By Staff

April 24^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The Ontario government is raising the speed limit permanently from 100 km/h to 110 km/h on 10 additional sections of provincial highways in northern and southern Ontario.

“The change builds on the safe and successful increase to six sections of provincial highways in 2022 and aligns with posted speed limits in other jurisdictions across Canada.

“Most of Ontario’s highways were originally designed to safely accommodate speed limits of 110 km/h and the data from our changes in 2022 shows they do just that,” said Prabmeet Sarkaria, Minister of Transportation.

“These evidence-based increases are a common-sense change to make life more convenient for Ontario drivers while bringing our highway speed limits in line with other Canadian provinces.”

“Starting July 12, 2024, the speed limit will be permanently raised to 110 km/h on most of the following provincial highway sections, with the remainder coming into force before the end of the year:

• • • Hwy 401, Tilbury, extending the existing 110 km/h zone further east by 7 km
    • Hwy 401 from Hwy 35/115 to Cobourg (approximately 35 km)
    • Hwy 401 from Colborne to Belleville (approximately 44 km)
    • Hwy 401 from Belleville to Kingston (approximately 66 km)
    • Hwy 401 from Hwy 16 to Quebec boundary (approximately 107 km)
    • Hwy 403 from Woodstock to Brantford (approximately 26 km)
    • Hwy 403 from Brantford to Hamilton (approximately 14.5 km)
    • Hwy 406 from Thorold to Welland (approximately 13 km)
    • Hwy 416 from Hwy 401 to Ottawa (approximately 70 km)
    • Hwy 69 from Sudbury to French River (approximately 60 km)

“All highway sections were selected based on their ability to safely accommodate higher speed limits. Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan have a maximum speed limit of 110 km/h, while in British Columbia, the maximum speed limit is 120 km/h.”

We want to find out how many traffic deaths there were on  400 highways in 2023 and then report on what that number is a year after this increase in speed was made legal.

 

 

By Pepper Parr

April 23^rd, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The wolves are circling what they think is going to be easy prey.

The Grimsby Town Council recently voted to accept a report from their Integrity Commissioner (vote was 5-2) to suspend the councillor’s pay for 15 days for contravening the council’s Code of Conduct.

Ann Marsden see this as an interesting Integrity Commissioner report that is relevant to a complaint that could be put forward by at least three Burlington Councillors and multiple members of the public.

Marsden quotes Lynn Crosby who said:  the sole purpose of the petition put forward by Councillors Kearns, Nisan and Galbraith was to have the Mayor comply with the wishes of a majority of her Council and identified members of the community.

Ironic that the petition needed a 2/3 (which is 5 of the 7 members of Council) to get on the council agenda when a simple majority of council were asking the Mayor for something she was able to give but simply preferred not to.

On April 16 the Mayor made many on the record statements that did

Mayor Meed Ward did not make a declaration regarding a conflict of interest and failed to pass the Gavel thereby playing a two person role: accused and judge.

Marsden found it interesting that an Integrity Commissioner can recommend removal of a Council member as Chair of a meeting.  Given that Mayor Meed Ward set herself up as the Chair of all the Committee of the Whole meetings – which are currently the only meetings Council hold –other than the formal Council meeting at which bylaws are passed.

The Marsden’s said they would have their complaint drafted by May Day which is the day that commemorates the struggles and gains made by workers and the labour movement.

For those interested in the Grimsby Integrity Commissioner’s report the link is HERE. click on the April 15 council meeting for the agenda and documents).

This is getting to be a bit of a sticky wicket.

 

By Staff

April 23, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Mountain bike racing at night!

What an adventure.

Conservation Halton has announced that Mountain Bike racing will take place on Tuesdays at the Kelso Conservation Area starting in May

Outdoor adventure seekers and mountain bike enthusiasts can now register for the popular Tuesday night Mountain Bike (MTB) Race Series.

For the past 16 years, the race series has attracted over 300 seasoned mountain bikers and budding athletes each week for an unforgettable experience on Kelso’s trails.

“We’re looking forward to having our local riding community back for another action-packed Mountain Bike Race Series,” said Craig Machan, Director, Parks & Operations at Conservation Halton.

“It’s a great opportunity for individuals and families to get active outdoors and build new relationships with fellow riders. Over the years, we’ve seen more young riders signing up for the series, and we hope to keep growing this community at Kelso and attracting more people to the sport.”

The MTB Race Series includes twelve races and four heats. Races start on May 14, 2024, and run every Tuesday night until the finale event on August 27, 2024. This year offers a new flexible schedule to accommodate races that are cancelled due to the weather. To suit different skill levels, the races are divided into the following categories:

Kids Race: Children as young as four-years-old can join the races in a closed circuit, completing as many laps as possible within twenty minutes

Beginner: In a longer closed circuit, riders will complete as many laps as possible in thirty minutes

Novice: Riders will complete one lap of a 6 to 8 km course

Intermediate: Riders in this new category will complete two laps of a 12 to 16 km course

Sport: Riders will complete two laps of a 12 to 18 km course

Expert: Advanced riders will complete three laps of the full course that is approximately 18 to 25 km

To kick off the MTB Race Series, Conservation Halton will be hosting an Open House and plate pick-up at Kelso on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Riders will get an opportunity to explore the course, avoid line-ups for plate pick-up on the first day of races, and ask Kelso’s MTB team questions about the race series.

More detail and registration HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

By Staff

April 22^nd, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The Transit Users Forum will take place this year Burlington Public Library’s Central Branch on May 4 at 1pm in the Centennial Hall

Mayor Marianne Meed Ward will open this year’s Forum.  This is the first time we recall the Mayor opening the event.  She has always attended and has been the City’s cheerleader for better transit service.  If she had her way she would make the service free for everyone all the time.

BFAST Chair Doug Brown said: “Marianne Meed Ward has been a champion of better transit since she was a city councillor and has attended nearly all of our Forums in the past.

“Under her leadership, and with the strong support of Council, Burlington’s transit system was rescued from near death and is now poised for record growth.

“We are equally pleased that every city and regional councillor has stated their intention to attend. People who come to the Forum can be assured their voices will be heard.”

Having every Council member in the room is a first.

The event is organized by Burlington for Accessible Sustainable Transit (BFAST), a non-profit citizens’ organization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Pepper Parr

April 22^nd,  2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

April has not been very kind to Mayor Marianne Meed Ward.

She was seriously challenged by a majority of Council for taking on the Strong Mayor Powers which she said she was required to do.  There are a number of people who don’t agree with the position she has taken which resulted in three Council members supporting a motion that asked the Mayor to return to Council the powers that she was given by the province. A link to what Mayor Meed Ward has done so far is HERE.

Mayor Meed Ward had announced a speaker series she was going to host and asked Council to endorse the idea.  Council gave her a rough ride – wanting to know how the event was going to be paid for. It got a little nasty revealing how dysfunctional this Council has become.

Council wanted more detail on who was going to do all the work needed and where the money to pay for the event was going to come from

Mayor Meed Ward calling her speaker series:  “A Better Burlington: Innovation to Action” is to consist of two sessions each year “focused on the key challenges we face and fostering tangible ways to improve Burlington and engage residents in the process.

“Each Speaker’s Series will have a clear theme with a relevant speaker. The first session will be on Monday, May 27 at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre and will feature Jennifer Keesmaat, who will present on housing, community development and growth.”

Keesmatt is a former City of Toronto Chief Planner.

“Deputy Mayors will be invited to be participants in these series, where relevant to their portfolios. Councillor Shawna Stolte, in her capacity as Deputy Mayor of Housing, is part of the planning team for the inaugural event on housing. The team includes staff from relevant departments, including events, finance and communications.

“The Speaker’s Series will be free. This is to encourage as much participation and engagement from Burlington residents and city staff as possible. Costs associated with the series will be secured through corporate sponsorships and the Mayor’s Office budget.

Meed Ward added that on the recommendation of the Integrity Commissioner, sponsorship shall be secured through the City following its standard process, and will be separate from the Mayor’s Office to avoid perceived or potential conflicts of interests.

In keeping with the Council Code of Good Governance, sponsorship will not be accepted from anyone with an active application before the City.

The Integrity Commissioner also advised Meed Ward to seek Council’s endorsement of the Speakers Series.

All the Mayor wanted was an endorsement for a speaker series she wanted to host. Several members of this council were not about give it a rubber stamp endorsement.

Here is how Council reacted to the request for an endorsement.

Chair Nisan asked Mayor Meed Ward if she would like to move the item and begin the comments.

Mayor: Certainly I’ll move it and give you more detail.

“I always like to borrow I ideas where I see them and I think back to two terms ago, Mayor Goldring brought forward the Inspire series and this has really patterned after that it brought people together. It provided an opportunity for community engagement. It focused on key areas that the community was interested in and is free to the community and at the time.

“That was helped along by being free.”

Meed Ward added that this is “ a new area certainly for me. Not always new for the city. And so in order to just make sure that this was done in an appropriate way of course I can tell that our council code of good governance does have guidance around all of this in terms of seeking sponsors. So obviously no direct funding that is handled by any individual member of council and really the big caveat and condition is don’t seek a sponsor from someone that has active business in front of the Council for decision making.

“As an added level of extra due diligence, I suppose abundance of caution, I reached out to the Integrity Commissioner for conversation. I do that occasionally just to bounce ideas around and make sure that I’m on the right side of things.  The Integrity Commissioner did suggest that there might be an opportunity to invite counsel to endorse this. I’m not asking you to plan or fund it, but certainly to endorse the concept.

“This is an opportunity to for counsel to again endorse the concept of the series. So I will leave it at that.”

Part of the Mayor’s thinking is to hold a “trade show or a town hall component of the speaker series that would invite groups relevant to the matter at hand to come and talk to the community. So for example, habitat would be invited to introduce themselves to the community; that will be in advance of the speaker series. But free to the public and open to all and I’ll stop there and turn it over to my co-sponsor.”

Councillor Stolte:”I certainly endorse the speaker series, and especially given the fact that the first one is on the subject of housing, which just happened to be quite a nice coincidence because the mayor and I had sat down on about a month ago and had a conversation about my  hope of trying  to put together a city wide information session on the state of housing in Burlington and lo and behold, the mayor had been thinking already along the same lines as far as that being the first topic for Speaker Series.

“I think the mayor’s draw as far as it being from the mayor’s budget and the mayor’s office and biggest city wide draw certainly has the potential to be a more fulsome information session than what I could have put on from my end. So I’m glad to be able to partner on this. I look forward to future sessions that will certainly be directed towards other very important parts of our strategic plan. And I hope that this receives support from committee.”

Sometime later, weeks not days, Stolte said she was withdrawing her endorsement saying:

“Originally, in my role as Deputy Mayor of Housing for the City of Burlington, I had begun the planning process for a 2024 City Wide Housing Symposium as well as a “ward by ward” series of Housing Information Meetings with a focus of addressing the housing supply and affordability crisis in Burlington.

“The Mayor then decided to choose this model and subject as the first of her Mayors Speakers Series in May, so I agreed to join in the planning process in an effort to collaborate on the event.

“After deep consideration, I have concluded that Mayor Meed Ward and I have fundamental differences in how we choose to communicate critical information with the public and I have decided to resign my participation in the Mayor’s Speakers Series and resume my focus, time and efforts on planning for these smaller, interactive “ward by ward” resident meetings across the City.

“In an effort to connect with and ensure all Burlington residents’ concerns can be heard, I encourage the residents of Burlington to stay up to date on their Ward Councillor monthly newsletters for the dates and times of these upcoming Housing Information Meetings.”

Councillor Kearns wasn’t prepared to endorse the idea – she wanted more information saying:  “I did take an opportunity to look into some of our existing policies and while the concept is definitely noble, I want to make sure that we’re aligned with our policies. So one of the things that I’ve still yet to be able to acquire in order to do some effective decision making is the actual budget for the event.

“I’m not sure what we are looking for in terms of sponsorships and where that may or may not impede our ability to secure sponsorships for priorities that have already been endorsed.”

Staff time was also a concern for Kearns. “I wanted to understand a little bit better around staff time. I’ve further looked into some of the policy pieces which I may have continued questions on while all these costs come into clarity.

“I would like to put a motion to refer it to council and perhaps we can have the budget the cost of one of the speaker series by that time, so my motion would be to refer to counsel for information on budget and staff time.”

The motion to defer was put up on the screen so everyone could see it.  It went through numerous revisions.  Finally, they settled on

Chair Nisan: Okay, referrals been put on the floor. Does anyone want to jump in?

Councillor Bentivegna began with: “Just a quick question on staff budget time.  I make the assumption from what I sort of anticipate; is this Mayor’s staff budget and the Mayors staff time? Is that what I’m reading or not? I think that was the question.”

Mayor Meed Ward: “I can speak to both if you like by way of responding to my comments on the referral.   The request did come through to my office about the budget; the Counsellor is aware of the answer to this. We are bound by contractual agreements not to release information about the budget for this particular speaker series. So we won’t be doing that.

“Council members have a $5,000 budget for events. We have our other discretionary budget and Council member that is reported out annually. So that’s where people will see the aggregated amount of spend for any for any individual member of council.

“It will vary depending on the budget,with respect to impacts on other priorities for sponsorship that is exactly why we talk to staff in advance before we seek a sponsor and to make sure we are not also soliciting that same sponsor. Finally, with respect to non staff time. Staff do provide a certain amount of support to council members whether it’s preparing design work for flyers or newsletters or other items.

“We all have a council appointed communications person. We are a service of the city and have the ability to submit work requests for those things. So there’s not anything over and above staff time on this that other members of council don’t also have access to in the normal course of things. So this is a non-issue and I won’t be supporting the referral.

Council Sharman: In an effort to support the Mayor, said “back in 2011or 12  Gil Penalosai put forward an idea that became the premise of what is now the Appleby Line Street Festival for which we have masses of sponsorship funds.

“This is an initiative I wholeheartedly support. If we haven’t got budget for it this year, we will take a look at it next year. We’ve got to approve it. Right now I’m entirely in support of what’s before us and I won’t be supporting a referral to Council.”

Counsellor Bentivegna: “I have questions related to the referral. So I’m not sure exactly what’s in any emails (there was email between the Mayor and Kearns to dig out specific information on the budge0t).

“ I’m not sure how contractual obligations. I mean, we can’t see the budget for the event that we’re all supporting; but are we able to find out what the overall budget for the event is?

Meed Ward: “I assume that’s a question for me. I’m not asking Council to approve the financing. I’m asking you to endorse the concept of the series and the financing will be handled through my office budget and the normal course of things and any sponsors that I bring in as cleared through first checking that we’re not competing with stuff and also through the Integrity Commissioner policy and process.”

Councillor Kearns: “With respect to non-staff time who’s organizing the event?  Is it the mayor’s office with staff because the staff would not normally organize an event. I just want to clarify  – are they in a support capacity

“Is that what are you expecting from staff outside of the mayor’s office – to organize and support they would normally give any other member of counsel for an event?

Bentivegna: “I didn’t want to open a hornet’s nest here. But as the mayor mentioned, we all have $5,000 – that I use completely every year. And I do have staff for certain things that they may or may not be able to help me and I do them in each my neighbourhoods. I just make the assumption that everything is done the way we normally do on a day to day business.  I have difficulty I don’t want to read into this motion so I if stuff happened then I get into it. But at this point I’m going to support the mayor’s program.”

Chair Nisan: “I will call the vote on the referral motion all those in favour. Any opposed?  Motion does not carry.”

Chair Nisan: “We will  move back to the main motion and look for any questions or comments on the main motion I do not see any.

I will now call the vote. All those in flavor, Aye.

Any opposed? That carries 6 to 1.”

That was it – the Mayor had her endorsement; expect her to make that point at every opportunity she gets.

This is your Council folks.  Live with it for now – but try and do better next time.

By Pepper Parr

April 22^nd, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement that was founded in 1970. Let’s take a look at the last half-century of mobilization for action:

Reference is made to what the Americans did – they did lead the battle for change.  Canada became part of what is now an international movement years later. Last week BurlingtonGreen did a tree planting that 500 trees in Pathfinder Park.

THE ORIGINS OF EARTH DAY

In the decades leading up to the first Earth Day , Americans were consuming vast amounts of leaded gas through massive and inefficient automobiles. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of the consequences from either the law or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Until this point, mainstream America remained largely oblivious to environmental concerns and how a polluted environment threatens human health.

The stage was set for change with the publication of Rachel Carson’s New York Times bestseller Silent Spring in 1962. The book represented a watershed moment, selling more than 500,000 copies in 24 countries as it raised public awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment and the inextricable links between pollution and public health.

Gaylord Nelson, the junior senator from Wisconsin, had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States. In January 1969, he and many others witnessed the ravages of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, Senator Nelson wanted to infuse the energy of student anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a teach-in on college campuses to the national media, and persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair.

Senator Gaylord Nelson recruited Denis Hayes, a young activist, to organize the campus teach-ins and to scale the idea to a broader public, and they choose April 22, a weekday falling between Spring Break and Final Exams, to maximize the greatest student participation.

The name  Earth Day, immediately sparked national media attention, and caught on across the country.  Earth Day inspired 20 million Americans — at the time, 10% of the total population of the United States — to take to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate against the impacts of 150 years of industrial development which had left a growing legacy of serious human health impacts.

Groups that had been fighting individually against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness and the extinction of wildlife united on Earth Day around these shared common values. Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, urban dwellers and farmers, business and labor leaders.

By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other first-of-their-kind environmental laws, including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act. Two years later congress passed the Clean Water Act.  That is an exceptional collection of legislation that has made the world a better, healthier place.

The principal Earth Day event in 1980, held in Washington. D.C. across from the White House, capped a decade of substantial US environmental legislation, including the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Superfund, Toxics Substances Control Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and of course the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. It had seen the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the banning of DDT and of lead in gasoline. Earth Day continued to expand internationally during the 80’s, as did international policy initiatives.

As 1990 environmental leaders once again organized another major campaign. This time, Earth Day went truly global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting environmental issues onto the world stage. Earth Day 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

As the millennium approached another campaign, this time focusing on global warming and pushing for clean energy. Earth Day 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. Earth Day had the internet to help link activists around the world. There were now 5,000 environmental groups worldwide on board, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries.

Nearly one billion people around the world took action for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. An estimated 20,000 partners took action on climate change and other environmental issues through climate rallies, Billion Acts of Green™; the objective was to engage civil leaders in plans to build a green economy, connected through the online action centre at EARTHDAY.ORG. Through the Global Day of Conversation, more than 200 elected officials in more than 39 countries took part in active dialogues with their constituents about their efforts to create sustainable green economies and reduce their carbon footprints.

It was no accident that the United Nations selected Earth Day to sign the most significant climate accord in the history of the climate and environmental movement: the Paris Agreement. On Earth Day 2016, world leaders from 175 nations broke a record by doing exactly that.

Earth Day 2020 was the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. Activations included activities such as the Great Global CleanUp, Citizen Science, Advocacy, Education, and Street Art. The year’s theme for Earth Day 2020 was “Climate Action.” Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the planned activities were moved online. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in the United States. In total, over 1 billion people worldwide participated in Earth Day actions, and 100 million observed the 50th anniversary in what is being referred to as the largest online mass mobilization in history.

Where are we today?  The Ontario government wavers about Climate Change – and there are still deniers.

What is clear today is that we are perilously close to losing the Climate Change battle.

Make today your day to declare that you are the biggest part of saving the planet.

We are that close to losing it all.

If citizens of the world rise up in a united call for the creativity, innovation, ambition, and bravery that we need to meet our climate crisis and seize the enormous opportunities of a zero-carbon future this battle can be won.

By Staff

April 21^st, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

“The Anxious Generation,” by Jonathan Haidt,  is described as “erudite, engaging and combative in a New York Times Book Review.  A must read for parents.

He writes about how we “hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored – anxiety, depression, suicidality – is plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.

That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phase-out of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness | By Jonathan Haidt | Penguin Press | 385 pp. | $30

By Jim Portside

April 21st, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Here are a couple of quotes from Finance Minister Freeland’s budget speech.

“We are making Canada’s tax system more fair by ensuring that the very wealthiest pay their fair share,”

“We are doing this because a fair chance to build a good, middle-class life — to do as well as your parents, and grandparents, or better — has always been the promise of Canada.”

Who are the wealthiest Canadians?

Do you own a cottage, rental property, or vacant land.

Do you run your own business?

Self-employed?

Congratulations, you may qualify for the 1% of the 1% that the government is telling us is being targeted by the 2024 budget.

Maybe you bought a cottage in 2001, for $100,000, now you’ve retired and you sell the cottage for $600,000. The capital gain is $500,000.

Under the old rules, you would have to add $250,000 to your taxable income.

Under the new rules, as one of Canada’s wealthiest Canadians, you add $290,000 to your taxable income.

Big deal, the difference is only $40,000, but wait, winner winner chicken dinner, you’re now in Canada’s highest tax bracket.

If you sell your cottage today, without any other income, you’ll pay $93,047 in taxes. Under the new rules you’ll pay about $10,000 more.

No worries, just hop in your private plane and fly up to the cottage. Oops, I forgot, you sold the cottage for some retirement income.

For people who own their business or are self employed, accountants often recommend setting up a holding company. With the tax changes made in 2019 and with this budget change this approach may no longer make sense.

Holding companies don’t qualify for the small business tax deduction. Before this budget they were fairly taxed. By the time the money gets to you personally you pay the same amount of tax as if you did not have a holding company. With a holding company you can smooth out your income over a long period of time. Have a great year, leave some money in the holding company, have a lousy year, take some money out. Retire, start taking money out, just like a pension plan.

Small business owners work hard, create employment and don’t have access to guaranteed, government funded, defined benefit pension plans.

Holding companies don’t qualify for the small business tax deduction. Before this budget they were fairly taxed. By the time the money gets to you personally you pay the same amount of tax as if you did not have a holding company. With a holding company you can smooth out your income over a long period of time. Have a great year, leave some money in the holding company, have a lousy year take some money out. Retire, start taking money out, just like a pension plan.

Anyone who is retired and had planned, based on the tax rules of the day, to fund their retirement from a holding company, just got …. by the government. If the government wants to make this fair, then capital gains inside the federal public service pension plan need to be taxed as well.

Now, guess who retired before 2019 and used the recommended and legal accounting practices of the day to plan for his retirement.

Jim Portside is a retired information technology business man who sold his company in 2017.  He doesn’t have a cottage, no plane; he does fly kites.

 

 

By Staff

April 19^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

He isn’t on the payroll yet but City Manager designate Haassan Basit took part in the Ontario Big City Mayors AGM/Conference where former Toronto Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmat  took part as a keynote speaker.

Premier Ford was on hand for the photo op.

Ms Keesmatt will be in Burlington I May where the Mayor hopes she is a strong enough attraction to fill the 700 seat Main Theatre at the Performing Arts.