On Monday February 27, 2018 I attended the Springwater Compliance Audit Committee meeting. The CAC was set up to examine the election expenses of Springwater Mayor Bill French after a complaint by defeated deputy mayor candidate Dan MacLean. The details of this fiasco have been documented by Kate Har...
As everyone knows the Province has released a map showing “Study Areas” where they are considering expanding the Greenbelt. The Greenbelt has been very effective in stopping sprawl where it exists now. About the only people who are opposed to it are developers, landowners (including a few farmers) wh...
Or white. Or bubbly. Rachel Notley has just handed us a great way to support British Columbia. Buy B.C. wine! And score a win for the environment. Talk about heavy-handed! It would be one thing if the Alberta premier had used the moral suasion of her office to call on people to boycott BC wine [&hell...
MNRF Minister Kathryn McGarry It’s been months since the first shock of hearing that the Ontario Tree Seed Plant would close in September 2018. Our first stunned question then was Why? Now, after hearing the rationale from the MNRF at a public meeting, reading some of the letters addressed to ...
You-know-who with fund-raising t-shirt This started off as a review of three important books that I thought would be good gifts for activists – then it morphed into a Christmas wish list from all of us to all of us. These are the books: -Boiling Point – Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse, and ...
The anger was palpable. It came from residents of Oro-Medonte, Adjala-Tosoronto and Tiny. They were among 40 people from around the county who attended a workshop at the Oro Station community hall last week. The event was organized by Environmental Defence to get feedback on the “responsible aggregat...
There are so many Issues going on in Simcoe County it’s hard to know where to start. The Ontario Municipal Board hearing for the debacle of Burl’s Creek Event Grounds concluded several weeks ago. So a decision should be coming out soon. With all the illegal activities, fines and zoning violations inc...
Over the past 40 years or so I have watched land speculators buy up cheap land and somehow get the land rezoned from productive agricultural land into subdivisions or factories. The pattern seems fairly consistent and I’ve had some personal experience with this when I was on Oro-Medonte council. The ...
It’s been a while since I posted a blog so I’ll start with good news. Thanks to AWARE Simcoe’s efforts spearheaded by Anne Learn Sharpe and Kate Harries, the Nottawasaga River has been reinstated for protection under the Federal Navigation Protection Act. The former Conservative government had scrapp...
I’ve spent some time thinking about the Freele Tract recently, as I considered a response to the questionnaire the Rainforest Alliance is asking community members and stakeholders to answer. This is part of the process of evaluating the County of Simcoe’s decision to locate its organics ...
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