Author Archives: dougdraper

By Gail Benjafield

Woman’s Day – falling every year in early March – is celebrated in many ways.

The great Harriet Tubman, who led countless slaves from America’s south to freedom by following the northern star

For the last several years, the members of the British Methodist Episcopal (B.M.E.) congregation in St. Catharines, Ontario have held an annual dinner in memory of one its founding members, Harriet Tubman.  As most surely know, Tubman was a major conductor of the Underground Railroad, bringing many members of her family and friends to St. Catharines, in safety, and by stealth.

This Woman’s Day is special, because it is not only the 100th anniversary of Tubman’s death, but is also the month in which she was born in 1822. She and fellow freedom fighters built Salem Chapel at 92 Geneva Street, with the help of noted philanthropists and abolitionists such as William Hamilton Merritt. Continue reading →

A Foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper –

As a veteran journalist in Canada who continuously deplores what a handful of corporations have done to a profession I loved enough to venture in to – a profession  I  believed should, at its core, play a vital role in being  a watchdog on governments and other powers-that-be in a democracy – I am pleased to post this piece by Avaaz.org.

Quebecor and Sun Media make up one of the worst of the worst corporations on this continent when it comes to media strangulation – one that places the maximizing of ever-more-piggish profit margins for its corporate bosses and shareholders ahead of anything else, including the resources needed to run respectable, functional newsrooms across the country, including what’s left of the newsrooms at the only three daily newspapers in Niagara, Ontario.

Now this God-awful corporation, with links in its ranks to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is seeking a CRTC licence to do a broadcasting station that would spread American neo-Republican-Tea Party like progoganda across our country. Continue reading →

By Linda McKellar

Perhaps I am not a good Canadian because I actually like to promote my country at home and abroad.

Jimmy Carter, then U.S. president during the “Argo” caper, gives bulk of credit for escape of Americans to brave Canadians like Ken Taylor and to a friendly Canadian government that backed Taylor up..

 Such words as “pride” and “patriotism” often seem foreign to the Canadian lexicon and are considered impolite. I don’t want to come off as a braggart but perhaps it is time we start speaking up when blatantly disrespected.

Many are flocking to see “Argo”, the American-produced film that received an Oscar for best picture at the Academy Awards this February. But not me because this film represents a gross distortion of historical events.

Yes, I know Argo is not a documentary, but it is an all too common example of American braggadocio. Unfortunately many people get their “history” from movies and the misrepresentations are taken as fact. Continue reading →

 Submitted by the Office of Welland Riding MP Malcolm Allen

 OTTAWA –Malcolm Allen, the federal NDP representative for the Niagara, Ontario riding of Welland, spoke out in Canada’s House of Commons during Question Period this February 28 on behalf of constituents in his riding affected by the cuts to Via Rail.

Niagara, Ontario area MP Malcolm Allen

 “Mr. Speaker,” stated Allen. “Via Rail is not working for Niagarians. On February 20^th last week, I held a community roundtable on the cancellation of the only Via train from Niagara Falls to Toronto.”

 “Many angry Niagarians from across the entire region actually came and raised concerns about the reckless Conservative cuts to (passenger rail services) that Via says ‘wasn’t because of ridership’. In fact most of the time it’s full.”

 So what is the alternative that Via says we should in Niagara. It says well take the GO bus and get stuck in traffic. Oh, by the way, wait at night and take the Amtrak train from the U.S.

 When will this government restore Via’s funding and give Niagarians their train back?”

 To watch a video of Malcolm Allen asking this question in the House of Commons and the response he received click on the following link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-sWv6N6vEY&list=UUPlbB-Es16zaprMM1W1-5sg .

 Later on February 28, at a Niagara regional council meeting, regional government Chair Gary Burroughs  said the Region needs to assist in applying pressure on the appropriate federal bodies to reverse the cuts to Via Rail services in Niagara.

“We need rail service,” said Burroughs. “They took one of our services away and we will get involved as much as we can” to get the service back.

For more news on the Harper government’s planned cuts to Via Rail services for the year ahead, visit the site of Toronto area MP Olivia Chow at http://www.oliviachow.ca/2013/02/via-rail-massive-cuts-looming/  .

(Niagara At Large encourages all visitors to this site to share their views on this post or any other posts NAL has posted. Divergent views are most welcome in the spirit of NAL’s goal to operate as a virtual town hall for discussing and debating issues of interest and concern to our communities and countries across the greater Niagara region and beyond.)

Submitted by the Office of Welland Riding MPP Cindy Forster

QUEEN’S PARK, February 28 – Today in the legislature, Welland MPP Cindy Forster presented a petition signed by nearly 20,000 Ontarians calling on the government to preserve health care services in the south Niagara and Welland area.

Cindy Forster, NDP MPP for the Niagara, Ontario riding of Welland, tables citizens’ petition for health care in provincial legislature

“As the Niagara Health System prepares to transfer important services from Welland and Greater Niagara General Hospitals into its new north St. Catharines hospital at the end of March, thousands of south Niagara residents hope Health and Long-Term Care Minister Deb Matthews will listen to their concerns, and impose a moratorium on the move until new south Niagara hospital services are implemented,” said Forster.

“If the move goes ahead, residents of south Niagara will have to travel to north St. Catharines to access obstetric, pediatric and gynecological services. Many residents will have to travel an hour or more to access these essential services,” explained Forster. Continue reading →

Submitted by the Niagara Peninsula Conservation  Authority

A brief foreword from Niagara At Large  –

It is one of the great rites of spring in Niagara, Ontario – the annual migration of the great birds of prey, a diverse host of hawks and eagles, soaring and circling through the airshafts above the Niagara Escarpment.

A Red-Tail Hawk in landing mode

This yearly migration seems to be attracting larger gatherings of people, bustng to spend more time outdoors after another long, cold winter, and nowhere is their a larger gathering and a better place to witness this spectacle of great birds than the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority’s Beamer Memorial Conservation Area, atop the Niagara Escarpment in Grimsby, Ontario.

 NAL encourages you to read the following submission from the NPCA and consider giving yourself a chance to share in witnessing one of the great spectacles of nature this region of the world offers each year.) Continue reading →

 A Foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

 Tim Hudak and his Conservatives always seem to have found comfort zone in Ontario’s rural communities, including Hudak’s own Niagara West-Glanbrook riding made up of Pelham, West Lincoln, Lincoln Grimbsy and rural stretches of Hamilton.

Ontario Conservative opposition leader Tim Hudak slams Liberal’s green energy steps

Rural communities in Niagara and other areas of Ontario have been a bedrock, core constituency for Hudak’s warmed over Mike Harris stew of tax and spending cuts, and disarming labour unions of any strength they may have left to stand up against employers – public or private – who are pleased to see the wage gap continue to widen between them and all the rest of us, lower down on the foodchain. Continue reading →

A Submission from the Ontario Health Coalition

The Ontario Health Coalition, a Toronto-based public interest group lobbying for keeping public health care services public, affordable and accessible in the province, will be bringing its ‘Save Our Services’ campaign to the Niagara region this coming Monday, March 4.

And the Ontario Health Coaltion’s hopes you will show your support for quality, accessible hospital services for all Niagara residents by attending this rally, to take place Monday, March 4 at the Welland Arena at 501 King Street in Welland, Ontario. Continue reading →

By Delila Jahn-Thue – NAL’s Voice from Canada’s Mid-West

It’s still February as I write this and my deadline is two days away. I’m thinking about March, the month in which you’ll read this, the notion of moving toward something – a procession, progress through a season.

A few days ago Farmer and I called the children to count fat prairie chickens through our dining room window during another Alberta Clipper. Sheltered by the trees, they happily foraged the berry patch while our bird dog Pepper lay clueless on the porch floor.

 I’m thinking about Farmer, last night in bed. I woke him from the verge of sleep to quiz him about prairie chickens. I’d never seen them so big, only the smaller ones and pheasants. “No,” he said, “what you saw before were partridges or huns.” Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

The terror bombing and invasion of Iraq by the U.S and the U.K was and is, according to International Criminal Court criterion, a war crime. Neither country has to worry about prosecution though, since they are not within the court’s jurisdiction.  However, many would argue that it is a shame that the ICC doesn’t have more “teeth.

 The US/UK foreign policy barbarity has so far destroyed and partitioned Iraq, and it continues to exact a stupendous toll on innocent civilians.  At last count, there have been from 111,309 to 121,640 documented civilian deaths from violence in Iraq since the 2003 invasion began.

 These statistics do not include estimates from critics that 1,000,000 (including 500,000 children), died as a result of the United Nations imposed sanctions campaign that preceded the Second Gulf War.  (Former U.S Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously commented that it was “worth it”.)

What else has been accomplished? Continue reading →

Do You Want To Stick It To Ontario’s Greenbelt Plan? Well Here Is Your Chance

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Niagara’s regional governmet is holding a public forum this Tuesday, February 26, giving Niagara residents an opportunity to rant and rave about Ontario’s Greenbelt Plan and all it is doing to destroy opportunities to build more low-density suburbs and shopping malls.

This display of protest against the Greenbelt was displayed near St. Catharines, Ontario’s Pen Centre Mall a few years back. File photo by Doug Draper

This opportunity to slam a 2005 Greenbelt Plan that was intended to protect further farming lands, including tender fruit-growing lands from being paved over, has apparently been a disgusting, government-imposed road block to further development since it was implemented eight years ago.

Therefore, Niagara’s regional government, which has shown its continued interest in sprawling development in areas like west St. Catharines (where the new mega-hospital for all of Niagara will go), Niagara-on-the-Lake where it has approved a mega mall that may very well take customers away from and destroy Pen Centre and Fairview Malls in St. Catharines, and what is left of the Niagara Square Mall in Niagara Falls), now wants to hear from those who will most certainly ask for an end to the Greenbelt. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper 

Well, are you ready for radical change? Or at least a sequel to former Tory premier Mike Harris’s ‘Common Sense Revolution’?

Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak, led forward by his old boss and political mentor, former Ontario Conservative premier Mike Harris

I ventured out my front door in the dark and cold this Monday, February 25 to pick up The Globe and Mail to a front-page headline that read; “Hudak ready to topple Liberals and campaign for radical change.”

The story underneath that headline begins like this; “Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are shifting to a state of campaign readiness as Leader Tim Hudak declares he’s prepared to bring down the minority Liberal government by the summer and fight an election on a platform of sweeping change.”

And what do Harper and his Conservatives mean by sweeping change. The Globe report goes on to say this; “Not only does he (Ontario Conservative leader and Niagara area MPP Tim Hudak) want to slash spending to rein in Ontario’s deficit, he aims to redefine the scope of government and shrink it, contracting out health services to the private sector and ending state monopolies such as the LCBO.”

Hudak is then quoted saying this about the change he has in mind; “It’ll be a focus of what government should be in the 21^st century.” Oh yah? Sounds more like a warmed over version of the trickle-down economics from the Thatcher/Reagan and Mike Harris eras in the 20^th century to me. And all that led to was generous tax cuts for the richest individuals and corporations, and lower wages and fewer job opportunities for the rest of us, along with cuts to health, education and other social services. 

If that’s the kind of radical change you want in Ontario, then the Tim Hudak Conservatives may be just what you are looking for. Continue reading →

By Delila Jahn-Thue – A Voice from Canada’s mid-west

We’re burning through February here on the farm.

 Farmer’s winter is punctuated by a series of tractor troubles, storms and junk pile emergencies. “Junk pile” is what he calls my mini-van. Throughout January it sat lifeless most times I tried to start it.

It seems there’s a statute of limitations on battery life. I neglected to make sure a switch was off and once depleted in polar conditions, the battery refused to hold a charge. During one compelling emergency I was even forced to drive Farmer’s new-to-him truck.

He wasn’t pleased. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

The mess the now-finally-gone Dalton McGuinty – one I always thought was among the worst stinkos of a premier Ontario has ever had, and one who never gave a real fig about anything other than keeping himself elected and prepped up for those corporate boardroom jobs upon retirement – may now destroy any possibility his predecessor Liberal premier predecessor Kathleen Wynne has of surviving  long enough to chart a path of her own.

This guy still stands to destroy the Ontario Liberal’s chance to save itself, as a government.

And that is too bad, because Kathleen Wynne, in her own right, seems, or at least seemed, so different from the stinking pile of manure that was Dalton McGuinty. As someone I interviewed on a few occasions, and as someone I quite liked (or may have been sucked in to believing) was one of those few politicians who had an open and honest edge to her, it is sorry to see her going down so rapidly on the McGuinty baggage. Continue reading →

By Art Klein

(A Foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper – Way back when – in the dirty 1980s and 90s, when I was covering environmental issues for a once-decent daily newspaper in Niagara, Ontario, one of the major issues for people in the Southern Ontario and Western New York regions sharing the Great Lakes were the number of hazardous waste dumps bleeding their poisons into waters we drink, and waters vital to a diversity of wildlife, including fish many Great Lakes residents catch and eat. 

Environmental groups during that time – groups like Pollution Probe from Toronto, Operation Clean from Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Sierra Club from Western New York and others – pushed governments to excavate all of the wastes from these dangerous dumps and have them destroyed or, if that was not possible, at least place them in leak-proof vaults further away from watersheds in the Great Lakes basin.

One of the many sites that were subject to this debate was the West Valley, New York nuclear waste site, located in the Cattaraugus Creek watershed, draining into Lake Erie and the upper waters of the Niagara River, southwest of the Buffalo Area. Like Love Canal and so many other infamous waste sites that were a focus of debate back then, governments of the day decided that excavating and destroying the waste would be too costly, and they opted to hire engineers to come up with plans to wall the wastes in, using “containment  systems” instead.

As at least some of us who followed this whole business closely knew, these containment systems would eventually break down and the buried wastes – many of these poisons capable of remaining toxic for hundreds, if not thousands of years – would have their chance to leak out into the surrounding environment, including waters flowing into the Great Lakes again. The dirty 1980s and 90s would be reprised to poison the planet for future generations.

So here, below, is some disturbing news shared with Niagara At Large from Art Klein, a member of the Sierra Club in Western New York. And here we go again.)

An aerial shot of the sprawling West Valley nuclear wast dump site in the Lake Erie watershed, just upstream from the Niagara River

Bad science and engineering, entwined with the loony economics of shallow planning and the ever shifting priorities of government policy, developed West Valley Nuclear Demonstration Project, New York’s prominent Nuclear Waste Site. 

And the delays of five decades now allow climate change to intensify the menace of the site! Continue reading →

By Vance Badawey, Mayor of the Niagara, Ontario city of Port Colborne 

(A Brief Preface by Niagara At Large – Given that the Niagara Health System pushed ahead with its plans to site a new mega-hospital for Niagara in the region’s north end rather than somewhere more central, Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey has been an ongoing voice for finding new ways of providing acute care services in Niagara’s southern tier.

 In this post, he urges NHS supervisor Kevin Smith to follow through on plans for Urgent Care Centres in the region’s southern tier. If you are wondering what Urgent Care Centres or UCCs are, Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care defines them as facilitites that “can provide diagnosis and treatment for most injuries and illnesses through emergency trained doctors and other health care professionals. … “Some Urgent Care Centres,” the ministry goes on, “may offer follow-up appointments to see how your recovery from illness/injury is progressing.”

Now here is Mayor Badawey’s message to the NHS supervisor.)

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey

 While sitting in my hospital bed at the Holland  Orthopaedic and Arthritic Centre of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, recovering from knee surgery, I reflect on the health of the Niagara Health System and the current decisions yet to be made within the Niagara Health System – in particular, Dr. Kevin Smith’s expected announcement of the location of the two Urgent Care Centres. 

Our position continues to be consistent with the unanimous recommendation the southern tier mayors and the Niagara Regional Chair brought forward to NHS supervisor Dr. Smith  – two sites for his consideration, conditional upon the two UCCs being placed in Port Colborne and Fort Erie. The City of Port Colborne’s preference is the highway 140/East Main Street location for a new South Niagara hospital. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper 

Just three days into a new session of the Ontario legislature, it is sounding more and more like Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak can hardly wait to get back on the campaign bus.

Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak with his wife Deb Hutton and daughter Miller on the campaign trail in the fall of 2011. Hudak seems determined to get back on that trail as soon as possible. File photo by Doug Draper

In a media release circulated this February 20, Hudak, who is also a Niagara, Ontario area MPP and was a cabinet minister in the former Conservative government of Mike Harris, declared that the only way the province is going to move in a “new direction”, is if it has a “new team” in charge at Queen’s Park. 

“For Ontario to rise again, it’s clear we need to change the team that leads this province,” says the media release without coming right out and saying this time that the best ones to take over governance in Ontario are the Hudak Conservatives.  Continue reading →

By Doug Draper 

His name was Zeus – a noble name and one he lived up to during his all-too-short 18 years on this planet.

Zeus being his regal self, this past July 2012. Photo by Doug Draper

He was, like his Greek god namesake from ancient times, regal and sturdy, and the next time I hear a crack of thunder from the skies – rather than fearing that a lightning bolt might be aimed my way for something I may have done wrong – I will hear it as a ‘Hi’ from Zeus that was just as loud and hardy as his meow.

The Zeus I am talking about, as you’ve probably already guessed was a cat, and one fine feline at that. If you’ve followed my columns over the years going back to my employment with Niagara area newspapers, I have written obits from time to time on some of the great animals – most particularly cats – that have shared some of the all-to-little time we all have together on this earth because I believe  these wonderful creatures can be, if we are wise enough to allow them a place in our lives, among the best friends we have.

Zeus was not my cat, not that anyone – as people much than me have said, can ever “have” or “own” a cat. They have their own, independent spirit, and if we are fortunate enough, they extend a paw to us, which makes a friendship with them all the more precious. As Charles Dickens once said; “What greater gift than the love of a cat.”  

What greater gift, indeed.

Continue reading →

Submitted by Brock University

Youth University and Community Learning at Brock University have partnered to launch a “big questions” conversation series for Niagara youth.

The Brock University tower overlooking the Niagara Escarpment in St. Catharines, Ontario.

The series will provide a platform for youth aged 8 to 14 and their parents to discuss and engage with questions that have no easy answers, such as what makes a great country? And what is beauty?
 
“These types of questions explored in a group setting provide young people with an opportunity to question assumptions and develop critical thinking skills,” says Stacia Heaton, program manager of Community Learning at Brock. Continue reading →

Submitted by Start Me Up Niagara

(A brief note from NAL – We seem to be having more than our share of bitter cold days and nights this winter and most of us can only imagine what it must be like for someone without a home and with few, if any, warm places to go. 

That is where this not-for-profit group with a mission to “offer support and encouragement to people who are marginalized because of mental illness, disabilities, substance abuse or homelessness” comes in. 

Please read the following and do what you can to support Start Me Up Niagara. We also encourage you to click on the link below for the group’s website and learn more about its work and how you can assist.)

Bundle Up and hit the pavement on February 23, 2013 as part of the Coldest Night of the Year, a nation-wide family-friendly winter fundraising event for charities serving the local homeless community. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Mark Taliano

Breaking News from Niagara At Large

Submitted by the Office of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne

(NAL is posting this speech as it wraps up in the provincial legislature. If you catch this post on time you may wish to click on the following link to a live feed of the Ontario premier’s meeting with media at Queen’s Park at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, February 19 at http://www.livestream.com/premierofontario . )

Ontario’s Speech from the Throne Focuses on Common Ground of Strong Economy, Fair Society, Effective Legislature

The New Ontario Government Emphasizing New Jobs, Strong Communities and Healthy, Engaged Citizens

NEWS – February 19, 2013

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne

The new Ontario government is working toward a stronger province that will create good jobs and build strong communities across the province.

The Honourable David C. Onley, Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor, delivered the government’s Speech from the Throne in the legislature today.

The speech highlighted the government’s way forward to find common ground with the opposition so that Ontario can build a fair society, a strong economy and establish a more accountable legislature. Continue reading →

Submitted by the public interest group St. Catharines Pets Alive

(St. Catharines Pets Alive in a recently formed, non-profit organization group in Niagara, Ontario that, among other thing, is dedicated to “promoting a ‘No Kill community’ in which no health or treatable animals are killed.” Its mission also includes the promotion of the humane treatment of animals, and the rescue and adoption of homeless pets.resuce and adoption of homeless pets.)

ST. CATHARINES, Ontario –– St. Catharines Pets Alive (SPA) is embarking on a bold and aggressive initiative to make St. Catharines a No Kill City as quickly as possible. To do so, we are beginning to build the resources needed to create a “safety net” for the pets of our community and their caretakers.

St. Catharines Pets Alive is following the best practices of other cities that are No Kill or are in the process of becoming No Kill. Managed by a talented and experienced board of directors that is committed to openness, transparency, and teamwork, SPA aims to bring the community together to form a coalition of volunteers, foster care providers, rescue groups, and local businesses to implement innovative and progressive solutions which have ended shelter killing in roughly 90 communities representing some 300 towns and cities across North America. Continue reading →

A Niagara At Large news brief from Doug Draper

 While other regions in North America and Europe are turning to rail transit as an answer to gridlock on their highways, governments in Canada seem to be moving in the opposite direction.

Niagara, Ontario MP for the Welland area Malcolm Allen wants you to rally around the need for more – not less – rail tranist.

 Last year, and even while neighbouring New York State is continuing to work with the Obama administration to build a high speed rail system it hopes Ontario and Canada may want to link through Niagara to the Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s Via Rail cut its passenger services last year to this border region and others across the province.

 One Niagara, Ontario MP for federal New Democratic Party wants to hear from you if you happen to be someone who believes our governments should be investing more, and not less, in passenger rail transit. On that track, Malcolm Allen, the MP for the Welland Riding in Niagara, is inviting people from across the greater Niagara region to join him this Wednesday, February 20^th for what he is billing as “a public discussion on the importance of rail service in the Niagara area. Continue reading →

A Brief from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

What I am about to say is by no means an opinion of mine. It is a fact.

If Stephen Harper and his coalition of Reform and Canadian Alliance followers had formed a Conservative government that was holding the wheels of power in Canada a decade ago, they would have joined then-U.S. president George W. Bush’s so-called “coalition of the willing” and enveloped Canada in a war in Iraq. They would have engaged brave young Canadians in uniform and an entire country in a war a majority o Americans now agree was unnecessary and cost far too much in lives and treasure.

There is absolutely no doubt about that as Harper and his Tea Party-like breed of Conservatives went so boldly on record 10 years ago this winter – in the months, weeks and days leading up to Bush-led “shock and awe” assault on Iraq in March of 2003 – attacking Canada’s then-governing Liberals for not joining in this debacle.

This Monday, February 18 at 9 p.m. on MSNBC – a cable news and commentary television channel we on the Niagara, Ontario side of the Canada/U.S. border may get on Cogeco channel 133 – one of the network’s leading journalists, Rachel Maddow, will be hosting a special documentary called; “Hubris – Selling the Iraq War.” Continue reading →

A Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

If some of our many readers have been wondering why we have slowed down on posting news and commentary in recent days, we have been experiencing some computer problems that have to do with outside sources hacking and injecting viruses into our system.

These assaults have caused breakdowns in our ability to post news and analysis on NAL and, ultimately, in our ability to deliver an independent voice on the news and commentary voice to a region and world that has become so blown away by corporate media messaging.

So we hope you will be patient with us and trust us to come back with a vengeance in the days ahead. We feel we have no choice but to do so.

Indeed, the challenges we face in this region and in this world to live in communities and countries that offer a life of peace, good health and prosperity need to be addressed by voices that are not controlled by  corporate media interests and the bottom line. And Niagara At Large is determined to ramp up its efforts be one of those alternative voices.

Thanks to so many countless thousands of your across this region and continents, and in other countries around the world, for your continued support as readers and contributors by way of news and commentary to this site.

Doug Draper

(As always, share your views below.)

A Foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

The following post comes from Niagara, Ontario’s regional government, which has a continued history of supporting sprawling, low-density residential development, mega-malls and strip malls along four-to-six-lane highways while, at the same time, trying to pass itself off as a smart, sustainable growth supporter.

Niagara, Ontario’s regional headquarters

And what does that have to do with promoting less car-free, carbon-reducing development that helps with climate change?

This is a regional government, that unlike ones in other regions of Ontario like Kitchener-Waterloo, can’t even get its bloody 21^st century act together on a 21^st century regional transit system because it is afraid that a couple of local municipalities that could not give a shit about the future of this region want to keep serfs tied to their own transit services. ‘Oh’, say most of the cowards on this Niagara regional council, ‘ we can’t talk about developing a truly regional transit system for Niagara because idiots on the council, who are against any form of amalgamating more services, will say no’ because they fear that their little fiefdoms might be next to be amalgamated.’ Continue reading →

A Foreword by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

In a media release, posted below, from the office of Ontario’s Conservative Party opposition leader Tim Hudak, we are told , in so many words, that young people today are graduating from college and university palaces with hundreds of millions of our tax dollars in brick and mortar alone, and are coming out with huge debts and little to nothing in the way of real, decent-paying jobs.

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak wants more jobs for students graduating from the province’s colleges and universities. Good luck funding that.

If you look at Statistics Canada and other data, that is fairly well true. Earning a graduate degree at a college or university in almost anything these days might get you a job stocking shelves at a Wal-Mart Store ahead of getting one in your field.

So while I post the piece from the office of Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak below, I do so with a reluctant message to young people my daughter’s age to say to hell with college and university altogether, and use your intelligence to create new opportunities for yourselves in this changing economy that, quite frankly, our colleges and universities have not shown a very good track record of training people for. Continue reading →

An Update from Niagara Health System Supervisor Kevin Smith

February 11, 2013

There has been a great deal of activity since my last posting. I continue to receive a steady flow of input from the communities and interested consumers and providers. The tours of the new St. Catharines Site in particular have been a focus of feedback, and the consolidation of maternal child services remains a hot topic. 

Niagara Health System Supervisor Kevin Smith announces new NHS board

Here are updates on work underway:

A. NHS Board Process

You will recall from my report that we have struck a Community-Based Nominating Committee to aid in the selection of the new Board for Niagara Health System. This committee is made up of dedicated community leaders with governance experience including: Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

If Canada’s federal government can get rid of the penny because the coin is worth less than what it costs to keep it in circulation, then why doesn’t it apply the same logic to the Senate and get rid of it too?

An abominatiion of Canadian democracy – a costly, unaccountable senate that offers less than nothing of value compared to what it costs to keep it in business.

I am being perfectly seriously here. Last year, we were told by the Stephen Harper government that the penny was being abolished as of this February, mainly because from a plain cost point of view, there is no benefit in continuing to mint it. It is a one cent coin that costs 1.6 cents to make.

So now, like all the pennies we still have hanging around in tin cans, we have all of these senators from across Canada – some 105 of them in all – that we are paying about $130,000 a pop per year for, not counting benefit and expense packages 99 per cent of Canadians could only pray for if there ever were a heaven, and millions more of our hard-sought tax dollars are being shoveled out for their office space and staff.

And what are we – the people – getting in return? Continue reading →

–         The Question Is: How Much Time Will It Buy Her Minority Liberal Government?

A Commentary by Doug Draper

It is being billed by some in Queen’s Park circles as a “new face” cabinet.

Yet that billing remains in the eyes of the beholder and depends on the issues that matter to you the most.

Deb Matthews remains Ontario’s health minister in Kathleen Wynne cabinet.

If you are a teacher, or a student or parent of a student upset with the recent unrest and curtailment of extra-curricular activities in Ontario’s public schools, you might be elated to know that the province’s new premier, Kathleen Wynne, has replaced Dalton McGuinty era education minister Laurel Broten with London area backbencher and former school board trustee Liz Sandals.

If, on the other hand, you are a resident living in one of Niagara, Ontario’s southern or central communities, including two of the region’s largest municipalities, Niagara Falls and Welland, you might be upset to find out that Wynne is keeping Deb Matthews on as the province’s health minister. Continue reading →

By Pamela Minns

Ontario’s provincial government has removed “Heritage Day” entirely from our calendar.

Yet we ought not forget that in 1974 the Heritage Canada Foundation first established the third Monday in February each year as Heritage Day.In.fact, in Ontario the entire third week in February has traditionally been celebrated as “Heritage Week”.  Heritage has been defined as “the sum total of our inheritance – built, cultural and natural”.

The 19th Century Keefer Mansion in the Niagara, Ontario community of Thorold, now a premier inn and restaurant. File photo by Doug Draper

This year, Ontario Heritage Week runs from Monday, February 18^th to Sunday, February 24^th.  The theme, as announced by Heritage Canada Foundation for 2013 is “Good Neighbours”. The Foundation has stated that “preserving older homes and neighbourhoods ensures the long-term sustainability of communities. Indeed, investing in neglected homes and neighbourhoods can be an opportunity to provide affordable housing, improve public health, and revitalize and stabilize the community.” Continue reading →

A Commentary by Robert Nunn

The Idle No More movement is spearheaded by a new generation of
young, educated, articulate First Nations women and men.

Flags of the Idle No More movement. File photo by Doug Draper

We’re going to hear a lot more from them in the coming months and years. And we members of the settler culture must learn how to open our eyes and
our ears to their message. From our standpoint the movement could
justly be called “Deaf and Blind No More” – deaf and blind no more to our treaty responsibilities. Continue reading →

Submitted by the St. Catharines & District Council of Women

“Support and Advocacy for Youth at Risk: Family and Children’s Services (FACS) Perspective ”  will be the subject of a free public meeting at 8 p.m. on Thursday February 7^th in the Mills Room of the St. Catharines Centennial Library, located on James Street  in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario.

Youth in our community face a variety of challenges that place them “at risk”.  However  young people who have been in foster care face specific challenges , as they prepare to go out on their own, without the safety net of parents . Family and Children’s Services Niagara will tell us a bit about those challenges and what they are doing to help youth be successful and to reach their full potential. Continue reading →

A Comment by NAL publisher Doug Draper

“December 1^st, 1955,  our freedom movement came alive. And because of Sister Rosa you know, we don’t have to ride in the back of the bus no more.” – from the Neville Brothers song Sister Rosa.

It was her one simple, yet so very brave and dignified act that sparked a movement that would also see the emergence of Martin Luther King as one of the greatest civil rights leaders of all time.

The new U.S. Rosa Parks postage stamp.

And it was that movement that opened a door to a new era of equality and freedom for people of colour in America – an opening that would eventually make it possible for an African American to move from not being allowed to use a “white washroom” to being elected president of the United States.

Her name was Rosa Parks and it was all so fitting in the mind of this writer, who grew up embracing her as one of my heroes, that this February 4 – on what would have been her 100^th birthday and what is the start of a two-month stretch celebrating Black and Women’s History  – that the U.S. government honoured her, once again, by issuing a postage stamp with her image on it. Continue reading →

A Submission from the office of Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

Queen’s Park – NDP Leader Andrea Horwath mapped out priorities for the spring Legislative session, laying out proposals to make life affordable, help seniors meet their healthcare needs and take a balanced approach to balancing the budget.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

“Ontarians understand we’re facing big challenges. They don’t expect us to overcome them overnight but they don’t want to see the same status quo. They expect prudent, affordable change. We can achieve that this session,” said Horwath.

Horwath and the NDP caucus have toured across the province consulting with Ontarians on healthcare, jobs, debt and the deficit. As the House gets ready to resume, Horwath put forward achievable ideas that will allow Ontario to focus on making life better for typical families while balancing Ontario’s books: Continue reading →

Submitted by Niagara, Ontario’s Niagara Parks Commission

Niagara Falls, Ontario – The Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory is pleased to present “Venom”, a new family friendly educational exhibit designed for the kid in us all. The travelling show, which was created by Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo, of Ottawa, will run February 9 to May 12.

The king cobra.

Little Ray’s popular interpreter, Kevin Dungey, AKA “Caiman Kevin”, will return to the Butterfly Conservatory, and in his unique and captivating style lead daily (except Wednesdays) educational programs and interactive sessions for the public.  Visitors may remember Kevin from his participation in last season’s Animals of the Rainforest show, held at NPC’s Butterfly Conservatory.

 New this year, the Venom exhibit will include tarantulas, scorpions, highly poisonous toads, rattlesnakes, vipers and one of only two king cobras on display in Canada. Continue reading →

Submitted by the office of Welland Riding MP and NDP federal agricultural critic Malcolm Allen

(A brief note from Niagara At Large – Some in Niagara may remember that we have been through this before in the past decade or so with food processing plants closing down in the region and some of our farmers having no place else to market their fruit and other produce, leaving them with no choice but to pull out vines and orchards. Therefore, this is an issue worth paying close attention to.)

 WELLAND, Ontario – The Conservatives’ ideological plan to eliminate food packaging standard sizing could result in thousands of good jobs being shipped to the United States, all because of a decision made by the Agriculture Minister with no consultation.

Niagara, Ontario area MP from the Welland riding and NDP agricultural critic Malcolm Allen

In response to a question asked by NDP Agriculture Critic MP Malcolm Allen (Welland), the government confirmed that no impact analysis was completed to defend the decision to eliminate food packaging sizing standards. This decision could have devastating effects on the food processing and agriculture industries throughout Ontario. There are approximately 160 food and beverage processors in the Niagara Region alone and approximately 3,000 in the province. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

When I posted story this January 31 on a short list of priority issues Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor hopes to discuss with Ontario’s incoming premier Kathleen Wynne, there was one key item I forget to include in that story.

Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor speaking last year on future of casinos in his Ontario border area riding. File photo by Doug Draper

 That issue – and not a small one for Craitor and several others in Niagara Falls, Ontario, including the city’s mayor Jim Diodati – first surfaced a year ago this winter when the idea of closing one of the two casinos in Niagara Falls, Ontario and possibly opening one giant casino somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area.

While the province’s Liberal government eventually agreed to keep both casinos in Niagara Falls open, the government, along with its Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, also left open the idea of a gambling palace in Toronto, if enough supporters stepped forward to build and operate one. Continue reading →

By Dan Wilson

(Dan Wilson is a Niagara, Ontario and longtime advocate for the humane treatment of animals. He took part in the protests against a deer hunt that took place the first two weekends of January, 2013 in Short Hills Provincial Park. The hunt in this park, a nature sanctuary which is normally off limits to hunters, was approved by the province’s Ministry of Natural Resources as a traditional hunt, using bows and arrows, for aboriginal people only.)

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

Rights are bullshit – there, I said it.

Animal activists protest the January deer hunt in Short Hills Provincial Park. Photo by Dan Wilson

They’re an illusion, a pie-in-the-sky ideal. More like “wouldn’t it be nice if things were this way” rather than the way things actually are. They’re principles, propositions and beliefs, not carved-in-stone laws. Sometimes they’re called natural rights and sometimes they’re called inalienable rights, like the right to life. But they’re still all bullshit.

If we all have the right to an education and clean water, why are so many of us without either? And doesn’t a child have the right to go to school without being murdered by a gun-wielding maniac? But it happens, doesn’t it? Without respect for another person’s life, what good are rights? Continue reading →

Submitted by the Office of Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak

 HARNESS COMPETITION FOR BETTER QUALITY HEALTH CARE

TORONTO, February 1 – Ontarians rely on quality health care to be there when we need it.  We feel a special responsibility to put patients first to make sure that better quality care is there for our loved ones, Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak and Health Critic Christine Elliott said today.

Ontario Conservatives Christine Elliott and Tim Hudak want to administer more private sector medicine to province’s health care system

 “One of the ways Ontario can improve the quality of health care is by taking full advantage of opportunities to expand the use of productive competition to get better service at a lower cost,” Hudak said.  

Hudak and Elliott made the comments in advance of next week’s release of a health care-focused Paths to Prosperity, which will call for competition for clinical services that can be provided outside a hospital or physician practice to enhance patient care. Continue reading →

Submitted to NAL by the Office of Cindy Forster, Ontario Member of Parliament for the Welland Riding

WELLAND, February 1 – Welland MPP Cindy Forster met this January 31 with City Councillor Frank Campion to collect a petition signed by over 19,000 community residents objecting to important health care services being relocated to St. Catharines.

Welland city councillor Frank Campion presents ctiziens’ petitions on hospital services to Welland Riding MPP Cindy Forster.

“The people of Welland, and the Niagara-area, are speaking out and deserve to be heard,” said Forster. “Welland and Niagara Falls deserve better than to have their services ripped out from under them.”

 NHS Supervisor Kevin Smith and Health Minister Deb Matthews have told residents that in-patient Pediatric, Obstetrical and Gynecological services will be moved from Welland Hospital and Greater Niagara General Hospital to a new hospital in St. Catharines. For many, this would mean an hour-long drive to access urgent medical care.

 “This short sighted decision seriously endangers the health and safety of my constituents and neighbours,” said Forster. “Forcing them to drive to the far end of St. Catharines for services they currently get close to home is unreasonable. The services should stay where they are.” Continue reading →

This post submitted to NAL by Brock University

The Brock/Niagara African Canadian Renaissance Group and its partners at the St. Catharines, Ontario university will again host a series of community events throughout February to celebrate this year’s African Heritage Month (AHM).

The acclaimed PBS documentary series will be screened at Brock University this February. See accompanying post for more details.

 
The month-long program includes art exhibits and performances, film screenings, guest lectures, a drumming workshop and cooking demonstration, just to name a few.
 
All of these events are free. Everyone is welcome to attend.
 
“We invite the community to join us as we celebrate, debate and share what is a tradition at Brock University,” says Richard Ndayizigamiye, a Brock professor of modern languages, literatures and cultures and co-chair of this year’s organizing committee.
 
“For 2013, the AHM organizing committee worked to develop programming with a focus on Haiti,” says co-chair Tamari Kitossa, associate professor of sociology.
Continue reading →

A Public Advisory from the Niagara Health System, February 1, 2013

 The Niagara Health System today declared a C. difficile outbreak at the St. Catharines General Site’s Oncology Medical/Palliative Unit.

C. Dff – an out break of the dangerous bacteria is back at one of Niagara, Ontario’s larger hospital sites.

Five patients on the unit have confirmed positive for hospital-associated C. difficile in the last two weeks. Under our infection prevention and control protocols, this means the unit is considered to be in outbreak. Four affected patients remain on the unit, and there have been no deaths associated with the outbreak. There are no other C. difficile outbreaks at the NHS.

“We have stringent infection prevention and control protocols at all of our sites, and our doctors, staff and volunteers work extremely hard to follow these best practices,” says Dr. Joanna Hope, Interim Chief of Staff. “We are doing everything we can to get out of this outbreak as quickly as possible.” Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

One of the Ontario Liberal government’s more maverick members – Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor – is hoping to meet with premier-designate Kathleen Wynne as soon as possible to discuss some of the more burning issues in Niagara.

Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor

Craitor, a former Niagara Falls city councillor who has served for the past nine years as a Liberal government MPP for a riding that includes his city and the towns of Fort Erie and Niagara-on-the-Lake, told Niagara At Large the day following Wynne’s victory at a Liberal leadership convention this January 26 that he has a few issues he wants her to place on her to-do list.

Those issues, said Craitor, include a promise from Wynne to do what she can, within reason. to save the Fort Erie Race Track – a time-honoured horse-racing track in Niagara, Ontario that supports hundreds of jobs and has been a major fixture in the Fort Erie community for more than a century. That track, along with Woodbine in Toronto and others across the province, are now twisting in the wind as outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty chose to abandon them in slurry of decisions he made around gambling or so-called “gaming” establishments, including the now-defunct Fort Erie Slots casino in Fort Erie, over the  past year. Continue reading →

A Note from Doug Draper on a tour of Niagara, Ontario’s new hospital

Well there I was, standing over the guest book and a spot on the page where I was asked to sign in and share my comments on the place. I thought about it for a moment and what else could I say?

A line-up for tours of the new Niagara Health System hospital complex in west St. Catharines. Photo by Doug Draper

“Very impressive,” were the words I finally wrote down.

I could have added something about this – the first 21^st-century, state-of-the-art hospital in Niagara, Ontario – not to mention first-of-a-kind cancer and cardiac treatment centers – located in the wrong location to best serve everyone in this region, but there wasn’t much room next to my name to get into that. And besides, how many times had I made that point in news columns over the past eight years?

And how many times had it been made by others, including dozens of area doctors who urged the Niagara Health System way back when to locate this grand new hospital complex at a more central site in the region?  Save for a few others, including Pat Scholfield, a Welland area resident living in Port Colborne at the time, and Sue Salzer of Fort Erie, few back then paid very much in the way of attention until it was all but too late. Continue reading →

Submitted by the Office of Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak

(A Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper – NAL takes total responsibility for the headline you may already have read above the following statement by Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak, which we have posted below in its entirety.

You may very well note that Tim Hudak and, for that matter, most of the mainstream media in Canada refer to the Alberta tar sands more favourably as “oil sands.” NAL has made a firm editorial decision to join many of the more progressive news sources in the United States in referring to this abomination to the planet – one of the filthiest sources for oil on record in this world – as tar sands.

It is a far more accurate description of what is this God-awful, filthy goo, strip mined like you would gut a fish, and with no remorse from the government of Alberta or the current government of Canada, for gutting ever more of what is left of the majestic boreal forest region of Alberta.)

STATEMENT

• Tim Hudak, MPP
• Leader, the PC Party of Ontario
• Meeting with the Hon. Alison Redford, Premier of Alberta
• January 30, 2013 

Historically, Alberta and Ontario have been the economic engines of Confederation. All of Canada stands to benefit through job creation and economic growth in the 21^st century, if our two provinces leverage their respective strengths for national advantage.

Are these tar sands Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak’s idea of a healthy, economic future?

The facts are beyond dispute: According to the Canadian Energy Research Institute, over the next 25 years the Alberta oil sands projects will require an estimated $63 billion in job-creating goods and services from Ontario. Even today, some 500 Ontario-based companies are involved in oil sands work. More than a dozen of these firms employ over 1,000 people. In short, the oil sands are a game-changer for the Canadian economy and for job creation in Ontario. Continue reading →

By Elizabeth Chitty

A Niagara Giant Two Row Wampum March will take place on Saturday, February 2 at 11:00 a.m. in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario.

The Two Row Wampum Belt

Native and non-native people will walk side-by-side, each “row” carrying a huge purple banner and a white banner. The banners represent the purple and white stripes of the Two Row Wampum belt, which was the symbolic record of the first agreement between indigenous people in North America and Europeans.

This action represents re-affirming the content of the treaty, which outlined a commitment to friendship, peace between peoples, and living in parallel as long as the grass is green, as long as the rivers flow downhill and as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Continue reading →

Submitted by Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario

After taking last year off, the Niagara Social Justice Forum will once again return to Brock University for a full day of workshops, performances and exhibits this Friday, February  1.

A section of the poster promoting Brock’s social justice series

The Social Justice and Equity Studies program at Brock will host the sixth installment of the popular one-day community event, which provides an open forum for individuals and groups working for social change in Niagara to connect with one another.
 
The theme for this year’s forum is Our Own Backyard: A Global-Local Mash-up.
 
This event is free, accessible and open to everyone, but participants are asked to register in advance. Continue reading →

Submitted by Lyman Welch, water quality director for the Alliance For The Great Lakes

(Niagara At Large, through its publisher Doug Draper, a veteran, award-winning environment reporter, is committed to highlighting issues related to the health of our Great Lakes – the largest and one of the most precious basins for fresh, life-sustaining water on this planet – on this site.)

The Great Lales from space, An image from the critcally acclaimed Canadian film documentary Waterlife by Kevin McMahon

The Alliance for the Great Lakes, along with the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago and the International Joint Commission, hosted a meeting this January 23 with environmental leaders and the public to discuss how we all can help protect clean water in the Great Lakes on both sides of the international border. Continue reading →

Submitted by the Buffalo History Museum and Forest Lawn Cemetary

Buffalo, New York’s iconic Museum of History off Delaware Park.

BUFFALO, NY, February 28, 2013: The Buffalo History Museum (BHM) – in collaboration with Forest Lawn – announces a very special, all-inclusive tour aboard the state-of-the-art, climate-controlled, wheelchair-accessible Forest Lawn trolley that will highlight the historic and notable women of Buffalo.  The tour, which celebrates both Black History Month and Women’s History Month, will be offered on two dates: Saturday, February 16 and Saturday, March 16, 2013. Continue reading →

By Delila Jahn-Thue

(Niagara At Large is pleased, once again, to welcome Delila Jahn-Thue  from Canada’s great mid-west as a voice from another region of this continent to what we often like to think of here as an online town hall. In this column, Delila shares some her views on the perilous state of our planet and we welcome you to share yours too.)

I wake from a few hours’ sleep to accept my place in life.

Gone is my youth, during which I staggered wildly after whatever it was I was supposed to be in life, disappointed, judging myself at every turn. Gone is woeful self measuring against media models of success and failure in material terms. Now I wake nightly to burn in hell.

An Aunt recently advised: “First you throw the husband out of bed, then every blanket, cool off and go back to sleep.”

But here on the farm, following these directions wouldn’t lower Farmer’s temperature, or mine.

Besides, this means more uninterrupted reading time.

During the past few sizzling nights I’ve burned through Alanna Mitchell’s Sea Sick – The Global Ocean in Crisis. It’s a heavy club sandwich of global scientific research from her travels around the planet cataloguing Ocean vital signs. Continue reading →

A Submission from the Office of Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak

 QUEEN’S PARK, January 28, 2013 – The Ontario PCs are ready to get down to work and take immediate steps to fix the most serious jobs and government debt crisis of our lifetime – and hope the incoming Premier is ready to do same, Leader Tim Hudak said today.

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak

“Facing the risk of another credit downgrade and more than half a million unemployed, Ontario needs urgent action,” Hudak said.  “The challenges we confront today are the same as they were yesterday, and are the same as they will be tomorrow – and every day until we start to put Ontario on the right track.

“At a time when Ontarians are looking to their government for new ideas, I am concerned that the first 48 hours under the incoming Premier sound a lot like the last decade under Dalton McGuinty. Ontario is on the wrong path and we need to take action – starting today.”  Continue reading →

A Submission from the Office of Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

 (A Brief Foreword by Niagara At Large – On this one the Ontario NDP leader is doing the new Liberal leader and nest premier, Kathleen Wynne, a favour here . The NDP leader is offering the incoming Liberal premier the possibility of taking a controversy that allegedly involved the miss-spending of hundreds of millions of dollars of tax money for partisan political gain, and having it investigated in a non-partisan, public inquiry forum.

It may be a test of how willing Wynne is to set a new course to see how much she goes for Horwath’s suggestion.)

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath

 QUEEN’S PARK, January 28, 2013 – New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath says the new Premier must shed light on gas plant cancellations in order to move forward with the business of the House. Horwath says a public inquiry to investigate the gas plant cancellations would allow the Legislature to focus on other issues and provide the public with answers they deserve.

“This Legislature must be accountable to the people who elected us by providing clarity on key questions. We can start by dealing with the elephant that’s taken a front row seat in the Legislature,” said Horwath. “Premier designate Wynne has the choice to call for a public inquiry now, take it out of the House for a non-partisan review, and allow MPPs to focus on other key matters.”

A public inquiry would take the politics out of the issue by allowing an independent eye to take a look at what really went on and provide Ontarians real answers.

“The Premier designate would show her willingness to turn the page by appointing a fully public inquiry within 30 days, with open, public hearings.”

(Niagara At Large invites all of you who dare to share your first and last name on this site to share your views below.)

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Through the first 25 days of this New Year, I woke up each morning with one over-riding wish in mind for addressing what I felt had become the sad state of governance in Ontario.

Ontario’s next premier Kathleen Wynne.

My wish was for the opposition parties in Ontario – the Conservatives and NDP – to use the first days, if not hours, of the next session of the provincial legislature to pull the plug on whatever remains of outgoing premier Dalton McGuinty’s minority Liberal government. My wish was for them to do it as soon as possible so that we, the people, can decide in an election who we want to move the province forward.

Now, with an Ontario Liberal Party convention this January 26 in which Kathleen Wynne has emerged as the province’s next premier, I am thinking let’s not be so fast to pull the plug. Let’s give Wynne, who as much as she had to mouth a few obligatory niceties about the outgoing premier’s “legacy” and “building on the foundation” he is leaving behind, let’s give her a chance to fulfill the promise she has made to reach out to the opposition parties and to communities across Ontario to get us back on a healthy sustainable track again. Continue reading →

A News Brief by Doug Draper

The glass ceiling has been was shattered twice this January 26 in Ontario and Canadian politics.

Ontario’s first female premier, Kathleen Wynne and now one of six female premiers across Canada.

Kathleen Wynne, a Toronto area MPP and provincial cabinet minister, won an Ontario Liberal leadership race that went to three ballots this January 26, beating the party’s front-running establishment candidate Sandra Pupatello and becoming the first female and openly gay premier in the province’s history.

 Wynne, whose victory was assured when Gerard Kennedy, a third-place candidate and one of the party’s more progressive voices, threw his support behind her for reasons that had to do with similarities in their slightly left-of-centre vision for the party. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Just as the Niagara Health System is gearing up to celebrate the grand opening this March of its new hospital complex in St. Catharines, Ontario’s west end, there is some sobering news about the cost of some of the infrastructure needed to accommodate all the additional traffic the hospital will generate to this dumbest of places where the new hospital could have gone.

The new hospital complex the Niagara Health System is opening on the outskirts of St. Catharines, Ontario. Photo by Doug Draper

Niagara’s regional government has learned earlier this January that  the estimated cost of constructing a new interchange off Highway 406 to accommodate traffic to the hospital and other dumb growth, as opposed to “smart” growth,  St. Catharines and the region has said yes to over the past in west St. Catharines, has ballooned to about $30 million.

 Isn’t that nice. And who is going to pay for that?

Indeed, who is going to pay for all of the new infrastructure, including the millions already spent on widening Fourth Avenue and other roads running off Highway 406? Well the ordinary citizens of Niagara and Ontario will be paying out of their pockets, of course, for highway and other infrastructure that might not have been needed. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

Corporate suppression of the known negative “externalities” of industry, to the detriment of the public, is nothing new.

 In the 1950’s, for example, tobacco industry scientists knew that smoking led to premature deaths and escalating health costs.  They decided not to publicize the information, but instead to fraudulently ramp up a campaign to manufacture unreasonable doubt so that they could sell their products to an unsuspecting public.

How did they do it?  Continue reading →

A Submission to Niagara At Large from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance

(A Brief Foreword from Niagara At Large – Say what you want about the cost of starting up alternative sources of energy like solar and wind in this province and other regions across North America. The public cost of nuclear power has been huge and Ontario energy consumers are still paying for multi-billion-dollar cost over-runs at nuclear power plants like Darlington. We trust that those who are so opposed to wind turbines for reasons that include the cost to consumers will speak out just as strongly against moving forward with any more nuclear power projects in the province.)

It’s bad enough that the Liberal Government is determined to spend billions of dollars rebuilding a nuclear plant we don’t really need, but now it is layering on expensive consultants as a “cost control” measure.

Ontario’s Pickering Nuclear Energy plant is considered, by the Ontario Energy Board, to be one of the most expensive and least reliable plants of its kind in the world to operate.

The government will spend upwards of $650,000 to pay an ex-Ontario Hydro employee to tell it if the project is running behind schedule and over budget, as has every nuclear project in Ontario’s history.  Ontario Power Generation (OPG) itself will spend an undisclosed amount on a similar consultant to keep track of the project for a company with thousands of employees who are apparently too busy to do this.

Frankly, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  A corporation whose CEO is paid more than $1 million a year will hire a consultant to tell the government’s consultant if its project is on track. Continue reading →

A Niagara At Large News Brief

Bruce Timms, a long-time Niagara regional council for St. Catharines has been elected by the board of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority to serve as the NPCA’s chair.

Veteran St. Catharines regional councillor Bruce Timms is new chair of Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority

Timms takes over the chair’s job from Bart Maves, a Niagara Falls regional councillor and former Ontario Conservative MPP who has just been chosen by the party to try to win back that seat in the Niagara Falls riding from Kim Craitor, a former Niagara Falls city councillor who has held it for the Liberals for the past nine-and-a-half years. 

At its 54^th annual meeting this January, the NPCA’s board also elected Wainfleet, Ontario Mayor April Jeffs to serve as its vice-chair. Continue reading →

This News Brief submitted by the Niagara Health System 

Members of the public are invited for an advance tour of the new state-of-the-art hospital on Saturday, January 26, 2013. This is the last chance to attend an open house tour before we open to provide patient care on March 24, 2013.

The new hospital complex for Niagara in west St. Catharines. Photo by Doug Draper

This last chance is Saturday, January 26, 2013 – 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  Last tour starts at 3:30 p.m. Please arrive before 3 p.m. for a comprehensive tour.

New St. Catharines Site
1200 Fourth Avenue . Free parking on site – enter from main entrance on First Street Louth. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper 

“None of this is free and if we say; ‘Let’s not charge (developers for the cost of development)’, then the taxpayers pay.” – St. Catharines representative on Niagara regional council, Brian Heit.

“It needs to be communicated very clearly that all property taxpayers are going to be contributing to this grant (to industry).” – Niagara regional councillor and Lincoln, Ontario Mayor Bill Hodgson.

Niagara, Ontario’s regional headquarters

What both of these elected representatives were speaking to at the January 17 Niagara regional council meeting were development charges for corporations that might move a and who pays them. And I can almost sense the moaning from readers out there now. Development charges? That sounds boring and why should I care to read on. Well you may want to for reasons that hit you and me – and all of us – squarely in the pocket book.

What Heit and Hodgson, among only a few others on the regional council were responding to at that January 17 meeting was a motion supported by a majority of the councillors to exempt industry from paying any development charges whatsoever in Niagara over the next two years, all in the hope of stimulating more industrial grown in the region. Continue reading →

News Analysis by Doug Draper

“We have to fight this plan,” a charged-up Wayne Gates told more than 80, mostly central and south Niagara residents attending a rally this past January 19, aimed at sending a message to the Niagara Health System and Ontario government, that they don’t want maternity and pediatric services moved out of hospitals in Niagara Falls and Welland.

Niagara Falls, Ontario councillor Wayne Gates speaks at hospital rally with Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati (centre) and Welland Mayor Barry Sharpe at his side. Photo by Doug Draper

These were bold words and, without doubt here, heartfelt ones coming from the Niagara Falls city councillor and one cannot help but wonder if they will lead to any better results than General Custer urging the 200-some-odd soldiers in his regiment to stand their ground and fight with thousands of Sioux warriors swooping down on them.

Indeed, the Niagara Health System, with the full support of the provincial government and its feisty health minister Deb Matthews, shows every sign of following through on its intentions – first outlined in July of 2008 in a controversial ‘hospital improvement plan’ tabled by the NHS’s former CEO Debbie Sevenpifer and her now-long-defunct board – to consolidate most acute care services in the region, including maternity, pediatric and obstetric services – in the new mega hospital Sevenpifer and company insisted on building in the north end of Niagara, in west St. Catharines. Continue reading →

 By Sue Salzer

The recent history of Douglas Memorial Hospital in Fort Erie, Ontario should, by now, be a well-known story to all residents of Niagara – important to some and sorry about your luck from others.

Pariicpants clap for speakers at rally to keep hospital services in south Niagara. Photo by Doug Draper

De3pite written assurance to the mayors of Fort Erie and neighbouring Port Colborne some five years ago from the Niagara Health System – the body established by the province a decade ago to amalgamate most of the hospital service in our region – that their community hospitals would remain intact with the approval of a new hospital for residents of St Catharines, the NHS’s so-called “hospital improvement plan” followed shortly thereafter. With a reading of that plan it quickly became apparent that a death knell was about to befall local community hospitals. It was a well perpetrated hoax. Continue reading →