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Back to Home Letters - February 23, 2012

Letters: Feb 23

To Scott Reid, MP, Nicole McGrath and Robert Lovelace

Re: Scott Reid's "Polls", Bob Argue

Central Frontenac bag tags and clear bags, Jack Patterson

Re: Black Rat Snake, Gray Merriam

Re: Black Rat Snake, Bill MacDonald

Re: SF backs off protest, Rodney Hoff

To Scott Reid, MP

Your letter of January inviting us to stay in touch and respond to your survey was well received. We have given the issues listed much thought – Scrapping the Long Gun Registry, Responsible Government Spending, Cracking Down on Crime, Standing up for Canadian Values – as they are serious issues. You ask us: “Am I doing a good job of representing our views on these issues?”

Canadians have paid over a billion in tax dollars for the gun registry. It’s been a costly affair. It will never be complete. We work hard to buy stuff that breaks in no time, to buy food that nourishes us less but feeds us more chemicals, to pay our taxes. Now, the conservatives want to scrap the long gun registry. That’s more than a billion down the drain. To put salt in our wounds, you want to erase valuable information. I just have one question: whom are you protecting?

The second point is easy. Read the above. It’s an example of irresponsible government spending. As well: prison farms providing a most valuable and excellent rehabilitation program are closed down. The service is worth millions, but PC wants none of it. The food, healthy local fresh food valued at 2 million per year, provided meals to the prisons and the community in need. Instead, this high-quality, low-footprint, humanely-produced food is to be replaced with lesser-quality long-distance energy-burning commercial food-items, not real food. To boot, the Conservatives have designs to build a fleet of maximum-security prisons. No need to ask if this is a high-ticket item. It makes PC feel big. With our money? No, honey.

Cracking down on crime, as imagined by the Conservatives, is to set up a game with the public. Recall the G20. Wait, on spending, recall the artificial lake for the G20 in Toronto. Back to crime: are you so desperate to find criminals that you have to set people up to arrest somebody, anybody, in order to defend your prison project? By the way, the enormous police force, not to mention the agent provocateurs, cost a nice bundle.

In light of the above, our values are clearly different than yours, the Conservatives. We care about our fellow human beings; about the healing services we give each other; about the quality of the food we all eat. Our home is surrounded by forests. Hunters are active here seven days a week in season. Shots are heard as we wait for the kids’ school bus. We want to know who owns that gun, should anything – god forbid – ever happen. We want to know who aggressed innocent citizens speaking out as one should in a democratic society. But we want it done fairly, not corralling people into demoralizing fortresses. We don’t want our country to be a war zone just so our PM can feel like he’s winning one. Tell him to put on suspenders and pick up a shovel. To plant food. Then yes, that would be good.

Nicole McGrath and Robert Lovelace

Re: Scott Reid's "Polls"

Isn't it wonderful to live in a democracy? We get to vote every few years for our member of parliament who can then take the time to poll

us on specific issues as they come up. Unfortunately Scott Reid's approach to this is laughable in its absurdly biased and inflammatory "polls" that reduce complex social issues into stark black and white. 

Last time it was the housing tragedy in some of the First Nation communities where in effect, the "poll" blamed the victims. In his latest round he takes on the Kyoto Agreement, positing two extreme options. To call Kyoto a failure is to deny the 189 countries that have ratified the first global cooperative treaty to tackle climate change. This is a treaty that has always been viewed as a transition to a more inclusive and comprehensive one. To our global shame, this is the very first time in Canada's 145-year history that we have withdrawn from an international treaty we have ratified.

Let's look at the other part of this "poll" – the supposed cost of $14 billion if we continued in Kyoto. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in Kyoto that obliges us to spend so much as a dime. We had agreed to a 6% reduction from 1990 levels of greenhouse gases, but our emissions have actually increased by 25%. The spin here is that after doing nothing to reduce emissions with only a year left in the Kyoto timeline, it could cost us that to go out and purchase enough carbon credits to meet our targets. But there is no obligation to do so and the only penalty for not meeting targets would be a top up for any reduction commitments in round two of the Kyoto negotiations.

Kyoto and climate change, like other big issues of our times, is a complex problem that requires ongoing thoughtful dialogue and concrete action. Sending out extremely partisan propaganda to create simplistic wedge issues using our taxes to pay for it is not my idea of democracy at work.

Bob Argue

Central Frontenac bag tags and clear bags

It is interesting to note, that in spite of the many questions and complaints about the proposed (and actually decided upon) decisions concerning the bag-tag/clear bag changeover system, nothing has been done by the township powers-that-be.

I am involved with the Happy Gang Seniors in Arden, and none of the members that I know of agrees with what is being/has been decided - to wit, canceling/refusing to accept previously purchased tags after April 1, 2012. As previous writers have pointed out, this is not only unfair but the legality of same is questionable. They were purchased in good faith and now have been given an expiration date. This to me is the same as changing the rules of the game after the opening buzzer has sounded.

If this is not a money grab from the taxpayers, and we have been assured that it is not, but merely a method to ensure that re-cycling is being followed, what is wrong with allowing the use of our own clear bags, if we have them, with bag tags attached, until such time as no more tags exist and then accepting only bags issued by the township? This will cost the township nothing, allow us to use up our purchased tags and still follow the re-cycling guidelines set out by the township.

Also, one on my neighbors, who arrives around May 24 and leaves for the winter after the Thanksgiving weekend, called me from their winter residence to find out if what they had heard about the tag expiration date was true. Sadly, I had to tell them it was. How many other “summer residents” will be surprised and upset when they also find out that the tags they purchased and failed to use up will be no good when they try to use them in the spring?

Come on Councilors, do the right thing for the people who elected you.

Jack Patterson

Re: Black Rat Snake

MPP Randy Hillier is credited with implying that scientists produce regulations such as the silly one proposed for Black (Grey) Rat Snake protection (With friends like the MNR, the Black Rat snake might not need enemies, Feb 9/12). Scientists don't produce regulations. That is not their job. Regulations are the work of bureaucrats, policy wonks and, sometimes, politicians.

The Ministry of Natural Resources has shown signs of protecting itself from budget cuts by becoming a police service for the provincial government. An example was the assignment of an MNR officer to spend days in a tree to gather evidence against two people near Ottawa who processed a home-grown pig and illegally shared the meat. MNR may be retreating into a "regulatory" role and relinquishing its responsibility for stewardship of natural resources. The unanswered question about the Grey Rat Snake protection is: will the snake police have sidearms?

Gray Merriam

Re: Black Rat Snake

Having read your front page article (With friends like the MNR, the Black Rat snake might not need enemies, Feb 9/12) on the Grey Rat Snake and the information you provided to your readers on the heavy handed approach the Ministry of Natural Resources was using in this issue, I felt it necessary to do a little research to verify the theme of this story.

After making a couple of telephone calls to government offices, I learned that all landowners in the “Frontenac Axis” which may have Grey Rat Snake habitat on their property did, in fact, receive a letter from MNR asking for their personal input on how to proceed with the protection of the Grey Rat Snake which is on the “species at risk” list. The letter was dated Dec. 21, 2011, and went out to all landowners in City of Kingston, Perth, Gananoque, Twp. of South Frontenac, Twp. of Central Frontenac, Twp. of Frontenac Islands, Tay Valley Township, Drummond Twp. and all of Leeds and Grenville who may be impacted by this regulation. MNR explained in the letter that the Species At Risk Stewardship Fund and the Farm Incentive program are intended to support eligible landowners and farms or businesses if the proposed regulation has a negative impact on their property.

The MNR gave every landowner a two-month window in which they could respond indicating how this regulation would impact their property and asking for their input.

Contrary to M.P.P. Randy Hillier’s comments quoted in your article, on this occasion, the ministry recognizes the value of landowners’ input before moving forward with any new regulation that may affect their property.

I hope this will shed a little positive light on this issue of the Grey Rat Snake.

Bill MacDonald

Re: SF backs off protest

In the article about South Frontenac deciding whether to purchase a Caterpillar piece of equipment or not (South Frontenac Council, Feb 16/16), I was really disappointed to read that a solicitor had stuck their nose into the situation to stop a very founded refusal to purchase from this unconscionable company Caterpillar.

Perhaps if we had more people with a moral backbone to speak out, and take action against these types of selfish greedy corporations, by hitting their bottom line in any way we have the power, as this is the ONLY criteria they hold dear. I'm sure if a referendum or poll were to be carried out, and not decided by a group of persons so easily swayed from making the correct moral judgement, it would be a resounding vote to dump Caterpillar no matter what the cost.

More needs to be done by those placed in the trust of its residents than to follow the corporate mantra and screw as many people as possible for the greatest profit. Where has good moral business ethics gone, where people count? It's about time we had a re-think on how to be more compassionate in our business dealings with each other.

This ideal should come from the top but so far has no signs of doing so. Therefore should not our 'wonderful' PM Harper who was trumping a photo OP success with Caterpillar a very short time ago, giving them millions of our hard earned tax dollars, be demanding that money back??