Ontario

Thursday September 21, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 21, 2017

What happens when the big tent is a mirage

At this rate, Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown will be fighting the looming election on crutches, the result of his own party repeatedly shooting him in both feet.

August 23, 2017

Already facing numerous controversies and even a police investigation around candidate nominations, the PCs wounded themselves yet again, this time with the local riding association in Cambridge accusing party headquarters of rigging the nomination process in favour of its preferred candidates. The party apparently shortened the nomination deadline, arbitrarily and without consultation, so that local candidates planning to run were left with insufficient time to sell enough memberships to be competitive. The preferred candidates, critics charge, are already signed up and selling so locals won’t have a legitimate shot.

Party brass deny the allegations, but the damage is done, especially considering that this scandal is just one of many all around the same thing: PC party management overriding local members in making nomination decisions. Three local riding associations and numerous executives have resigned in protest. A former minister under Mike Harris has said electing Brown would be the worst possible choice. Allegations include ballot-stuffing, falsified membership forms, party-funded memberships and other irregularities.

Criticizing Brown and his team for this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Suffice it to say they’ve had months to make an impression. They’ve made one, all right, but it features corruption allegations, disdain for the grassroots and undemocratic behaviour. Hardly the sort of momentum they had hoped to create heading into the election next June.

September 12, 2017

In fairness, the PCs may be the poster children for this sort of nonsense, but the NDP and Liberals have had their own troubles, though not to the same degree. And the worst part? It’s completely unnecessary.

Parties have the right to choose their candidate in any riding, and party HQ is the final authority. They just need to be honest and transparent. It’s a tough sell, admittedly, but surely just saying out of the gate that a candidate has been chosen is preferable to making promises of grassroots inclusivity, accepting party membership fees and then kicking sand in the face of local riding associations.

The optics of having party central choose candidates are not good, granted. It’s tough to sell a big-tent, inclusive party vision while suits in boardrooms quietly make critical candidate decisions. But in the case of the Ontario PCs, that’s what is happening, and they’re compounding the problem by claiming to be one thing but demonstrating through their actions they are the polar opposite. Hand-pick candidates if that’s what you want to do. But at least have the integrity to be honest about it. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

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Thursday September 14, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 14, 2017

Police ask feds to postpone date for legal pot, say there’s zero chance they will be ready

Canada’s police services say there is zero chance they will be ready to enforce new laws for legalized pot by next summer.

September 9, 2017

Representatives from different police forces are appearing before the House of Commons health committee, which is studying the government’s bill to make marijuana legal.

Representatives from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Saskatoon Police Service also say they want the government to reconsider allowing people to grow pot at home, because it will be difficult to police and could make it easier for young people to obtain marijuana.

OPP Deputy Commissioner Rick Barnum says if the government doesn’t postpone the start date and allow police time to prepare and train their officers, there will be a window of six months to a year to allow organized crime to flourish and mistakes to be made.

The police say they also need more time and money to train officers to recognize and handle drug-impaired drivers.

The government introduced bill C-45 in the spring in preparation for an expected July 2018 date for adult Canadians to be allowed to buy pot at provincially mandated stores, possess up to 30 grams of marijuana or grow up to four plants at home. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Tuesday September 12, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 12, 2017

Liberals enduring two scandal trials

Two Ontario Liberals went to trial last Thursday on Election Act bribery charges stemming from a 2015 byelection in Sudbury, but the stakes are also high for Premier Kathleen Wynne herself.

 

December 18, 2015

The Sudbury trial happens nearly simultaneously with another Liberal trial – related to the cancellation of two gas plants – which makes for terrible optics for the party. But while that second trial involves staffers for former premier Dalton McGuinty, the Sudbury scandal is one forged entirely under Wynne’s tenure.

The premier herself is set to testify on Sept. 13.

“Politically, it’s not good,” said Nadia Verrelli, an assistant political science professor at Sudbury’s Laurentian University.

Regardless of the outcome, it may focus the provincial election campaign – with a vote nine months away – on questions about the Liberals’ integrity rather than their policies, she said.

Pat Sorbara, at the time the Ontario Liberal Party CEO, faces two charges and Gerry Lougheed, a Sudbury Liberal fundraiser, faces one charge. They both deny wrongdoing.

September 29, 2015

In late 2014, the Sudbury riding became vacant when the New Democrat who won it five months earlier stepped down for health reasons. The Liberals had their eye on winning back a riding that until 2014 they held for about two decades.

Andrew Olivier, who was the Liberals’ candidate in the riding in the general election, wanted to run again, but Wynne had other ideas. She ended up successfully luring the riding’s NDP MP – Glenn Thibeault – to run for the provincial Liberals.

One of Sorbara’s charges relates to an allegation she promised to get Thibeault “an office or employment” to induce him to become a candidate, which both deny.

Sorbara and Lougheed are alleged to have offered Olivier a job or appointment in exchange for stepping aside for Thibeault, who was ultimately given the post of energy minister last year.

Wynne has said that she had already decided Olivier would not be the byelection candidate by the time Sorbara and Lougheed spoke to him, therefore anything offered was not in exchange for stepping aside. Rather, Wynne says, she was trying to keep him in the party fold. (Source: Global News) 

 

Saturday September 9, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday September 9, 2017

LCBO to run 150 marijuana stores

Premier Kathleen Wynne is cornering Ontario’s recreational marijuana market by restricting sales to 150 LCBO-run stores.

June 20, 2017

The standalone cannabis outlets, separate from provincially owned liquor stores, and a government-controlled website will be the only place weed can lawfully be sold after Ottawa legalizes it on July 1.

In a move that will close scores of illegal “dispensaries” that now dot Ontario cities, the LCBO will get its product from the medical marijuana producers licenced by Health Canada.

Only those 19 and older will be allowed to purchase or possess marijuana and pot consumption will be limited to private homes.

Smoking weed will continue to be illegal in any public space, including parks, workplaces and motorized vehicles.

Prices will be kept competitive to curb the black market.

November 27, 2015

The government expects a boost in tax revenues.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa, Attorney General Yasir Naqvi, and Health Minister Eric Hoskins unveiled the plan Friday at Queen’s Park after months of work from Ontario’s cannabis secretariat.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which runs the province’s 651 liquor stores, using workers who are members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, will oversee all retail sales and run the online service.

But the branding of the government’s new pot chain will not necessarily include the LCBO’s name.

September 24, 2015

“When it comes to retail distribution, the LCBO has the expertise, the experience and the insight, to ensure careful control of cannabis, to help us discourage illicit market activity and see that illegal dispensaries are shut down,” said Sousa, who has not yet determined how much tax revenue legalized weed will bring in.

Naqvi said the government has “heard people across Ontario are anxious about the federal legalization of cannabis.

“The province is moving forward with a safe and sensible approach to legalization that will ensure we can keep our communities and roads safe, promote public health and harm reduction, and protect Ontario’s young people,” the attorney general said.

There will be 40 LCBO weed stores in place across the province on July 1, 2018, 80 by 2019, and 150 in 2020. (Source: Toronto Star) 

 

 

 

 

Thursday September 6, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 6, 2017

Blockade down in Caledonia

An Indigenous barricade that blocked a main thoroughfare in Caledonia for close to a month has been dismantled.

July 31, 2013

Ontario Provincial Police say they asked demonstrators to leave the Highway 6 bypass Monday night.

“Once we responded, they eventually dispersed … on their own,” OPP spokesperson Const. Rodney LeClair said Tuesday.

The protesters had moved their roadblock from its original location at Argyle Street South to the Highway 6 bypass earlier Monday.

LeClair said police responded that evening because a “group was gathering” and using tires and trees to block a stretch of the bypass, which runs between Greens Road and Argyle Street South.

No one was arrested or injured, he said.

May 8, 2006

The OPP reopened Hwy. 6 Tuesday afternoon after the Ministry of Transportation’s maintenance contractor cleared the road.

LeClair said he hadn’t been told if demonstrators were still occupying the area around the bypass Tuesday.

“We’re remaining in the area just to preserve the peace like we’ve said from the onset, just maintain public safety,” he said.

Protesters who support the Six Nations hereditary government, known as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, set up the barricade on Argyle Street South — Caledonia’s major thoroughfare — Aug. 10.

April 23, 2006

This spot — just south of town at the entrance of the former Douglas Creek Estates — is where a larger, more intense blockade and standoff took place in 2006 over land claims.

Indigenous people have renamed the site Kanonhstaton, “the protected place.”

This time around, demonstrators have said they were protesting the Ontario government’s transfer of a 154-hectare property known as the Burtch lands to the Six Nations Elected Band Council instead of the confederacy.

The return of the land, the former site of a correctional facility, was negotiated in exchange for the earlier barricade coming down more than 10 years ago.

April 21, 2006

On Monday, demonstrators issued a statement noting they had moved the barricade to the bypass “to unify the people of Six Nations and relieve pressure on our people and the residents of Caledonia.”

They erected a barricade on the bypass to “apply pressure on Canada to return to the negotiation table,” the statement reads.

It’s not clear what led the demonstrators to dismantle their barricade altogether or whether any issues were ironed out.

Protesters did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)