Author Archives: dougdraper

Friends of Willowbank, a not-for-profit citizens group dedicated to restoring the 19th century Willowbank estate in Queenston, Ontario, is calling on student artists to submit their work for possible use for one of its major fundraisers.

The winning submission will be featured on posters for the 2011 Willowbank Jazz Festival, an annual event that helps raise funds for restoring the estate and for other educational and training programs the Willowbank group runs to promote heritage conservation in our region and others. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

‘The problem is the liberal media.”

Keith Olbermann doing his thing for one of the last times.

I’ve heard that comment and others like it for all of the 32 years I’ve been a professional journalist and going back well before then – during the times of the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam War, the enactment of the War Measures Act in Canada and the civil rights movement in the United States. Continue reading →

A Foreword by Doug Draper

The ongoing cleanup of the Buffalo River – a major tributary to the Niagara River – will be the focus of a public meeting in Buffalo this coming Tuesday, January 25.

The Buffalo River's 'elebator alley'. Photo courtesy of the citizen group Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper

The waters of the Buffalo River, flowing by numerous old and often abandoned industrial mills along its shores before emptying into the upper Niagara, was so polluted a few decades ago, about the only fish that could survive in it were bullheads or catfish and scientists found visible tumors on half the ones they caught for examination.

More recently, the river’s waters and bottom sediment have shown visible signs of impairment as government agencies have worked together with private industry and citizen groups like Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper on numerous projects aimed at revitalizing this important waterbody. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

In the days since the ouster of Niagara Health Systems CEO Debbie Sevenpifer on Tuesday, January 18, this news site and others, we suspect, have been swarmed with requests from citizens in this region to know what kind of a severance package Sevenpifer is getting.

It is one damn good question, given the fact the Sevenpifer, alone, was siphoning up more than $340,00 of our taxdollars annually in salaries and benefit, while the NHS is forecasting a $7 million annual operating debt at the same time the NHS has been cutting frontline services at hospitals in Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Welland, Niagara Falls and other areas of the region. Continue reading →

By Becky Day

I spoke with regional councillor Bruce Timms today. He has been leading the charge in an attempt to bring a new type of regional governance to the Niagara Region, one that follows the Halton region model.

St. Catharines regional councillor Bruce Timms

“The focus of my reform is to integrate city council and regional council so there is good clear communication between the two levels of government,” he said. “That’s far more important than any talk about amalgamation.”

Timms proposal would see each municipality have double duty regional/municipal councillors. In Thorold’s case, there would still be 8 councillors but 1 of those would be wearing two hats. They would run for “the double duty councillor” spot in the next election in 2014. Each municipality could determine how they would do it. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

It is hard to let the third week of this January, 2011 pass without making some mention of the 50^th anniversary of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address – considered by some to be one of the most stirring speeches of the last century.

The address was delivered on January 20, 1961, as frigid a day in Washington, D.C. as the days we are experiencing in the northeastern U.S. and Canada now. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

It’s lookin’ like the campaigns for this coming September’s provincial election are already heating up to a point where they might melt some of this snow.

Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak in Beamsville, calling on Liberal government to give Ontarians a break on hydro bills.

There were two Ontario party leaders stomping ground in the Niagara region this January 20  –  NDP leader Andrea Horwath and Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak – both on issues of particular concern to many ordinary citizens of this province during these coldest days of winter, the cost of hydro and heating our homes. Continue reading →

A Niagara At Large Editorial by Doug Draper

Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat.
– the late British labour minister Ernest Bevin

The scapegoat for the moment over the mess we call hospital services in this region is Debbie Sevenpifer, the now ousted president and chief executive officer of the Niagara Health System.

Ousted Niagara Health System CEO Debbie Sevenpifer

As news circulated through Niagara, Ontario this January 19 that the board of trustees of the NHS – the decade old body responsible for operating most of the hospital services in the region – had suddenly replaced Sevenpifer with now acting CEO Sue Matthews, the phone calls, email and even the odd voice across the street from some of my neighbours came in, celebrating her departure with lines like – ‘It’s about time’ and ‘Maybe things will run better now.’

One of Niagara At Large’s readers even talked about mixed the rum and coke, and celebrating. But maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to break out the drinks and party balloons. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Debbie Sevenpifer, who has served as the often-besieged chief executive officer of the Niagara Health System for the better part of eight years, has been relieved of her $345,0000 per year job by the NHS’s Board of Trustees.

Ousted Niagara Health System CEO Debbie Sevenpifer

The news came in a media release posted by the NHS this Wednesday, January 19 and noting that “The Niagara Health system Board of Trustees today announced a change in senior leadership. … Effective today, R. Sue Matthews has been appointed as Interim President and Chief Executive Officer, replacing Mrs. Debbie Sevenpifer.”

The board’s announcement follows in the wake of reports earlier this January that the NHS, the body responsible for operating most of the hospital services in Niagara, Ontario, could be facing a $7 million deficit in its operating budget for the coming 2011/12 fiscal year. That news renewed calls from local municipal councillors and others across the region, including Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor, for a provincial investigation of how well the NHS manages its operations. Continue reading →

By Pat Scholfield

Once again, the Niagara Health System is predicting a $7million deficit; nearly triple its originally proposed $2 million.

Niagara hospital services advocate Pat Scholfield

This has come after the NHS, the body responsible for managing most of the hospital services in Niagara, Ontario, has been feverishly implementing the HIP (hospital
improvement plan), which was calculated to reduce their annual deficits.

Obviously, the HIP has not worked as planned.

A major part of the HIP, applied quickly, was the cutting of around 100 beds across Niagara and an equal number of frontline staff, as well as shutting down emergency rooms (ERs) and operating rooms (Ors) at the Port Colborne and Fort Erie hospitals. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

It looks like we better start bracing ourselves for even more cuts in front-line services at hospitals in Niagara, Ontario.

Either that or the provincial government is going to have to dig even deeper into our pockets to find more money to bail out the Niagara Health System.

It was less than a year ago that Debbie Sevenpifer, CEO of a Niagara Health System responsible for managing most of this region’s hospitals, declared the infusion of another $14 million of funding on top of the hundreds of millions the NHS already gets from the province a “gold medal day.” It would help keep the NHS on the track to balancing its operating budget by 2013, she suggested.

And now we find memo, dated January 10, 2011, from NHS chief financial officer Angela Zangari to the hospital system’s staff (you can read the full text of it below) forecasting a $7 million deficit – “$5 million more than anticipated,” to quote Zangari’s memo – for the NHS’s 2011/2012 fiscal year.

If this doesn’t justify the call from more than 7,000 residents who signed a petition across this region, accompanied by resolutions from the councils of seven of Niagara’s 12 municipalities – Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Wainfleet, Welland, Niagara Falls, Thorold and St. Catharines – for the province to come in and conduct an independent investigation of how the NHS manages its affairs, then what does? Continue reading →

By Shafee Bacchus, former commissioner of corporate services for Ontario’s Niagara Region

Now that the municipal elections are over I am compelled to reflect on the promises made and the difficulties faced by those who are new in power to effect change.

Shafee Bacchus

Firstly, I am convinced, after many years spent in municipal administration, that one of the greatest obstacles to change is the longevity of those who are returned to power each successive term. These individuals, with few exceptions, feel secure in their positions and are under the illusion that their continued election somehow reflects the good decision they make on council over the years.

Let’s be clear. Municipal elections are based on name recognition in the majority of cases with less than 30% of eligible voters participating. It is not based on decision making of individual councillors. If that was the case, I would bet more than half of those long-standing councillors would be out after the first term. Continue reading →

By John Sewell

(The following is an open letter former Toronto mayor John Sewell wrote to his city’s newly elected mayor, Rob Ford, on the unsustainable cost of policing in the Toronto area. We in Niagara ought to take heed. Soaring policing costs are mugging taxpayers here too. This letter is being printed in Niagara At Large with the permission John Sewell. NAL: urges you to read it and share your comments below.)

Dear Mayor Ford,

The New Year has hardly begun, but a grand opportunity is being presented to you to stop the gravy train.

Former Toronto mayor John Sewell

I know that ending the sense of entitlement within city services is a big priority for you, as is ensuring that taxpayers get good value for their tax dollars. Continue reading →

Niagara At Large is posting the following release from the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario on the sad passing of Al Kozlik, one of Canada’s most distinguished actors who performed for decades on the stages of the Shaw and Stratford Festivals.

Long-time Shaw Ensemble Member mourned

January 13, 2011, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada….The Shaw Festival mourns the passing of distinguished Canadian actor Al Kozlik. Mr. Kozlik died peacefully on January 11 at the Greater Niagara General Hospital after suffering a stroke. He leaves behind his spouse of 41 years, Scott Sunderland.

Upon making the announcement, Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell noted: “Al was a most beloved and generous Company Member with an enthusiasm for, and love of, actors and acting that was endlessly infectious. I feel blessed to have witnessed his final performance as “Firs” in The Cherry Orchard last season, a part he had always wanted to play and which he embodied so beautifully.” Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  It’s an old theme, one ignored by Macbeth, but one which needs further investigation today.

A crab some of us might normally enjoy eating, smothered in BP oil down on the gulf. And BP is getting away with it!

One of the ugly faces of power today is Petroleum, and boy does it corrupt.  Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Friedman, in his book, Hot, Flat, And Crowded, observes that when the price of petrol is high, it empowers petrol dictators and disempowers democracy.  So, when we see the market for crude oil (often manipulated) rise, democracy diminishes. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The Niagara Regional Police Service is once again tabling an annual budget that defies the 1.4 per cent target set by the regional government.

Niagara Region's Police Chief Debbie Southall delivers regional council another over-the-top bill for policing

At a regional budget meeting this January 14, Niagara Region’ Police Chief Wendy Southall tabled a budget that calls for a 5.1 per cent increase that would mean a jump in the NRP’s operating budget to $127 million this year.

Southall told regional councillors she’d have to make cuts that would equal laying as many as 30 constables to meet their budget target, something she said she is not prepared to do.

This is the same kind of way-out-of-line budget hike e the NRP has come to the regional council with in previous years and, once again, most of the increase is being attributed to salary increases – totaling around three per cent per year – awarded to the police union through the province’s provincial arbitrators.

The union and provincial arbitration board obviously do not give a fig about concerns expressed by regional councillors, time and time again, that Niagara’s taxpayers simply cannot afford these kinds of cost increases, particularly during a time of economic hardship for many of this region’s residents. The fact that they are settling on salaries in the same range as those officers are award in the Greater Toronto Area – even though the cost of living in Niagara is significantly lower – doesn’t seem to matter either. Continue reading →

A special fundraising concert is being held in St. Catharines, Ontario this to assist the family of two young boys diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy – a debilitating disease that could cost them their lives before their 20th birthdays.

From left at front are Boston and Gibson Riddick during a visit to a local fire department with their parents and supporters.

The concert, to take place at the Quality Inn Parkway Hotel and Convention Centre on Ontario Street in St. Catharines this coming Tuesday, January 18, will feature many popular area bands (see more details below) and raffles and silent auction. It is aimed at raising as much as $100,000 to help Chris and Sherry Riddick and their two boys, Gibson, 11, and Boston, 3, retrofit their home and purchase a specially equipped van to make home life and travel more accessible for the boys.

The event has been organized by a community group calling itself the Riddick Family Lift Project Committee and starts at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10 with all proceeds going to the cause. The bands, including The Bends, Unruly Gentleman’s Club, Dr. Colossus and Tim Atherton and the Athertones, have donated their time to the fundraising campaign, just as Parkway owner Angelo Nitsopoulus has donated space for it.

For more details and contact information, see the media release below. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

It’s beginning to look like decades of forcing Niagara, Ontario residents to subsidize sprawling, low-density development through their property taxes rather than making those profiting from this kind of costly development is finally catching up to our regional government. And we, the taxpayers in this region may be the ones who pay – big time!

Unfortunately, the region’s kiss-off subsidies to developers (and I’m talking not about staff, but about those regional councillors who are in bed with developers)could eventually leave Niagara with a capital deficit of $416 million in capital deficits over the next decade – a deficit we would be passing on to our children for generations to come.

This unprecedented $416-million shortfall, quoted in a report released this January 12 to the regional government’s Corporate Services Committee, could have an impact on the region’s “financial well being.”

The impact on taxpayers for years to come, according to the report the region’s chief administrative officer, Mike Trojan, and its corporate services commissioner, Brian Hutchings tabled before the committee, “would be significant.”

And this is where I come back in to stress the following.  Continue reading →

 (At the time Joseph Somers sent Niagara At Large this piece, the price of gasoline, per U.S. gallon, averaged around $3.19 to $3.29 in the Buffalo, New York area, versus what amounts to more than four-and-a-half bucks per U.S. gallon on the Ontario side of the border at a time when the dollars in both countries are hovering around par.)

By Joseph Somers

In Welland, Ontario this week, at an Esso station on Main Street East, we woke up to find an increase in gas prices per litre from $1.099 to $1.159 – an increase that amounts to 6 x 4.546, or an increase of $0.273 per imperial gallon overnight!

The gas prices, per litre and not gallon, that Canadians are slapped in face with on the Niagara, Ontario side of the border. Photo by Doug Draper

Meanwhile, gasoline across the Niagara River (in the Buffalo area) now runs around $3.29 per American gallon. At that a cost or however pennies more on the U.S. side, it costs Canadian consumers well over a dollar more to purchase the same gallon of gas on the Canadian side of the border.

Using U.S.A. costs, Canadians have to pay at least a $1.30 more per gallon for gasoline, much of it exported to the U.S.A. from Canada.

There is no excuse for this difference in gas prices other than unadulterated greed.

(Share your comments below on this or related topics, such as why can you purchase a gallon of milk at Wegmans grocery stores in Western New York for $1.49 when it costs $5.00 or more for a gallon of milk in Niagara, Ontario?)

Joseph Somers is a resident of Welland, Ontario. We welcome you to contribute posts on matters of interest and concern to Niagara readers on this site.

 (Visit Niagara At Large for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)

By Doug Draper

It wasn’t all that long ago that a previous Niagara, Ontario regional council and the councils of 12 local municipalities in Niagara all but stalled out on launching a first-of-a-kind, specialized transit service for the whole region.

Had it not been for the last-minute support some five years ago of one of the smaller rural councils in Niagara – that of former West Lincoln mayor Katie Trombetta – the regional government would not have had the backing it needed among its own flock and the local municipalities to launch a transit service for countless thousands of Niagara residents who can no longer drive and require it for medical and other basic needs.

Today, that service has grown by leaps and bounds, from a ridership totaling 4,524 in 2007 (its inaugural year) to 13,975 in 2010. And there is every reason to believe these ridership figures will continue growing exponentially as growing numbers of aging Niagarians and others with challenges making it impossible for them to drive find out it is there to serve them.

“I am really proud of these results,” said Kim Koz, a manager of fleet services for Niagara’s regional government of the jumping ridership figures at the first meeting of 2011 of the region’s transporation subcommittee.  “It’s amazing and it just keeps growing. There is definitely a need for the service out there.” Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

I’ve argued this point before and I will argue it again, however much the union representing Niagara Regional Police and other police officers across Ontario dislike it.

 The catapulting costs of police services in this and other regions in the province – mostly due to the unreasonable and unsustainable wage and benefit demands of the Police Association of Ontario which is one of the province’s most powerful unions – is bankrupting municipal governments and assaulting the pocket books of municipal taxpayers.

Niagara Regional Police headquarters in St. Catharines, Ontario

In that spirit, I was heartened to see a full-page story, entitled ‘What Price For Law And Order’, in the Saturday, January 8 edition of The Globe and Mail, hardly a radical paper in this country, that made exactly the same point.

That Globe story begins like this: “At a time when cash-strapped cities are bringing down austerity measures to reign in spending, police budgets have continued their steady growth, forcing civic leaders to make tough choices between funding law and order and paying for other major services.”

“Despite declining crime rates,” the story continues, “spending on police forces – one of the largest single items on municipal ledgers – has risen 41 per cent per capita across the country over the last decade for which Statistics Canada numbers are available. Much of that cost is being driven by police raises that consistently top the inflation rate.”

“The dilemma is stark: Let policing costs continue to rise and governments must make cuts elsewhere – whether road repairs, libraries or parks – to compensate.” 

Well hallelujah to The Globe for making that point (you can read the whole article by clicking on  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/whats-the-price-for-law-and-order/article1862544/ ) and certainly Niagara is one of those regional municipalities that is being strong armed to financial death by a police union that seems not to give a damn about the rest of the people, many of whom are struggling to keep their homes and pay their bills.

The question is always this: When will a critical mass of our municipal and provincial politicians stand up for the ordinary resident and taxpayer, and stand up against this bully police union and the provincially appointed arbitrators that give this union and its members virtually everything they want? Are our politicians that afraid of this union that they would rather saddle residents in this and other municipalities across this province with costs they can no longer afford?

Just this past fall in Niagara, the regional council felt it had ‘no choice’ but to approve a new contract for the region’s police that amounts to a 9.96 per cent raise hike for unionized members of the Niagara Regional Police Service over the next three years. It is a hike that will see first-class constable on the force making more than $83,000 by the end of this New Year while the median annual income for workers, most of whom have private-sector jobs in this region, is down around $35,000.

Our police like to talk about protecting us against muggers. Well this is a financial mugging of the very people our police are sworn to serve and protect. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

In the week leading up to what would have been Martin Luther King’s 82nd birthday, Buffalo, New York’s Downtown Library is hosting a free event commemorating the life of American civil rights leader.

The late American civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

The Buffalo library’s tribute ceremony will take place on Thursday, January 13, four days before the January 17 Martin Luther King Day commemorated by countless millions across the United States.

King played a leadership role in breaking down racial barriers in 1950s and 60s America when it came to desegregating schools and other public and private institutions, and in finally guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote a century after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery.

One of the world’s leading advocates for non-violent protest at the time, King was assassinated in 1968.  We all received a wake-up call around violence and assassination with the tragic attempted assassination of Arizona Congresswoman Gabriell Giffords and the killing of six other people by another in what seems like a continuous stream of disturbed people in America who are able to still go into a store and purchase a lethal weapon. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Possibly not to be outdone by U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to recognizing citizens who provide voluntary service to their communities, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper used a stop in Welland, Ontario this January 7 to announce a new awards program for celebrating volunteers.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, file photo.

“Our government is proud of the millions of volunteers and other everyday Canadians who generously give their time, experience and expertise to make their communities stronger,” said the Conservative PM during his first visit to Niagara in more than a year. “These awards will celebrate their enormous contributions and we hope it encourages others to participate and make a difference in their own communities.”

Niagara At Large is pleased to include the Prime Minister’s Media Release and a Backgrounder from his office, providing more details on the new volunteer awards program below. Read through them, and then share your comments with us on this announcement. Remember that we only post comments by readers who are willing to include their real name. Continue reading →

(Niagara At Large regularly posts media releases and public addresses by our municipal representatives or member of parliament for all parties at the provincial and federal levels of government on matters of interest to our readers.
In that spirit we are posting this January 7 media release from Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath on the application of the controversial Harmonized Sales Tax to hydro and home heating bills.)

Take Unfair HST off Hydro & Home Heating – Horwath
 
Queen’s Park – Ontario’s New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath says the Ontario Government must take the unfair HST off hydro and home heating bills.

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath

“In these tough times it’s just wrong to stick a new tax on hydro and home heating bills. Today New Democrats are calling for a simple step to make life more affordable for Ontario families,” said Horwath.
 
In September Ontario’s New Democrats launched a campaign to take the harmonized sales tax off hydro.  Today’s announcement expands the campaign to take the unfair tax off home heating bills such as natural gas and heating oil.
 
Removing the HST from hydro and home heating would save an average family with two children $220 per year. Continue reading →

“Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake …,
Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break,
Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake.”

– from a 2007 song ‘Last To Die’ by Bruce Springsteen on the continued engagement of our young people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Commentary by Doug Draper

If you’ve been listening to some of the recent news wrap-ups on the year that has just passed by, you may have heard that 2010 was the bloodiest year yet for NATO troops in Afghanistan.

In 2010,  a total of 703 American, Canadian and other NATO soldiers paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan, and why?

Why are we still there, a total of 10 years and many thousands of lost NATO forces and Afghani lives later?

Don’t know how many remember, but this so-called war was  initially  supposed to be about hunting down and capturing Osama bin Laden (remember him) and his Al Qaeda operatives and their Taliban embedders in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

Toxic myths are running rampant these days, but the best one so far is the notion that private health care is more cost-effective and more efficient than public health care.  Worse yet, we are led to believe that somehow privatization is the answer to the current economic mess and the response to an aging population.  I’m not sure how or when we were lead astray, particularly with the model south of us which represents one of the world’s most inefficient Health Care systems, but somehow it happened all the same.

Image courtesy of Ontario Health Coalition, a not-for-profit public interest group based in Toronto.

It may have started when people from bloated bureaucracies started referring to patients as “clients”.  The term “client” is less personal, and better lends itself to business terms, not dissimilar from the military euphemism “collateral damage”, which of course means civilian deaths.   “Clients” can be charged, discharged, lost, over-charged, without much stress. Not “patients” though: the Hippocratic Oath tells us we must take care of them, regardless of cost. Of course healthy “clients” are great.  Insurance companies don’t like unhealthy “clients”; they’re too expensive.  Private systems need to extract profit from the system, and it’s harder to do if the “client” is unhealthy, or if the care is complex.

One might ask, then, how a Universal Public System can take care of a sick patient better than a Private system, and still be more efficient. The root of the answer is money, and how it is used. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

It has almost become a cliché now to say that the Internet has “democratized” our lives more than any other technology developed on this planet since the invention more than half a millennium ago of the printing press.

Newly elected Thorold, Ontario councillor Becky Day has apparently made the mistake of launching a website for residents she represents.

Democratization in the age of the internet means that anyone who has access to a computer with a server can go online, create their own blog or website, and send their messages out to the larger community that can potentially include a “global village” of thousands,, if possbily including millions.

The Internet can be a powerful force for good or bad or just a cornucopia of useless crap in between, depending on how we choose to use it. And in recent years, growing numbers of political leaders – most notably U.S. President Barack Obama and former U.S. presidential candidate Howard Dean – have learned to use it to mobilize large number of people at the grassroots level to learn more about their take on the great issues of the day and their campaigns.

Only more recently have politicians at the municipal level come to realize that the Internet can be a doorway for connecting with their constituents in an open discussion – a virtual town hall – on the issues of concern to our communities today. One Niagara politician who has shot out of the internet gate with a blog site that is working to do this is in Niagara is newly elected Thorold city councillor Becky Day.

Becky Day ran and won one of the eight councillor seats in Thorold after losing her job as a journalist at a weekly piece of crap published by the equally crappy daily papers in Niagara, Ontario. It is called something like ‘Thorold Niagara News’ and Becky was the last columnist that paper had that wrote about the mess Thorold residents had, and may still have, as a local municipal council. Her columns included one account after another of some of what were arguably some of the best staff the city had moving on to other municipal governments, because those who made up a deciding block of the council of the day could not care to listen to their advice, and even sometimes saw it as insubordinance. Continue reading →

The oppression and liberation of animals will be among the topics discussed by featured speaker Anthony Nocella at the Niagara Action for Animals’ ‘January Potluck’ in St. Catharines, Ontario this Friday, January 7.

Featured speaker on animal liberation, Anthony Nocella

Nocella, an author, activist and educator, comes to the region from the Syracuse, New York-based Institute for Critical Animal Studies and Syracuse University.

 Nocella’s “activism, which has lead him to be a lobbyist, assistant to a Texas State Representative, and arrested for numerous acts of civil disobedience, stretches through many social causes including youth advocacy, alternatives to incarceration, ending racism and poverty, Native American rights, LGBTQ rights, animal rights, anarchism and international human rights,” reads a short biography on the speaker. “He is the co-founder of more than 20 political organizations including the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS). He has published more than seven books including Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (2004).” Niagara Action for Animals (NAFA) is a not-for-profit, charitable organization dedicated to the humane treatment of all living creatures great and small. Continue reading →

By William Hogg  ,MD reporting from Kirkland Lake, Ontario
 
If you were a toolmaker, would you remain in a space without a factory to work in? Not likely. Trends to outsourcing aside, you’d head to a space with a place for you to do your work. The question is this: to stay or to go? No real dilemma. Go!

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath joins south Niagara residentsat one of many protests last year over the closing of the Fort Erie hospital's emergency room. File photo by Doug Draper.

Doctors (and nurses) in many outlying areas of southern Ontario, where their workplaces, the hospitals,  are being dismantled apace, are faced with that very dilemma. To stay or to go. But no – ethics prevail.

Almost a year ago,  I visited the chairman of the Premier’s Panel on outlying hospitals. (His report, due over a year ago, was recently circulated.  To say the least, it was platitudinous nonsense.)  Coincidentally, and of much interest, that same chairman is also the well-paid CEO of the Kirkland Lake hospital.  That small gold mining town of about 8,000 people has a beautiful big hospital. Look at its picture below.  It has an emergency.  That lovely hospital has many beds, too, and few doctors.  It beckons.

At almost the same time that I was visiting several similar places up north, the far away Fort Erie hospital in the far southern tier of Niagara was already thoroughly dismantled. Almost totally inoperative.  No emergency.  No active beds. The local doctors had no place to do their tough work. And patients, young and old alike, were already dying en route – to elsewhere.  I must repeat: the isolated snow-town of Fort Erie, really a real city of thirty thousand people, has no really functioning hospital. Is there any doctor’s dilemma here? To stay or to go? Yes, there is. Continue reading →

By Dylan Powell

When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ripped through Haiti last year, I shared in the collective grief.

Click on this poster to blow it up to a readable size.

The images coming back from that country were horrific and traumatizing. The response these images fueled was heartening, with the Canadian public donating more than $200 million in aid.

I remember organizing a bake sale just days after and being overwhelmed with support, quickly selling out and raising over $500 for Doctors Without Borders. I don’t think many people held any naive ideas about an overnight recovery, however, it was beautiful to see so many people feel so connected to this tragedy that they felt compelled to act.

One year later we mark the anniversary of that earthquake and, unfortunately, the situation in Haiti is still grim. The country has been struck with a massive cholera outbreak, political instability, a lack of funds reaching the ground, and only an estimated two per cent of the actual rubble from the earthquake has been cleaned up. To compound the issue, a lot of funding is drying up. For all those who felt compelled to act this past year, this is a call for you to continue your support. Continue reading →

A Comment by Doug Draper

I was driving south on Highway 406 a week or so before this past Christmas when it began snowing so hard it was getting kind of’ treacherous out there. You could hardly see the road in front of your face.

So I did what few other drivers seem to do any more during one of the first heavy snow falls of winter. I slowed down.

Guess I was the stupid one though because other drivers kept whipping by me as if it was a sunny day in July, including one cowboy in a light truck that splashed grimy slush across my windshield as he sped by. Every once in a while there is a bit of poetic justice though, and a few miles up the road I passed this same ranger with his truck spun off through a ditch and about 40 feet off the road.

This brings me to the suggestion some have that the answer to all this is making those of us who already spend a ridiculous amount of money keeping a vehicle on the road spend many hundreds of dollars more putting snow tires on our trucks and cars.

I’ve got an idea that might even prevent more road accidents in winter. Why not just slow down! Continue reading →

A Message from NAL Publisher Doug Draper

 Maybe I’m just turning old and crabby as I hesitate to wish people a Happy New Year any more.

I’m still stupidly doing it again though, in t\the days leading up to this January 1st whenever I cross paths with people I know in the real world, or on the phone, or in the virtual world of the internet.

It just seems like wishing people a ‘Happy New Year’ is the courteous thing to do as we count down the clock to another calendar year.

Then again, it is a tradition, and I don’t mind respecting a bit of that.

But I’d rather say something like the following to all of you out there who have been kind enough to support Niagara At Large, as a rather renegade, independent news and commentary site for a greater binational Niagara region that includes our friends in Buffalo and other communities in Erie and Niagara Counties. Id rather say the following that “from one struggling soul to another, I wish you a relatively peaceful and stress-free year, and one where if any false prophets, whether they be from the private, commercial or public sectors make promises that seem to good to be true, be careful not to drink the Kool-Aid.’ Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

“Every time it rains it rains
Pennies from heaven.
Don’t you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven.
You’ll find your fortune falling
All over town.
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.”
 
From the 1936 Arthur Johnston/Johnny Burke song ‘Pennies From Heaven’, first made popular by Bing Crosby.

Well of course that old song goes back to the Great Depression times of the 1930s when a penny could still buy you one or two books of matches, some penny candy or maybe even a boal of soup for a starving hobo.

In Canada and U.S., the modest penny is losing all respect.

A penny really meant something then, and I can remember listening to parents and grandparents that lived through those times. A penny meant enough to them that they sometimes talked about a term I grew up with in my first years of life in the 1950s and 60s called “penny pinching.”

Can you imagine pinching a penny now? Who is doing that in an age when so many of us, who would not bother stooping down to pick up a penny on the sidewalk, are blowing ourselves into personal bankruptsy swiping credit and debit cards.

A lack of ‘cents’ or sense may be the reason a committee of Canada’s un-elected Senate is now floating  a recommendation to get rid of the penny. And there have been moves in the United States to do the same thing, even though good ol’ Abe Lincoln is stamped on that copper piece, for God sake! Continue reading →

 By Vickie Fagan

I forgot to tell you that I am an entrepreneur! Yes, good news, I work for myself. 

There is a lot of buzz in this climate of tossing longstanding faithful employees to the wind and about the rise of the entrepreneur. There are even government initiatives to encourage new business ventures.

Niagara 'mogul, impresario, magnate and tycoon' Vickie Fagan facing another day on the job.

The thesaurus terms used to describe my position are; mogul, impresario, magnate, tycoon.

Lofty I know.  But basically in my case entrepreneur translates to “virtually unemployable in a small town.”

I began my quest as a video producer magnate when I had exhausted all avenues of employment in my field here in the Niagara region. After years of working in the big smoke for broadcast television, (you know that industry that is now a ghost of its former self with legions of former producers, editors, camera people wandering the streets dazed and confused wondering what hit them) I now walk the fine line of scraping up work both here and in Toronto. I sit in my state of the art office (my couch or dining room table) most days in variations of lounge wear unless I have to be out in the world on shoots or meetings.

Working from home has its benefits but one must be careful to make sure that you don’t fall prey to a few minor pitfalls. For instance, this little impresario hasn’t washed her hair in two days. When I do emerge from my cave, blinded by the hustle and bustle of work outside the home, I have to remind myself repeatedly that I am in fact wearing mascara and if I insist on rubbing my eyes, will look like a depressed raccoon by noon. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

It was just this past November, when Canada’s un-elected Senate killed a climate change bill, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended the Senate’s actions. He called the bill to cut carbon emissions “completely irresponsible,” claiming it could throw hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people out of work.”

Cowboy Stephen Harper rides shotgun for his tar sands gang.

Throw possibly millions of people out of work, Mr. Prime Minister? There are only 34 million people in the entire country, and a lot of us don’t have jobs now. It’s interesting how the same individuals – a number of them climate change skeptics or deniers – who keep saying there isn’t enough scientific evidence to show that human activity has something to do with the more severe shifts in weather we seem to be experiencing more frequently these days, are demanding that Harper back up his claim that millions of jobs might be lost with some evidence.

But hey Mr. Prime Minister, we don’t need to implement a plan for reducing carbon or greenhouse emissions to eliminate jobs cost jobs in the tar sands of Alberta and other sectors of the oil industry. Your corporate pals in the industry may take care of that with plans they are reportedly now considering for outsourcing possibly thousands of Canadian energy jobs overseas. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

 “I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”

~ the late American  astronomer Carl Sagan

Apparently former U.S. president George W. Bush never actually said ‘go shopping or the terrorists win’ in words spoken quite that starkly, as much as some of my more liberal friends still want to believe he did.

But in an address to his nation in the month following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush said something that pretty well kissed that mythical line and it went like; “People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshipping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games. Life in America is going forward, and as the fourth grader who wrote me knew, that is the ultimate repudiation of terrorism.”

Isn’t it too bad that instead of just talking about working, shopping, playing and going to places of worship, then-President Bush had also told his fellow citizens and the rest of the world that continuing to invest in such vital public services as libraries, schools and other public institutions and infrastructure is also a repudiation of terrorism. Continue reading →

Niagara At Large wishes you and your family and friends a peaceful Holiday Season.

We also wish to take this time to thank each and every one of you for your support over the past year as readers and contributors to this independent online news and commentary site for our region.

With your continued support, we look forward to taking this online news project to a plateau where we can sustain it in the New Year and for many years to come as the one free and open voice for news and commentary of interest and concern to residents across our greater binational Niagara region. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

In the days following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the firefighters in my hometown of Thorold, Ontario stood in front of a local grocery store and, within a matter of a few hours, collected well over $10,000 to support the families of those who died in those attacks.

One of the many scenes of firefiighters and other 'first responders' at work in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

That was a pretty impressive outpouring of support coming from a community of less than 20,000 people, but it didn’t end there. In the weeks ahead, one good woman in our community managed to collect enough boots, gloves and other clothing to fill a tractor-trailer truck enroute to Manhattan for those firefighters and others at ‘ground zero’, searching for bodies beneath the smoldering rubble of what was the World Trade Centre.

The people of Thorold were hardly the only ones in our greater binational Niagara region who contributed everything possible, including sending some of their firefighters to New York City to relieve tired recovery and cleanup crews at the ground zero site. Communities all across this greater Niagara region, on both sides of the border, did the same.

I can’t help but recall that collective expression of support for New York City firefighters and their families, who former U.S. president George W. Bush once called heroes, as I strain to understand why it has taken all these years since for the U.S. Senate and Congress to finally approve a health care bill for firefighters and other 9/11 rescue workers suffering from the toxic fumes and dust they inhaled at the ground zero site. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

 I remember a local doctor protesting hospital cuts, exclaiming that the government is psychotic.  Good point.

A banner displayed in Fort Erie, Ontario last year in response to the closing by the Niagara Health System of that community's hospital emergency room.

 People who care about themselves are more apt to care about others, something about self-esteem.  If Canada were a patient then, we’d have low self-esteem.  How else to explain the self-destructive mistake of closing Emergency Departments?  We know that the experiment was tried and failed in Saskatchewan; we’ve seen local tragedies, and yet we continue to pursue this “illusion” as if it were true that the closings will improve health care in Niagara.  Diagnosis: poor self-esteem, possible psychosis. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Officials on both sides of our Ontario-New York. border have rolled out a “comprehensive planning effort” they hope will avoid what could be a perfect storm at our bridge crossings during the Holiday Season.

The planning by a coalition of custom agencies and others has been many months in the making and is a response not only to an always busy Holiday Season at Niagara’s three major bridge crossings, but to an unusual number of other activities this season that is expected to possibly draw an unprecedented number of cross-border visitors that could get tangled in enormous backups at the bridges. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Niagara’s regional council has three new representatives going to the police board who  they have a Herculean job ahead of him.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badeway, one of three new elected members to Niagara's police board.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey, former Thorold mayor and newly elected regional councillor Henry D’Angela and the regional council’s new chairman Gary Burroughs are now heading for seats on the Niagara Police Service Board. And these three individuals – the only three on the seven-member board that are elected by the taxpayers of the region  – come in at a time when growing numbers of taxpayers are  expressing open concern and sometimes even anger over police spending. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Why should the victim’s family have to pay? Why, in all fairness, should they?

Reilly Anzonino

It is an appeal that must be made soon because an Ontario coroner’s inquest into the circumstances surrounding Reilly’s death could begin as soon as this coming February and the cost for her to have proper representation at the inquest could be substantial. Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

”Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
– the late American civil rights leader,  Martin Luther King Jr.

“When you are on the right side of justice and history, you never go backwards.” – former U.S. military officer and Middle East war veteran Dan Choi, thrown out of the army because he came out of the closet as a Gay under America’s finally revoked ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.

Well, Hallelujah! We’ve had some fine hallelujah in a post featuring Vickie Fagan below, and a video of choruses of that song that went viral on Youtube.  But I am talking here about something else – about a vote by the U.S. Congress and Senate, expected to be signed before Christmas by President Barack Obama before Christmas – to finally end discrimination against gay people in the U.S. armed forces.

Dan Choi with American actress and gay rights activist Kathy Griffin at a rally earlier this year against 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy for U.S. military.

As someone who is not gay but who grew up fighting discrimination and supporting the civil rights movement for African Americans in the 1950s and 60s, I believe the repeal this December of his Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy – requiring gay men and women to hide in the closet if they want to serve their country in the military forces, – is as important as the U.S. Civil Rights Act that was finally signed in 1964 by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who apparently had every intention of signing it at the time he was cut down. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

If you are looking for a four-legged friend of the feline variety, the Welland and District Humane Society is now overrun with cats looking for a good home.

While not one of the nine cats listed below, Molly is one of the other many felines at the Welland shelter in need of a home.

In fact the Humane Society now has so many cats in need of adoption, it has asked the not-for-profit group Niagara Action For Society NAFA)to send out feelers to its members and friends who may be able to assist in finding homes for the animals.

There are nine cats in particular  at the shelter (listed by Niagara At Large below) that NAFA is helping to find homes for. Six of the cats have already been spayed/neutered. Continue reading →

By Vickie Fagan

My company recently produced a video for Alphabet Photography. It was a flash mob video featuring 100 choir members from Chorus Niagara belting out the Halleluiah chorus in the middle of a food court in Welland, Ontario.  You may have heard of it- it has gone viral.

How does a video go viral? Well, Alphabet Photography had a great concept, they hired a fabulous local choir to execute it, made sure it was properly produced to capture the sound and visuals in a way to engage the viewer and chose an unassuming mall in one of Canada’s underdog towns. When the economy went south, Welland was in the front seat of the bus.  Up until now, Welland has been most recognized as a town with a burgeoning unemployment rate and a canal. Continue reading →

By Randy Busbridge

After a curious and lengthy silence, the Niagara Region held a Public Information Centre on November 30 to provide a status update on plans to finally deal with Niagara-on-the-Lake’s troublesome Wastewater Treatment Plant.  The facility is rapidly running out of capacity, and has long been a source of unpleasant odours.

Could this Parks Canada land become a popular eco park?

The session confirmed what the rumour mill has known for some time:  Region Public Works has narrowed the field down to two options.  The first option is to build a new facility on the site of the current north lagoon.  The second is to build a new facility nearby, in the southwest corner of the Parks Canada Lakeshore Road property.  Both options deliver a new, modern facility to handle current and future needs.  Both options require the draining of the current sewage lagoons and the decommissioning – and demolition – of the old wastewater treatment plant.

Much work remains to be done to establish a final plan, including detailed environmental assessments in co-operation with other levels of government.  One of the key challenges going forward will be to determine how to drain and clean the old lagoons.  Presenters at the Public Information Centre made it clear this was an area of risk, and also of expense.

So here’s an idea … Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano
 
Last week, when I was reading about West Lincoln’s resistance to locate a clean-energy wind farm nearby, I was reminded of past history lessons and their impact on the future.

Canadian tar sand in hand

 
Centuries ago, Spanish Conquistadors were thoughtful enough to bring measles, smallpox, and malaria to the natives in the New World, but they didn’t do it for free. In exchange for their gifts, they burdened themselves with gold and silver.  It seemed to be a good deal for everyone (except of course the natives of South America). In exchange for the inconveniences of sailing across the ocean and engaging in warfare, the Spanish were rewarded with precious cargos.  Relatively speaking, it was easy: instant gratification. Continue reading →

By Steve Rowan

(The following commentary flows from a note Steve Rowan, an ol’ Yankee innkeeper on ol’ Cape Cod, sent to Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper. It is a slice of some of the conservations we have around the innkeeper’s fireplace.)

ar Doug,  I owe you much gratitude.

Through your tireless coverage of the Niagara region, the threats in your towns caused by excessive and destructive commercial building, the corruption of the educational system through manipulations by the leaders of the university systems-whose strikes and actions literally cost and threaten students with tremendous financial costs and excessive time to achieve their degrees, these are issues on a local level that the average reader somehow has to hear about.

You’ve done a fine job, tirelessly telling the  story, presenting the readers with information that will enable change both in the operation of your society, but information that will enable the readers to see a balance perspective. This perspective is about the rights of man and the rights of people in a fair society. Continue reading →

A Commentary By Doug Draper

 Hey,  all you people out there in central and south Niagara.  That new hospital the Niagara Health System is building in north Niagara – the one towering beyond a jungle of strip malls and big box stores, out their on the western fringe of St. Catharines’ urban boundaries – that is a St. Catharines hospital okay!

If you think this new hospital being built in west St. Catharines in a regional hospital, forget it. It is a "St. Catharines hospital," according to St. Catharines regional councillor and the city's former mayor, Tim Rigby. Photo by Doug Draper.

 Have you folks in the central and south end finally got that!

 I’ve been meaning to bring this up in a commentary since St. Catharines regional councillor Tim Rigby pointed it out at one of the final meetings of the last regional council in late September in front of a gallery of south Niagara residents who are still foolish enough to demand that everyone in the region have fair access to emergency and other hospitals services.

At that infamous September 23 regional council meeting that dragged on for more than six hours, members of the Yellow Shirt Brigade, that group of south Niagara residents fighting against the NHS’s systematic downsizing of services in their community hospitals, had to wait until after midnight to find out that the council would not back a resolution approved by seven local municipalities for an investigation of the way the NHS manages area hospital. Continue reading →

By Dan Wilson

It’s that time of year again, usually just after the American Thanksgiving, that radio stations begin playing Christmas songs. I’ve been told that some stations begin even earlier (like in October), as soon as the advertisers start their Christmas sale promotions.

So I’m at work last week, and one of the supervisors changes the radio station from the designated classic rock station to an all-Christmas music station. Tis the season, right?

Well, somebody complained and after much ado, the station was changed back to classic rock music. So what’s the big deal? What’s wrong with playing Christmas music at work? For the record, the worker who complained was me.

I’m not a religious person.  In fact, you could call me anti-religious. I believe religions were created to control the people, plain and simple. Give them something to fear and they’re easier to manage.  I also believe, as John Lennon did, that religious institutions are responsible for much of the violence and suffering in the world.  “Imagine there’s no heaven…” Continue reading →

A Comment By Pat Scholfield

Speaking as a resident of Port Colborne for over 54 years, I was keenly interested in hearing about the Auditor General’s report just released, particularly relating to the health care system and more specifically to the Niagara Health System in Niagara where I reside.

Pat Scholfield

The LHIN (Local Health Integration Network) and the Niagara Health System (the board responsible for managing most of our region’s hospitals) have been insisting that one of the main problems with our overcrowded ERs and long wait times is because people are using emergency rooms inappropriately.

However, the Auditor General’s report said this conclusion is wrong. The report (released this fall by Auditor General Jim McCarter) concludes that a lack of inpatient beds is the culprit. Why do we have a shortage of inpatient beds? The LHIN and the Niagara Health System would have you believe the main reason for a shortage of beds is because people should not stay in the hospital, but should instead go to Long Term Care Homes and/or go home. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Gary Burroughs, the former lord mayor for Niagara-on-the-Lake and veteran regional councillor, is replacing retiring Peter Partington as chair of Niagara, Ontario’s regional government.

Niagara's new regoinal chairman, Gary Burroughs

Burroughs won the Region’s top political job this December 9 in a race that included veteran St. Catharines regional councillor Bruce Timms, former Thorold mayor and newly elected regional councillor Henry D’Angela,  former Conservative MPP and newly elected Niagara Falls regional councillor Bart Maves and former Welland mayor Damian Goulbourne who lost a bid for a regional councillor position during last October’s municipal elections.

The contest was decided rounds of voting by newly elected members of regional council from across Niagara since this region does not hold the regional chair job out to Niagara voters during municipal elections, to be elected at large. D’Angela, Timms and Goulbourne fell out in the earlier rounds, leaving the final round to Burroughs and Maves, which Burroughs won by a spread of 19 to 11.

Niagara At Large posted a piece on Burroughs and his bid for regional chair on December 1 (you can visit it by visiting NAL at www.niagaraatlarge.com and scrolling down to the story). But here is just to recap a few key points about Burroughs with more to come later. Continue reading →

By Fiona McMurran

I like this live-streaming. It’s not as good as actually being present, but it’s a darn good second best.

Here’s how things went down in Regional Council Chambers this morning, Thursday, December 9.

There were five nominations, which was a bit of surprise. One presumes that Pelham’s Brian Baty decided to withdraw his name. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

The province’s minister in charge of cops and correctional services told Niagara At Large this week he is prepared to implement the recommendations Ontario’s Ombudsman, Andre Marin if they serve to cool the chance of another security mess that occurred at the G20 summit last June in Toronto.

Veteran Liberal cabinet minister Jim Bradley

 “I think the recommendations of the Ombudsman are good and implementable,” said Jim Bradley, St. Catharines MPP and Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services, in response to a scathing report Marin released this December 7, criticizing the province and police honchos like Toronto police chief Bill Blair for security efforts at last June’s G20 meeting in Toronto that turned ended up looking like a civil rights and public relations fiasco before the province, the country and the world.

“I have assured (Marin) that all of the recommendations will be implemented,” said Bradley. Having said that, Bradley went on to say that he thought it was a bad idea for the federal government of Stephen Harper to hold the G20 in downtown Toronto in the first place. A better place, if it had to be held in Toronto at all, may have been the old CNE grounds where there are at least some physical boundaries between any protesters inclined to do harm and the G20 leaders. But it may have been better off held some place else, he said, away from any one of a number of iconic sites anyone interested in violence may want to target in Toronto.

“It keeps coming back to this,” said Bradley of the location the Harper government picked for the G20 summit – the convention center in downtown Toronto. “It was a totally inappropriate place to have it.” Continue reading →

Charges of mispending of funds at the Niagara Parks Commission have raised calls for an independent audit of the NPC by the province’s New Democratic Party.

The Niagara Parks Commission's headquarters in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

 So far, those calls have gone unheeded by the governing Liberals and this December 8 a committee dominated by Liberal MPPs voted down an NDP-tabled motion that would have triggered an audit of the commission by the province’s Auditor General.

Below is a media release from the NDP on the latest development for your information.

Liberals vote to cover up Niagara Parks scandal QUEEN’S PARK –

The McGuinty Liberal government has used its majority on a legislative committee to vote down an NDP motion calling for an independent audit of the scandal-ridden Niagara Parks Commission.

At the committee meeting this morning, all the Liberal MPPs voted against the motion put forward by NDP MPP France Gélinas. The motion would have triggered a special audit by the province’s Auditor General.

“I’m astounded. The McGuinty government has voted to cover up the NPC scandal,” said Gélinas. “We’ve seen very troubling allegations of lavish spending, cozy relationships with contractors and lax financial record-keeping. And it’s been going on for years. You’d think the government would be all for an independent audit — but obviously the McGuinty government hasn’t learned anything from the EHealth scandal.”

The Liberal MPPs who voted against Gélinas’ motion are: Wayne Arthurs (Pickering-Scarborough), Aileen Carroll (Barrie), David Ramsay (Timiskaming-Cochrane), Liz Sandals (Guelph) and David Zimmer (Willowdale). “These MPPs will have lots of explaining to do for their vote,” said Gélinas.

(Click on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region. And we encourage share your views on this topic in the comment boxes below.)

By Doug Draper

In a toughly-worded, condemning report he released this December 7, Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin concluded that the provincial government’s secret passage of a “relic” of a law that gave police “extravagant, sweeping powers triggered what amounted to martial  law in downtown Toronto” during last June’s G20 summit.

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin

The Liberal government’s enactment of the Public Works Protection Act this June, without any public disclosure or debate in the provincial legislature, set off what Marin also described as “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.” It resulted in “ugly scenes” and a “sad legacy” for city, the province and the country, he added at a media conference upon the report’s release, “and we can never let that happen again.”

Marin was of course speaking of the arrests of more than 1,000 people, the vast majority of them peaceful demonstrators, and the eyewitness accounts of police abuse at the G20 summit late this June. Continue reading →

A Foreword by Doug Draper

Niagara At Large is posting in its entirety the following media release from the office of Ontario Conservative’s opposition leader, Tim Hudak, slamming Premier Dalton McGuinty for reductions in frontline care at hospitals in Niagara and Hamilton.

Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak

This latest Conservative blast at McGuinty, set off in the wake of concerns raised about hospital services in an Ontario Auditor General report released this December 6, makes no mention of other culpability of other parties around longer emergency room wait times and other reductions in front line services.

Most notably, there is no reference to the Niagara Health System, the amalgamated board that has been responsible for managing the majority of Niagara’s hospitals for the past decade.

It was the NHS that put together a so-called “hospital improvement plan” that, for example, called for the closing of emergency rooms at the hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne? Could the NHS not have found ways of keeping those ERs open with the overall funding it has? Continue reading →

A Commentary by Doug Draper

 “I’m shot. I’m shot,” he reportedly said as he staggered closer to the entrance of the Dakota Hotel in a City of New York he loved and felt so safe in.

There were even a few reports that he may have uttered the word “why” as he crumbled to the ground, hemorrhaging to death from gunshot wounds delivered by a psychopathic stalker he gave an autograph to only a few hours earlier.

 I will never forget walking into the newsroom of The St. Catharines Standard (where I worked for the first 19 years of my career in this now shaky journalism business) a few minutes before midnight on Monday December 8, 30 years ago, and seeing the shocked and bewildered looks of the editors on the desk as they stared at the paper’s then primitive computer screens.

 Before I had the chance to ask what awful thing happened, one of them looked up and said; “John Lennon has been shot and a bulletin just came in that he is dead.” Continue reading →

By Dr. William Hogg – dare I write it? – MD

Some 30 years ago, I received a letter from OHIP, Ontario’s Medicare bureaucracy, with the salutation, “Dear Health Care Worker.” It was sort of like a punch in the stomach. Euphemistic style.

To those useless ‘turds’ I was no longer a doctor. Like an inspissated fecolith I was lumped together, indeed very democratically, right along with everyone else on the front line of the governmental delivery system of ‘health’ care, nurses included. Nowadays, everyone is used to ‘health care workers.’ Only nurses and doctors still squirm a bit at the term. But just think how inefficient is Dear Health Care Worker. A Dear Nurse (or Dear Dr.) would save twice as much in ink alone – let alone money. But more about this historically critical type of word-suppression later. Now for a brief word about word-theft, name-theft. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

This reporter first met Gary Burroughs about 30 years ago when he was at a meeting for Operation Clean, a citizens group in his hometown of Niagara-on-the-Lake that was fighting toxic chemical pollution in the Niagara River.

Gary Burroughs runs for regional chair's job

That is as much to say that he cares about environmental issues. If he didn’t, the late Margherita Howe, then chair of Operation Clean, would not have him in the room without giving him the kind of dressing down she was famous for giving significant others who sat on their duffs on the green file.

I later met Burroughs as chair of the Niagara Parks Commission when he fought an unsuccessful fight to keep the hotelling industry in Niagara Falls from doing those high-rises we see above the falls today. He tried to fight those hotels rising up above the so-called “sight lines” above the trees along the little escarpment lining the table rock area of the falls. Suffice to say, he lost that battle with the hoteliers and it may have had something to do with him losing his job as the commission’s chair.

Then Burroughs ran and won his bid to serve as Niagara-on-the-Lake’s lord mayor, even while losing a race as a Liberal candidate, against Conservative Rob Nicholson, to serve as the MP in the federal riding of Niagara Falls. Continue reading →

By Mark Taliano

The Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami of 2004, which killed over 230,000 people, annihilated local fishing communities. Those fisherfolk now reside in shanties far from the sea. And tourist resorts are being built where they once fished.

The death toll from Hurricane Katrina was 1,836. Floods broke the levees and demolished much of New Orleans, wiping out public hospitals and schools. Those institutions won’t be re-opened.

 Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, and BP have recently signed no-bid contracts to lay claim to vast oil reserves in war-torn Iraq. The war enabled those no bid contracts. What is the common thread through each of these tragedies? Shock (of the “Shock and Awe” variety). Continue reading →

A Comment by Doug Draper

I’ve always had trouble understanding the mind of someone who would deliberately destroy someone else’s property – not because they know are for some reason angry with the property owner or even know who the owner is, but just because it is there.

St. Catharines nativity scene. Photo courtesy of City of St. Catharines.

In this case, we are talking about property that is owned by and gives pleasure to the public at this time of year – the a nativity scene in front of the City of St. Catharines’ City hall.

Now I’ll admit it. I am not a go-to-church guy. But whether you go to church or not, whether you are a religious believer or not, why would anyone want to smash up camel and shepherd statues for a nativity scene?

The nativity scene in front of St. Catharines’ classic old city hall building off King and James Streets is one of those nice, traditional displays that give many people in the community pleasure each Christmas season.  It represents an expression from this municipality of ‘good will’ toward all at this time of year, at least until someone of ill will comes along and smashes it. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Peter Kormos, the NDP representative serving a Welland Riding at Queen’s Park that spans Welland, Port Colborne, Thorold and the south end of St. Catharines, has tabled a petition from residents in the region, calling for an investigation of the Niagara Health System.

Welland riding MPP Peter Kormos slamming government on hospital care.

The same call for an investigation of the NHS – the board responsible for managing a majority of hospitals in the Niagara area – was supported earlier this year by several of Niagara’s local municipalities, including Welland, Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Wainfleet, Thorold and St. Catharines. Following lengthy debates this fall, the same call for an independent look into how the NHS is managing hospitals across the region was not supported by Niagara’s regional council.

The regional government’s naysaying has not stopped Kormos from taking a petition, signed by more than 7,000 residents, to Queen’s Park however. The wording of the petition, as written into the records at Queen’s Park this December 1, speaks for itself. Niagara At Large therefore runs it below in full.

God bless the government of this province if it chooses to ignore it. Continue reading →

By Doug Draper

Ontario’s Ombudsman Andre Marin will release his promised report this December 7 on controversies surrounding the way security forces dealt with demonstrators around the G20 summit in downtown Toronto last June.

John Pruyn being dragged away by police.

Last July, Niagara At Large broke the story of John Pruyn, a Welland resident, federal government worker and part-time farmer, who had his artificial leg pulled off by police before he was arrested and kept in a makeshift cage for two days before being released without any charges.

Enough stories like Pruyn’s made it to the Ombudsman’s office to trigger a special investigation, the results of which will be released by Morin at a news conference at Queen’s Park this coming Tuesday.

You can watch the media conference live at 1 p.m. on December 7 by locking on the Ombudsman’s Twitter account at www.twitter.com/Ont_Ombudsman.

In the meantime, two Niagara MPPs, Welland riding NDP critic Peter Kormos and St. Catharines riding MPP and Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services had an exchange on G20 security in the provincial legislature this December 1. We include the hansard of that discussion below. Continue reading →