Thankful for banners
Dear Editor:
Thank you to Royal Canadian Legion branches throughout Wellington County for putting up banners with photos of some of the thousands of Canadians who gave up their future so you and I could have ours.
George Adams,
Fergus
Lack of substance?
Dear Editor:
An open letter to Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Ted Arnott.
I am very upset with your government’s handling of stomping all over the collective bargaining rights for a negotiated agreement and the education workers’ right to strike.
Once again your party is demonstrating their agenda is to break both education and health care by underfunding both while sitting on a $2 billion-plus surplus.
I recognize your position as speaker but even when you weren’t you didn’t speak up for your constituents. We are getting tired of this. There are rumblings about the lack of any substance from you.
Use of the Notwithstanding clause in the current situation is overkill. Those workers, since 2012, have had an eight per cent wage increase. The cost of living has risen 18% in total since then.
These are some of the lowest paid workers and they get offered 2.5% or 1%. Education minister Stephen Lecce, who has never attended a public school, constantly rails about benefits and pensions while you and him have had way larger increases and better benefits and pensions.
All workers should have some sort of benefits and pensions but not your government. You wouldn’t improve nurses’ compensation and we are losing them in droves. But breaking the system so you can privatize it (i.e. – long-term care, etc.) seems to be the goal of all Conservative governments.
How about speaking up for your constituents where many are struggling to find affordable housing and trying to make ends meet? I believe you to be an honorable man. Take issue with your government’s position or at least state you fully support their actions and goals.
Then your constituents can express themselves at the ballot box. This is not what we voted for from your government.
Gregory Bowman,
Fergus
Bad precedent
Dear Editor:
For decades, contract negotiations for education employees occurred between local levels of education worker groups (CUPE, ETFO, OSSTF, etc.) and local school boards.
By 2012, the provincial government had changed this format, so that the provincial level of education worker groups would now negotiate directly with the provincial government.
During contract negotiations in 2012, the provincial government passed Bill 115, which outlawed strikes and lockouts, without offering any other process to resolve the stalemate between themselves and their workers. This forced education workers to take the deal that they were offering without any further negotiation.
In 2016, Ontario courts found that this bill was a violation of collective bargaining rights of educational workers. This finding was based on protections written into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Fast forward to 2022. Ford’s government passed Bill 28, which will impose a four-year contract on 55,000 education support workers and prohibit striking for the life of the contract. And this time in order to block the workers’ right to take them to court, the provincial government is planning to invoke the Notwithstanding clause.
The Notwithstanding Clause, or Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, gives provincial legislatures the ability, through the passage of law, to override certain portions of the charter for a five-year term. It is not something that should be used lightly and certainly not to win a fight with your employees.
Our provincial government is saying to a group of citizens, here is the deal you are going to take and you have no say in the matter. No say because we will use legislation to block you from using long-fought-for and established portions of the negotiating process and because we are now willing to block you from addressing our actions within the legal system. The Ford government is willing to enact a rarely used part of the Canadian Constitution to win a contract negotiation.
Right now we have a majority government. That means that if the Ford government wants to pass a bill, it will be passed. So ask yourself, what other rights are covered by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? What other rights would this government be willing to trample in order to get what it wants? And are you certain that you would agree with everything they might want?
A precedent is being set, one that affects the rights of each citizen in this province, now and in the future.
Joanne Mitchell,
Fergus
‘Other tools available’
Dear Editor:
Doug Ford treats the Canadian Constitution as a meaningless piece of tissue paper to be torn up at a whim.
The Notwithstanding clause is meant for serious constitutional issues, not for labour negotiations. Other tools were available, such as binding arbitration (including final offer selection) before a strike or legislative action after.
Simply put, Ford is abusing our constitution. If our constitution becomes meaningless, then what is left? A country with no guiding principles. A country where the ad hoc and Machiavellianism rules. A country where autocracy gets a foothold.
Peter Varty,
Fergus
‘A lazy bully’
Dear Editor:
An open letter to Premier Doug Ford.
You have made a train wreck out of Ontario’s education and healthcare systems.
Stop using the Notwithstanding clause of the constitution. It shows you are a lazy bully and don’t want to do the work required of being in a democracy.
Stop imposing contracts on workers. Stop imposing wage limits on workers.
Negotiate. Negotiate. Negotiate.
Jane Vandervliet,
Erin
Local impact
Dear Editor:
If you live in Erin, between Sideroads 17 and 5, and between the 4th and 8th Lines, please check out the proposed changes to the boundaries of the Greenbelt.
Much of this land is proposed to be added into the Greenbelt. The justification is that it is part of the Galt Paris Moraine, and I would agree that it is important to protect the sources of our groundwater supply.
However, is it necessary to add the lands to the Greenbelt? There are already ample protections within the Official Plans of the town and the county.
The new designation will impact all these properties by preventing the construction of an accessory dwelling unit on the property (something that is currently permitted), and it will remove the possibility of creating a severance on some of the properties.
Both of these are ways for current landowners to either realize some of the inherent value in their property or assist their children or loved ones in the acquisition of housing.
You have until Dec. 4 to submit a comment to the Environmental Registry of Ontario.
Rod Finnie,
Erin
Against ‘urban sprawl’
Dear Editor:
An open letter to Premier Doug Ford.
I am adamantly opposed to your government’s proposed Bill 23, ‘Building more homes faster act.’
It will likely gut green energy standards, meaning that new homes in Ontario municipalities like Erin where I live, which is slated to have major new housing developments once our wastewater treatment facility is completed, will not be energy efficient and will spew out tons more greenhouse gases and cost homeowners more to heat and cool their homes.
What we need are new homes featuring heat pumps and solar energy with triple glazed windows and superior insulation built to net-zero emission standards.
Bill 23 will invite development in conservation areas, including the Greenbelt, destroying our parks and natural habitat for birds and other wildlife.
It will also increase urban sprawl and critically reduce farmland which is needed to produce local food.
It will also greatly diminish the vital role of Ontario’s conservation authorities and give more power to developers.
Building more inefficient homes faster will increase the drastic effects of climate change, which will in turn increase climate-driven extreme weather like the windstorm that struck much of southern Ontario and Quebec on May 4, 2018, killing my son, an arborist, and his co-worker after they rescued a child stranded on a school bus by a fallen tree.
Another more recent example of how climate change makes severe weather even more extreme was the “derecho” windstorm on May 21 this year in Ontario and Quebec which killed 11 people and caused more than $1 billion in property and infrastructure damages.
What we need is affordable, energy efficient housing that is carefully planned in self-contained walkable communities where people can live and work and enjoy natural green spaces – not urban sprawl that destroys the beauty and livability of Ontario’s small rural towns and communities!
Debbie Wickham,
Erin
Served community well
Dear Editor:
Please indulge me as I submit a few respectful words about Jamie Burnett, the local newspaper publisher I worked for over six interesting years (1976 to 1982).
Jamie died recently and I have only just learned about this loss.
His life resume is a full one, but my own particular relationship with Jamie began with my role as a raw young reporter/photographer for his Fergus Elora News Express in 1976 and progressed to my becoming editor of his second weekly, The Erin Advocate.
It is no small thing to be the publisher of a small-town newspaper. Jamie took that responsibility very seriously and worked hard to keep the editorial side of both his weeklies vibrant and, dare I say it, precocious.
In other words, he let the ink-stained wretches he employed (old journalists like those kind of images of themselves) carry on with story telling. For that we were all grateful. And awards were won!
Furthermore, he loved new technology and strove to adopt computers to his business despite their early awkwardness. Somehow it worked, but only because of his heroic efforts.
The offices of the Burnett weeklies were rather happy, chummy places where story ideas came as often from the darkroom technician or the receptionist as from the editor’s desk. Everyone felt empowered by Jamie’s leadership style.
As I reflect on the local journalism scene of the late ‘70s, which involved the News Express, Cable TV, the Advertiser, the Guelph Mercury, and, when the news was especially big, CKCO TV, I can only thank Jamie Burnett for managing a newspaper that played a vital role in the pretty dynamic Fergus-Elora community that existed almost a half century ago. It didn’t just happen recently.
Being a participant in that particular era was a stimulating experience in my young life. So may I say “thanks, Jamie” for being at the helm. You served your community well!
Bryan Hayter,
Fergus
God’s gospel?
Dear Editor:
RE: Anti-semitism common, Oct. 27.
Yes, anti-semitism does exist and probably will always, just as other forms of injustices towards different people groups.
Are Jews labelled as “Christ-killers” and depicted as such in the gospels? Which gospels? Who are the authors that she says are blaming Jews instead of Pontius Pilate for crucifying Jesus? Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter or John? Is not all scripture “God-breathed” and nothing that is written in scripture comes from any man or woman? God is the author of all scripture and he chose a variety of people to write what He wanted.
None of the writers claimed that any of the scripture comes from their own thoughts or beliefs. As for the accuracy of events written after the death of Jesus, Luke 1: 1,2 says “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eye witnesses (my emphasis) and servants of the word.”
Since God is the author of all scripture, he cannot allow lies or untruths to be part of the information contained in the Bible. The unpleasant truth that Jewish religious elites, priests, officers and people themselves turned against Jesus may be hard to take or understand. Three times Pontius Pilate (a Roman authority) told religious leaders and the gathered crowd that he, and Herod (also Roman) could find no charges against Jesus to have him put to death or crucified. It was Judas (a Jew) who was paid by Chief Priests and officers of the Temple Guard to plot how to betray Christ.
Mark 14: 53-65 also chronicles the condemning of Jesus by Jewish authorities. Many of the early believers or Christians were Jews as described in Acts 2: 1-41 the Day of Pentecost. Verse 5 reads “Now they were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.” Three thousand new believers were counted that day when Peter gave the message of the sacrifice that Christ made for all. Many or most of them would have been Jews.
It should be noted that Jesus was never stoned by anyone, John 8: 59. We must remember that no one, Jews or Gentiles, came forward to defend Jesus when he was wrongly charged. The history of mankind is rather ugly and difficult to acknowledge at times. Scripture says all have sinned and need salvation through Christ, a good starting point to think about.
In John 16: 33 Jesus says, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Michael Thorp,
Mount Forest
Remembrance poetry
Dear Editor:
A poem for Nov. 11, entitled Go to the crosses.
Go to the crosses
That stand row on row
In quiet reflection
Hear the wind moan
As it cries for lost lovers
Lost sons and lost friends.
It cries because it knows
War never ends.
Go to the crosses
Give thanks for the grace
That let all those others
Lie in your place.
Hold holy the loss
Given for you
Let your thoughts rise
In deep gratitude.
Go to the crosses
That stand row on row
In quiet reflection
Let your tears flow.
Joy Lippai,
Arthur
‘Remember the dead’
Dear Editor:
Once again as our own names are read
And once again, you will remember the dead
You pin on your poppy, to remember our brave sons
Yet we were just farm boys from the farmers fields
But over here in these plough fields, our shed blood runs red!
Out of all those names that were read
Choose just one man, a soldier who bled
As you pin on that poppy
May it remind you of the One who has said
All of our lives are in His hands, to bless us instead!
Sytske Drijber,
Rockwood