–    Province Committed to Maintaining Roads and Bridges

New from Ontario’s Mnistry of Transportation

August 28^th, 2015 – Driver and vehicle licence fee increases come into effect on September 1, 2015 in order to help maintain Ontario’s road safety, support key services and improve crucial transportation infrastructure.

Fees for driver licences, renewals, replacements and commercial permits are among those increasing.

These changes support the recommendations of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services to cover the rising costs of maintaining provincial roads, bridges and highways, enhance cost recovery for the delivery of driver and vehicle licensing services, and to support quality public services Ontarians rely on every day. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress,” said the late great Indian civil rights activist and humanitarian Mahatma Gandhi, “can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

With that, it was disgusting to read that Hybrid Turkeys – an Ontario-based corporation and one of the largest breeders and distributors of turkeys for food on the continent – was fined a mere $5,600 after pleading guilty in an Ontario court this August to one count of animal cruelty committed at one of its turkey farms in the Kitchener, Ontario area.

An alleged victim, crippled and in pain, from an undercover video in the Hybrid Turkeys animal cruelty case.

The animal cruelty case, brought to the court by the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) after an undercover video, produced by an Ottawa-based animal advocacy group Mercy for Animals Canada, allegedly showed employees inside one of the company’s barns kicking and clubbing turkeys to a point of severely maiming them.

The video, which I am providing a link to further down in this post, was broadcast, in part, on CBC’s Marketplace program and is sickening to watch, although not much more sickening than the joke of a  fine the Ontario court meted out and the fact that charges against five employees caught in the abuse of the birds were dropped. Continue reading →

• Apllications Now Open To Local Environmental Stewards

News from Ontario’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change

August 27^th, 2015 – Ontario is calling on community groups to help protect, restore and enhance the Great Lakes by applying for a Great Lakes Guardian Community Fund grant.

Lake Ontario and Lake Erie and beyond from space. Click on the image to enlarge and you may see the Niagara River connecting the two lakes. These are our precious life-sustaining fresh waters to protect and preserve.

Now in its fourth year, the fund provides a grant of up to $25,000 to not-for-profit organizations, schools, First Nations and Métis communities and other local groups for projects that have a direct environmental benefit to the Great Lakes. Past projects and activities supported by the fund have included:

• Planting trees
• Creating rain gardens
• Restoring wetland habitat
• Controlling invasive species
• Cleaning up beaches or shorelines
• Naturalizing stream banks and shorelines.

Applications will be accepted until October 23, 2015. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

If you’ve been following federal politics in Canada, you may have seen the TV ad the Harper government put out earlier this summer.

Mike Duffy (left) and Stephen Harper, who appointed him to Canada’s Senate and welcomed his presence at Conservative Party fundraisers, during better times.

It is the one that begins with a shot of harper at his desk, seemingly working away late into the day on the issues at hand.

“Most of the decisions you have to make in this job are hard ones,” says Harper in a voice over for the ad. “You have to confront issues you never expected,” he continues over an old photo of him shaking hands when then-Senator Mike Duffy, who is now fighting criminal charges in court.

“You can’t be bound by ideology (and) you don’t have the luxury of only making popular choices,” adds what we are given to believe is our hands-on, hard-working prime minister before he gets up and turns off the office lights to the line; “And on a good day you get to go home feeling you lived up to the job.”

Based on testimony coming out at the Duffy trial in recent weeks from Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright and the former legal counsel to the Prime Minister’s Office Ben Perrin, the portrait of Harper painted in this ad is a steaming pile of crap. Continue reading →

A Brief from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

There goes another one of Niagara, Ontario’s iconic, locally owned businesses.

Photo courtesy of Julia Blushak

Niagara Central Hobbies – better known to generations of Niagara residents as ‘The Hobby Shop’ on St. Paul Street in St. Catharines – is closing this Saturday, August 29^th after 68 years in business.

Founded in 1947 by General Motors worker Ray Stewart whose daughter Maria Lounsbury, her husband Ray and other members of the Lounsbury family have kept operating over the years, the Hobby (shop) as I can’t stop calling it was the go-to place for electric trains, model cars and ships and planes and dollhouses, and a vast range of other inventory for anyone interested in arts and crafts. Continue reading →

By John Bacher

The electorate is catching up to the reality of climate change in Canada with a speed that should encourage the most pessimistic about the reality of human sin.

2013 flood in Calgary Alberta area wreaks devastating havoc on people and property.

While Pope Francis, in his recent Encyclical letter “Laudato S,i” recognized that; “the climate is a common good, belonging to us all and meant for all”, many despair of voters sharing  his understanding that it is imperiled “mainly as a result of human activity.” This breakthrough to higher consciousness was witnessed earlier this year in Canada’s most oil rich province when voters elected Rachel Notley to be Alberta’s Premier. Continue reading →

(A Brief Note from Niagara At Large – Check out the reference to climate change in the third paragraph of this media release.

While the climate change deniers out there continue to oppose any policies or plans that involve shifting away from oil and other carbon-emitting sources of energy, the costs we are all paying for property destruction, escalating insurance premiums and food prices due to an every higher frequency of  severe flooding, drought, wildfires, wind and hail storms and other climate-related disasters are becoming ever more unsustainable.

The Harper government never factors these costs in to its pitch for staying the course on expanding the tar sands expansion.)

News from the Ontario Government

Province to Better Support Individuals and Municipalities Following Natural Disasters

Queen’s Park, August, 2015) – Ontario is making it easier and faster for municipalities and individuals to get financial assistance following natural disasters.

Requests for provincial disaster assistance have doubled in the last five years and are expected to continue to rise due to climate change. As a result, the province is replacing the Ontario Disaster Relief Assistance Program with two new programs that will be more responsive to the needs of individuals and communities following a natural disaster. Continue reading →

A Brief  from Doug Draper at Niagara At Large

When former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was returning home this August 20^th from his first radiation treatment following his recent statements that he has been diagnosed with cancer, the following sign was lining streets in his Plains Georgia neighbhourhood.

“I think this is one campaign we can all get behind—Jimmy Carter for Cancer Survivor,” said someone who participated in placing the signs in Jimmy Carter’s neighbhourhood.

For the full article on his homecoming and the sign that greeted him, click on the Georgia-based The Daily Kos at – http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/21/1414169/-After-first-treatment-Jimmy-Carter-and-family-returned-home-to-see-the-streets-lined-with-support?detail=facebook

A related commentary posted on Niagara At Large this August 20^th can be viewed by clicking  on – https://voiceofniagara.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=14599&action=edit .

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more newsand commentary.

(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

A recent headline on the front page of the business section of The Globe and Mail read; $29 Billion And Climbing’.

The headline was calling attention to the escalating costs Canadians are paying each year for pharmaceutical drugs- costs that are becoming unaffordable to growing numbers of us.

“The annual cost of prescription drugs hit near $29-billion last year – and that number is on the rise,” reads an introduction to the article under the headline. “As more Canadians seek more medication, a patchwork system of pharmaceutical coverage is under pressure.”

There is an answer to this looming crisis that threatens to bankrupt what private and public drug insurance plans are around and place an impossible burden on individuals and families that don’t have drub benefits. It is called pharmacare and several studies – the most recent one published earlier this 2015 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal – could save (not cost) Canadians somewhere between $4 billion and $11 billion a year! Continue reading →

A Note from Doug Draper

One of the last of the truly compassionate Conservatives from the Joe Clark/Flora MacDonald era, Joe Reid passed away earlier this August at age 97.

Joe Reid, a lawyer by trade, was a mayor of the Niagara, Ontario municipality of St. Catharines in from 1979 through the 1980s served as a federal Member of Parliament under the leadership of then-Progressive Conservative prime ministers Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney when there was still a streak of progressive running through a party that has nothing in common with what has metastasized under the jackboots of Stephen Harper today. Continue reading →

An electric car being re-charged

News from Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro

August 18^th, 2015 – Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro announced today their collaborative partnership with Tech Mahindra Ltd. to build an Intelligent Electric Vehicle Charging System (IEVCS) designed to contribute toward Ontario’s clean energy future.

“The potential load impact of electric vehicle charging on transformers is something that needs to be taken into consideration by local distribution companies,” said Tim Curtis, President, Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro. “This innovative project will provide an alternative to expensive upgrades to our distribution system as Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro customers contemplate switching to electric vehicles.” Continue reading →

From Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Most media outlets wait until the final days before we vote to declare their position on the parties running in an election.

Stephen Harper has changed Canada, alright – for the worse.

They wait until the final days even though many of them – and I can say this for a fact as someone who has worked for news outlets for the better part of 40 years  – had a well-baked position in the oven before the election was even called. So much so that they have readers or viewers saying; ‘I can tell by their reporting that this newspaper has a Liberal bias or that news station has a Conservative bias’, and so on.

There is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to humans doing the reporting, however much we may try to be objective. We’re not recording machines. The most we can hope for out of anyone reporting news is fairness and accuracy

So with little more than eight weeks to go before Canadians go to the polls on October 19^th to vote in this federal election, I am not going to leave any you guessing where this online news outlet stands, if you don’t know already. As publisher and the principle writer at Niagara At Large, I’m putting all the cards I have at this point on the table now. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

For three days in a row, starting this past August 17^th, Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, rain full page ads in the back of its front section, promoting the federal leaders’ debate The Globe will be hosting this coming September 17^th.

Canada’s Green Party Leader Elizabeth May

“An epic fight four years in the making,” reads a headline for the ad above images of three, not four federal leaders. Missing and so far not invited to join in the Globe debate with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is Canada’s Green Party Leader Elizabeth May- and that is not only unfair, it speaks poorly of a newspaper I otherwise have a great deal of respect for around the thoughtfulness and accuracy of its political coverage and commentary. Continue reading →

A Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper –

As a hopelessly addicted newspaper reader, one of the first sections of any newspaper I turn to is the Letters to the Editor section where more frequently than you may imagine, you can find a letter that – in just a couple of paragraphs – does a better job of pinning the tail on the donkey than a news article half a page long.

As the stench of deception and scandal continues to envelope Canada’s Harper government as the trial over former senator Mike Duffy’s alleged fraud and bribery trial, a letter to the editor ran in The Globe and Mail this past August 18^th that pinned that tail right where it belongs.

Here is the letter – Continue reading →

A Note from Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

He’s America’s Joe Clark.

And like Joe Clark, who served as leader of Canada’s Conservative Party and as the country’s prime minister for a brief time during the mid- to late 1970s, Jimmy Carter, who served one term as America’s president during the same period, has never really gotten the respect he deserves from his nation’s citizenry.

Both men brought to high office an honest and decency and intelligence we too rarely see in our politicians. Yet neither were granted the time and support they needed to fulfill agendas they may very well contributed to a better world for all of us today.

With that in mind, it was said to learn from a statement Jimmy Carter released himself this past August12th that he is now battling cancer. Continue reading →

News from the Office of Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown

(A Brief Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper – Patrick Brown has only been leader of Ontario’s PC Party for a matter of months and it remains to be seen whether he will chart a different path than his predecessors Mike Harris and Tim Hudak when it comes to the province’s municipalities.

Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown

While Ontario premier from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, Harris did more cutting and gutting of public services than any other premier in the last 50 years, leaving a number of them downloaded on municipalities that had little choice but to raise property taxes and user fees to cover the cost. Continue reading →

News from Ontario’s NDP Leader

Niagara Falls, August 17^th, 2015 – Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath delivered an address to the annual Association of Municipalities Ontario conference in Niagara Falls on Monday.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

“We must be focused on finding solutions that work for communities in Ontario,” said Horwath. “We are stronger when the province and municipalities work together. It is how we built this province.”

Horwath reiterated the Ontario NDP’s commitment to infrastructure investment – including for the Ring of Fire – and said that the (provincial) Liberal (government) plan to sell off Hydro One is the wrong way to address those needed revenues.

“Owning our hydro and investing in infrastructure has never been an either-or choice,” said Horwath. “The best decisions are based on the facts, not on ideology and not on catering to a small group of powerful friends and insiders. By those measures, the scheme to sell-off and privatize Hydro One – to trade long-term stable revenues for a one-time cheque – is a bad decision.” Continue reading →

News from Ontario’s Niagara Parks Commission

Queenston, Ontario, August 18^th, 2015 – The Niagara Parks Commission (NPC) is pleased to announce the return of its Annual Harvest Barbecue at Queenston Heights on Sunday, August 30.

Niagara Parks’ scenic Queenston Heights park overlooking the lower Niagara River

Set against the stunning backdrop of the lower Niagara River in the heart of wine country, the Annual Harvest Barbeque will begin at 4 p.m. on the patio of Queenston Heights Restaurant, located next to Brock’s Monument.

NPC’s world-renowned chefs have once again created an irresistible menu featuring Niagara’s seasonal harvest, which will be showcased at six specific dining stations. Other popular tasting stations will include samples from Château Des Charmes, Inniskillin, Jackson-Triggs, Reif Estate Winery, Mike Weir Winery and Niagara Oast House Brewers. Continue reading →

News from Niagara, Ontario’s Regional Government

August 18th, 2015– Niagara Region is among 45 communities selected to take part in The Healthy Kids Community Challenge, which promotes healthy eating, physical activity and healthy lifestyle choices for children. The region is receiving $1.125 million from Ontario to fund local community projects.

Niagara Regional Headquarters

The Niagara Healthy Kids Community Challenge has been championed by the region’s 12 local area municipalities, key community partners and the local business community, who will come together to deliver programs for children and their families that support healthy habits.

The Healthy Kids Community Challenge combines a community-based approach with centralized provincial supports to help communities develop and implement policies, programs and environmental supports that enable one common outcome: healthy children. Continue reading →

A Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

This is to inform all of you – our many subscribers and those who go frequently to this site, or have just discovered it for the first time – that Niagara At Large will be out of service until Wednesday, August 19^th.

I can never go back to those days when newspapers could be king, but we can try to do something here for our region of the world and those of us who have a common determination to make life good for our friends and neighbours and for our children. A too old file photo of Doug Draper, working for a once-proud Niagara, Ontario newspaper

That means that we will not be posting any news or commentary, or be able to post comments from readers until that date, all due to the fact that our hard drives and other systems will be down for updating and repair.

An online news site (note that I have always refused to call Niagara At Large a blog, with all the baggage that carries) going down for any length of time is risky and potentially suicidal since there is, at the end of the day, no loyalty to any one site in the internet sphere. Over-riding wisdom has it that if you are not “feeding the beast,” as in posting engaging content on a site every day, you are dead, due to all the other online competition out there.

This may be true. And it will be truer than true for Niagara At Large if we re-launch on August 19^th and there is no one on the other end of cyber space who cares.

But this NAL publisher needs to fix computer issues that have been neglected too long through the last brutally cold winter, and one that had me dealing with some tragic sickness and family too. Continue reading →

New from the Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association

Fort Erie, Ontario – The Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association (CCFA) of Niagara invites local residents to celebrate 70 years of uninterrupted diplomatic relations between Canada and Cuba with a BBQ of Cuban food and music to meet Toronto Consul-General Javier Domokos Ruiz and his staff, who will be available to answer questions on Cuba’s latest developments.

This , at 1760 Ridge Road in Ridgeway (Fort Erie) between 1:30 pm and 6:00 pm on Sunday, August 2^nd. 

The celebration comes in the wake of the United States re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba as well as the Cuban team competing in the Pan-Am Games. The BBQ is also a fundraiser to provide scholarships for local residents to volunteer in Cuba as part of the Canada-wide Che Guevara Volunteer Work Brigade which has sent five local residents to date. Continue reading →

A Plea from the International online activist group Avaaz 

An American dentist has made headlines for brutally shooting down a gentle lion named Cecil.

Cecil having a moment with one of his cubs

 But his despicable act has given us a fleeting opportunity to save the world’s lions.

Wealthy Americans and Europeans like him go to Africa and pay to hunt lions and other exotic animals for sport, and send their trophies home.
If all of us act right now we can get the US and Europe to ban the import of trophies when they threaten the survival of these majestic animals. Continue reading →

News from the American-based public interest group Alliance for the Great Lakes

(A Brief Note to this from Niagara At Large publisher – Former Ontario Liberal MPP for Niagara Falls and now councillor in that city put at least two if not three private member’s bills on the floor of the provincial legislature, calling for public access to the waterlines of beaches along our Great Lakes, but then premier Dalton McGuinty, along with the leaders and members of the other two mainstream parties, the Conservatives and NDP, didn’t give a fig.

How interesting that in the United States, a country usually far more protective of private property rights than Canada, continues to rule in favour of shoreline/beach access for the public, not only in the Lake Michigan area, but in other regions like Massachusetts, etc.)

This fence, installed by private homeowners right down to the waterline of Lake Erie in Fort Erie, Ontario, is a way of sayingto public beach walkers; ‘Do your walking somewhere else.’

Chicago, Illinois, July 29^th, 2015- TheAlliance for the Great Lakes, along with Save the Dunes, the state of Indiana and Long Beach Community Alliance, have prevailed in landmark litigation that upholds Indiana’s public trust protections — including the public’s right to recreate on its portion of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Indiana has long recognized and endorsed the public trust doctrine as applied to its water bodies. Under this doctrine, the state of Indiana holds title to the shore of Lake Michigan below the ordinary high-water mark in trust for the public to enjoy for recreation and other uses. Continue reading →

A Brief Commentary by Doug Draper

Just when the world was celebrating the successful efforts of one small group of humans to rescue a whale trapped on the rocky shoreline shoals of British Columbia earlier this month, there is this disgusting story.

Cecil the lion, blown away by a so-called ‘trophy hunter’ just for the friggin fun of it.

I am talking about the story reported late this July, 2015 about some asshole dentist, identified as Walter Palmer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A, working with a team of fellow ‘trophy hunters’ to lure a lion out of a wildlife sanctuary in Zimbabwe, Africa and blow it away.

And it was not just any lion that this tooth doctor drilled a a fatal arrow through. This lion was an iconic feline named Cecil – one of the most famous lions in the world and one that countless people travelled from abroad to catch even one fleeting glimpse of during a tour through the sanctuary. Continue reading →

By Nick Fillmore

In addition to the staging of the PanAm Games, Toronto was the location of some unusually high profile activities in recent days that were supposed to increase the efforts to tackle climate change.

The events raised some important questions: How effective are efforts to slow the increase of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, do Canadians agree on the extent of damage to our environment, and what do scientists say in their most recent reports about the degree of the threat? Continue reading →

News from Niagara, Ontario’s Riverbrink Museum

Italy’s scandalous and extravagant Marchesa di Casati known throughout Europe for her bizarre behavior and outrageous wardrobe, held lavish balls for which she had designed extraordinary costumes.

One such costume was the famous Fountain Dress, now re-created by costumier, Pam Mundy, for the RiverBrink Art Museum Gala Fundraiser “Primarily Porter” which is being held at Konzelmann’s Estate Winery on Monday, August 3^rd.

This special evening will start with canapes and sparkling wine on the lawns of Konzelmann Estate Winery at the edge of Lake Ontario. Continue reading →

A Brief Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

The passing of Flora MacDonald at age 89 this July 26^th is another reminder of what an ugly turn Canada’s Conservative Party has taken since the years she served it, all too many years ago, as a true voice for human compassion and justice.

The late, great Canadian Conservative Party icon Flora MacDonald

Flora MacDonald, who was shattering glass ceilings for women in politics through her years as a leading member of the Conservative Party from the John Diefenbaker and through the Joe Clark years in the late 1970s/early 1980s, was also the first woman to run for the leadership of one of Canada’s three major parties, losing in 1976 to Clark, who is scheduled to deliver the eulogy at her funeral. Continue reading →

–        Harper’s Attack on the ORPP an Attempt to Kill a Made-in-Ontario Solution for a Secure Retirement

News from Ontario Liberal Cabinet Minister and St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, July 27^th, 2015 – Stephen Harper’s refusal to help hard-working Ontarians build a secure retirement is a new low for a Prime Minister known for playing politics and ignoring evidence.

St. Catharines Liberal MPP and Ontario cabinet minister Jim Bradley.

 Last week, the Harper government publicly refused to cooperate with Ontario to create a provincial savings plan – the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) – despite knowing that many Canadians need help saving for a secure retirement and warnings from experts that people are not saving enough.

“Stephen Harper should be helping hard-working Ontarians save for retirement instead of attempting to obstruct our plan to ensure every person in the province can retire securely,” said Jim Bradley, MPP for St. Catharines. “It’s one thing to disagree or debate, but voters expect cooperation among governments on matters as serious as saving enough money to live on once you leave the workforce.” Continue reading →

A Brief Comment from Doug Draper

I’ve often railed against the damage and death we humans have wrought on other creatures on this planet. And yet it is important to remember there are also demonstrations of warmth and caring out there.

This desperate whale, stuck on the shoals of B.C., is back with her pod thanks to some human friends

One of them played out late this July, 2015 on the shores of British Columbia when a young female orca (known more unfortunately in human parlance as a “killer whale”) was discovered trapped on rocky shoals at low tide.

A wonderful marine researcher named Hermann Meuter and others cuddled, whispered to and soaked this whale with water until, many hours later, the tide came back out and she was able to rejoin a pod (‘pod’ means extended language in whale language) waiting for her off-shore.

“I think she knew that we were all there to help her,” siad Meuter in an interview with CBC. “We all cared about this whale and we were all very lucky to give that whale another chance.” Continue reading →

By John Bacher 

On May 13, 2015 the Niagara Region submitted its briefing paper to the panel headed by former Toronto Mayor, David Crombie on the Co-ordinated Provincial Plan Review.

Due to a loss of canning companies around bad trade deals or just pressing in on our farmlands in ways that governments do not give them the support they deserve, we lose these precious growing lands in our region and country. File photo by Doug Draper

The contents of this audacious but revealing document can be summed up well with a parody of one of the plans being reviewed- the Growth Plan, more commonly called “Places to Grow.” What the Niagara Region’s government is calling for, quite simply, is “Places to Sprawl.”

In horrible details, Niagara Region’s government, with the backing of its 12 local municipalities, comes up with a revolting litany of ways to bulldoze down planning regulations that guard against a blight of low density sprawl further into this region’s green lands. Cleverly, it suggests a way which, if implemented, would simply dissolve the Greenbelt as a planning tool. Continue reading →

Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

Garden Walk Buffalo – one of the largest garden tour on the continent and still free after all of its 21 years – is back this Saturday, July 25^th and Sunday, July 26^th.

And if you classic old American neighbourhoods and the best of lawns and gardens framed in classic Federick Olmsted urban landscape, do yourself a favour by joining tens-of-thousands of others in this annual right of summer.

Garden Walk Buffalo now features close to 400 gardens, with free shuttle bus rides running from neighbhourhood to neighbourhood where the clusters of gardens are located, and runs each day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Detailed maps for the garden locations are available both days at headquarters who kind find by clicking on the Garden Walk link included further down in this post. Continue reading →

News from the Ontario Government

(A Note from Niagara At Large – This post includes a counterpoint, inserted at the bottom from Ontario’s New Deomcratic Party.)

Queen’s Park, Toronto, July 20^th, 2015 – Ontario is investing more than $7 million in small hospitals, including many rural hospitals, to improve patient care close to home.

The ongoing campaign to keep hospital-based health care in Ontario alive.

This funding will help more than 50 hospitals across Ontario improve care for patients through measures such as:

• Reducing wait times
• Providing staff with additional clinical education
• Expanding programs in partnership with community organizations.

 Today, Dr. Eric Hoskins, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, was at the Campbellford Memorial Hospital in Northumberland County to announce this funding. The minister also marked the upcoming opening of the new Hastings Field House, which, beginning August 30^th, will offer a six-month program for people with vascular disease, including those who have suffered a heart attack or stroke. The Cardiovascular Rehabilitation and Secondary Prevention will include education, self-management training and exercise for people with vascular disease. Continue reading →

– We Must Do Our Most To Protect And Preserve It

A Brief Commentary from NAL publisher Doug Draper

As a NASA space probe beams back astonishing images of the ninth stone from the sun – the planet Pluto – from billions of miles in space, there are a few things we humans (who like to think of ourselves as the most intelligent beings on our planet) ought to consider.

Pluto up close. It is cold and dark out there. Want to try living there? How ’bout’ working a little harder to look afer our planet Earth?

The first stems from my earliest introduction to Pluto when one of my grade school teachers covered a blackboard with a large poster of our universe, showing that wee, little planet out there, furthest away from the sun. I recall thinking how dark, cold and lonely a place Pluto must be.

To no one’s surprise, the images of the place coming in to NASA, have its experts saying there may be some possibility of “geological activity” occurring on the planet – i.e. volcanic eruptions taking place above a surface coated with sheets of frozen methane gas – but there are no signs of life approaching anything we are aware of on our Earth over the past many millions of years. Continue reading →

By Nick Fillmore

If a group constructing a massive project for you set a budget of $1.4-billion, but later came back and said they were spending $2.5-billion, what would you do? Normally you would probably throw the whole team out the door, and perhaps sue them for the $1.1-billion overrun.

Wow. Look at all the empty seats for Pan Am rugby matches, whatever kind of ivory league school sport rugby is in the first place. But then who other than the elites can afford to attend these ‘Games’. According to a recent CBC report, tickets for the closing ceremonies are not going up to and over $1,400 dollars. But the rest of us will be paying the bills for all of this long after those closing ceremonies are over.

But in this case, the $1.1-billion overrun belongs to former Premier David Peterson’s Pan Am Games organizing committee, and even though two officers were fired, expenses continue to climb. By the time they’re finished, I’ll bet it will cost $3-billion – well over double the amount we were told in the beginning we would be paying.

But considering that the Games are a big hit with influential folks in Toronto, there’s not nearly as much criticism of the atrocious waste of money as there would be if, say, Toronto Community Housing was found to have greatly overspent.

http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2014/11/27/pan-am-games-costs-still-rising/

Moreover, it seems that the proud folks of our “world class city” don’t want to blemish the image of the Games, which are running in Toronto and across Southwestern Ontario from July 7 to 26, followed by the ParaPan Am Games, August 7 to 15. Continue reading →

News from Brock University

Brock University, St. Catharines, Ont., July 16^th, 2015 – Award-winning aboriginal Canadian actress, playwright and filmmaker Shirley Cheechoo has been named as the next Chancellor of Brock University.

Brock University’s new Chancellor Shirley Cheechoo. Photo from Brock University

 In making the announcement, University President Jack Lightstone said Cheechoo accepted the invitation after her nomination was unanimously endorsed by Brock’s Senate and Board of Trustees. She will be installed for a three-year term at Brock’s fall convocation ceremony on Oct 17.

 The eighth chancellor in Brock’s 51-year history, Cheechoo is the first woman and the first aboriginal Canadian to hold the ceremonial leadership role. She succeeds businessman and philanthropist Ned Goodman, who is stepping down after serving as Chancellor since 2007. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

I don’t know about you, but I have already heard more than enough about the Pan Am Games. And they are just getting underway this July 10^th in in Toronto, Ontario and neighouring municipalities.

Ping Pong? Hell, for more than two-and-a-half billion dollars, why not have lawn darts on the Pan Am Games venue too?

CBC radio and television, which I normally have some respect for, has been going giddy over this high-priced venue for sweaty jock straps for weeks now.

Just a few nights ago, CBC’s The National, did a feature on Canadian ping pong ‘champs’ readying themselves to compete in these games. What next? Are there competitions in lawn darts and paddle ball to do features on.

One thing I know. I’d rather watch flies trying to poke their way through a screen to my dining room than spend a day watching ping pong on TV. And I sure don’t think we, the taxpayers of Ontario, should be paying more than a two and a half billion dollars for the privilege. Continue reading →

A Message from the Office of Canada’s Green Party Leader Elizabeth May

Ottawa, Canada, July 8^th, 2015 – The Green Party of Canada calls on the Leaders of all parties to acknowledge the scientific consensus that the wildfires and extreme weather we are witnessing today are an indicator of what is to come as global warming intensifies.

Canada’s Green Party leader Elizabeth May calls for more national action on climage change.

Forest fires are nothing new and occasionally we have a bad year. “But the extent of wildfires burning across western Canada today is unprecedented: the total area burned by July 5th is the same amount that burned by August 5th last year and the 2014 fire season was the 5th worst of all time in BC”

Claire Martin, meteorologist and Green Party Climate Change Critic observes, “The wildfires burning this early in the season across the west are an indicator of a dangerously parched environment right now, and consistent with many scientists’ predictions.  Conditions like we have now are expected to increase in frequency with climate change.” Continue reading →

Ontario, Canada, July 9th, 2015 – Ontario and 21 other states and regions have signed the first-ever Pan-American action statement on climate change. Ontario Kathleen Wynne hosts signing of climate agreement The Climate Action Statement highlights the urgency of combatting climate change, affirms that state, provincial and municipal governments are leaders in achieving impactful global climate action and acknowledges the need to work together to continue reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne led the signing today at the Climate Summit of the Americas. The statement includes commitments to: Support carbon pricing; Ensure public reporting; Take action in key sectors; Meet existing greenhouse gas reduction agreements. Signatories include representatives of states and regions from across the Americas, including Brazil, Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. The statement builds on recent agreements, including California’s Under 2 Memorandum of Understanding, which stresses the need for immediate action to limit global warming to 2°C, and the Compact of States and Regions, which commits partner jurisdictions to annual public reporting of greenhouse gas emissions. The statement calls for greater national action at the United Nations Conference of the Parties in Paris, and support for regional measures. It also builds on Ontario’s actions to address climate change, which include the announcement of a cap and trade program to limit the main sources of greenhouse gas pollution, the establishment of a 2030 mid-term target for greenhouse gas pollution reduction, the closure of all coal-fired power plants and the largest infrastructure investment in Ontario’s history, which includes the electrification of the province’s commuter rail network. Combatting climate change is part of the government’s economic plan to build Ontario up. The four-part plan includes investing in people’s talents and skills, making the largest investment in public infrastructure in Ontario’s history, creating a dynamic, innovative environment where business thrives and building a secure retirement savings plan.

QUICK FACTS Combatting climate change creates new economic opportunities in renewable energy and clean technologies. Ontario’s environmental sector has 3,000 firms, employs 65,000 people, and is worth an estimated $8 billion in annual revenues and $1 billion in export earnings. According to the Conference Board of Canada, every $100 million invested in Ontario in climate-related technologies is estimated to generate an increase of $137 million in GDP and 1,400 new jobs. A Canada2020 poll shows that 84 per cent of Canadians believe that prosperous countries such as Canada have an obligation to show international leadership in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION Climate Action Statement – Climate Summit of the Americas

Continue reading →

A Comment from Ontario’s Conservative Party

QUEEN’S PARK, Ontario, July 7^th, 2015 – The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario’s 2015 report, Feeling the Heat, is another example of the Wynne Liberals saying one thing and doing another. With the Environmental Commissioner confirming that Ontario is set to miss its 2020 greenhouse gas targets, the Liberal’s empty promises and lack of leadership are evident once again.

March in Toronto prior to this July’s climate summit

“The Liberals make grand promises without a realistic plan to reach them. They are more focused on environmental photo-ops than actually hitting their targets,” said PC environment critic Lisa Thompson. “Much like the Liberal’s plan to balance the budget, this report confirms that the government’s climate change action plan is unrealistic.”

No matter what the Liberals call their carbon tax it will have the same results: increasing cost of living for Ontarians and businesses will continue to find it difficult to compete. Continue reading →

By John Bacher

An obscure regulation will come into effect this July as a result of an initiative of the Conservative government of Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper. It prohibits the construction of any new coal burning electrical plant in Canada and will phase out those currently operating by the year 2061.

Harper’s go slow approach to coal burning electrical generation, which Ontario has already demonstrated (through its already accomplished shut down of coal-fired plants) is one of the low hanging fruit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, should be the focus of a national political debate.

While provinces have the power to follow Ontario’s lead and shut down coal burning plants, the federal government has the opportunity to offer incentives to do so. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

‘Don’t dare ever mention the A-word.’

As a journalist in Niagara, Ontario, I’ve heard variations of that line around municipal council tables in this region for the better part of for more than 30 years.

Niagara regional headquarters

It’s as if any talk of amalgamating municipalities in this region is akin to promoting some form of pornography or an apocalypse. And it’s as much to say; ‘Let’s continue on with a xenophobia and narrow, parochial vision that continues to prop up 13 municipal corporations in Niagara that have fail we, the people, so much that our region continues to suffer one of the highest unemployment rates in Canada, that continues to see young people coming out of college and university fleeing this region for greener pastures, and that continues to resist building a truly regional transit system that has been available in almost every other region in southern Ontario for more than a decade now.

So we should say thanks to Tom Rankin of Niagara-based Rankin Construction and to a handful of other prominent business people in Niagara for attending a roundtable of regional government this June and calling for another look at amalgamating our 13 – yes that’s right, THIRTEEN – municipalities in to one.

These business people and others in the past have tried to make a case that attracting more businesses and jobs to Niagara has suffered from the amount of bureaucracy that has to be gone through dealing with two levels of municipal government. But over and over again, due to too many mayors and councillors at the local level who place parochial interests above the interests of Niagara as a whole, these calls for a united region have gone nowhere. Continue reading →

News from the Sierra Club Niagara Group, Buffalo New York

Climate and Clean Energy Writers Group

Monday, July 6th, 2015 Session:

Haven’t had time to read the

       Pope’s Climate Encyclical?

Walk through Laudato Si with

Sister Eileen O’Connor, 

Member, Diocesan Care for Creation Committee            

6:00-7:30 PM

Unitarian Universalist Church

695 Elmwood at Ferry (Garden Entrance)

2nd Floor Alliance Room

Free and open to the public

For more information on the Sierra Club Niagara Group click on http://niagarasierraclub.com/ .

(Niagara At Large now invites all of you care to share your real first and last name to respond to this post below.)

A Commentary by Doug Draper

As this Canada Day was approaching, I have found myself feeling distant from – and sometimes even a little angry with – this country I grew up feeling so proud of.

The relentless craving for more and more tax cuts, followed by the gutting of services around health care, education, public and infrastructure renewal and environmental protection ignited that feeling of distance.

Then there was that pig-fest of a senate, the muzzling of what is left of our publicly-paid-for scientists, the war on citizen activists and our aboriginal people – as if they are enemies of out state ot terrorsits – and the transformation of our nation’s role in the rest of the world from peacekeeper to warrior – bomb, bomb, bomb!

All of it left me thinking about flying my Canadian flag upside down on this Canada Day. Continue reading →

A Brief Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

Thirty years ago this June 23^rd, an Air India flight, carrying 329 passengers and crew, took off on Canadian soil and was blown to pieces by a bomb planted on board above the seas off Ireland, killing them all.

A piece of the Air India jet found floating in the north Atlantic 30 years ago this June

Thirty years later, it remains (in terms of high loss of human life alone) the worst act of domestic terrorism ever perpetrated on Canadian soil. And what is more than scandalous 30 years later, not one of the perpetrators of this horrific crime have been brought to justice yet – even though it is fairly well known, through various investigations and a public inquiry that ultimately went no where, who one or more of these perpetrators are.

Isn’t it something how quickly the Harper government can act to get a draconian anti-terrorist law (C-51) passed, less than a year after some domestic wack job murdered a sentry on duty at Canada’s tomb of the unknown soldier, then walked into the halls of the federal parliament wielding a gun before he was gunned down.

Could it be that Harper and company drew up and passed this law – an act many constitutional scholars in Canada fear compromises our civil liberties – so fast because there they were, huddled behind doors, with a gunman on the other side, hunting them down?

Boy, we sure don’t see that kind of response from this Harper government on the mounting numbers of aboriginal women and girls that have gone murdered and missing, do we? And where is Harper’s response to make true restitution for the victims of residential schools? Continue reading →

A Brief from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

If you survived the boredom of grade school English classes enough to still have a place in your heart for the plays of William Shakespeare, don’t miss a chance to enjoy two of his greatest ones in one of the most scenic settings in our Greater Niagara Region.

Shakespeare In Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York is back for 40th season. File photo by Doug Draper

The 40^th season of Shakespeare in Delaware Park is already underway in Buffalo, New York with Romeo & Juliet on now followed byTwelfth Night later this summer.

These performances remain free to the public after all these years despite government cut backs to the arts, which is why members of the cast will walk up the hill during the intermission asking members of the audience to place a small cash donation in a hat.

And it is always a wonderful cast, including some of the best theatrical actors in Western New York. Continue reading →

News from Niagara, Ontario’s Amalgamated Hospital System

Niagara Health System’s Annual Report titled Forward, which was released today at our Annual General Meeting, highlights our successes and milestones from the past year and our future planning.

Niagara Health System’s super hospital complex in west St. Catharines

In choosing the theme Forward, we are conveying the message that we are actively moving ahead on a new and exciting path.

“Part of this new way forward is a deep acknowledgment that to move ahead, we need to be working proactively with those we serve and partnering arm-in-arm with our 12 communities, and with other health service providers and agencies across the region and beyond,” says NHS President Dr. Suzanne Johnston.

Added Dr. Barry Wright, Chair of the NHS Board of Directors: “Our health system has experienced amazing successes and developments in the past year. We’ve attracted new leaders, staff and physicians and we are proud of our emerging culture. We continue to develop a culture of safety and quality, working with academic partners like Brock University, McMaster University and Niagara College. And we continue with the development for our ambitious future including a new South Niagara Hospital, and working with all communities to strengthen local healthcare.” Continue reading →

Niagara At Large is pleased to post the following on behalf of the good volunteers from Niagara Action for Animals

(Niagara At Large now invites all of you care to share your real first and last name to respond to this post below.)

 By Pamela Minns

“Everybody loves heritage – it is like mother and apple pie – EXCEPT when it costs money and interferes with what we call ‘progress’ “

There is only one heritage conference held in Ontario each year, so it is a big deal ! Former recent venues were Cornwall, Midland, Kingston and next year Stratford.

Our Niagara conference was held in Niagara on the Lake at the town’s beautiful Community Centre from April 30^th – May 3^rd, with opening and welcome Thursday night at Navy Hall. 

About 225 registered for this event, considerably less than I anticipated, given the popularity of Niagara on the Lake.

A lot happened at this conference – many speakers, bus tours, workshops, displays, networking and visits to various sites in the Region as well as AGMs at RiverBrink Art Museum in Queenston. Niagara is a perfect place for a conference of this type, with its rich history, built heritage and natural beauty.

The Keefer Inn in the Niagara, Ontario community of Thorold begain as the 19th century home of one of the region’s founding families and would have been destroyed had it not been for public and private partners at the local level working to save it, and convert it into a now beloved inn and restaurant. Photo by Doug Draper

Every time I attend one of these conference, I wonder why we have them at all when the people who should attend, don’t attend. I have attended many of these events over the years and I have met many wonderful, committed people involved in heritage, many of whom are still attending conferences.

BUT we are all “the converted”. We all know the importance of saving our heritage – we work at it every day. What about those who have no interest in heritage preservation, or are involved in things like real estate, law, development, insurance, municipal councils?

They deal with matters of designated heritage properties regularly, and based on many questions I hear from this group, most do not really understand designation. Some feel there is no use for an old building and that they should all be demolished to make way for new.

Do they ever think outside the box ? Those are the people who should be at these conferences to gain an understanding and appreciation of the absolute need for preservation. Do we need more building materials in our landfills? And if we have to boil it down to money — restoration is a huge economic driver! Continue reading →

A Brief Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

It is a line attributed some eight centuries ago to St. Francis of Assisi, the Italian friar who understood back then (and more than many of our most pathetic political leaders do today) that the survival of we humans depends a mighty great deal on how well we respect and treat the natural world around us.

We break down and degrage the life-sustaining gifts we’ve been granted on this planet, and we are tredding down a road to hell – it really is just about as simple as that. If you shit enough poison into the atmosphere, there will be no more life-giving air to breath!

Jorge Mario Bergoglia, the Argentine cleric who rose to the head of the Catholic church and now takes his name after that great saint, released an unprecedented, 184-page encyclical t June 18^th, 2015 calling for a world-wide “cultural revolution” to move away from oil, coal and other fossil fuels to head off the destructive effects of “catastrophic climate” for present and future generations.

“The pace of consumption, waste and environmeantl change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary life-style, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes,” says Pope Francis in this encyclical. Continue reading →

Another of countless dead fish washed up along the Ontario shores of Lake Erie in a slime of killer algae the province’s Conservation Authority administrators and board members has failed to effectively address.

News from the Alliance for the Great Lakes • Environmental Defense Canada • Environmental Defense Fund Freshwater Future • Michigan League of Conservation Voters • National Wildlife Federation Ohio Environmental Council

Quebec City, Quebec, Canada – This June 12^th, , the Governors of Ohio and Michigan and the Premier of Ontario announced a significant commitment to restore Lake Erie by putting an end to harmful algal blooms like the one last summer that left nearly 500,000 Toledo-area resident without safe drinking water.

We applaud their commitment to reduce the amount of nutrient pollution, specifically phosphorous, flowing into western Lake Erie by 40 percent – and we look forward to working with U.S. and Canadian public officials to take action to meet that goal. 

The commitment is an important step forward in keeping Lake Erie free of harmful algal blooms and, in turn, protecting our region’s economy, drinking water and way of life. The science is clear: dissolved phosphorus from agricultural runoff is driving the resurgence of harmful algal blooms. Continue reading →

 – NHS also better than provincial average in administrative expenses

News from the Niagara Health System, a Niagara, Ontario body responsible fr the operation of the region’s ‘s amalgamated hospital services

June 10th, 2015 – Niagara Health System (NHS) is pleased to report that the latest health performance indicators from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) show that we are performing better than the Canadian average in eight indicators and better than the Ontario and LHIN averages in Administrative Efficiency.

Niagara Health System’s super hospital complex in west St. Catharines

Highlights of the indicators released today as part of CIHI’s Your Health System initiative demonstrate NHS is performing:

• Better than the Canadian benchmark for Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio (HSMR);
• Better than the Canadian average for obstetrical trauma (with instrument) — also highlighted as a top performer since our results have been in the best 10 per cent of performances over the last three years;
• Better than the Canadian average for low-risk C-sections;
• Better than the Canadian average for readmissions (all patients; medical patients; obstetric patients; patients 19 years old and younger);
• Better than the Canadian average for worsened depressive mood in long-term care;
• Better than the Ontario and LHIN averages in administrative efficiency.

Continue reading →

By Nick Fillmore

During the hour that it took the world’s elite G7 politicians discussing climate change to wander through an enchanting meadow of flowers in Germany’s Bavarian Alps earlier this week, at least 800 people died prematurely from the impact of air pollution, most of it caused by the burning of non-renewable fossil fuels.

The un-magnificent seven, otherwise known as the G7 leaders, do a photo op through a beautiful Gernan meadow before agreeing to wait until the end of this 21st century before ending their big oil addiction.

Wanting to show the world – particularly voters at home – that they care about the seven-million people a year dying from various pollution and carbon related causes, the leaders of the world’s richest countries, including Canada, signed a joint declaration calling for a global phasing-out of fossil fuels 85 years from now.

It’s unlikely that, during their deliberations in the picturesque Schloss Elmau at the foot of Germany’s highest mountain, anyone at the Summit reflected on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report of a year ago that said in 2012 around seven million people died – one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure. Continue reading →

A Commentary from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

There was a time when we humans seemed unafraid to give ourselves very tight deadlines to accomplish what seemed, at the time, to be some very ambitious, if not almost impossible, challenges.

We placed these challenges before us, the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy once stated, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Indeed, Kennedy made that statement in the early 1960s when he announced that his country would put a man on the moon before the end of that decade and bring him back safely. And with all of the will and resources of government and the scientific community put forward, it was done.

An earlier U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, directed General Motors and other auto manufacturers in his country to retool their plants, within a matter of months, to produce tanks, bombers and other military vehicles necessary to combat the Nazi threat and attacks by a then hostile ‘Japanese Empire’ following the outbreak of the Second World War. And that too was done.

One could go on with example after example of how we seemed once capable of accomplishing some very spectacular things over a very short period of time. The Empire State building – to this day, one of the most iconic skyscrapers of all time – was built from ground to top in the late 1920s, with construction technology primitive to what we have to day – in 13 months.

A NASA photo of our earth taken from the moon in the 1960s when there still seemed some hope it would sustain us for at least a few more centuries, if not more.

These days, we can’t even rebuild a simple two-lane bridge on DeCew Road, crossing a channel of the Lake Gibson system in the Niagara community of Thorold, in that length of time – and I know that the people who were waiting and waiting and waiting, and were wondering why such a relatively small project took longer than the building of the Peace Bridge between Fort Erie and Buffalo in the 1920s.

This all leads me up to this total joke and travesty of an agreement leaders of the G7, including Canada, the U.S. Germany, Italy, Japan, Great Britain and France, signed this June 8^th, 2015 to end the use of gas, oil and other fossil fuels contributing to a breakdown of our earth’s climate by the end of the 21^st century. Continue reading →

A Call to Canadians from Avaaz, a global online citizens organization which NAL supports and which makes as its “democratic mission,” closing “the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.”

Dear friends across Canada,

The ad thousands of us pulled together to create is done! It calls on PM Harper to stop blocking a historic climate deal — let’s make sure he sees it before the crucial meeting tomorrow.
  
By clicking here to see the ad, then tweeting it and sharing it to the Prime Minister’s official accounts, we can make sure he’s flooded with the message before he walks into talks with powerful countries like Japan and Germany. 
Avaaz staff are getting media lined up to watch this video spread. Let’s make it the biggest thing on the internet this weekend and put huge pressure on Harper before it’s too late:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/sick_of_apologizing_1/?bRUUpdb&v=60059
You might recognize the ad. It’s a spoof of a Canadian classic. It shows what binds us together as Canadians — including our desire for PM Harper to get out of the way of progress on climate change. Continue reading →

A Brief Comment from Doug Draper

The Canada I grew up in and was once so proud of had a world-wide reputation as a peacemaker, a beacon for common good services like education, seniors’ services and health care, and a leader on environmental protection.

Stephen Harper, Canada’s Tar Sands Prime Minister, places the dirty oil of his coporate masters over a more carbon free, greener energy future – a plan many economic analysts and energy experts belive will leave Canada behind almost every other developed country, including the United States, Germany and China, that is forging a path to a healthier, more sustainable energy future.

Indeed, during the many years I was a fulltime reporter on environmental issues in the 1980s and 90s, Canada had rules and regulations, and state of the art research and monitoring programs for environmental protection that were looked upon as models for other nations around the world.

But no more. 

In Stephen Harper’s Canada, almost anything to do with environmental protection has been burned in the ovens and Environment Canada s scientists have been muzzled to a point where, unless they get special permission from Prime Minister Tar Sand’s office, they cannot publicly discuss any of their research findings – research, by the way, that we, the taxpayers of Canada, paid for.

The sad fact is that Environment Canada and related agencies like the federal department of Oceans and Fisheries, and Natural Resources have been so hollowed out under Prime Minister Tar Sands and his corporate masters in the oil industry that it would hardly matter if those federal bodies, at this point, were abolished. Continue reading →

A Foreword from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper 

It seems, all too sadly in this Canada these days, that we are addressing episode after episode of injustices committed against others –whether it be injustices committed to wildlife, or to our aboriginal peoples, or to our environment. Not to forget the injustices perpetrated against all of the rest by embezzlers appointed to the Senate.

John Pruyn being dragged away by police in riot gear – for sitting on the lawns of Queen’s Park listing to speakers at a G20 rally.

Then there is this one – plainly described in a report a few years back by Ontario’s official Ombudsman Andre Morin, and by countless civil liberty lawyers and groups as one of the most egregious assaults on citizens’ rights to gather in the spirit of frexpression in this country’s history.

This one unfolded five years ago this June in the streets of Toronto where, as one cop not wearing his usual badge, told a young person walking in the downtown area that “this is not Canada anymore” and where armies of police, dressed in Darth Vader gear, kettled thousands of people and arrested more than a thousand – locking them in makeshift cages for what turned out to be no reason. Continue reading →

A Brief Commentary by  Doug Draper

By now, anyone who still gives a shit about what has been happening to this once-proud, sinking ship called Canada– if you have any moral compass left for this once decent land – might feel some shame over the report released early June, 2015 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on residential schools.

An image of a residential school in Canada. Don’t the kids look like they are having fun? Many of them did not come out alive and were buried in unmarked graves.

If you are a Canadian and you still don’t know what a residential school is or was in this now-bullshit excuse for a country of ours then then fuck you!

And if you think that my use of the words shit and fuck are obscene, I could go a hell of a lot further on the bad word scale and it still wouldn’t add up to the disgusting obscenity Canadians of European background put hundreds of thousands of first nation, aboriginal people – people who lived her thousands of years before we showed up with our diseases – in Canadian-government sanctioned residential schools that were not much better than Nazi-run concentration camps.

Of course, those of us who grew up through are cappy public and Catholic elementary and secondary school systems in this country were never taught anything about that.

That God-damned drunk, John A. McDonald, we were told, was our founding father, according to our school propoganda. Never mind that he supported policies to starve native people to death. Continue reading →

By Nick Fillmore

During a flight from Montreal to Halifax I missed a chance to carry out an act of defiance – “shaming” – against a person who has greatly abused his position of authority in Canada.

Given how powerless ordinary folk and public interest groups have become, I would like to see people embarrass the hell out of those who take advantage of the public by lying to us, cheating us, or destroying our priceless environment. 
As I made my way down the aisle, I spotted the square jaw, the glasses and the prematurely-balding head. I was going to get my chance to walk right up to the Right Honorable Peter MacKay.

MacKay has lied to us enough times that cartoonists depict him with a Pinocchio nose. As Justice Minister, he lied that he didn’t know information ignored by the Department would mean a law the government passed violated the Constitution, and worst of all, in 2007, he misled the House of Commons over what he knew about the possible torture of prisoners handed over by Canadian troops to the Afghanistan government.
As I got closer to MacKay, who was already seated, our eyes locked. I squinted angrily, and then. . . .  I walked right by, not saying a word!

Damn! Opportunity lost! Continue reading →

A Brief Comment from Doug Draper

This is another one of those stories about the ignorance and violence that too often plays out around our relationship with other great creatures on this earth that makes me furious.

The Newmarket black bear, moments before it tried climbing down the tree and was shot to death for, so far, harming no one!

So furious that I had to let a day go by before I posted this column for fear it would be peppered with George Carlin’s list of the seven words you can’t say on television.

The story I am talking about is one of a recent sighting of a black bear in the Greater Toronto Area community of Newmarket that ended this June 1^st with a decision by York Regional Police to shoot the bear to death when it began climbing down from a tree it was hiding in.

According to one Toronto area media outlet, the final moments of this bear-sighting saga ended like this; “The animal was located in a backyard of a Newmarket, Ont. home on London Rd. near Yonge St. and Davis Dr. Monday morning.

Officers had the bear surrounded and were waiting for Ontario ministry wildlife experts to arrive prior to the shooting.

Police say the animal had made it up a tree and was climbing down when it was shot.

“Bear began coming down from a tree and became a risk to people in the area,” tweeted York Regional Police. “Officers have shot the bear due to having no other options.”

In fairness to the police, they are not wildlife experts and it would be unreasonable to expect them to be when they are already tasked with addressing everything from traffic violations and domestic disputes to robberies, assaults, homicides and possible terrorist attacks. They are also not equipped with tranquillizer guns..

However, there were other options. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

 There’s an old line that speaks to the right all of us should cherish in Canada and the United States to freedom of expression, and it goes something like this – ‘I may not always defend your view on an issue, but I will always defend your right to express it.’

The billboard you were not allowed to see in Niagara, Ontario. Banned as it was by certain ‘thoght police’ in the region.

In that spirit, I find it more than a little disturbing that a billboard sign by a group of animal activists in Niagara, Ontario, supporting a vegan diet and opposing the eating of eggs, was pulled down in the Niagara city of St. Catharines this May 2015.

If you know anything about a vegan diet, it excludes everything or virtually everything to do with animal products, including milk, milk-related foods and eggs. It is a diet, I must confess, that is a bridge way too far for me. And as much as those who embrace a vegan diet may be appalled by this, I just had two hard-boiled eggs before I posted this. And just before I went to bed the night before, I had a glass of milk. 

Very sorry if the vegans out there can’t deal with that.

 Nevertheless, let’s get back to the right of people in our part of the world, where we like to pride ourselves in still being free to express our views in whatever is left of a democratic society.

Where is that right when a special interest group – in this case some egg farmers – can lobby a commercial sign firm to take their billboard sign down, simply because they are vegans who don’t like eating eggs? Do these egg farmers actually think that this billboard will persuade me and most others not to eat eggs? Do they feel that threatened that they have apparently successfully lobbied the billboard sign firm to rip the sign down? Continue reading →

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

(A Brief Forward from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper – The move by Ontario’s Liberal government to at least partially privatize Hydro One – the hydro delivery piece of a once-proud Ontario Hydro plundered by the former Ontario Conservative government of Mike Harris – should be of concern to everyone who uses and pays for hydro services in the province. 

Somehow, Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne argues that this move to sell off some portion of Hydro One to private shareholders will bring much needed money to the province for other things like public transit, infrastructure renewal, etc. That seems very suspect given the history of privatization in other jurisdictions, including Margaret Thatcher’s Britain where the privatization of public services like water led to a significant rise in water costs, a crumbling of water delivery infrastructure and an explosion of boil water advisories (due to dangerous fecal bacteria, etc. in the water) all over the country. 

Finally, what we may all want to consider as the Wynne government moves quickly in the days ahead to approve this hydro privatization plan is that private corporations and their shareholders have a history of placing profits and dollar returns to them above everything else. We, the consumers of hydro services, are lucky if our concerns around hydro costs come a distant second.) 

From the Office of Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath 

Queen’s Park, May, 2015 – This May 22^nd, 2015, Andrea Horwath, Leader of Ontario’s New Democrats called on the Liberal government to separate the portions of Bill 91 that relate to the proposed sell-off of Hydro One and to travel the committee across the province. Continue reading →

The Great Lakes from space. The largest single basin for fresh water in the world. Do we still care enough to save them?

News from the Alliance for the Great Lakes  •  Freshwater Future  •  Michigan League of Conservation Voters  Ohio Environmental Council  •  National Wildlife Federation

(A Brief footnote from Niagara At Large – Nutrient pollution from both sides of the U.S.?Canada borders of the Great Lakes could suffocate theses greatest of frehwaters to a point where there is no live living n them for fish or the rest of us. Note here that no Canadian group is involved in the important post below. Not Polluton Probe, the Council of Canadians or anwyone else. Apparently they have all given in to Harperland and an attitude in Canada that there is no more hope for anything around protecting the life-sustaining resources of our planet.)

Chicago, U.S.A. – May 2015 – Solving the nutrient crisis facing the Great Lakes requires an all hands on deck approach. The report released today by Ceres – Feeding Ourselves Thirsty: How the Food Sector is Managing Water Risks – is a clear call to action for increased private sector engagement to improve water quality not only at their facilities but also throughout their supply chains from farm to factory. Continue reading →