 By Ray Rivers
BURLINGTON, ON. July 2, 2013 Canada was the first nation in the world to ban cannabis, back in 1923, driven to action by a transplanted Alberta magistrate, eugenicist and racist, pen-named ‘Janey Canuck’. A prolific Maclean’s Magazine columnist whose book, ‘The Black Candle’, warned about the dangers of “Chinese opium peddlers” and “Negro drug dealers;” she convinced legislators to adopt prohibition without a word of public debate.
So it was fitting that Maclean’s, in a recent issue on cannabis, reviewed the facts, acknowledged the error of its ways, and is now calling for legalization. The facts can be summarized as follows:
1. Safety. Well nothing is perfectly safe, but puffing ‘weed’ is safer than drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or adding salt to your steak. It is not addictive, doesn’t ‘gateway’ to other drugs, and smoking doesn’t cause cancer – in fact, may protect against it.
2. Wasting resources. I thought this would appeal to fiscal conservatives, but alas! Enforcement is costly, so is imprisonment and so are the courts. People behind bars aren’t contributing to the economy, they are draining it.
3. Protecting Children. Despite prohibition, more Canadian children have tried ‘grass’ than anywhere else in the west, including decriminalized Spain.
4. Eroding societal values. If the law is an ass, people will ignore it and hate the cops. Legalization would kill black-markets and gangsters faster than a speeding bullet. And aren’t prisons just training academies for inmates wanting to become better criminals?
5. Provincial budgets. The LCBO gives1.2 billion dollars a year to the provincial government, in addition to the 13% HST and 10% licensing fee. Why wouldn’t we want to regulate the production and sales of recreational cannabis and use the revenues to pay for public services?
‘The Black Candle’ was wrong, but it is never too late to do the right thing. Back in the early 1970‘s The Royal Commission on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (LeDain Report) called for de-criminalization of cannabis. In 2002 a Senate committee reported that “… drug legislation was largely based on a moral panic, racist sentiment…” and also called for legalization. Chretien and Martin started drifting towards de-criminalization but then Stephen Harper, another transplanted Albertan, like Ms. Canuck, came along to reverse progress. Drug enforcement is back big time. Today growing six hemp plants will get you an automatic 6 months in the big-house.
Richard Nixon’s war on drugs in the US was an absolute failure. Jails are half-filled with drug inmates, drug crime is at an all-time high and drug use in America has never been higher. In light of this, many states have taken action to start decriminalizing drugs. Washington and Colorado, are legalizing, developing infrastructure and rules for cultivation and marketing. The US feds, like their Canadian counter parts, have ultimate jurisdiction, but they’re not interfering. Is that because their last three presidents were self-proclaimed potheads?
Stephen Harper claims to never have smoked ‘pot’. So his head should be clear – right? Not at all. Last year, addressing the Summit of the Americas, he admitted “…that the current approach is not working. But it is not clear what we should do.” Still ignorance hasn’t deterred him from going back to what doesn’t work – aggressive criminalization.
Since the Conservatives came to power in 2006, drug-related arrests have mushroomed by 41% and over 400,000 people have been arrested. And, Harper can’t even articulate why. In a 2010 YouTube clip the PM miserably failed to make a single coherent point in defense of his neo-con drug policy – just ended up mumbling something about drug cartels.
Now, if Harper is concerned about drug cartels he needs to visit Mexico. That country used to have one of the toughest policies on drugs anywhere, which ultimately led to its deadly drug wars. The wars became so vicious that the Mexican government has now decriminalized small quantities of all major narcotics.
Of course, Mr. Harper should have gone to learn the Mexican experience before he saddled us with his ill-advised, retro drug laws. And why not take along his conservative ally, Rob Ford? Toronto’s controversial mayor might be interested to know that smoking crack-cocaine is now legal in Mexico.
 Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province.
The views of the author are his alone
 By Ray Rivers
BURLINGTON, ON. June 24, 2013. I grew up in the back woods of Ontario with a party-line phone. Everybody listened to everyone else’s conversations, and the rumour mill churned faster than Coronation Street. At university, we spent more time speculating who the narcs were tapping than we ever did smoking. Working in Ottawa, I recall a well-placed senior bureaucrat, who despite his high-level position in the Canadian government was a self-avowed communist, and so convinced his house was being bugged he refused to talk politics.
 So I got used to people listening in. When the story broke recently about the Obama administration continuing the Bush electronic surveillance program, I initially just shrugged it off. I mean wasn’t that the kind of program which caught the Toronto 18 and almost got the Boston 2. If you’re not planning evil, then you have nothing to worry about, I reassured myself. And it’s the authorities who are doing the monitoring – they wouldn’t abuse their power. There must be something more important to worry about.
 Listening has something to do with freedom of speech? You don’t say. How can listening in on conversations have anything to do with freedom of speech? And how could a meta-data computer be more intrusive that the cameras catching your every move in a public toilet cubicle? By comparison, the streets in the UK are blanketed with closed circuit TV cameras, according to the TV show MI5. Surveillance is just one of those compromises we need to make for security in this crowded, complex world that has evolved. So what is the big deal?
The big deal is the slippery slope. Big Brother is really here! Thank goodness for whistle-blowers, like Edward Snowden, who are forcing the debate about how far a state can go riding roughshod over our constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy, and by extension, freedom of expression. But now, that everyone knows the state is listening in, how effective can this snooping be? The professional terrorists will just find other ways to communicate, like the burner cell phones used in the TV series The Wire. And the government will still be collecting troves of personal information on the rest of us – and looking for another way to use it?
Back home, it is no surprise that Canada is in-step with the Americans, conducting warrantless electronic surveillance, started as part of the Anti-Terrorism Act back when Canada was heavily engaged in the Afghanistan conflict . The snooping was put on pause over privacy concerns in 2008, but Mr. Harper brought it right back after his election victory in 2011 – at the same time he was killing the long gun registry.
Stephen Harper would not suffer the long gun registry because a handful of hunters and farmers thought it violated their privacy. It seems government recording a rifle’s registration number is dangerous. Yet, the Harper government has no trouble recording and listening in on our every personal conversation. Indeed, there is silence among the Tory libertarians, who don’t give a stuff about this violation of privacy and where it may lead. Or, are they just being a bunch of desk-thumping seals that according to former Alberta backbencher, Brent Rathgeber, best describes the Harper Conservative caucus?
 Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province.
 By Ray Rivers.
BURLINGTON, ON. June 18, 2013. We’re not talking ice cream cones. Collecting income from two separate sources is called double-dipping. Most of us have probably double-dipped at some point in our lives. Maybe we taught evening classes while drawing a salary for the day job? Or perhaps we drove the courtesy van at Canadian Tire, or greeted at Wal-Mart while drawing a CPP or OAS pension. This double-dipping is a natural part of our capitalist culture – by earning as much income as we can, we help grow the economy. There is nothing wrong with double-dipping.
I was surprised, however, that Justin Trudeau was collecting speaking fees while also serving as member of Parliament. I thought politicians were eternally hunting for a soap box, and were happy if only it were free. But Trudeau actually got paid. Well, politics is a complicated, dirty business, as Justin found that out when the Conservative-linked Grace Foundation demanded their money back, just to embarrass him. In the midst of the Senate debacle and with the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) being investigated by the Mounties, Mr. Harper sank even lower than I thought he could go.
Trudeau might have known it was a trap. Why else would the Conservative leaning Grace Foundation invite the soon-to-be-crowned leader of the Liberal Party to speak. And why pay him $20,000 when anyone could have just turned on the TV or gone to one of his stump speeches. And, if you are good Conservative would you really go to listen to the son of the most despised man in Conservative history? Almost a year after he spoke, Grace demanded their money back. But somehow the letter went to the Prime Minister’s Office, which circulated it far and wide, before even Trudeau had seen it. And it worked, Harper embarrassed Trudeau.
 This is not what the political junkies mean by Double Dipping. To be clear, Justin wasn’t in any kind of conflict of interest, although this raises a question about the nature of his job as MP and his commitment to serve the people. I think he was wrong to charge for the speech, and he obviously agrees since he has offered to repay everyone. In fact, this whole incident says more about the PM, Grace and their board of directors than it does about Trudeau. The Canada Revenue Agency conveys charitable status only to organizations which do not “seek to further the interests of a particular political party”. And Grace’s actions should now place their charitable status in jeopardy, but don’t count on it with this government firmly in control.
I was also surprised to learn that senators, like Pamela Wallin, are permitted to serve on corporate boards, where she would be party to corporate decision-making based, in part, on government policy before them. There is no question that an airline or an investment house would benefit from inside information on evolving government policy. Why else would they have been willing to pay over a million dollars? Wallin was taking Doube Dipping to a new level.
And wasn’t she being paid to attend to business in the Senate when she was double-dipping to pick up all those lucrative earnings? By definition doesn’t this make the Senate her part-time job? The fact is that the Senate isn’t a full-time job and it’s not even a serious business. We can complain about senators like Wallin, Duffy, Brazeau or Harb – but really – isn’t the problem more with the Senate itself than the occupants. The Senate doesn’t fit our governance model because there is no place for a Senate in a Parliamentary democracy. It is time for it to go.
Editors note: Back in the ‘good old days’ several of the bigger banks has Board members who were Senators that sat on the Senate Banking Committee that set the rules on bank behaviour.
 Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province.
 By Ray Rivers.
Burlington, ON. June 13, 2012. – The one thing about giving advice on the economy is that you usually can find at least one person to agree with you and a lot of others who will disagree – almost no matter what advice you give. Ergo, I got a healthy response to my message last week – that if we are contemplating adding to the tax burden; to build transportation infrastructure, pay off the debt, or whatever; we need to be thoughtful about how we do it. We are a wealthy society, by anyone’s account; that is, unless you are middle-class or poor.
 Don’t you just love the political process. These are the few, the ones you hear about – there are thousands who serve diligently and honestly year after year. A 2008 study by Statistics Canada concluded that between 1980 and 2005, median earnings among Canada’s top earners rose more than 16 percent while those in the bottom fifth saw their wages dip by 20 percent. Armine Yalminizyan, a senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, concluded that… “The biggest economic boom since the 1960’s has basically only boosted the rich, leaving the middle class stagnant and the poor worse off. In the 1960s. as the economy grew this rapidly, almost everybody got a bigger piece. In this generation of economic growth, the gains are accruing primarily to those on top.” While we are looking forward to an updated report from Stats Can, we should be confident that this picture hasn’t improved.
In the 1980‘s our governments, in Canada and the US, slashed the top tax rates and shifted the tax burden onto the middle classes. Any first year economics student could have predicted the outcome of this deliberate adventure in retro-grade social engineering, and the winners and the losers that were created. Trickle down economics, the silly notion that the poor live better when the rich get richer, is bogus and it’s nonsense. The poor aren’t better off watching the wealthiest get even wealthier. Cheap credit and cheap imports may make their lives seem richer, but in the end it is just more debt to pay back. We are engaging in class warfare – not yet war, but wait for it. Remember the ‘Occupy Movement’?
According to a 2006 documentary, The One Percent, a mere 1% of Americans owned almost half the wealth in the USA. In 2009 they earned 17% of the national gross income and took home over a trillion dollars. Middle-income earners, by contrast have had to live on lower household incomes, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1996. The Conference Board of Canada places Canada sixth worst, behind the US and UK on their ‘inequality index’. Still, the rapid growing decade from 1997 to 2007 saw the top income earning 1% of Canadians take home fully a third of our increase in national income, a greater proportion than in the US.
This is a serious issue and requires a serious discussion and serious action. Inequality spurs more inequality – greed leads to more greed. Wallin and Duffy earned healthy incomes as respected journalists and, no doubt, each receives a healthy pension from those jobs. In addition, Wallin reportedly earned hundreds of thousands (Editors note: It was actually more than $1 million) as a board director while she was a senator. And, they each make over a hundred thousand dollars as senators. Did they really need to cheat on their expense claims as well?
But then isn’t this what greed does to us?
 Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province.
 By Staff
BURLINGTON, ON. June 9, 2013. The letter set out below came from a reader. To the best of my knowledge I never dated the woman before I moved to Burlington. I moved to Burlington to marry the love of my life.
I didn’t pay Donna Zaffino for writing the letter and to the best of my knowledge I’ve never bought her a drink. I’d like to say “I owe you one” but that might result in a flood of letters and my bar tab at the Queen’s Head is already outrunning my allowance.
I LOVE the new name!!! It is simple, identifies your purpose and rolls nicely off the tongue.
You choice of name perfectly reflects all that I have come to love about your paper. I grew up with the Montreal Gazette but played Word Search in the Star as a 60′s Irish Anglo kid in Montreal. And later in high school the Gazette was the paper to read.
Ever since I accidentally discovered your paper I look forward to seeing each new article show up in my virtual mailbox. It is actually your paper that launched a whole new exciting and exhilarating life for me. Through your articles and announcements of upcoming events I have since linked up with some extraordinary people and groups here in Burlington.
Your articles are in-depth, well research and teach me so much about my new home of only 4 years. All this is why I adore your paper. Your paper and passion for community ranks right up there with the other Gazette. The fact that there was once a paper of the same name speaks to your love and passion for Burlington by choosing a name from our history.
By the way. This is coming from a pretty critical newspaper snob. I only read two Canadian papers. The Burlington Gazette for regional news and another for national and foreign news.
I also like the name change as now, when I quote where I learned something, people will know to what I am referring.
Keep up the great reporting. And I welcome Mr. Rivers as a new addition to you staff.
Aw shucks Donna, you shouldn’t have.
 By Ray Rivers.
BURLINGTON, ON. June 6, 2013 Robin Hood, legend has it, stole from the rich to give to the poor, doing what we call ‘redistributing income’. England, at the time, was run by Prince John, a greedy SOB and a very poor fiscal manager who ran up record deficits to pay for his brother’s crusading activities and his own extravagant lifestyle. During his reign, as national growth plummeted and unemployment skyrocketed, he taxed the poor to death (literally) while allowing the rich to hoard their wealth.
 Robin Hood – a leading thinker on the distribution of income. Robin, on the other hand, understood that income is either spent on consumption or stuffed away as savings. He knew that the poor spent everything they earned, so every penny or half-crown they could lay their hands on was being plowed back into the economy – creating employment and domestic product. The rich, who couldn’t possibly spend all they made, stuffed their savings into a strong box or under the mattress. Robin was often heard to say, “If you want economic growth you need to redistribute” – the Robin Hood Clause.
Taxation, I know, sometimes feels like highway robbery. But not all taxes are created equal – some help our economy and some hurt. Sales taxes are regressive. They hurt, disproportionately, the middle-income and poor and thus, the economy. Stephen Harper understood this when, in his first term as PM, he cut two percentage points off the GST in order to grow the Canadian economy. By contrast, income taxes are progressive – you pay more only if you make more. Consumer demand and economic growth are largely unaffected, in comparison to sales taxes.
Our Premier was looking in the wrong places to help Toronto, the city that won’t help itself, get real public transit. The last thing the recovering Ontario economy needs is an increase in our regressive HST. I guess Jim Flaherty agrees with me, although I suspect he also had other reasons for turning down the Premier’s request to raise the HST.
So, why not look at income taxes? Provincial rates are about the lowest they’ve been in three generations. In the US, President Obama has long been trying to ratchet up income taxes on the wealthy. Even the normally conservative US Federal Reserve Chair (Bernanke) has been making noises that he supports a doubling of the tax rate on the richest Americans. Is it only a matter of time until we will need to catch up with the Americans again?
So Premier Wynne, let’s get ahead of the game. Why not get serious about reversing the damage done to our economic potential over the years by the ruthless cuts to the most important tax system we have?
Raise the progressive rates on those with the highest earnings; those who can best afford to pay. Didn’t the NDP already force Dalton McGuinty to apply a token surtax on the wealthy in his last budget? Does that then leave Andrea as the closest thing we now have to a modern-day Robin Hood? And if so, why is she silent now?
 Rivers with his latest book: The end of September. Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province.
 By Ray Rivers.
BURLINGTON, ON. May 29, 2013. The Sopranos, a cable TV series about your average mafia boss, living and killing in New Jersey, doesn’t seem such a fantasy anymore. In fact, the escapades of Rob Ford and his brothers would make great crime TV. Starring Rob, Doug Ford as a former drug dealer and brother Randy as an enforcer. His sister is a victim of gun violence in the family home and she has a coke-dealing former boyfriend who once tried to kill Rob. Somali drug lords have made a video of Ford purportedly smoking crack – then they go underground or worse, as a homicide investigation begins. US website gawker.com raises money to buy the ‘Crackstarter‘ video but can no longer locate the sellers.
Were they given an offer they couldn’t refuse? Then, Ford comes forward to vaguely deny his crack use and claim there never was a video. Screen play writers must be wringing their hands for a chance to get at this outstanding tragic comedy.
Except it’s not funny. The Globe and Mail’s weekend expose on the Ford family history should have frightened and disgusted rather than amused and entertained Toronto residents. Ford seemed like a breath of fresh air to voters in that last election. He was unconventional, and almost charming in a red-neck kind of way, carrying himself like a beardless Old St. Nick, with a bag full of promises. And voters, sick and tired from a long garbage strike, turned to the man promising them a ‘free lunch’ – he’d lower taxes and end the ‘gravy train’.
But there was no gravy train and there is no free lunch. Lowering taxes? Hello! Doesn’t Mr. Ford understand that the price of everything always goes up? It’s called keeping up with population growth and inflation. We don’t see electricity, gasoline or food prices declining. Of course, you could always gut your basic programs, as ‘Mike-the-Knife’ did to Ontario’s health care and education systems. So grow up Toronto. You can’t have it both ways.
 We know how it ends. Take transportation. The GTA is not going to get out from under ever-increasing gridlock without new transit systems, and that takes money. Burlington’s mayor is quoted as saying that his constituents support expansion – he gets it. And so does the new Premier, Kathleen Wynn, who is taking the lead to find smarter ways of funding. Too bad Rob Ford hasn’t put as much energy into securing public transportation as he has performing adolescent distractions. He has ruled out everything except subways and expects somebody else to pay for them. His court is divided for lack of leadership, so the rest of the GTA and the Province have to take the lead, in his place.
And speaking of taxes, we should understand that Toronto residents pay below average property taxes as a proportion of their real estate dollar. So the next time some con man named Ford, in a black Cadillac SUV, is offering you a free lunch – just smile and say, no thanks, I’ve seen the Sopranos on TV. I know how it ends.
 Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson.
 By Ray Rivers.
BURLINGTON, ON. May 22, 2013. Four Senators and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff either out of a job or wondering how long they are going to keep the one they have. That is what happens when you don’t give the children something constructive to do – they just get into mischief.
The Senate serves no useful purpose. This well financially padded play-pen for worn-out political hacks has no meaningful role in our democracy. Senate reform, you say? Sure, but why not just get rid of it?
Modeled after the British House of Lords, the Canadian Senate was supposed to be the chamber of ‘sober second thought’, a place from which the landed gentry could repel the populists, keep the mob from taxing away their wealth. The kind of place where Conrad Black would feel comfortable pontificating, as he, no doubt, did in the ‘real’ House of Lords in London.
 Can’t you just imagine the discussions which took place in Charlottetown and Quebec in 1864 – Sir John A and 35 other well-suited men, all crowding around a table trying to piece together the British North America Act. As they neared a deal on the constitution they backslapped each other, agreeing on the dominance of the House of Commons and its location in Ottawa.
Still self-congratulating each other, they traipsed off to London two years later for the hard sell. Queen Victoria, studied the plans for a moment, then looking up at these upstarts scowled, “What, no upper chamber? Pity.” And that may well be how the Canadian Senate got created – a regal after-thought.
Albertans like Peter Lougheed and Stephen Harper, had long preached the merits of an elected (triple E) Senate, but anyone with a serious grasp of political science would know they were talking through their ten gallon hats. Two elected bodies? Both believing they are the rightful government? How would that work? Congressional grid-lock in the US would look like child’s play here, were we to go down that road. There is no place for a second governing body in Canada’s parliamentary democracy.
Why, when Trudeau patriated the Canadian Constitution in 1982, why didn’t we have the good sense to ‘whiteout’ all the language describing the Senate, its composition and function? Then we wouldn’t be needing a constitutional amendment to get rid of it now.
Of course Ontario, Nova Scotia, B.C., Manitoba and Saskatchewan have already called for abolition, the Official Opposition is on-side, and we should note that every upper house at the provincial level, including Quebec’s, has been abolished. So let’s do the right thing – put it out of our misery.
 Meanwhile back at the ranch, there is this Duffy affair. Bizarre and stinking. Who actually believes that Stephen Harper wasn’t aware of the payoff? And if he was, why the dance he’s been giving us. A week ago, I would have believed him, but then I could swear I saw his face on gawker.com – or was that the Mayor of Toronto, smoking crack?
Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. May 22, 2013. The surprise wasn’t that Jack Dennison, Councillor for Ward 4, lost his application for a severance and several minor variances to his property on Old Lakeshore Road but how two members of the Committee of Adjustment conducted themselves. We will get to that.
Dennison was applying for a severance to his property that would allow him to create a separate lot on which a two-story house could be built. He required permission to sever the property and needed a number of variances as well.
A staff report did not recommend the application.
The vote went 3-2 against Dennison with Chair Malcolm Ramsay, members Grant Newbury and Robert Bailey voting against and members Dave Kumar and Sam Sarraf voting for.
 Burlington’s Committee of Adjustment. All appointed by city council to serve a four-year term. From left to right chair Ramsay, members Bailey, Newbury, Kumar and Sarraf. Peter Thoem, also a member was absent. Five members of the community delegated starting with Dave McKay who gave the committee an overview of how Roseland got to be the community it is today. He was followed by Diane Gaudaur, president of the Roseland community Association who set out the case for saying no. Gerhard Gerber who lives right across the street from Dennison talked about the impact the requested severance would have on the streetscape which was a major part of the opposition to the application.
Christine Dwivedi followed with a very, very lengthy presentation during which the chair asked if she had anything new to add. Mrs. Dwivedi stuck to her guns even though it was clear that at one point she had the members of the committee following her and taking in the many trenchant points she made but after more than an hour it was clear she had gone too far.
During her delegation we did learn that Dennison attempted to buy 10 feet of the west side of the Dwivedi property for $120,000. Mrs. Dwivedi also reported a nasty dispute over work Dennison had done when he installed a new in-ground pool.
With the clock past 10 pm legal counsel for the Roseland Community Organization summed up the reasons for not granting the severance which included an Ontario Divisional Court ruling which is a binding decision.
Applications like this include levels of detail that can be mind numbing and that was certainly the case Tuesday evening. There were some very interesting points made and they will be covered in detail at a later date making them part of the community record.
The process has the applicant stating their case, the members of the community who oppose the application stating their case. The applicant is then given an opportunity to rebut whatever those opposed have to say.
It then goes to the chair who asks each member if they have questions. Once all the questions of the member of the Committee of Adjustment have been asked each is then asked to make their comments.
It is at this point that members of the Committee make it known if they are going to support or oppose the application.
The chair then polls each member individually to hear them say publicly and for the record that they are supporting the application or opposing that application.
Last night three opposed, two supported – one member was absent. Peter Thoem, a former council member was absent – spending his time at Point Peelee watching birds.
Other than the lengthy presentation made by Mrs. Dwivedi , the hearing was like any other that is contentious with significantly different views on either side.
 Councillor Dennison neighbour Christine Dwivedi and lawyer Mark Nicholson prepare to delegate at a Committee of Adjustment hearing. Where things went off the rails Tuesday evening was when committee member Sam Sarraf began to ask his questions. He first directed a question to David McKay on what the boundaries of the community were and then literally fired a bunch of questions at city planner Jamie Tellier who was on hand to answer technical questions and support the report staff had prepared.
There was question after question on specific definitions. Sarraf had clearly prepared and was directing Tellier to specific parts of the Official Plan and having him read them aloud. On several occasions Sarraf asked Tellier: “Would you not agree.” It became clear that Sarraf had an objective and he began to move from being a committee member asking questions to a person advocating on behalf of the applicant.
At one point Sarraf asked a question on a piece of evidence that had not been introduced by anyone. He asked if the property Dennison was seeking to sever was not at one point three separate lots. Where did Sam Sarraf get that information? Did he research the issue? And if he did – why would he do that? His role is to be an impartial adjudicator who hears evidence presented and makes decisions on the merits of the evidence and adheres to the procedures used by a Committee of Adjustment.
Dave Kumar had questions that were related to how this matter would be seen and treated by the Official Plan. His question was very technical, not something that would normally come from a person with a financial background. Kumar’s questions were also beginning to take on the tone of an advocate.
Committee of adjustment members Bailey and Newbury stuck to the issues. They asked questions of staff that were intended to clarify a point. Bailey had very few questions, Newbury asked for some clarification relating to the original design of the lot when it was first put together.
When Chair Ramsay was about to ask the members of the Committee for their comments, which is the time they get to say if they intend to support the application, Sarraf suggested to the chair that any decision be “deferred” until the applicant had a chance to return and address some of the issues raised, particularly relating to what any house built on the severed lot would look like.
Things like this are done for the applicant by the applicants agent. It is not the role of the committee members to suggest possible actions for an applicant.
There was a time when Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward once advocated for a constituent at Committee of Adjustment. The city’s Solicitor was brought in to read the rules to what were then newbie Council members. Might be time for the city Solicitor to have a chat with the boys on what’s kosher and what isn’t kosher in terms of ethical behaviour.
It was a long meeting, the room was far too warm and everyone was getting tired. The hands of the clock were getting close to 11:00 pm and Chairman Malcolm Ramsay was letting things slip a little.
 Jack Dennison usually goes all out for what he wants. Did he go too far at a Committee of Adjustment meeting on Tuesday? One observer with experience in matters like this wondered why the chair did not move the meeting into an “in camera” session and have everyone clear the room and once the doors were closed, turn to the two members who were offside by a country mile and ask them: “What the hell is going on here?”
Was there collusion between Sarraf and the applicant? That was certainly a question on the minds of many as they talked after the meeting.
While Dennison was reading his comments he was working from a document he had not made available to those opposed to what he was asking for. In quasi-tribunal hearings such as Committee of Adjustment opposing parties make documents available to each other. In higher “courts” lawyers are required to do so.
When Dwivedi was making her presentation she asked that Dennison not be given a copy of her comments because he had not shared his. The chair didn’t disagree with Dwivedi but once the documents were in the hands of the committee members, Sarraf immediately passed a copy to Dennison who was sitting next to him.
There was the sense that these two guys were part of the same team. It smacked all of that small town, old boys network stuff.
Both Dave Kumar and Sam Sarraf have run for public office – both in Ward 5. Sarraf ran in 2006, Kumar in 2010. Kumar is also a former city hall employee where he worked in finance.
The political class tend to hang together in Burlington.
 Councillor Jack Dennison’s application to sever his property was not approved by Burlington’s Committee of Adjustment. Two members of the committee came very close to becoming advocates for the application. Did this amount to collusion? When running for public office Sarraf said he had completed five years study at Mohawk College in both Construction and Civil Engineering he worked from 1983 to 1999 as a Land Surveyor and was responsible for surveying many of the development projects in Burlington during that period of rapid growth. These included The Maple Community, Mapleview Mall, Tyandaga, and Millcroft communities as well as The Orchard.
In 2000 Sarraf became Project Manager & Planner for a local Engineering consulting firm and was instrumental in the development of several residential and commercial projects and subdivisions in the GTA including the environmentally sensitive Oak Ridges Moraine.
Kumar ran in Ward 5, hoping to succeed Rick Goldring who was running for Mayor in 2010.
Running for public office is noble – it isn’t easy work. Those elected or appointed are in place to serve the people of the city –they are not there to serve their own interests or those of their chums.
Last night we saw what one observer described as what he expected from a “banana republic”. “I never thought I would see that in this city”.
This observer added that Burlington needed an Ethics Commissioner. That would put us on the same footing as the Senate in Ottawa. Would that help us keep our Best City ranking next year?
 By Ray Rivers
BURLINGTON, ON. May 17, 2013. Justice M. Green put it very well when he said, of the federal governments Safe Streets Act that it represented “…an ideology of unabashed Puritanism marketed through fear-mongering and invidious exploitation of communal differences.”
Justice Green was writing about one of the Harper government’s signature legislative pieces, (Globe and Mail – May 2, 2013). Indeed, if puritanism was the driving passion, then why not just bring back the pillory stocks, the dunking stool and the whipping post. 17th century puritans used to nail their prisoners’ ears to the stocks – so they would have to face their victims. And, the multitude of crimes in those days included treason, sedition, arson, blasphemy, witchcraft, perjury, wife-beating, cheating, forgery, coin clipping, dice cogging, slandering, conjuring, fortune-telling, and drunkenness.
 Putting people in pillory stocks was a common practice in the 1800’s. We have progressed since then; haven’t we? It took four centuries to narrow down the list of crimes and, more recently, two generations of socially progressive efforts, to whittle down the number of criminals in Canadian prisons. And the reality is that crimes, criminals and costs have further fallen over the last two decades. So Mr. Harper’s new law – Bill C-10, ‘The Safe Streets and Communities Act’ can only turn the clock back.
This legislation has the ultimate purpose of expanding the prison population and increasing the number of costly prisons required. Why? A good question. Since, ironically, the changes being instituted are happening while crime rates are falling and streets are generally safer in Canada. It is also ironic that the very government which claims to be promoting safer streets is the same one which shut down the long gun registry and destroyed almost all of its weapons records. It is also the government which has made our country more of a potential target for international terrorism through it’s unbalanced foreign policies.
If US-style laws and US prison systems are the models in Mr. Harper’s mind, then privatized for-profit prisons cannot be far behind. And if profit-oriented US prison providers, like ‘GEO’, are to be engaged, we should expect that higher US-style crime rates will also follow. The US, with the highest incarceration rates in the world is a poor model for us to emulate, by any reasonable person’s assessment.
These American for-profit organizations tend to feed on the underprivileged and the poor, while making greater profit from the increasing number of inmates facing longer sentences. Looking objectively at the prison system in Canada, it is hard to miss the imbalance which already exists – how certain minorities are over-represented. For example, less than 13% of Saskatchewan residents are aboriginal and yet aboriginals make up over 80% of the prison inmates in that province. This is something the so-called ‘Safe Streets and Communities Act’ will do absolutely nothing to improve – it will in fact exacerbate the problem.
‘The Safe Streets and Communities Act’ will be the topic of a Town Hall Meeting I am moderating at McMaster Innovation Park (175 Longwood Rd. S.) in Hamilton, 7 PM, May 22. The event is free and open to the public; it would be nice to see you there.
 Ray Rivers Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson.
 By Ray Rivers
BURLINGTON, ON. May 9th, 2013. You know the feeling. You have just ordered fish and chips and the waiter sets down a juicy hamburger for the guy at the next table. You recall the price was the same and wish you’d ordered differently – then your fish arrives and you want to ask the waiter to change it for the burger. That’s Andrea Horwath. She demanded poorly from Kathleen Wynne, in the provincial budget, and now she’d like to order again.
Take the 15% cut in insurance rates. I didn’t think that could happen. Aren’t the rates set on the basis of claims, as they’ve always told us? Are we going to have 15% fewer accidents this year? Possible, but I doubt it. So that means we’ve been paying at least 15% more a year than we should have. And look at your insurance bill. Why are we paying for accident health coverage in a province with universal OHIP? Talk about being over-insured.
New Zealanders have true no-fault auto insurance. They understand nothing is risk-free. So if you are on the highway and have an accident, the biggest insurance pool in the country, the government, takes care of you – but you can’t sue a third-party for personal injuries. I bought a used car there and my yearly insurance bill was $99.00. Why can’t we do that here?
The NDP platform on car insurance, when Bob Rae became the first Dipper Premier, was to nationalize it. But he chickened out – wouldn’t do it then. Has the NDP dropped the idea entirely, or did Andrea think it was too much to ask, and wishes she had now? I mean BC, Quebec and Manitoba – all have variations of public auto insurance for their people – and they pay lower premiums. Why are we fattening the big insurance companies? Keeping that money in our pockets would be like a tax cut. A good way to stimulate the economy.
But the best we can do is fifteen percent, this time. Horwath made her play and now she’s not so sure. She’s hiding in her office, waiting to hear from… who? You’d think she would have done that before she made her ask on the budget. Now it is just about stalling, checking if the chips, which came with her fish, are salty enough before she slips one into her mouth. But they are getting cold as she hesitates, pretending she’s not really all that hungry.
Horwath is in a pickle. The Liberals need her far more badly than she ever thought, and Andrea now wishes she’d asked for more – because she probably would have got it. But she didn’t – so it’s time to lift her knife and fork and dig into that plate she ordered. Act like the adult you want people to think you are, if you expect them to make you Premier some day. Take the deal you demanded and make it work – then maybe, next time, be a little more careful about what you order up.
Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. May 2, 2013. The Premier of the province Kathleen Wynne got her Minister of Finance to produce a budget that might keep the leader of the NDP happy enough to not vote against it later this week but that really isn’t the problem we are going to have with this government.
When Kathleen Wynne told a Legislative committee that she didn’t know the cost of closing the gas plant in Oakville was $310 million she lost me. For her to have sat at the Cabinet table where the decision to close the plant was made and tell us now that she believed the cost was just $40 million tells me the same games are still being played.
 We had trouble believing Kathleen Wynne when she was Minister of Transportation and in town to convince us the government would never pout a road through the Escarpment. Even harder to believe that she didn’t know the cost of closing the Oakville gas plant project was going to cost just $40 million when the true cost was $310 million. Wynne is going to wear that rubber tire around her neck until it eventually brings her down and that is going to be close to tragic for the province.
I don’t believe Andrea Horwath and her New Democrats can govern. And to have Tim Hudak as Premier of the province takes us back to the Mike Harris era – we are still struggling to get out from under the damage he did.
Hudak carries the same Harris blood line; one that is limited, simplistic and basically mean-spirited. Hudak does not seem to be able to see anything majestic in the human condition. . Horwath hasn’t grown to the point where she can serve as Premier – and if she were elected – where would her Cabinet come from? Wynne just doesn’t know how or want to tell the truth.
The budget will probably pass and then get reduced to a mess in committee that will slow us down for years to come.
The mistake the Ontario Liberals made was choosing Wynne and not Sandra Pupatello.
We would be in the middle of an election now had Pupatello been chosen as leader. Pupatello would have cleaned Tim Hudak’s clock and we would have a majority government.
Premier Wynne is correct when she says the people of Ontario don’t want an election. Having an election with Wynne as leader certainly doesn’t guarantee her a win. It won’t put the New Democrats in office and it is doubtful that the Progressive Conservatives would win a majority.
It is not our view that Ontario wants what Tim Hudak wants for us. What a mess
 By Ray Rivers
BURLINGTON, ON May 2, 2013. Give the people what they want. Dalton McGuinty transformed Ontario’s health care system from mediocre to one of the best in the country. He was the education Premier who brought peace and productivity to the class room. He banned cosmetic pesticides, driving with a hand-held cell phone and smoking while children are in your car. He brought in the HOV lanes, the Greenbelt, and helped keep the auto industry alive during the 2008 recession. But one of his biggest achievements was the Green Energy Act.
Generating energy with coal is dirty, speeds up climate change and impairs our health. So the Premier set up the Ontario Power Authority to make a plan – to phase-out coal but make sure the lights didn’t go out. Solar and wind are the path to the future but they only work when the sun shines and the wind blows – so you need a backup and that is natural gas. And gas, the utilities have been saying for years, is clean.
 One of two gas plant the provincial government chose not to complete – cost to quit – close to half a billion dollars But don’t tell that to the voters in Oakville and Mississauga. When they heard about the plans for new gas plants, they weren’t going to let Dalton put one in their back yard. So on the eve of the last election the Liberal government, hoping to get its third majority, killed the partially constructed gas plants in those communities.
It turns out the cost of that decision is now known to be over a half billion dollars – compensation for the private entities building the plants – and new power plants will still have to be built somewhere.
The provincial budget came down this week, but it will have to compete for newspaper space with the gas plant fiasco. The pundits expect the NDP will support this budget and continue to support the Liberals for at least a while – till they are ready to pull the plug.
It is said that voters have short memories, but will the teachers support the government which declared war on them? Will the ORNGE, E-health and the Caledonia crises fade in the voters‘ minds? And on the budget, will the public register its concern that Ontario has been in deficit for the last decade and its debt doubled over that time? And, yes, don’t forget the gas plants.
Despite all the good that Premier McGuinty did for Ontario, his legacy will likely be tarnished by this one avoidable blunder. Who would have advised him to pander to a handful of vocal constituents and to reverse himself on a sound energy plan? That was an expensive lesson for all of us, and Dalton paid a huge price, falling on his sword and giving up his leadership. This is also Political Science 101: Be careful with the advice you get from the kids surrounding you in the heat of an election campaign The honey they are pouring into your ears may well turn out to be hemlock.
Next week I will be exploring the new Ontario budget. If the NDP does indeed support the budget on first reading, the question is whether they will see it through committee and onto final reading. Andrea must be asking herself why she would want to climb into bed with a Liberal government so shaken by something as destructive as the gas plant fiasco? There are interesting times ahead.
 Ray Rivers will write weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator. Rivers was a candidate in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson.
 By James Smith
BURLINGTON, ON. May 2, 2013. This past weekend yet another young man, 27, died on the railway tracks near Dixie Road in Mississauga. Another family is now linked with Burlington’s Denise Davy and her family by grief over the loss of a loved one on the Lakeshore rail corridor. More than just sad, this news is devastating because when someone dies like this, a family is left not only with the ache in their heart over the loss, but also left with so many unanswered questions. How and why did this happen? Is it misadventure, suicide or is there something else at work? What are we missing in this picture that motivates people so they feel they have to cut across tracks in the first place?
I’ve never met Ms Davy, but I’ve been impressed with her commitment to attempting to get action on preventing other deaths on the tracks in Burlington. Ms Davy has successfully brought this issue to the front of mind, not only of Burlington City council, a success in its own right; Ms Davy has moved council to direct staff to act.
 A couple of really inadequate signs alongside a path that leads up to the railway tracks – crossing is a snap until one realizes there is a train that you didn’t see or hear when you started crossing. As I write this, I’m sitting on a GO Train making my way into Toronto and I can see how very easy it is for one to make it onto the tracks. Pulling into Bronte station, I saw two men walking away from the tracks. (Did they just cross them?) They likely didn’t give the train and the tracks a second thought. Just something to get around. One does not need to be an expert to see what danger lurk on the Lakeshore corridor. Just look out from the seat of a GO train as I’ve just done to see the trails and paths, the tree forts, BMX jumps and graffiti. Pretty quickly one can get the idea of where people regularly walk, play, lurk and take shortcuts. With GO moving to half hour service in June the peril on the tracks is about to become far greater. To mitigate the danger, I notice more brush being cleared and new fences on the rail corridor throughout Mississauga. Will this project carry on to cover Burlington and the rest of the GO network? I hope so – and I hope it happens soon.
Fences are only part of the answer, the spot where the latest death occurred happened on a section of track already with new fences installed. To improve rail track safety Burlington and other cities need not so much better city planning around railways, but better transportation vision. Being hived off into four parts by railways and highways Burlington has created a neat two kilometer grid that isolates pockets of development as little land-locked islands ironically surrounded by transportation corridors. How do people get in and out of these islands? By car, or for the foolhardy, taking a chance crossing the tracks on foot. This is a result of the dominant planning regimes of the mid-20th century where land use was neatly divided up into its own little planning ghettos.
 By Ray Z. Rivers
Ray Rivers will write weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a political animator.
BURLINGTON, ON. April 29, 2013. ‘Root-causes’ you say? Justin Trudeau dared to utter that phrase in his interview with Peter Mansbridge, shortly after the Boston Marathon bombings. Trudeau was “committing sociology”, the Prime Minster accused, as if that was one of the unforgivable crimes the PM had included in the government’s new ‘safe-streets’ legislation.
 Afghan women being taught some of the basics through funding provided by the Canadian International Development Agency – getting at the root causes of political violence. National Post right-wing columnist Barbara Kay had earlier taken her aim and fired a volley at the young leader – showing his ‘inner sophomore’, she accused. She went on to draw a comparison to his father, when as PM he brought out the army to quell the FLQ hostage crisis of 1970. True enough he activated the War Measures Act, but Pierre also dealt with some of the “root-causes” – the disenchantment and estrangement of Quebecers’ from their rightful role in the federation. Lest we forget, he introduced official bilingualism, regional economic development, and the inter-provincial equalization program.
Of course Kay and Harper are playing politics, aren’t they? Everybody knows that for every effect there is a cause…and a root-cause. I mean why else is Canada providing social and economic aid to Afghanistan, except to remove the kind of ‘root-causes’ that contributed to 9/11, right? Under Stephen Harper, Canada, proudly, has become one of the world’s top donors of economic development and educational assistance in Afghanistan, raising the levels of education, ensuring greater food security, and regional development of that nation, one of the world’s poorest.
In 2011, Canada assisted over 1600 schools graduate almost 50,000 students, 85% of them girls. And we helped Afghan small and medium businesses create over 20,000 new jobs, injecting $325 million in the national economy. These are very impressive stats for a government that doesn’t believe in ‘committing sociology’ and in considering and reducing ‘root-causes’.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. April 17, 2013. Scott Stewart, one of the toughest General Manager’s this city has seen in some time uses his smile and basically decent demeanour to get things done. But if that doesn’t work – well, Stewart came to us from Hamilton where he acquired certain skills. Let’s just leave it at that.
Earlier this week Stewart, who now heads up what is referred to as D+I, which is the short form for Development and Infrastructure Committee – the place where all the hard work gets done. All the paper bound tasks; legal, Human Resources, Information Technology and Finance got shifted over to City Manager Jeff Fielding.
That realignment didn’t leave much for Kim Phillips to do and perhaps we will see some changes in that portfolio somewhere down the road.
Stewart, who drives hard and is remarkably responsive, brought a small report to council committee where he talked about how he feels his people have done and asked council to respond. Stewart sat there with most of his Directors but they didn’t get to say a word. Stewart was the mouthpiece.
Do you want more of this and less of that? Are we delivering on the deliverables?
 He came to us from Hamilton – that’s as much as anyone needs to know about General Manager Scott Stewart. This is the first time we have seen anyone at the General Manager or Director level for that matter put himself on the hot seat – but I guess when you’re on the province’s Sunshine list you can do things like that.
The IKEA matter came back to council four times – and that was good – thought most council members; but the Tim Horton’s desire to be on Brant Street in the old Blockbuster location came back to council too often.
 By Ray Rivers.
BURLINGTON, ON. April 16, 2013 Sometimes we Liberals can feel like Goldilocks. First, the leadership vote kickoff in Toronto last Saturday felt… too empty. Then the concluding meeting in Ottawa…well, it was so full they sold out the $20 dollar tickets in a flash. The event was packed with big-name Liberals, including one-time opponents Jean Chretien and Paul Martin who sat on opposite sides of the room. It was a big deal.
The victory was conclusive and Justin Trudeau graciously took the podium to thank one and all. The Party had opened voting to members and non-members alike, and over a hundred-thousand Canadians participated, picking Trudeau with eighty percent of the votes – a new deal for political leadership. 
Justin kicked off his leadership campaign by promising to rebuild the middle-class (by which he really meant middle-income Canadians). But what does that mean? Franklin D Roosevelt is credited with building the modern middle-class in America, a consequence of his New Deal in the 1940‘s. Five factors played together for FDR; 1. a sheltered union movement to lift the pay of workers, 2. massive public investment to create jobs for the unemployed, 3. the break-up of corporate conglomerates, 4. progressive income taxation, and 5. trade protectionism.
Chretien, in his remarks at the podium, noted that his Team Canada had landed significant deals in their excursions into China, while the best Harper could do was to bring back a couple of rented Panda bears. And Trudeau, who has supported the Chinese buy-up of the tar sands and the Keystone pipeline, seems unwavering on business-as-usual for global trade, the kind that ensures we Canadians remain the hewers of wood and drawers of water we were at confederation. Not much of a new deal here, I’m afraid.
Trudeau has not yet spoken, perhaps wisely, on the other elements of how he plans to re-build the middle class. He and the party’s policy wonks have their work cut out, developing options to restore and promote the middle-class, if he is to be believed. Of course, Justin is not PM yet, just the leader of the third-party. But if the polls are any indication, he might very well be in position to lead a Trudeau Liberal government after the next election.
Well thought-out and pronounced policy options to restore a more balanced Canadian society and a healthy economy would be a big deal, even if it not exactly FDR’s new deal.
Ray Rivers is a retired civil servant, a former Burlington candidate for the provincial legislature and an author. His book, The End of September focuses on how things could have been different during the Quebec crisis in 1983. Rivers will write for Our Burlington on a regular basis – about twice a month.
Ray Rivers was seen pontificating with a bunch of Burlington Liberals Saturday morning before he headed into Toronto for the Liberal Party of Canada Showcase where the six candidates running for the leadership of the party were giving their final speeches. We asked Ray to give us a first person report on the event. Ray, still with a belly full of fire for politics, reports:
 By Ray Rivers.
TORONTO,ON. April 9, 2013 I could feel the mood as I descended the stairs from old Union Station to the near vacuous bowel of a structure, that is the Toronto Convention Centre. Trudeau volunteers were everywhere, waving their skinny balloons, and making rallying noises. They were mostly young people, which was so delightful to see. The woman on the TV the night before, told us the Liberals would have trouble filling the seats at this event, and she was right. The rows of seats were dispersed as best they could to disguise that the attendance was not what had been hoped.
At $150. per ticket, for which didn’t even get a bottle of water, let alone coffee and a doughnut, the low turnout was not a surprise but a disappointment. There was this overly lengthy tribute to departing interim leader Bob Rae – sure, he deserves recognition, but hey, I thought we were coming to listen to the candidates. Then the organizers allowed twenty-five minutes for each of the butt-numbing speeches. They were all good, of course, though I have to admit that I ran off to an ad hoc meeting and missed the last two speeches. But then, like the rest of the crowd there, I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t matter. Somebody in the Party needs to take a serious look at how they plan these events.
Joyce Murray had the most effective video and gave a very good speech. She cautiously and slowly walked the crowd through her vision of co-operating with the NDP and Greens in order to beat Harper at the polls next time. But it is a complicated matter, and so innovative, that I doubt some of the regular folks got it – or felt comfortable with it. Joyce spoke of her commitment to small business and the environment and I couldn’t help thinking what a brilliant environment minister she would make in the next Liberal government.
 The country watched as another Trudeau headed towards the leadership of a political party Then came Justin, with a huge gaggle of groupies, Trudeau scarves casually around their necks, clapping their skinny balloons and chanting, as their hopeful gracefully climbed onto the stage and proceeded to inspire everyone with his speech. He was confident and positive and delivered his well-written speech with passion and power. Knowing the question was in everyone’s mind he commented about his father, saying that his campaign was about Pierre, then added just as it was about all of the parents (of the younger of us, I guess) – that it was about restoring Canada to the glory days before Stephen Harper screwed it up. Perhaps he was just anticipating the Tory attack-ads coming the Monday following the vote count, but it certainly struck a chord with me – nice twist on a theme.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. April 9, 2013. It was almost slick – if a little underhanded – the kind of thing we used to see with a previous Mayor.
While Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward was talking about one of the finer points of the Ghent Avenue development the Mayor looked directly at the Clerk, nodded his head and the Clerk nodded back at which point the Mayor interrupted Councillor Meed Ward and brought to her attention that she had gone beyond the 15 minutes of discussion she was permitted under the city’s procedural by-law.
Meed Ward was a little stunned and I don’t think she was fully aware of what had just been done to her.
At full Council meetings the Mayor presides and recognizes different speakers. The city manager is in attendance and he is there to address Council on how the administration would handle an issue.
The Clerk plays a vital, semi-judicial and administrative role. If Council passes a bylaw it isn’t in force until the Clerk signs the document.
 Angela Morgan, Clerk, city of Burlington; powerful position. She runs the municipal elections, she has the power to tell the Mayor what he is doing is wrong and advise him publicly not to do so. She made the mistake on Monday of letting her Mayor mislead her. The Clerk is the person the Mayor, or any member of Council for that matter, turns to for an interpretation of the rules. The Clerk has an assistant who takes the minutes but it is the Clerk who has final say on almost anything and everything.
Angela Morgan, Clerk for the city of Burlington; is an attentive, polite, informed bureaucrat. But Monday evening, April 8th 2013 – she did nothing to advance the civility of debate and discussion at Council meetings. This is not something she did on her own – the Mayor put her up to it.
One must admit that Meed Ward does run on – frequently. She has no friends at Council. Her Ward 2 colleague Rick Craven has absolutely no time for her. Councillor Taylor puts up with Meed Ward because he sees a lot of himself when he was a younger man in Meed Ward today.
Councillor Dennison and the Mayor treat her with the mildest respect possible or with total disdain – depending on the issue.
Monday evening there was a very divisive debate on the Ghent Avenue development, which is in Meed Ward’s ward and she wasn’t backing down.
 Mayor Goldring read the Procedural Bylaw carefully and found a way to collude with the city Clerk to shut down a member of his council. The days of innocence for this Council came to an end Monday April 8th, 2013 It isn’t a very pretty development and there are all kinds of issues surrounding the pre-sale of the 58 properties and the way the city chose to let the developer’s consultants provide much of the technical opinion.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 21, 2013 Here we go again. A magazine that promotes its readership with a list of the best place to live, the safest place to live and maybe even the nicest place to live and then all those locations promote this specious recognition.
Burlington, Burlington, Burlington! We are better than some phony recognition given to us by a magazine promoting their circulation.
Unfortunately, you can bet real money that the Mayor will tout this phrase every opportunity he gets and the members of city council will do the same damn, stupid thing.
 The nicest thing about this graphic put out by the city is the picture. This city has huge potential but we will never rise above our provincial past as long as we let others define us.
It is what we do with what we have been given that should make us important.
Can we grow to the point where leading corporations choose this city because it has the very best schools, the very best sports organizations for our children and a performing arts centre that is the envy of the country because of the type of event it brings to its stage?
The Burlington Art Centre has one of the very best ceramics collections in North America – and we have it stuffed into boxes because there isn’t any adequate space to display that collection.
Much of the city grew out of a land grant given to a native who served the British Army during the American revolutionary war. Born a native, became a savage warrior and grew into one of this country’s early statesmen – Joseph Brant is recognized by a pathetic little museum. He was a great Canadian but we don’t seem to be able to tell our citizens that story.
Why oh why, oh why do we need outsiders to tell us how good we are?
The late Jane Irwin reminded city council that we are called Borington for a reason. Time to grow up and be who we really are.
Has anyone noticed how vibrant the Alton Village community is becoming? Are we aware of the way our downtown is going to change in the next five years?
Do we use the Escarpment as a place that provides the fresh vegetables we consume or do we just talk about how nice it is?
Can we grow beyond the festivals that take place on the waterfront?
There are a lot of things done in the city that are superb and we don’t need a magazine with a circulation smaller than the population of the city to tell us what we have going for us.
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