Forty-eight hours after fighting and winning his third election, local MP Jamie Schmale says it’s bittersweet to be going back to Ottawa while the Conservative Party itself has once again been defeated. “We were hoping for better,” Schmale said.
Councillor Pat Dunn, chair of the ORV task force, used the Sept. 21 council meeting to remind the mayor and other councillors about procedural hurdles that are still in place regarding the city’s final decision to route ORV traffic around the city rather than through it.
The Kawartha Lakes council chamber took on a decidedly somber tone as councillors, the mayor, CAO and clerk all wore orange shirts to recognize the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation that occurs Sept. 30.
Trillium Lakelands District School Board senior staff, led by superintendents Tim Ellis and Tracy Hubbard, told trustees at their Sept. 14 regular board meeting that the board is dealing with a number of worrying issues.
With less than a day before the votes are counted in the 2021 Canadian federal election, it is worthwhile to look at the latest polling provided by 338Canada.com. If their predictions are correct, Prime Minister Trudeau will remain the nation’s leader, Jamie Schmale will win Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock easily and the classic bellwether riding of Peterborough-Kawartha that has sided with the winning party since 1960 could see a photo-finish with less than one per cent of the total vote separating the winner from the loser.
People’s Party of Canada candidate Alison Davidson and Libertarian candidate Gene Balfour are also vying for voters’ intentions on Monday – and their parties have much in common. It’s the PPC that gets the most headlines, though, thanks to the pandemic and leader Maxime Bernier’s use of it as a wedge issue. Now home to most of the anti-vax, anti-mask, and no-more-lockdowns movement, the PCC’s Davidson does nothing to dispel this notion when she speaks about vaccines.
Judi Forbes, Liberal candidate in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock, believes that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did the right thing by calling the federal election that is currently being contested. Forbes also thinks the party she represents “has had Canadians’ backs during the pandemic” and possesses the best possible plan to help Canadians recovery from the pandemic.
Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes- Brock Member of Parliament Jamie Schmale believes that small business will be the key to Canada’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. He also thinks the Conservative Party of Canada is best poised to create the conditions for that recovery more quickly than any other party.
After much passionate debate and suggestions of secret deals made between councillors, Kawartha Lakes council will be recommending that ORVs not be allowed to pass through Lindsay. In a tie vote among councillors at the committee of the whole meeting, Mayor Andy Letham cast the deciding vote to halt the proposed route through Lindsay and instead look at another option.
Undergraduate application statistics provided via e-mail by Deanna Underwood, manager of communications and events, at the Ontario Universities Application Centre show that 2021 could be a very busy year for universities right across the province.
There will be no mandatory vaccinations for staff or students for COVID-19 at the Trillium Lakelands District School Board. The local board takes direction on vaccination policy from the Ministry of Health – and the Ontario government has been steadfast in its opposition to mandatory vaccines or vaccine passports.
Trillium Lakelands District School Board’s director of education, Wes Hahn, hopes to see students return to schools with recess, music and choir programs, open cafeterias and libraries and a full range of extracurriculars when school starts again this fall.
At few other times in public discourse are more numbers floated for public consumption than at election time. There seem to be multiple polls outs out every day, sometimes telling conflicting stories. Politicians, as a part of their tried-and-true stump speeches, talk about millions and billions in election promises like pocket change.
In a battle of conflicting expert reports, Kawartha Lakes has decided to take the advice of their own staff and voted to approve the demolition of the majority of the walls that currently surround the courtyard of the Olde Gaol Museum at 50 Victoria Avenue North in Lindsay.
Local candidates are off to the races in a federal match-up that pits the Liberal’s Justin Trudeau against new Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh. Annamie Paul, the federal Green Party leader, will face her first campaign since Elizabeth May stepped aside in 2019. At this time, only the Conservatives and Liberals have chosen candidates locally, with the Conservatives of course running incumbent Jamie Schmale and the Liberals once again fielding Judi Forbes.
The new secondary school union head says the nearly 300 students that are staying home this fall for online learning may end up affecting class choice for the majority who are going back.
A deal has been made. After months of difficult negotiations and the intervention of a provincial conciliator, the Trillium Lakelands District School Board and District 15 of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) have reached and ratified a three-year collective agreement that will guarantee labour peace until Aug. 31, 2024.
With a fall federal election a real possibility, the Conservatives and Liberals locally appear to be ready with two familiar faces. Incumbent Jamie Schmale of the Conservative Party of Canada has already been nominated by his party executive and will be running for a third time, first elected in 2015.
Ross Memorial Hospital’s leader is seeking as much as $7.5 million from the city over the next five city budgets. At a special meeting of council on June 29, senior staff and volunteers from RMH presented a plan regarding upgrades and improvements necessary at the hospital that will cost about $15 million.
Nearly 5,000 people have now signed an online petition against the decision made by the Peterborough- Victoria- Northumberland Clarington Catholic District School Board to disallow the flying of Pride flags in front of their schools.
Kawartha Lakes council, by a vote of 7-2, decided at their June 1 committee of the whole meeting to recommend only one route for ORVs to travel through Lindsay. Councillor Pat Dunn called the route the best choice “because it was the shortest, safest route with the fewest number of homes impacted.” The route selected will impact the following streets:
If the Off-road Vehicle Task Force gets its way, ORVs could soon be permitted on such busy Lindsay streets as Logie, Wellington, Cambridge and Angeline Streets, among many other choices, as a go-through route. Bobcaygeon, too, could see ORV use on some of its main roads. In what is expected to be another contentious meeting on June 1, Kawartha Lakes council is being asked to approve a new set of off-road vehicle (ORV) routes through Lindsay and Bobcaygeon.
