Posts with the Auditor General tag

Barris Beat

Are you glad “it’s happening here”?

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Instead TV hockey, I’m watching dogs hanging out of car windows.

There I was, a few weeks ago, settling into my TV easy chair on a Saturday night, prepared to watch the Leafs play somebody. And suddenly the screen was awash with picturesque images of rural Ontario. Next, there was a guy in a tractor cab.

“Is this a trailer for a CBC series I haven’t seen?” I asked myself.

Then the same guy was offloading sacks from a flatbed near his barn. And there was a lush soundtrack of orchestral music rising behind him. And I realized this was an advertisement.

“It’s gotta be a beer commercial,” I thought, “because they’re the only sponsors who can afford commercial spots on Hockey Night in Canada.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Much sole-sourcing. No soul-searching.

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ServiceOntario outlet. CityNews.

The last time I went there, I learned something. Remember those Ontario Health cards with the red and white stripes and no head shot? Several years ago, I received notice that I needed to have mine updated with new coding and a photograph. I honestly had visions of lineups, questionnaires, and a long wait to have a new photo taken and an even longer wait for the new card to arrive.

“Nope,” the ServiceOntario representative said. “I already have your photo from your driver’s licence in the file. We can use that for your new health card.”

I was in and out of the service outlet in minutes. My updated card arrived just days later. And I’d discovered that the digital system storing my photo ID actually does work. (more…)

Barris Beat

Ford’s foxes in our hen house

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Choosing expediency over experience. Pinterest

We had considered many options. People. Places. Past knowledge. We knew the subject – youth violence and alienation – required some very specific understanding of the causes and effects of the problem. We had plenty of college and university experts on hand because we worked among them. But somehow we sensed to get to the root of the problem, we had to get closer to the ground. There was a vital element missing in our approach.

It was experience. (more…)

Barris Beat

Where the Ford government allegiances lie

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Oath-taking – a practice for those wishing to tell the truth.

When I cross the border into the United States, it happens. When we go through security checks at international airports, it happens. When I was approached by the Ontario Court for jury duty, it happened. At those moments and others, we are asked:

“Do you swear that this is the truth?”

It’s called an oath. And when we cross an international border, Customs and Immigration officers need to know we’re being honest. Going through Pearson Airport security and onto public commercial airlines, security needs to know we’re abiding by the law. And if we’re meeting our civic duty in the Ontario court system, the judge needs to hear us say, “Yes, that’s the truth.”

So why don’t any of those protocols of oath-taking, of abiding by the rules, apply to Ford government officials around Conservative policies regarding protection of Greenbelt lands? (more…)

Barris Beat

Another Ford Greenbelt review?

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Richard Nixon, found out, covering up the truth, nearly impeached, claiming, “I am not a crook!” Poliitico.

I dodged most of the last few months of my university classes to see it. I sensed – as a journalist-in-training in the early 1970s – that reality was more important than theory. So, we all crowded into a student lounge at Toronto Metropolitan University (then Ryerson) to watch the daily TV Senate Committee hearings into connections between the Watergate break-in and then president Richard Nixon.

I specifically remember Committee Chair Sen. Sam Ervin sparring with Nixon’s then White House adviser John Ehrlichman.

“The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere,” Ervin said later. “What he says is executive privilege, is nothing but executive poppycock.” (more…)

Barris Beat

When a ship of state is sinking…

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Not living up to responsibility costs lives. HistoryExtra.

In 1979, I met and interviewed a seaman named Steve Prentice; he was in his 80s then. Just before midnight on April 14, 1912, the ship on which he served, RMS Titanic, struck an iceberg 600 kilometres off Newfoundland. As a junior purser, his job was to serve the needs of passengers and crew.

That night, he happened to be close to the bridge of the Titanic, just as the ship’s designer Thomas Andrews told Bruce Ismay, the chairman of White Star, and Titanic’s senior officer Edward Smith what he’d seen below decks.

“What’s her position?” Ismay asked Andrews.

“The position, sir, is that she’s going to sink,” Andrews said. “The water’s coming straight up. The bulkheads won’t help her in any way at all.”

Young Steve Prentice then spent the next 90 minutes convincing as many passengers as possible to get to the lifeboats. It was his job. (more…)

Barris Beat

Signs of development = the Greenbelt gravy train

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Signs of the times. Is this creating affordable housing?

They seemed to pop up overnight. One day I was driving through Pickering up Brock Road and there was the Greenbelt land – fields, gullies and natural forest. The next day, following the same route, there were signs as big as all outdoors shouting out to all who passed:

“100-foot by 300-foot lots!” those signs proclaimed.

As I recall, it was just before the recent Greenbelt controversy erupted that I first saw the signs. (more…)

Barris Beat

Bad judgment must be called out

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Playing on a tree on the other side of the fence was so inviting, but, it turned out, against the rules.

It happened when I was about nine. The public-school playground got a little boring, so a bunch of us found a maple tree just across the back fence of the schoolyard to climb, sit in and hang from. Word got around to the principal, Mr. Palmer Kilpatrick. If for no other reason than fear of liability, he announced that the tree was off limits.

That didn’t stop us. Next day, we headed back over the fence and scrambled back up the tree. Suddenly, it got quiet. All my fellow tree-climbers disappeared. I was alone. I looked down and there was Mr. Kilpatrick standing at the foot of the tree.

“Ted, come down,” he said sternly. “You know you’re not supposed to be up there.”

“Yes sir,” and I came down. Everybody else who’d climbed the tree with me that day had taken off. And I could have too. But something inside me said, “Fess up and face the consequences.” (more…)

Barris Beat

What Bethlenfalvy’s 100 don’t see

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Peter Bethlenfalvy speaks to his 100 about building not being accountable. YouTube photo.

He preferred to present the government’s first-quarter fiscal results, focus on Ontario’s deficit projection for 2023-24. But reporters preferred a response from Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy to the Greenbelt controversy in his riding.

“The 100 people I talked to say ‘build,’” he answered. “That’s what I hear and that’s why we’re going to continue on our build.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Billion-tree promise

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What a pledge to plant trees can yield. Photo – Stop Sprawl Durham.

There was a short news clip about a week ago. It captured the Canadian minister of energy and natural resources smiling for the cameras. The video showed him joining the mayor of Surrey, B.C. Together, Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Mayor Brenda Locke planted a tree symbolic of long-range plans to help restore Canada’s tree population, reduce the effects of severe weather (flooding or drought) and rescue a warming planet.

“Planting two billion trees over 10 years is a key part of Canada’s plan to fight climate change,” Wilkinson said on August 2. “Every tree planted is a step toward a healthier, more sustainable Canada.” (more…)