Happy Easter from Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell 1904 – 1987

The Mega Quarry is only 2/3 of the size of the farmland and health devastation envisioned by the Springwater Township land use plans

The Midhurst Secondary Plan added to the Springwater Park and provincial forest sales will be +50% bigger than the Mega Quarry.

This consolidated plan will help to destroy the ability of Ontarians to eat and breathe.

A very good opinion article by Bill Nieuwland in the Barrie Examiner called, Valuable farmland disappearing. Word, pdf

The problem:

Unsustainable farming practices in Australia, the United States, western Canada, Latin America, Asia and Africa are causing widespread salinization, decertification, toxification and erosion.

The  solution:

However, in Ontario we have just witnessed a wonderful success in preserving 900 hectares of precious food land. Through a broadly based grassroots movement that raised the alarm far and wide, the Megaquarry was stopped in its tracks. It was the life- sustaining food and water source that would have been destroyed forever that prompted people to wake up and ask probing questions that the proponents of the quarry could not answer.

The Midhurst Secondary Plan, MSP:

 But what about our own equivalent of the Megaquarry? At 756 hectares, the loss of prime farmland to the Midhurst Secondary Plan approaches that of the Megaquarry.

True as far as the it goes but I would go farther than that: I think the MSP just the opening act for a much bigger, if possible, more grotesque mega-, mega-plan.

One Plan: (at least) Two Phases

Numbers of Hectares of food and forestry (oxygen producing) Taken out of Use

• The Math: 756 (Midhurst Secondary Plan) PLUS +600 (Springwater Park and provincial forests) EQUALS +1,356 Hectares (that we know of so far)

Puts the  900 hectares for Mega Quarry into perspective, doesn’t it? (+50% more land)

Posted also on SpringwaterParkcc.org on December 29, 2012.

Idle No More – Flash Round Dance at Georgian Mall, Barrie, Ontario December 26, 2012

First song, 0:51

Second 14:05

Thanks to orithwase.

Coss-posted from SpringwaterParkcc.org.

the Idle No More movement introduces themselves to backwater ON municipalities which have internet connection

What do you call closing down the 401 eastbound at London, Ontario and then up Wellington Street?

A start.

A bell-weather article from the London Free Press Idle No More protest brings more than 1,000 to the street in London. Click here for an outstanding video of this action (then click through embedded video).

Significant Excerpt:

They halted traffic for 90 minutes on Canada’s busiest highway Wednesday, more than 1,000 protesters from area First Nations. They’re part of a grassroots movement — Idle No More — gaining momentum across Canada. Jennifer O’Brien explores the story behind the protest.

Q: What is Idle No More?

A: It’s a grassroots movement — fuelled by social media — to protest the lack of First Nations’ involvement in decisions made in Ottawa. Supporters say according to treaty rights enshrined in the constitution, aboriginal leaders must be consulted on decisions affecting Canada’s resources. Instead, Ottawa signs deals with foreign investors, including China this year, that directly impact the resources that should be shared by all who live on this land, natives say. The issue has been simmering for years, but the tipping point was this month’s quick passing of omnibus budget bill C-45 that contains many changes that directly affect First Nations communities, Idle No More organizers say.

Q: Some of the issues are decades old. Why is everybody so fired up now?

A: First Nations have a young population where the majority of the people are under 35, and those young people are more educated than the same demographic was a generation ago. Deep indigenous roots coupled with higher education has given the movement strength. Social media has helped exponentially.

Q: Who was behind London’s Idle No More rally.

A: Members of the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation organized and planned the protest that included hundreds of school children, teens, families and elders from that community. Hundreds more turned out from other area First Nations. Most protesters were aboriginal, but there were also many non-aboriginals on the walk and at the rally.

Q: What is specifically threatening to First Nations communities?

A: Idle No More organizers say Bill C 45 contains changes to the Indian Act — which they say is already discriminatory and racist. “The native people in this country are the only race of people in the world that have a specific piece of legislation that governs their lives,” said Ray Deleary, a senior policy analyst at Chippewas of the Thames. Bill C45 changes the way land is managed on reservations and takes thousands of rivers and lakes off a protected list.

Q: What do organizers hope to achieve?

A: First Nations leadership represented equally in government and lawmaking.

jennifer.obrien@sunmedia.ca

A different national sovereignty.

Who is guarding the guardians: Big time corruption in secrecy-heavy, backwater towns.

Shakedown for 50% of a company revealed by a  Radio-Canada TV and the Toronto Star joint investigation.

Tom Miller, the former chief administrative officer of Lamont, Alta., is approached by the Star and Radio-Canada with questions about an alleged kickback scheme. He refused to answer questions. The allegations, which have not been proved in court, are the subject of lawsuits and an RCMP investigation.

Click here for video.

Julian Sher writes in today’s Toronto Star: Intrigue in the oilpatch: Quebec builder who hoped to cash in on Alberta’s oil boom caught in mulitimillion-dollar controversy involving alleged shakedowns, secret recordings and revenge:

Like many Quebec construction developers, Gilles Filiatreault is no stranger to kickbacks and extortion.

But he never expected to find trouble in a small town in Alberta’s industrial heartland eager to cash in on the riches of the oilpatch boom.

Now Filiatreault finds himself embroiled in a multimillion-dollar controversy involving clandestine recordings of alleged shakedowns and revenge, an ongoing RCMP criminal inquiry and a secretive town council forced to call on the province to investigate its activities.

A joint investigation by the Toronto Star and the Radio-Canada TV program Enquête into one Alberta community raises wider questions about transparency in small towns across Canada, where there is often little oversight into how and why money is managed and spent.

Excessive secrecy is well-known flag for wrongdoing.

“More often than not, we don’t know what is going on in these small towns,” says Jim Lightbody, chair of the University of Alberta’s department of political science and an expert in municipal politics. “It’s only when someone’s ox is gored that it becomes public.”

…

Still, a review of the minutes of town council meetings in recent months shows there are regular sessions behind closed doors in Lamont to discuss “personnel and property” issues — a secrecy that is allowed under provincial legislation, which critics say is open to abuse.

“The problem is that everything city hall does is personnel and land,” says the University of Alberta’s Lightbody. “These small town councils are so used to doing everything in private. Who is guarding the bloody guardians?”

A provincial government investigation into corruption:

Two days later, (Nov. 17, 2011) another secret council meeting — this one lasting almost two hours — concluded with the announcement that the town had requested the provincial Municipal Affairs department inspect “any matters connected with the management, administration and operations immediately.”

“If a town makes the request, something is really amiss,” says municipal affairs expert Jim Lightbody. “That means the problem is really out of hand — the cow pie is on the fan.”

And Mayor Bill Skinner denies former town manager Tom Miller was fired over kickback allegations.

Many believe there are way too many in camera sessions in Simcoe county area municipal governments.

The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.

Thomas Carlyle 1795 – 1881

When will responsible government return to Springwater Township and Simcoe County?

Development and growth interests rule over the citizens.

William Lyon Mackenzie — Toronto’s first mayor

Elected officials continue to block for an industry while the much shrewder unelected officials retire in droves to “spend more time with their families”.

Excerpt:

Responsible government
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments (the equivalent of the executive branch) in Westminster democracies are responsible to parliament rather than to the monarch, or, in a colonial context, to the imperial government. If the parliament is bicameral, then the government is responsible first to the parliament’s lower house, which is more numerous,directly elected and thus more representative than the upper house.

…

Canada
In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the British government was sensitive to unrest in its remaining colonies with large populations of British colonists. After the Lower Canada Rebellion led by Louis-Joseph Papineau in 1837, and the Upper Canada Rebellion led by William Lyon Mackenzie, Lord Durham was appointed governor general of British North America and had the task of examining the issues and determining how to defuse tensions. In his report, one of his recommendations was that colonies which were developed enough should be granted “responsible government”. This term specifically meant the policy that British-appointed governors should bow to the will of elected colonial assemblies.

…

In the Province of Canada, responsible government was put to the test in 1849, when Reformers in the legislature passed the Rebellion Losses Bill. This was a law that provided compensation to French-Canadians who suffered losses during the Rebellions of 1837-1838 in Lower-Canada. The Governor General, Lord Elgin, had serious misgivings about the bill but nonetheless assented to it despite demands from the Tories that he refuse to do so. Elgin was physically assaulted by an English-speaking mob for this, and the Montreal Parliament building was burned to the ground in the ensuing riots. Nonetheless, the Rebellion Losses Bill helped entrench responsible government into Canadian politics.

In time, the granting of responsible government became the first step on the road to complete independence. Canada gradually gained greater and greater autonomy over a considerable period of time through inter imperial and commonwealth diplomacy, including 1867′s British North America Act, 1931′s Statute of Westminster, and even as late as the patriation of the British North America Act in 1982 (see Constitution of Canada), Source

Resistance to tyranny is a civic duty and obedience to God.