization, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, AMO, worked out an understanding with the Liberal government that amounted to $1.5 billion of which $1 billion has been delivered. Tim Hudak, leader of the Progressive Conservative opposition has said that he isn’t committed to following through on the last half a billion and that does have municipalities up in arms. The municipalities fear a return to the days when the province stiffed them by down loading all kinds of services to the municipal level. Harris’s government just said – here you deliver these services and find a way to pay for them.
 Marianne Meed Ward, the Liberal candidate in the last provincial election gave then MPP Joyce Savoline a real run for her money. She then decided to run municipally where she now gives city council a real run for its money. Because municipalities are creatures of the provincial government they have to do what the province tells them to do. That’s what had Councilors Craven and Meed Ward out in public with Sakran warning there is a serious problem with any suggestion that the AMO agreement might not be followed through on. No one wants a return to the Harris days and the fear is that Tim Hudak, who was part of that Harris government, is going to take the province back to the days when downloading was the rule.
Locally, McKenna, the PC candidate had nothing to say about Hudak’s thoughts on the downloading issue. The community is not seeing nearly as many press releases from the Progressive Conservatives.
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By Staff
 BURLINGTON, ON September 19, 2011 Sunday afternoon a citizen observed two masked males walking towards the Medical Centre at 141 Plains Road carrying firearms. Before entering the clinic the males realized they had been spotted and fled on foot..
Less than an hour later police were dispatched to 185 Plains Rd E, the location of a Guardian Drug Store, where two masked men who entered the pharmacy and demanded cash and drugs from the employees. The males produced a firearm in the robbery.
 Serious damage was done to the Plains Road pharmacy in October 2010. This pharmacy is believed to be the same one damaged seriously by fire in October of 2010.
At the time Firefighters from the Waterdown Road station, who were on their way to check an unrelated alarm signal, discovered the blaze as they passed the Aldershot Guardian Pharmacy just after 1 a.m. in the morning. The crew attacked the fire and called in additional units.
Damage has been estimated at least $750,000 and the cause of the fire has not been determined. Investigators from the Ontario Fire Marshal’s office has been called in. Pharmacy owner Lisa Vogt, who opened the business in June, says she plans to rebuild her “dream.”
Just under a year later two males rob the pharmacy and take an undisclosed quantity of money and prescription medication and then fled the pharmacy to a pickup truck parked outside. The vehicle left the area eastbound on Plains Rd. The pickup truck is described as green with a white cap, no make or model determined at this time.
The suspects were described as male white, 18-25yrs, 5′-10″ to 6′-0″ft, wearing dark hoodies and dark pants. One male was carrying a blue duffle bag; a dark pistol type handgun was seen by the pharmacy staff.
Earlier this month another pharmacy was robbed at gunpoint.
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By Pepper Parr
 BURLINGTON, ON September 19, 2011 – At the half-way point – no political party is losing the race but no one is winning it yet either. The citizens seem to be burnt out with the federal and municipal elections during the past 10 months. Very, very few lawn election signs and those are the ones that count.
During a two hour drive about the city we counted less than 50 signs for all three parties. McKenna had 21, Sakran 13 and Russell 4. We didn’t count the signs outside campaign offices nor did we count those clearly on commercial. We went looking for those individual homes in places like the Queensway community, south of the QEW and west of Guelph Line where McKenna had support that surprised us.
What is confusing is this: Each political party must have at least a couple of hundred members, that is people who pay their dues annually, and we wondered why those members did not have signs on their lawns. They wouldn’t say no if asked. Does this suggest that the political parties are so poorly organized that they don’t have a sign crew that gets out and puts signs on lawns. Or are political signs on lawns passé?
Clearly there is no excitement about the election. It’s going to take place and the people of Burlington seem to be comfortable with that and on election day – they will trot out to the polls and cast a ballot. Will we see another less than 50% turnout?
Province wide – no one candidate has scored big points. They have all made significant points and there is a clear difference between what Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals are prepared to do to help immigrants, with credentials that are not recognized, get a job. The Progressive Conservatives see this as unfair and point to the 50,000 Ontarians who are unemployed. The philosophical differences between the two parties is perhaps most clear on this issue.
What will it mean in Burlington? Jane McKenna, the Burlington Progressive candidate was very vocal on this one and managed to put both feet in her mouth and have Burlington described as home to the Conservative lunatic fringe.
Karmel Sakran didn’t goof to the same degree but he did suggest that if the downloading deal the municipalities have with the provincial government is ended by the Progressive Conservative government, we will all experience financial hardship as the result of the $168. increase in our property taxes. That increase would amount to 50 cents a day – not exactly financial hardship territory.
Political campaigns do bring out the hyperbole and exaggeration. It all needs to be taken with many grains of salt.
Both Karmel Sakran, the Liberal candidate and Peggy Russell, running under the NDP banner, are seen in the community and their organizations pump out press releases every day. McKenna seems to have withdrawn a bit and is running what is called a “bubble campaign”, which is when the candidate goes to places where the reception will be pleasant and no one asks hard questions. The Progressive Conservative campaign now has a small recreational trailer that drives about the city. They haven’t issued any press releases at least nothing we saw
If the Tories are to retain the seat they must hold their traditional vote and that means getting McKenna in front of every Tory they can find that is still breathing. If they can keep the traditional base – they should be able to retain the seat.
Sakran’s strategy was to be seen by the conservative community in Burlington as a moderate they can trust and, given the way McKenna has mismanaged her campaign so far, many conservatives may choose to sit on their hands October 6th or actually vote for a Liberal.
Less than three weeks to go. The two all candidate meetings will let the community see how McKenna stands up to Russell who is well briefed and can be forceful. It should be interesting to watch her. Sakran, who is equally well briefed, but we’ve yet to see him in a forum where he has to perform under some pressure.
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By Pepper Parr
 BURLINGTON, ON September 15, 2011 – It was a great idea at the time but it got off to a shaky start and just didn’t get any better.
The first step in having elite cycle racing take part in Burlington started during the Jackson administration when a group known as MidWeek Cycling appeared before a Council Committee asking for financial support for a plan they had to run two cycling event in the downtown core and at other venues around the city and elsewhere in the region.
Then Mayor Jackson however didn’t like the look of the idea and was disturbed over the fact that the project wasn’t properly documented and that the promoter hadn’t showed up for a critical meeting. We should have paid attention to that red flag.
On a recorded vote it passed but Jackson didn’t go for it. On that one he was right. More than a year later, a lot of egg on our faces and hours and hours of time pout in by staff and the Regional Police – and guess what? We are looking at the event again.
This time however – it is going to be a lot different. The biggest change is at the MidWeek Cycling club level. Crag Fagan, the guy that drove people at city hall and the Regional police offices nuts, will not be part of the next attempt to bring elite cycling to the city.
Why are we doing this a second time? The original agreement was for a two year period. The thinking at the time was that 2011 races were to be a lead up to the 2012 races which were 2014 Olympic qualifying events.
 Chris Glenn has kept his staff focused on the objective, it wasn’t always easy working with an event organizer who didn’t appear to be able to meet commitments. Many saw this as an opportunity for Burlington to take advantage of the geography and put the city on the map as the place to hold first class racing events. The plans to hold a Criterion event in the downtown core had a lot of people excited. The Burlington Down Business Association and the Burlington Hotel Association were all a twitter over the possibilities.
They liked the idea so much that they petitioned the Region for permission to have retailers remain open for the Canada Day Race. They could just see the dollars rolling in.
Councillor Jack Dennison, a keen cycler did everything he could to make the event happen but it was just one problem after another that had city hall staff doing far more than they should have. That won’t be happening again. The event is actually the Canadian National Road Cycling Championships which are held by the Canadian Cycling Association. That association doesn’t really put on the event. They look for a local association to put on the event and chose MidWeek Cycling to do that job. MidWeek had Crag Fagan lead the project for the club. That was a terrible mistake.
Fagan came close to getting himself arrested when he had MidWeek issue a cheque to the Regional Police to cover some permits. The cheque bounced. Bouncing a cheque made out to the police isn’t exactly a positive career move.
Things are going to be much tighter and much more disciplined. City hall staff now have a much better understanding as to how these events take place and what the dynamics are and what they need to do and what they need the partners in the events have to do. During early 2010 staff did everything but send a cab to Toronto to pick up Fagan so that he would actually be at meetings. It was dispiriting for the staff and disappointing for everyone involved – but Scott Stewart, currently the Acting City Manager but in real life the General Manager of Community Services could see the potential and he worked with his staff to figure out how they could salvage something from the experience.
Stewart’s team has put together a list of what has to be done and by when – and made it very, very clear that if a deadline is missed – no excuses this time, the deal is off. The deal amount to $30,000. From the city and $20,000 from the hotel association.
The cycling association has to have the following worked out and documentation delivered to the city and the Regional police by October 3rd. No extensions.
If they come up with documentation on the timing, the staging of the event, worked out the logistics that are involved, worked out how residents in the affected areas will be notified, how the general public will be kept aware of what is happening and provide a preliminary traffic management plan – things will go forward. But – the city has made it very clear – the deadline is October 3rd.
Traffic management was a major hurdle that really wasn’t overcome during the 2011 experience. The costs police were looking to have covered were seen as just too high by the MidWeek Cycling people. The belief is that the police have also learned something from this experience and the intention seems to be to make more use of the volunteer police.
Acting City Manager Scott Stewart mentioned that someone had suggested the police volunteer some of their time. Stewart commented that “that one wasn’t on – the idea didn’t fly:, which is unfortunate. Our police are well paid and policing in Burlington isn’t exactly hard work. Giving a little back is part of the Burlington culture that could work its way into the police service.
There were some valuable lessons learned from the summer of 2011 experience. The city now knows that cycling events work best when roads being used are closed with escorting available for those who must drive along the cycling route. There were other lessons learned as well – the biggest one being to insist that deadlines get met by the sponsors of the event. We will know on October 3rd if that lesson has really been learned.
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 By Pepper Parr
 BURLINGTON, ON September 14, 2011 It’s done. The city’s Community Services Committee approved an Engineering department recommendation to go with the bid submitted by Graham Infrastructure to complete the construction of the Brant Street Pier at a cost to the city of $6,429,700.
Every member of council voted FOR the recommendation – all in favour votes by this Council have not been the norm. The matter goes to a regular Council meeting on September 26th where it becomes legal. You can expect to see construction people on the site the next day.
The Council committee went for the whole package which added $283,360 to the price which included the extension of the promenade from the edge of the pier right up to Lakeshore Road and for the access ramp that will let people get to the small mini beach that has formed on the west side of the pier.
They deferred on a floating dock on the west side of the pier even though councilor Dennison pushed a bit to get that included. What happens next?
Here’s the schedule:
Finalize contract and mobilize the construction team – October 2011
Site preparation/Steel removal – November/December 2011
Much of the steel used in the first phase was found to be deficient and will have to be removed.
Steel fabrication – November 2011 – March 2012
New steel beams that meet the design specifications has to be fabricated and delivered to the web site.
Steel installation – April May 2012
This is the point where it all begins to come together.
Deck and beacon construction May to December 2012
The beacon, which we’ve heard very little about gets built during the phase of construction.
Winter shutdown December 2012 to March 2013
An early winter or a long winter could extend this phase. If it is a mild winter some time may be gained.
Total completion, grand opening – April – June 2013
Council looks for re-lection November 2014
 The first major task is the removal of tons of steel beams that are deficient. Some of the beams that were never used are shown above. Who will get the funds recovered from the sale of this scrap steel? There was a very satisfied feeling in the Council chamber when all seven hands went up approving the recommendation. And they have every reason to be satisfied – they worked long and hard and overcame several significant obstacles.
There are legal points to be argued with the claims the city is making against the original contractor and the designer – but those are matters for another day. Wednesday, September 14th was a win day for this council and they deserved to feel pleased with what they had achieved. The Engineering people deserved the credit they were given
The total project cost, including the nearly $5.98 million spent to date, will amount to a total of $14.44 million, which does not include the legal costs.
There is more to say about where we are with the pier project; how we got here and just what those “lessons learned” were. Agreeing to a $6 million dollar project and ending up with a price of $14. million calls for a hard look at what the crowd at the city hall really did. Credit where credit is due, yes – but accountability and laying the responsibility for the mistakes where they belong is also a part of the process. We will cover that story when city council passes the by-law that lets properly qualified contractors begin their work.
 Much of the steel from the circle area on the left out to the end of the pier has to be removed and replaced. The caissons that dig deep into the lake bed are sound and that portion of the electrical system installed is in good shape. However, three of the light standards seem to have just disappeared. The Engineering department managed to return the light standards that were unacceptable and has bought twelve new light standards The city has a strong legal case and will probably settle with the designer and the contractor at some point in the legal process but, as the Mayor said during the meeting – “that is something we will handle on another day.
Graham Group of Companies is a North American-wide company, with a local base in Mississauga. Graham is the fifth largest construction company in Canada with more than 1,200 salaried staff and a 2010 revenue of $1.8 billion.
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By Pepper Parr
 BURLINGTON, ON September 15, 2011 When city council committees meet to do the business of directing the city they do so in public. They meet with the appropriate staff – in public where all the facts are heard by everyone in the room.
When the bids for the completion of the Brant Street Pier were opened it was done in public – no one knew what the bids were until the envelopes were opened – in public.
This is the process that keeps people honest and allows a public to be informed.
The Burlington city council goes into “closed session” which means the media has to leave the room and a sign gets posted on the door to the Council Chamber saying Council is in closes session.
 Councillor Craven is the best procedural person on council but he too can let something slip by. To his credit, he recognizes his mistakes and does something about them. One of the Council committees recently went into closed session to talk about a matter related to the Paletta Mansion, which Council had learned was losing a pile of money. There was no reason given as to why they were going closed – they just say it is confidential and the media has to accept that. Any council member can ask that they go into closed session. Ward 1 councillor Meed Ward has on occasioned mildly questioned going into closed session but she has never said no – which she has a right to do.
When they come out of closed session council never tells you what was discussed. The Clerk knows but she (usually female) is bound by an Oath of Secrecy..
During one such meeting, the Chair of the committee that was coming out of closed session said they had discussed the Paletta matter – and then added that there were questions raised about the Pier as well. THAT was a no, no.
Your council has a right to decide something is confidential and they can talk about that and only that in a closed session. So when Councillor Craven mentioned that Pier questions had come up I asked him later why that was done..
He agreed that it should probably not have been done. I advised the chair of the committee that I would be writing him formally and lodging a complaint.
Councillor Craven is a pretty proactive chair and he looked into the issue, discussed it with the Clerk and made the following statement last night at a Committee meeting.
It has been pointed out to me by a member of the news media that I made a procedural error at our last Community Services Committee.
I announced that we were going into closed session to discuss the Paletta Mansion
When we came out of closed session I announced that, while we were in closed session, there had also been a couple of questions about the pier.
I have met with the Clerk about this matter.
The member of the news media was correct..
I should not have allowed the pier questions in closed session because the had not publicly stated his intention to ask these questions before we moved into closed session..
In the future I will be more vigilant in ensuring that we stick to the announced subject in the closes session, and I ask that all members refrain from asking questions on other topics, unless they announce their intention in public before we go into closed session.
Now on the surface this might look like someone being overly picky and sensitive. Not the case. Your city council goes into closed session far too often – and when they are there you, the public, have no way of knowing what was said other than the subject they went into closed session to discuss. And, as Craven’s comments show, – they will talk about other issues while in closed session. There is no oversight and while the Clerk has considerable influence legally, there isn’t a member of the Clerk’s office in this city that is going to challenge a chair.
There is a different, healthier ethic developing on this council. Burlington is a better city for it. The information identified in the Shape Burlington report is being narrowed.
Councillor Craven has served notice that he will be more vigilant and he will. Councillor Sharman, the other councillor that chairs a committee, as well as their respective co-chairs now know that they need to respect the public’s right to know.
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By Staff
 BURLINGTON, ON September 13, 2011 The Mayor is ready to put on the third in a series of Inspire sessions that he holds at the McMaster University DeGroote School of Business on Thursday September 29th – 7 pm. This time we get to hear Tom Rand, one of those successful software entrepreneurs that survived the dot com bubble in 2000. He sold his company in 2005 when it had reached the xxx level
 Rand is the Inspired speaker – part of Mayor Goldring’s efforts to bring intelligent debate to the city. Rand now focuses his efforts on carbon mitigation and is active in Cleantech venture capital, technology incubation and commercialization plus public advocacy. Rand is the Cleantech Practice, Lead Advisor at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto and sits on the board of a number of clean energy companies and organizations, including Morgan Solar.
 The first 100 people at the Inspire event to be held at the DeGroote School of Business on the South Service Road on September 29th will be given a copy of Kicking Tom’s book Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our Word, will be the focus of his talk on the 29th. In a different approach to getting his books into the hands of people Rand is giving away 100 copies of his book at the event.
Rand has a BSc in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, a MSc in philosophy of science from the University of London / London School of Economics and an MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto. He speaks publicly about the issue because it is his belief that we have yet to have a serious, public conversation about the threat of climate change, and the economic opportunities afforded by the global transformation to a low-carbon economy.
“I’m really just a guy trying to slow our gallop toward an over-heated climate. Doing what I can with what I’ve got.” Is how Rand explains what he does.
 Tom Rand is a part of the group of people who work out of one of the most impressive operations in the country. The MaRs centre is an incredible learning place that brings new ideas to the market. Log into www.marsdd.com Kick is richly illustrated and accessible. It addresses achievable solutions that will have a real and meaningful impact on the future for our children. It’s been conceived to appeal to a broad range of readers on multiple levels. For those who skim read and pull quotes and captions, Kick provides an engaging glimpse of this fascinating subject. For those who seek deeper understanding, the lively, factual text provides an easy-to-understand summary of the technologies and supports all claims with scientifically verified end-notes-from a politically neutral technology expert. Kick will engage, entertain and educate the public about one of the most important subjects of our time. The book deals with Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Biofuels, Hydropower, Ocean, Smart Buildings, Transportation, Efficiency and Conservation and the Energy Internet.
Rand has an interest in the Planet Traveler – North America’s Greenest Hotel. The building was an abandoned structure in downtown Toronto when Tom and his partner Anthony Aarts bought it. During 2008-2009 it was converted into a low-carbon hotel. The target was to reduce carbon emissions from business-as-usual by three-quarters. Using existing technologies, and leveraging only 5% of the buildings value that target is being met. Technologies deployed include geo-exchange heating and cooling, solar thermal and PV, high-efficiency lighting and drain-water heat recapture. The geo-exchange pipes were the first to be buried under a public laneway in the City of Toronto.
 It’s a different hotel – Tom Rand thinks it is one of the best examples of how we can cut down on carbon emissions. The overall lesson? “Buildings are really low-hanging fruit when it comes to emissions reductions”, says Rand. “Not only can we reduce emissions by three-quarters or more, we can make money doing it.”
Rand points out that we ” have just left the hottest year on record. While experts again try to ring alarm bells, our media still gives voice to the pseudo-intellectual pursuit of climate skepticism. Perhaps while Rome burned, some bravely questioned the finer qualities of fire. Perhaps on Easter Island, as the last trees fell, some elders courageously debated the necessity of wood. These days, Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail columnist and Rex Murphy, CBC voice, sing in tune with the likes of Glenn Beck, sincerely believing their skepticism to be a form of intellectual virtue. It is not.”
German chancellor Angela Merkel calls the low-carbon economy the “third industrial revolution.” A new energy internet supplied by clean energy sources like biomass, wind solar, hydro, and geothermal has spread across the continent. There are new storage technologies like compressed air and low-friction flywheels. Large-scale efficiencies make economies more competitive. If Canada gets it right, we’ll sell this stuff to the rest of the world.
The transition to a low-carbon economy brings huge economic opportunity, but it is not optional.
While Wente asks whether humans can control the climate, global average ocean temperatures hit record highs. More ominously, as the oceans have warmed since the 1950s, plankton levels have dropped 40 per cent. As goes plankton, so goes the rest of oceanic life.
Skepticism becomes a vice when applied to a broad consensus of expert opinion warning of existential danger. The policy commitments demanded by climate science need broad public support. Skeptics erode that support without intellectual justification.
Let’s be clear, says Rand. We have known since the early 19th century that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, insulating the earth like a blanket. In 1965, the U.S. president’s Scientific Advisory Committee warned the build-up of carbon dioxide would cause changes in the climate. By 1989, then U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher declared to the UN General Assembly that climate change was the single greatest threat to our very existence. There are other informed opinions.
Thatcher, no shill for the environmental movement, was scientifically literate. The same cannot be said for those who scoff at the accumulated wisdom of our scientific elite. All national academies of science in the developed world have endorsed the basic premises of human-caused climate change. The only scientific argument remaining is not about whether climate change is real or imagined, but whether the results will be catastrophic or merely disastrous.
Yet untrained skeptics assure us that the dangers of which the scientists speak may not be real.
For Murphy, public acceptance of expert opinion on climate change amounts to religious indoctrination. Wente asserts that climate cannot be controlled by human behaviour. Beck argues that it’s a Communist conspiracy. The purported dangers are at best hypothetical constructions of a few scientists, at worst mere monsters under our bed, easily dismissed with a dose of adult skepticism. The skeptics explicitly cast themselves against the orthodoxy of our time, as noble knights standing up to society’s pressure to conform.
This is nonsense. Climate change is not like politics or a painting. The opinions of laypersons are not relevant. It’s hard science, and the truth of the matter has been settled by those qualified to make the judgment.
But we’re far past the complex theoretical models now. Ask an Australian farmer what climate change means. The same climate instability that brought Australia the longest drought in human memory, now unleashes catastrophic flooding. To B.C. foresters, it’s the pine beetle destroying their timber. Lloyd’s of London, like most insurance companies, faces escalating costs due to extreme weather events. Russia’s scorching summer, which temporarily ended grain exports, and the floods in Pakistan are but appetizers before the main event.
The pseudo-intellectual pursuit of climate skepticism delays Canada’s participation in a new economy, and it makes it harder to have that public and adult conversation we so desperately need: the one about how volatile nature has become, and how angry it will get.
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By Staff
 BURLINGTON, ON September 14, 2011 – Lawrence Solomon, is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud. He says:
New, convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun — not humans
The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.
The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere.
In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.
The hypothesis that cosmic rays and the sun hold the key to the global warming debate has been Enemy No. 1 to the global warming establishment ever since it was first proposed by two scientists from the Danish Space Research Institute, at a 1996 scientific conference in the U.K. Within one day, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bert Bolin, denounced the theory, saying, “I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible.” He then set about discrediting the theory, any journalist that gave the theory cre dence, and most of all the Danes presenting the theory — they soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials.
The mobilization to rally the press against the Danes worked brilliantly, with one notable exception. Nigel Calder, a former editor of The New Scientist who attended that 1996 conference, would not be cowed. Himself a physicist, Mr. Calder became convinced of the merits of the argument and a year later, following a lecture he gave at a CERN conference, so too did Jasper Kirkby, a CERN scientist in attendance. Mr. Kirkby then convinced the CERN bureaucracy of the theory’s importance and developed a plan to create a cloud chamber — he called it CLOUD, for “Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets.”
But Mr. Kirkby made the same tactical error that the Danes had — not realizing how politicized the global warming issue was, he candidly shared his views with the scientific community.
“The theory will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century,” Mr. Kirkby told the scientific press in 1998, explaining that global warming may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.
The global warming establishment sprang into action, pressured the Western governments that control CERN, and almost immediately succeeded in suspending CLOUD. It took Mr. Kirkby almost a decade of negotiation with his superiors, and who knows how many compromises and unspoken commitments, to convince the CERN bureaucracy to allow the project to proceed. And years more to create the cloud chamber and convincingly validate the Danes’ groundbreaking theory.
Yet this spectacular success will be largely unrecognized by the general public for years — this column will be the first that most readers have heard of it — because CERN remains too afraid of offending its government masters to admit its success. Weeks ago, CERN formerly decided to muzzle Mr. Kirby and other members of his team to avoid “the highly political arena of the climate change debate,” telling them “to present the results clearly but not interpret them” and to downplay the results by “making] clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.” The CERN study and press release is written in bureaucratese and the version of Mr. Kirkby’s study that appears in the print edition of Nature censored the most eye-popping graph — only those who know where to look in an online supplement will see the striking potency of cosmic rays in creating the conditions for seeding clouds.
CERN, and the Danes, have in all likelihood found the path to the Holy Grail of climate science. But the religion of climate science won’t yet permit a celebration of the find.
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By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 14, 2011 – Just so you know and just in case you were confused the Lady Jane sets the record straight. She said:
“In an Inside Halton article a quote was attributed to me that does not accurately reflect my views or those of my Party.
“The PC Party of Ontario and I welcome new Canadians to Ontario. We believe however that Dalton McGuinty’s affirmative action program is wrong. We have 550,000 Ontarians who are unemployed and yet the Liberals want to pay $10,000 each to hire foreign workers.
“I hope this clarifies my position and regret any confusion this may have caused.”
 McKenna: - This is her first significant election and the learning curve is steep and there isn’t a lot of time. Hopefully there will be fewer goofs that become provincial campaign issues. The Lady Jane is Jane McKenna, Progressive Conservative candidate FOR THE Burlington seat in the Ontario Legislature.
Up until very recently Burlington had this problem with a pier that wasn’t getting built. Media throughout the province had us looking like country hicks and the pier was becoming known as “the mistake on the lake”. But we persevered and got that problem back on track and are in the process of becoming known as a community that knows how to overcome adversity.
Then Wham! – a candidate in the provincial election comes out and says something really, really dumb, a comment that was against everything most Canadians stand for and hold dear.. Try as she might, Jane McKenna, Progressive Conservative candidate for Burlington isn’t going to be able to get this albatross off her neck easily. Watch for it to come up during the local debates.
And now Burlington is becoming known as the home of the lunatic Conservative fringe. At least the members of the local Progressive Conservative association can’t be blamed for the candidate – they didn’t pick her.
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By Karmel Sakran, Liberal candidate, Burlington.
We asked each of the candidates to tell you, our readers, what they thought was wrong with the election platforms of the opposing candidates. We asked that they write about “the other guy”. In a future feature each candidate will write about their party platform. We wanted to attempt to create a bit of a debate between the candidates. The Progressive Conservatives advised that they “will not be participating in the first half of our request. “We will get back to you ” they advised “with the 2nd half of the request regarding the PC Party Platform and what it will do for Ontario and for Burlington.” Here is what the Liberals had to say. The New Democratic comments appeared earlier.
BURLINGTON, ON September 12, 2011 – For weeks now, on doorsteps and events all over Burlington, I’ve been working hard to bring the message about our party’s positive approach to health care, our world-beating education system and the green jobs of tomorrow.
But here’s my main message for Burlington: it’s hospitals – not highways.
Jo Brant Hospital – not the mid-Peninsula highway
True to form, the Ontario Liberal government has approved the redevelopment plan for Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital, while clearly stating that the mid-Peninsula highway that PC leader Tim Hudak wants so badly, will not pave over north Burlington’s valuable agricultural and sensitive environmental lands.
 Karmel Sakran in front of his campaign office, which is located north of the QEW – a change from the usual campaign office locations on Fairview. Sakran says the decision to be north of the QEW was strategic. The recent Jo Brant Hospital announcement was a long-awaited one that will benefit all Burlington residents. It came after two years of hard work by hospital officials, the City of Burlington, citizens and a group of private donors.
Rather than celebrate this decision as a good for Burlington, the opposition PCs and NDP chose to attack the efforts made by their fellow citizens, calling the announcement’s timing pure politics. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As someone who sat as a Hospital board member for five years, I know the province requires a “state of readiness” before providing capital funding for a project of this nature. As a community, we rose to the challenge and did just that – and within the all-important five year funding window.
That we now have a commitment for provincial funding is a huge step forward for Burlington, one that I’d hate to see disrupted or revoked by a Hudak-led Tory government, a regime that favours highways over hospitals.
We build hospitals – not close them like the PCs
This Liberal government builds – not closes – hospitals. In its first two terms, this government has built or launched 18 hospital projects. Compare that to the previous Mike Harris Tory government, when Mr. Hudak was a minister, which closed 28 hospitals.
As a founding board member of Burlington’s Carpenter Hospice, whose 10 bedrooms provide end-of-life care to about 110 residents annually in a home-like setting, I was delighted when our government increased its funding, August 31. The additional $320,000 added to base funding will strengthen Carpenter’s nursing and personal support services and enhance its ability to deliver palliative care in Burlington.
We strongly focus on education
The government’s relentless focus on education is paying off in our schools and the economy. Test scores are up: 69 per cent of grades 3 and 6 students are mastering reading, writing and math – a 15 point increase since 2003. We’re expanding online math tutoring for students from grade 7 to 10 and doubling teacher education to two years to give student teachers more practical classroom experience. Ontario Liberals are the only party with a plan to keep students on track, from full-day kindergarten right through post-secondary and into a good job.
Home care strengthened
The government continues to strengthen health care by bringing back house calls – a boon for some Ontarians with ongoing medical issues that make it hard for them to arrange office visits. Seniors especially will benefit because it will be easier to stay in their own home and remain independent while enjoying better health through regular check-ups and medical attention.
Tuition grants for university & college students
By creating a tuition grant that takes 30% off the average undergraduate tuition in Ontario, the Liberal government is moving Ontario forward by keeping the cost of post-secondary education within everyone’s reach. Annually, the grant will save families $1,600 per student in university and $730 in college.
Contrast this with the Harris-Hudak PCs, who cut post-secondary education by $435 million, slashed student aid by 41%, allowed fees to skyrocket by 67% and provided no help to middle-income families.
 Karmel Sakran is a lawyer by profession and so it wasn’t all that difficult to convince the provincial attorney general to pay the city a visit. It was apparently a relaxing day for all. The Hudak PCs’ $14 billion hole in their platform means they won’t help middle-class families afford post-secondary education, and will make deep cuts that send tuition through the roof, again. The current NDP platform barely mentions education but their legacy is clear; they were the party that eliminated up-front student grants, before we brought them back.
Let’s build on our progress & continue to strengthen Ontario
No question: Ontario needs the strong, steady hand of the McGuinty Liberal government to keep moving forward.
Over the past two terms, this government has hired thousands of doctors and nurses, built 18 new hospitals and improved access to primary care. Our health investments helped us go from having the longest to the shortest surgical wait times in Canada and 1.3 million more Ontarians now have a family doctor.
We lowered early-year class sizes, improved school buildings and introduced the continent’s first full-day kindergarten program. We’re also increasing post-secondary attainment by adding 60,000 new spaces – including three new undergraduate satellite campuses.
And to further help seniors remain in their own homes – in safety and dignity – we’re introducing a Healthy Home Renovation Tax Credit for things like ramps and walk-in baths.
Our platform also promises to create 50,000 new clean-energy jobs through Ontario’s world-leading FIT program. And we’re reducing electricity bills by ten per cent through the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit.
Liberal platform fully audited. PC & NDP platforms: hundreds of uncosted promises
The Hudak PCs’ platform – with its $14 billion hole – has 229 uncosted promises. And that will mean deep cuts to health care and education. The NDP has 119 uncosted promises in their platform and a crushing $9 billion tax increase.
Our platform features just 45 new, fully costed commitments to help Ontario families stay on track.
We’re the only party with a platform that has been audited by an economist – Scotiabank Chief Economist Warren Jestin – who confirmed that our numbers add up.
McGuinty Liberals support Burlington commuters
I also don’t hear any positive emanations from the PCs or NDP about the major transit and highway programs that have helped Burlington commuters go to and from their jobs. What we do know is that between 1999 and 2003, the PC government contributed nothing to GO transit leaving municipalities to carry the load. During the NDP time in office, they invested less than a third of what our government has invested and were the first to privatize highways.
Since 2003, the City of Burlington has received more than $48.8 million to support public transit plus nearly $13 million in gas tax funding. As well, the government added 600 new parking spaces at the Burlington GO Station, new weekday bus trips from McMaster to the Burlington GO, and a seasonal weekend and holiday Toronto-Niagara Falls train service with one of the stops in Burlington.
We’ve committed to $434.1 million to Halton Region for highway improvements since 2003. All this with a dedicated gas tax to municipalities. Not only are we improving transportation in Burlington and Halton Region, we’ve brought in tougher penalties for drinking and driving, speed limiters on most large trucks and banned the use of hand held devices while driving.
Powerful reasons to vote Liberal on October 6th.
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By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 13, 2011 – They were all smiles – there was finally much more in the way of confidence on the part of Council – and now the city – that the expansion to the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital is really, really going to happen. Hospital CEO Eric Vanderwall was there to tell Council that the hospital expansion would be complete in six years and open late in 2016 or early 2017. And oh, he almost asked, could we have the first payment on that $60 million you agreed to provide.
When the hospital held a little mini gala sort of event early in August, with a tent outdoors and waiters walking through the crowd – and it was a crowd – serving hors d’oeuvres, we were all waiting for a Minister from the government to arrive and make it more official – and tell us that the hospital expansion was really going to be funded.
 Architects rendering of what the hospital will look like after the expansion has been completed. Plans are for an opening in late 2016 or early 2017 But the Minister didn’t make it – we were told that she got tied up in QEW traffic – poetic justice there for sure. Ted McMeekin, the man who lost his Cabinet seat to Sophia Aggelonitis, the Minister who didn’t make it to the meeting, handled the event and stretched it out as long as he could – and enjoyed every minute of his time holding the microphone.
But we finally all went home not exactly sure what had happened. Something was going on but no one in Burlington knew what the bureaucrats were up to. Well today we know – they were doing all the paper work and the background stuff; the scheduling and making the need for funds fit in with what the province will have in their piggy bank when it comes time to write cheques.
And the province won’t be writing cheques anytime soon. But Erik Vanderwall has a letter from the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, Deb Matthews, saying that the province has us in the system and we are now part of the flow of funds out from them and in to us.
When Vanderwall was giving all this good news to your city council Mayor Goldring had the cheek to ask if he could perhaps see a copy of that letter. Eric, who really knows how to handle people, demurred and said while he had no problem with giving the Mayor a copy of the funding letter he didn’t think it was his place. Now the good Eric didn’t offer to ask the Minister if she would mind if he gave a copy to the city – nope, he suggested the Mayor contact the Minister and ask for a copy.
Golly gee – Burlington has been asked to put up $60 million of the “hundreds of millions” it is going to cost to do the expansion – you think the least they could do is get the city a copy of the letter that says the cheques will be in the mail.
Turns out that the money to pay for all the early stage work is going to come from Burlington. Vanderwall gave the city the schedule the hospital needs to get this project going.
Here is the schedule:
2011/12 $7.5 million
2012/13 $7.5 million
2013/14 $7.5 million
2014/15 $7.5 million
2015/16 $15 million
$2016/17 $15 million
for a total of $60 million which the city has committed itself to and already has a large chunk of the first payment in the bank.
The hospital wants that money pronto so they can get on with building a parking garage which will free up the land the expansion is going to be built on.
So Burlington is going to carry the can and pay the bills through to about 2014 (which is when this council is going to come to you to get re-elected).
 Hospital CEO Eric Vanderwall entertained the crowd for as long as he could last August but even he could only do so much. The Minister with the Announcement didn’t make it to the party so we all went home Vanderwall told council that the hospital will be completed in six years and that the Hospital Foundation has committed to meeting the city contribution of $60 million on a dollar for dollar basis. We were also advised that while nothing public could be said they had about $7 million already committed.
The hospital foundation has its Board of Directors in place. There is a Campaign Cabinet and an Ambassador Council in place to get the word out to the community and drum up those dollars. They have a lot of raffle tickets to sell.
Burlington has been sadly served by its hospital in the not too recent past. There were c.Difficile deaths that rattled the community and destroyed a lot of the confidence a public should have in its hospital. Eric Vanderwall deserves credit for re-building the level of medical service delivered by the hospital and spearheading the drive to get the funding needed from the province – which is why we pay him the big bucks.
But he could have gotten the Mayor a copy of that letter.
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By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 13, 2011 – The ethic of a city council takes a little time to develop. Some city council’s play fast and loose with the rules and others are super tight. Every city council has a procedural by-law and there is always at least one member of council that knows the thing inside and out – often better than some of the Clerks.
In Burlington that would be Ward 1 councillor Rick Craven. At one point he was carrying the by-law under his arm and quite willing to read sections out to a council member who was being too casual with the rules.
 Councillor Lancaster of Ward 6 can at times take an ethical issue a little too far but she is on the right side of the conflict of interest question and for a former beauty Queen – what is seen is important. At every committee meeting the chair is expected to ask if there are any conflicts of interest and during my time in watching this Council I’d never ever seen anyone declare a conflict. Jack Dennison should be declaring a conflict on a number of issues but he tends to disregard the question – if he does make a comment he tends to mumble it.
This Council has Blair Lancaster, the rookie member for Ward 6 – and Blair is a real stickler for the rules – sometime too sticky. There was an occasion when the Downtown Core Commitment was being discussed and Lancaster, who owns a downtown business that she doesn’t operate chose to declare a conflict and for the part of the meeting that was discussing that matter – Lancaster left the Council table and sat in the public gallery. We had not seen THAT before.
And then guess what happened. A week or so later councillor Dennison declared a conflict of interest on a matter and he too left the Council table and sat in the public gallery. Dennison looked a bit like a school boy who was sent outside the classroom.
This Council is finding itself and making it mark as to how it is going to do business.
Quite a change – a welcome change. The principle matters.
Dennison has frequently had conflict problems. He and his family own Cedar Spring Health and Racquet Club which provides some services to the city which require Dennison not to discuss or vote on issues that re related to parks and recreation use of outside services.
Dennison got himself in a bit of a pickle during the 2008-2009 recession when his sports club took a serious financial hit when membership declined seriously.
 Jack Dennison, councillor for Ward 4 has one of the bettr business minds on Council and knows where are the bones are buried – struggles with conflicts of interest due to his ownership of a sports facility in the city. Always honest – but his situation gets a little sticky at times. Dennison did what any prudent business man would do – he cut back on his expenses. Problem was one of those expenses was city property taxes which the club didn’t pay for a period of time. And that is permitable – when you don’t pay your taxes you pay an interest penalty – which made prudent business decision.
The tough part is how does a corporation not paying its property taxes when one of the officers and a director of that corporation sits as a member of Council. Sticky wicket that one – but Dennison got away with it. His constituents re-elected him.
There was never any question about Dennison taking advantage of his vote on council. He never takes anything that he hasn’t earned and deserved.
But Blair Lancaster has brought a higher ethic to the Council chamber and we can expect the Councillor for Ward 4 to be in the public gallery more often.
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By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 13, 2011 “If this one doesn’t want to make you throw up, nothing will. That was Warren Kinsella’s opening line in his blog on comments local Progressive Conservative candidate Jane McKenna./ Kinsella is a born Liberal – he can’t help himself and he plays the game for keeps – no prisoners for this guy – knee cap them and leave them at the side of the road. He goes on to say:
Tea Party Tim Hudak’s campaign of intolerance swung through Burlington, with his hand-picked candidate smearing new Canadians with the sort of language that will blow your mind.
Jane McKenna, a failed municipal candidate whose previous priority was getting more booze outlets in her area, told the Burlington Post that she opposed helping new Canadian citizens get the certification they need to work in their chosen profession. If that’s not enough, McKenna then went on to say:
“When did we become for immigrants?” That’s a quote.
 Bought the blue pin strip for the election. Suits her? Here’s a newsflash for McKenna, and her “leader,” who have piloted Ontario campaign 2011 straight into the gutter on only day three of the contest: Canada and Ontario have always been “for” immigrants. We are, in fact, a nation of immigrants.
As former PC leader John Tory has said, Hudak has been “stirring up envy and negativity” in the election campaign. And, like John said, Hudak himself favoured a more generous plan to assist newcomers just a year ago. (Meanwhile, the Ontario Liberal plan, Tory noted on his drive-home radio show, was “one of the best investments” we could make. He’s right.)
Hudak and McKenna’s attacks on hard-working, tax-paying citizens demeans them, and their party.
I’d say they should be ashamed of themselves, but I think they lost their capacity for shame long ago.
I’ll be watching the local contest—Burlington—closely to see whether the Liberals or the NDP can break the decades-long grip the Progressive Conservatives (PC) have had on the local seat.
Russ Campbell, a respected commentator on things conservative and Conservative who gets his mail delivered to a Burlington address wasn’t about to let Kinsella use up all the oxygen and piped in with:
“This is an important choice for PC party members in Burlington, for the odds favour our party beating the Dalton McGuinty Liberals in the Oct. 6 general election. And wouldn’t it be nice to replace retiring incumbent MPP Joyce Savoline with another PC, continuing the riding’s PC-blue tradition for another four years.
 With the support of Ted Chudleigh who is running in Halton and Joyce Savoline who is retiring from public office Jane McKenna on the left was able to handle one of her early press event quite well. Regular readers will know that I was less than impressed with the PC nomination process that unfolded in Burlington. However, in Jane McKenna, we seem to have a local candidate with a chance of keeping the seat for the Tories. Oh, I’ve expressed reservations regarding Ms. McKenna’s lack of related experience and the fact she never had to undergo the scrutiny of a nomination contest—as the only candidate seeking the nomination, she was acclaimed. But when you’ve been given cream, you set about finding a way to make something nice, like ice cream.
One of the indispensible benefits of a nomination contest is the need for candidates to go through a mini-campaign, during which riding association members can assess each candidate’s organization skills, media savvy, personal background and related professional experience, not to mention their ability to communicate effectively. With luck, the candidates’ core values and beliefs may also be revealed, because, during the time they are seeking the nomination, they don’t have to toe the party line and keep “on message.”
But we have what we have, so I took advantage of an offer to meet Ms. McKenna, which she’d made a couple of weeks or so ago. In chatting to her, I sought answers to the sort of questions I would have expected to come up during the nomination process. And I got answers; she ducked none of my questions.
I won’t go into much detail here since the meeting was meant more for background than as an interview per se. I will, though, share some of my impressions.
Overall, Jane McKenna is a very presentable candidate: she’s local, intelligent, articulate and shows spunk. I pressed her at times, but she remained composed and stuck up for herself. And, when I expressed criticisms, I didn’t get the sort of defensiveness one too often gets from politicians. She basically acknowledged my criticisms when she felt they were accurate and otherwise gave me reasonable-sounding explanations.
I was most interested in hearing Ms. McKenna’s position on local issues like hospital funding, mid-peninsular highway, urban growth and mineral extraction on the Niagara Escarpment. Ms. McKenna seems to have a sound grasp of local issues, and she did not repeat party “talking points,” instead she gave real answers. These were not always the answers I wanted to hear, but they did seem genuine. I also tried to gain a sense of how deep were her commitments to those positions.
Basically, her positions seem to align with those I believe are most widely held in the riding. She’s obviously done her homework, is a quick learner and seems to understand the core concerns of her constituents. If she didn’t always have a grasp on these local issues—and I’m not saying she didn’t—she obviously has used her resources and intellect to get up to speed before the election officially kicks-off.
 McKenna used to sell advertising – she knows how to listen and she knows how to make her point. With some luck and all her pluck working for her she just might convince enough of the Tory vote to get out on October 6 – there is enough blue blood in the city to win it – just as long as they don’t listen too closely to what se has to say – according to Warren Kinsella We here in Burlington don’t live on an island and must take into consideration the realities and pressures we face as a part of a broader community, at both the regional and the provincial levels. Ms. McKenna gets that.
In short, folks, Jane McKenna will do fine. At least, that’s the way I see it.
Well that wasn’t quite the way Campbell saw it at first glance but then, for an old Tory like Campbell, seeing the Burlington seat go to a Liberal was perhaps more than he could swallow – so he instead gulped and decided to go with the devil that he at least knew something about.
Sort of like horse racing – you pick your winner and you place your bets. What I want to know is this: Did Campbell send the Party a cheque?
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By Peggy Russell, Candidate for the New Democratic Party in Burlington
We asked each of the candidates to tell you, our readers, what they thought was wrong with the election platforms of the opposing candidates. We asked that they write about “the other guy”. In a future feature each candidate will write about their party platform. We wanted to attempt to create a bit of a debate between the candidates. The Progressive Conservatives advised that they “will not be participating in the first half of our request. “We will get back to you ” they advised “with the 2nd half of the request regarding the PC Party Platform and what it will do for Ontario and for Burlington.” Here is what the New Democrats had to say. The Liberal comments will appear later this week.
BURLINGTON, ON September 13, 2011 – I was honoured when I was approached to seek the candidacy to represent Andrea Horwath and the Ontario New Democratic Party in Burlington.
For the past 10 years I have been working to help build a stronger community as an elected School Board Trustee with the Halton District School Board. The opportunity to continue to represent families in Burlington as the MPP for our community within a party that is presenting a positive alternative to the negative politics of the past truly motivated me to continue the progress that so many of us have been able to achieve together.
In this election, I am looking to once again earn the trust of Burlington families so that we can continue some of the positive initiatives that I have helped to achieve for our community and so that I can work to deliver affordable change for families who are feeling squeezed in this economy.
Our party has a clear plan to help make life more affordable for families and seniors while improving healthcare and education, supporting job creation, protecting our environment, and working to change the negative, partisan politics of the past.
I hold those who choose to seek public office and to represent their community in the highest regard. I feel this way because democracy matters and government matters. We are so fortunate to live in a province and country where young people can aspire to great things including elected office. It is up to us who seek and who have held such positions to inspire these young people and to encourage participation in our great democracy.
Over the next weeks of campaigning, I will be joined by other candidates who are also working hard to seek your vote and your trust. They should be proud of the contributions that they are making to our community and to our democracy. Of course, we will be debating ideas and often we will not agree. I believe that residents will see a clear distinction between the plan that our New Democratic Party Team and I present and that of my opponents.
 After ten years service as a school board trustee Peggy Russell wants to head for Queen’s Park and doesn’t feel her loss in the last municipal election is going to hold her back. Solid candidate with a very clear point of view. Is Burlington ready for a New Democrat at Queen’s Park ? Our plan believes that there is a positive role for government to play in job creation and building a better society for all.
The no-strings attached corporate tax give-aways that the other two major parties promote have failed to deliver the economic success that has been promised.
The laissez faire approach of the other two parties to job creation needs to be replaced with a targeted plan to invest and help those businesses that actually create and sustain jobs in Ontario.
Our party believes that the current government has wasted too many of our tax dollars that hard working Ontario residents have contributed on failed schemes, overpaid consultants and runaway CEO salaries. This will change under an NDP government where CEO salaries will be capped and tax dollars will be invested in frontline services, not on overpaid consultants.
We disagree with a government that has made life more difficult for families by introducing an HST tax on families during a recession. We have seen how this has contributed to skyrocketing energy and transportation costs. Our plan will provide relief for families by removing the HST from essentials such as gas, hydro, and home heating.
The other opposition party is also promising change, but change to what – and is their change affordable? They have yet to demonstrate how they can create jobs, keep Ontario affordable for families, and preserve the kind of educational, health and other services that make Ontario a great place to live
I look forward to having the opportunity to share more of my ideas over the course of this campaign and debating the direction that our province should go with the other candidates for Burlington. On October 6th the residents of our community get to have their say. That is the beauty of our democracy.
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By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 9, 2011 The Engineers have done their work and come to the conclusion that Graham Infrastructure of Mississauga should be the company that completes the construction of the Brant Street Pier. Hallelujah!
The recommendation is part of a report that will go before Council September 26. This has been a long protracted project and it looks as if the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train coming towards us.
The city received and publicly opened four bids from pre-qualified contractors to complete the pier project on Aug. 26. Prices ranged from $6.5 to $10.5 million. Those numbers included 13% HST; municipalities pay just 1.7% HST. The lowest bid came in from Graham Infrastructure.
The city reviewed all four bids to ensure they complied with the requirements of the tender documentation issued to seven prequalified contractors in July 2011. The total contract price of Graham’s bid is $6,429,700, including net HST at 1.76 per cent.
 The natural beach was a gift nature gave the city. Does the city have to spend additional money to build an access ramp to the location? And is the access ramp proposed the most cost effective solution? And will we call it the MacIsaac ramp? The bid includes two optional items: a beach access ramp and additional concrete work for the waterfront promenade in Spencer Smith Park. Interesting that the city does not break out the cost of the waterfront promenade part that is needed and the ramp to the natural beach that was formed by current that developed around the pier.
The concrete work for the promenade is necessary – this Council can and should seek some public input on the access ramp to the natural beach. We have a council that talks about getting input from the community but we don’t see this council asking people in the community what they want.
Our Mayor has stayed the course and held firm to his belief that the pier could be completed for the amount that was allocated. And he has done so with a considerable amount of uniformed opposition from a group that want the thing torn down. Well the Mayor has done his job – his council has been with him – well everyone except Ward 2 Councilor Meed Ward who voted with against going forward with a tender because she thought a deal could have been worked out with the contractor that walked off the job. She now takes the position that she will work with whoever wins the tender award. Good for her.
City staff have done a superb job of keeping this very difficult phase of a problem task on point. It has not been an easy job but they’ve done it and done it with all the expertise and professionalism that was missing when the project got started two council terms ago. Again – kudos for a Mayor that stuck to his guns.
I’m looking forward to our Mayor asking each Council member to hold a meeting in their ward at which the Mayor will listen to opinions on whether or not the access ramp should be included in this second phase of the construction project.
There’s nothing wrong with the ramp and it makes economic sense to include it in the next phase of construction – but this city has put up with a lot of delay and a pile of additional expense and they deserve the right to have this all be it small addition explained to them and given a chance to voice there opinion.
Ward 4 councilor Jack Dennison commented that “municipalities certainly no how to spend money” when the idea of an access ramp was first proposed by city engineers.
The Graham Group of Companies is a North American-wide company, with a local base in Mississauga. Graham is the fifth largest construction company in Canada with more than 1,200 salaried staff and a 2010 revenue of $1.8 billion.
Graham is an employee-owned, industry-leading construction solutions partner. They are a diversified and growing company active across North America.
 Sounds like a pretty decent organization. They are certainly big enough and appear to have the scale needed to get our pier built. Let’s see what Council decides when they discuss the staff recommendation. Graham covers the entire construction lifecycle and every contracting mode: general contracting, CM/GC, project management, design-build, design-bid-build, integrated project delivery, turnkey solutions, renovations/upgrades, Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) and partnerships, commissioning and post-construction management. This versatility is underpinned by our major competitive advantages:
Extensive integrated capabilities, based in Graham’s offices and shops in more than one-dozen centres across North America, lifting us far beyond a standard general contractor or construction manager;
Large, company-owned equipment fleet to help us self-execute construction work;
A unique, industry-leading integrated information system that creates a seamless and accurate project execution platform from first contact through final reconciliation.
Two questions: Where were these guys when we began the pier construction project and do they have a trestle of their own?
Assuming council accept the staff recommendation – will we hear jackhammers on the site before we see snow?
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By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 12, 2011 It looks like it might be choo choo Dalton. The Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, told the Toronto Board of Trade today that his government was going to create 68,000 GTA jobs as the province expands GO train service.
“Our goal is to build a high-skills, high-wage Ontario economy. To get that, you need to keep goods and people moving,” said McGuinty. “That’s why we’re expanding GO train service to two-way service, all day, on all corridors.”
Two way service – all day. What exactly does that mean? Will we see a schedule during the off peak hours that is better than the basically hourly service we have now? This government is throwing the words jobs, jobs, jobs around like curses in a grungy bar. A little more detail please. We get that we have an economy that is under a little stress. And there are people out of work – we have something in the 7%+ unemployment range – so new work is good.
 Improved GO service is another election promise. Mark that one down and see if they come through on it. Will this promise take as long as the hospital to come through ? And by the way the hospital funding is just that at this point – a promise. The upgrade to the GO service will mean jobs in construction and engineering. Good high paying jobs – but there were no times lines attached to the announcement.
According to the Premier there are some 45,000 people from communities like Hamilton, Barrie and Oshawa take the GO train to Union Station. If all those people drove to work instead of taking transit, the GTA would need to build four more Gardiner Expressways and four new Don Valley Parkways to accommodate the extra cars. We certainly get how packed those four lanes on the QEW are and what a mess when there is an accident.
All good news – but why do we have to have an election to hear all this good stuff?
The Premier said the province has invested $4.7 billion since 2003 to build new lines, improve stations, add new trains and increase service. Now, there are 12 million more people riding GO than in 2003 — a 28% increase. Today, 94% of all rush-hour trains are on time and passenger satisfaction with GO is 82% — up from 59% a year ago.
The Premier used the occasion to remind us that the last PC government recklessly gutted transit — and made a mess of GO Transit in particular. First, they downloaded GO to the municipalities, then uploaded it again. Now, the Hudak PCs are at it again. They have a $14 billion hole in their platform — which would mean deep cuts to transit at a time when transit is most needed.
The last NDP government also cut GO service and now would introduce a crushing $9 billion in job-killing taxes.
Those are acceptable comments during an election. Are they true ?
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By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 12. 2011 End of the first week – and where are we in the provincial election? Well it is getting a little heated.
The biggest event was the visit to the Liberal campaign offices by the Premier. The campaign office was packed – and it wasn’t exactly a small office. A number of Tories were seen in the crowd. Liberal candidate Karmel Sakran was ecstatic.
Then there was the war of words over the immigrant job tax credit of $10,000. That was part of the Liberal platform. McKenna came out swinging on that one and managed to make a couple of solid points.
Where is the race going? The Liberals certainly have the best campaign at this point but they have been gearing up for some time and their candidate has been in place for months whereas the New Democrats have had their girl in place for less than a month while the Progressive Conservatives were a last minute nomination situation.
The Liberals however cannot win this seat without pulling some support from the traditional New Democratic base and that base is still very solid – more so since the tragic and untimely death of national New Democratic leader Jack Layton. The NDP locally still hopes for a bit of that orange wave to work itself into the provincial campaign, not likely, and then to have some of it seep into the Burlington campaign – very unlikely. However their base will hold and they may succeed in pulling back those who voted NDP in the past.
The Liberals appear to have woken up their base. It has always been around, part of the Paddy Torsney legacy. But if the Liberals hope to make this riding Liberal red they are going to have to attract some of the softer NDP vote and hope that the Progressive Conservative base continues to sit on its hands. Have you noticed that the Liberals aren’t using the bright vivid red of the past – more of a wine colour.
The Progressive Conservative base is unhappy. They did not like the way Tory headquarters in Toronto kind of imposed a candidate on them – but they have only themselves to blame for that debacle. Had they managed to develop a really solid local candidate the Toronto PC’s would have left them alone. Joyce Savoline, the current member of the Legislature for Burlington, didn’t leave the new candidate anything in terms of an election organization. She has been out on the campaign trail with McKenna and Ted Chudleigh, the member for Halton, which includes part of Burlington has shared events with McKenna while she learns the ropes.
The nomination mess has left a bit of a bad taste in the mouths of the quieter stories in town. There is nothing a political party likes more than a local constituency organization that has money in the bank and a local favourite with a good profile. Brian Heagle thought he had that to offer but he brought too much political baggage with him. Rene Papin was certainly a “good old boy” – having been a past president of the association, but for reasons that are not yet clear Papin was sort of asked to step aside. Could it have been his being a man of colour? Karmel Sakran wants to hope that if that was the case that the Tories were dead wrong?
Does Burlington want just white people representing them? Rude question perhaps but a question that the people of this city want to ask themselves.
McKenna to her credit appears to be putting up a stiff fight and talking back very loudly but then Jane McKenna has always been a very “in your face” person. If will take another week to figure out if she is more soundly briefed then when we first talked to her. If she is – look out folks. This is a driven woman.
A bit too early to tell if the lawn signs are really an indicator of support. Every political party has friends with commercial property that are made available for signs – those are expected. It is the lawns signs on the residential streets that tell the tale. If those Tory blue signs don’t sprout up quickly – that would suggest the base is going to sit on their hands and that would mean the end of a reign that started in 1943.
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By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON September 12, 2011 – The city is without a City Manager. The task is being done on a rotating basis by the three General Managers with Scott Stewart, GM for Community Services doing duty in September and October, Kim Phillips, GM, Corporate Services will take the helm for November and December and if Roy Male, Director of Human Resources is right – the city should have a new City Manger hired by the end of the year. “We want to have the new city manager in place within 90 days” is the way Male see this happening.
Steve Zorbas, Acting General Manager for Development and Infrastructure has handled the city manager job on a few occasions while others were on vacation.
Burlington has not had that many City Managers – “Just four” advises Male who will oversee parts of the hiring of a new city manager but the bulk of the work on that assignment will get done by the Executive Search firm the city hires.
There is a lot of work to get done before the job is opened up to a competition that will see city council actually make the decision. Male advises that there will be two sets of interviews – the first at which all those who meet the criteria and are recommended by the search group and then those who make the short list.
The rules of the game are that Council members have to attend all the interviews. If for some reason a council member misses an interview then they have to drop out of the interviewing process. So every council member is going to have to find time on a busy schedule to interview what could amount to perhaps as many as a dozen candidates.
So, if your Council member takes a little longer to get back to you on a problem – you know what they are up to – hiring.
 Roy Male runs the Human Resources department for the city. He hopes to see the new city manager in place before the end of the year. Male has been with the city during the reign of the four city managers the city has employed Burlington has a solid reputation within the municipal industry and the job pays well – in excess of $200,000 annually. The city has a lot to offer and at least one very senior staff member intends to be one of the candidates applying for the job says the city is going into a very exciting phase. And indeed Burlington is about to clear a number of significant hurdles.
We will have a contract signed with a contractor to complete the construction of the Brant Street Pier. The Strategic Plan will be in place. We will be well on our way to working through just what it is the city wants in the way of a transit service.
We will have the “community engagement” staffer in place soon – this is the person that was recommended in the Shape Burlington report to help citizens engage with city hall. The Burlington Performing Arts Centre will have part of a season under its belt and they will begin to get a sense of how the community is going to take the place.
Not quite sure what the city is going to do if all those problems are put behind us.
Roman Martiuk left the job of city manager before the end of his five year contract and at the time it wasn’t all that clear just why he left. Martiuk said he “stepped aside” – probably the right thing to do when he realized his contract wasn’t going to be renewed. There was a rather unfortunate social event for Martiuk at which some of his comments were not taken very well by many of those who attended. Martiuk chose that occasion to make comments that didn’t need to be heard about the people he had worked with for the past four years. Sometimes it takes a little stress to being out the true colour of a personality.
The process of selecting the new city manager starts with a profile of the job and the kind of person the city needs to get the job done. That profile is created by council with input from the senior staff and, according to Roy Male, some of the Team Burlington people as well as some community leaders who will be asked to sit in on the creating of the profile.
Team Burlington is a collection of organizations that develop and promote the city. Tourism, Economic Develop are part of the Team.
This profile is a critical part of the process – it sets out just what the city wants their new city manager to do. Maybe the document should be made public – see if there is agreement from the people that pay for this high priced piece of talent as to just what the job entails.
 Roman Martiuk had a very short term with the city. He chose to step aside when it was clear to him that his five year contract would not be renewed. . Tim Dobbie, a former city manager has had a street named after him. Will we see a Martiuk Street? Martiuk was quite candid in an interview when he said he wasn’t all that keen in city engagement and he had major problems with the significant shortfall in infrastructure funding – meaning that we didn’t have the money to pay for the road repairs that have to be done.
It will be interesting to see how council decides to work with the community on how it goes about defining the profile for the job. That’s probably a more important document than the Strategic Plan.
Burlington has about 1600 people on the payroll with a significant number working part time. There are 850+ working full time. The city has a number of senior level committees in place with the three general managers and 17 Directors running the departments that keep the city going day in and day out.
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By Staff
BURLINGTON, ON September 8, 2011 An organization that has fostered, nurtured and developed creative talent in Burlington announced yesterday that it will cease operation at the end of September. This is not good news for Burlington.
 Creative Burlington, an organization that has struggled since its very inception but nevertheless managed to make huge strides in the development of the arts community in Burlington and was a leader in the campaign to develop the Burlington Performing Arts Centre that opened its doors less than a month ago. A sad, painful irony for the people that were in the trenches when an arts centre wasn’t much more than a gleam in the eyes of many.
In an announcement Board president Paul Mitchell said: “We reached the decision with great reluctance and regret but knew we could not continue without long-term financial support. We have concluded that the financial stability of the organization is too uncertain despite our efforts to obtain sustainable funding through events, programs and other vehicles, including a request to the City of Burlington.”
Mitchell took the opportunity to” thank the many people who have supported us over the years, including our generous corporate partners, our 400 plus members and our dedicated staff. We are proud of our highly successful programs to promote arts and culture in Burlington, including the Arts Recognition Awards held last February, our magazine Artworks and various festivals and events. It would be a shame if these initiatives disappear, but we are not in a position to continue them.” Mitchell said.
 Deb Tymstra was both all business and all about the performing arts and a large part of the reason we have a Burlington Performing Arts Centre is because she was in the trenches more than ten years ago developing the idea and raising money. Deb Tymstra, Executive Director, said the decision to cease operations was especially regrettable because of the demonstrable need to promote and support the arts in Burlington. “We have been advocating for the City of Burlington to give significant recognition and support to arts and culture in its new Strategic Plan, including the establishment of a Burlington Arts Council.
Arts and culture are vital to a successful, creative and inclusive community. We believe the City must be a leader in supporting this important sector,” Tymstra said.
Creative Burlington began in 2000 as Performing Arts Burlington, a community-based group to advocate for a performing arts centre. It raised $64,000 for the facility and provided experts to help design the centre and serve on the Project Management Team.
 Passionate about everything she does Deb Tymstra put her heart into what is now Creative Burlington. But the support she needed from within the community just wasn’t there and the city was not about to offer any ongoing funding. At the same time the organization provided programs and events to strengthen the recognition of the performing arts in Burlington. It later expanded its mandate to include all art forms and was renamed Creative Burlington in 2010.
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