Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock MP Jamie Schmale found himself in the minority last month when a majority of Conservative delegates refused to vote for a statement that read “climate change is real and the party must be willing to act.”
A full 54 per cent of Conservative delegates voted against the statement with an election likely to be called within the next 12 to 18 months.
Imagine you create a budget. You want to eliminate wasteful, unhealthy spending in 10 years. Maybe it’s omitting the cigarettes, or the weekly case of beer, or the family-sized packs of candy and cookies. Then you put the kids, the smokers, and the beer drinkers in charge of monitoring your progress toward your goal.
And they don’t have to report on that progress for, oh, say 10 years – the year by which you want to have reached the goal. And if they miss the target? They just have to say: Yup, we missed it.
Of all the memes and jokes that ran their courses in 2019, one is still very much proving its relevance: The succinct “OK Boomer” put-down.
Although the passive humour it provided may have been quickly killed by corporate entities and middle-aged politicians, “OK Boomer’s” cultural impact remains, inciting ongoing internet feuds, and leading to what Maclean’s magazine has called a “corrosive generational blame game.”
Kawartha Lakes City Council recently voted to reject a motion by the municipal Heritage Committee to designate the properties at St. David Street and Riverview Road in Lindsay as a site of “cultural heritage value and interest.” The motion also barred staff from continuing the process to designate the site officially. I don’t think that motion went far enough.
Thanks to organizing efforts by 17-year old Abby Jardine, Fenelon Falls joined other parts of Canada and much of the world in a climate strike September 27.
Rallying at the old Fenelon Falls Theatre marquee sign, about 50 marchers took to Fenelon Falls’ main street to bring attention to the issue of climate change.
Roderick Benns recently interviewed the PPC, Conservative, Liberal, Green, and NDP candidates for Haliburton, Kawartha Lakes, Brock riding to help voters make an informed decision leading up to the election in October. In our fourth installment is Elizabeth Fraser from the Green Party of Canada.
Benns: Can you highlight a policy of your party that will lead to increased employment and increased average income in our riding?
Fraser: One of the Green’s economic policies which could be applied in the riding of Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock as a way of increasing employment is the Green Venture Capital Fund. This fund is part of the Green Party’s focus on small businesses and would provide support for small local green businesses.
Roderick Benns recently interviewed the PPC, Conservative, Liberal, Green, and NDP candidates for Haliburton, Kawartha Lakes, Brock riding to help voters make an informed decision leading up to the election in October. In our first installment is Gene Balfour of the PPC.
Benns: Can you highlight a policy of your party that will lead to increased employment and increased average income in our riding?
Balfour: The Peoples Party of Canada will create an economic, investment and governance environment designed to out-compete other jurisdictions so that new jobs, long term career opportunities and income growth will take place within our communities.
During the week of June 24, Kawartha Lakes Environmental Advisory Committee recognized students across the municipality for their exemplary efforts toward enhancing and protecting the environment in the current school year (2018 to 2019). A total of three awards were presented to students ranging from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 7.
The first Environmental Youth Hero award was presented to Alexis Benns, a Grade 7 student at Central Senior Public School, who was nominated for her efforts in raising awareness on climate change by organizing community marches. Alexis felt compelled to take action on her own because of her recent studies of the impacts that climate change is having on the environment. On March 15 and May 3, Ms. Benns was able to organize two marches that involved not only students from multiple schools within the area, but members of the community as well.
In 1946 George Orwell, the writer of 1984 wrote in his seminal Politics and the English Language that, “When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases … one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy, the appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain his not involved.”
But who is this Orwell? He probably took courses at university that were not tied to ‘performance outcomes’! He merely warned generations of the dangers of totalitarianism. Clearly not a man who was ‘open for business.’
They may not be old enough to vote, but a group of students made their voices loud and clear in today’s climate strike. What began as a handful of Central Senior Public School students gathering at Victoria Park quickly grew to a swarm of approximately 70 protesters.
As they marched down Kent Street in downtown Lindsay today, the students, accompanied by several adult supporters carried handmade signs with slogans like “The sea is rising, so are we,” and “Planet over profit.”
