Ontario remains tops

Posted on by October 11, 2017

Most competitive jurisdiction in Canada

For the second time, Ontario has been named the most competitive place to do business in Canada. That should come as little surprise to us in Mississauga, which remains the best location to do business in the most competitive place in Canada.

Georgia-based Site Selection magazine in the United States awarded Ontario its ranking in its September 2017 issue. It added, “Canada’s GDP grew at a 3.7-per-cent pace in the first three months of 2017, more than tripling the 1.2-percent pace in the United States.” Ontario has for several years been Canada’s principal economic driver.

Ontario is dealing from a position of strength again. With an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent, joblessness is at its lowest level since the summer of 2000. Ontario emerged from the great recession of 2008-10 some three years ahead of the United States and nearly all of Europe. The reason? During the good years prior to the recession, Ontario had run three consecutive budget surpluses, used some of the funds to pay down long-term debt, and invested in the type of essential infrastructure and skilled people that attracts leading-edge companies to seek out Ontario as a place to build a future.

Since the depths of the recession, our Ontario work force has grown by nearly 800,000 net new jobs. 72 percent are private sector; 74 percent pay above-average wages; 92 percent are full-time. And 165,000 net new jobs have come to Ontario in 2016-17 alone.

Cyclone Manufacturing

Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie and I are escorted through Meadowvale-based Cyclone Manufacturing by Vice President Robert Sochaj (right). Cyclone makes advanced airframe parts for virtually every aircraft manufacturer in the world in four state-of-the-art facilities whose employment has grown from 80 in 2008 to more than 800 today.

Ontario’s overall business costs are lower than in the Province’s principal competing jurisdictions. The cost of doing business in Ontario is lower than in the United States; the United Kingdom; France; Germany; Italy; Australia or Japan.

There are no capital taxes on business in Ontario. Ontario’s corporate tax rate is lower – 13 percent lower – than the average combined federal-state corporate tax rate in the United States. Tax credits for research and development, and a world-class cluster of universities and colleges for access to the world’s best minds are among the reasons why global businesses of all sizes are choosing Ontario.

What is doing well here in Mississauga? All the fundamentals of a prosperous economy: manufacturing; real estate; construction; finance; life sciences; education; advanced technology and small businesses, along with the service sector they need and support.

Building on Ontario growth and success:

  • Infrastructure investments will exceed $190 billion in the next 13 years in Ontario to ensure that businesses can operate, and families have world-class facilities to live, learn and work;
  • Investment in primary, secondary and post-secondary schools ensure that Ontario’s skilled workforce remains the world’s tops;
  • New legislation ensures that working conditions in Ontario match or exceed the best in the world, and that the prosperity that businesses and entrepreneurs create in Ontario is shared equitably with those whose skills and labour helps generate that wealth.

Foresight and careful planning ensured that Ontario would have a long-term vision, and be able to do the important things in the right order, within budget and on-time. For example, the overwhelming majority of Infrastructure Ontario projects have, in the past decade, come in on schedule and within budget.

Links:

Flu Shot

Posted on by October 13, 2017

Avoid being a seasonal flu statistic

Bob getting flu shot

The hands injecting the flu shot into my arm last year were those of Shoppers Drug Mart Pharmacist Nancy Huynh, at Glen Erin and Britannia. The flu shot is available in Lisgar, Meadowvale and Streetsville. Get yours this fall and every fall.

Back when I was first elected, I had never had the annual flu shot. And in the two years before my first election, I was laid flat by a lingering seasonal flu virus. As a new MPP, the then-Minister of Health extolled the virtues of the flu shot. I figured the risk of any discomfort from getting the flu shot had to be less than the misery I had endured from the flu in the previous few years.

So, like a good community role model, I took my first flu shot. And that year, I never had the flu. Nor did I suffer from any adverse effects after getting the flu shot. Needless to say, the next year, I made a specific point to see my doctor that fall, and got the flu shot. And that year again, I never came down with the flu. Such was also the case, the year after, and the year after, and every year since. It’s not a coincidence. In the 14 years I have been having an annual autumn flu shot, I never had the flu!

Now, a cold is a germ, and a flu is a virus. I have had a head cold, but never the seasonal flu with its weeks-long aches and pains, sneezing and coughing, and feeling like death warmed over week after week. When I have had a cold, its symptoms have usually been milder, and of shorter duration.

When the H1N1 virus scared people several years ago, they rushed out and lined up to get the flu shot. Deaths and hospitalizations fell sharply. Check out the data from the Public Health Agency of Canada on flu-related hospitalizations and deaths. You can plainly see from the graphs showing that both deaths and hospitalizations for flu-related causes dropped sharply in the years after the H1N1 scare, that the flu shot works. Just as soon as the H1N1 scare abated, and people shrugged off the need to be vaccinated against the seasonal flu, both deaths and hospitalizations shot right back to their historical levels.

In the Legislature: the flu shot is important

Let’s understand the facts:

  1. The flu shot is absolutely free, and easily available from your doctor or at many pharmacies and clinics;
  2. The flu shot works. If you take it, you are extremely unlikely to ever get the seasonal flu. Depending on the cold germ, most people even find colds to be milder if they have had the flu shot;
  3. Not taking the flu shot makes you much more likely to be laid out for a week or more with a flu virus that is almost completely preventable;
  4. The flu vaccine is made from eggs, and it is made in Canada. It’s safe, and it sure beats having the flu. You need it every year, and the flu virus ‘signature’ is locked down in February of each year to keep the flu viruses against which you are being vaccinated current.

Go to your pharmacist. Most offer the flu shot on the spot with scarcely any waiting. See your doctor. Get the flu shot at a work or community clinic. However you get it, don’t let another week go by without getting the flu shot. It matters.

Flu shot information

Diwali 2017

Posted on by October 6, 2017

Celebrating the Festival of Light

The religious festival of Diwali is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and by many Buddhists. Celebrants light candles, and set off fireworks signifying the triumph of light over darkness, and good over evil. The celebrations commemorate the homecoming of Ram after 14 years in exile in the forests, and his victory over Ravan. Celebrants mark Diwali with prayers, lighting of divas, fireworks and sharing of sweets and gifts.

In the Sikh community, this day is celebrated as Bandi Choor Diwas. The Sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind Sahib-Ji, was freed on this day in 1619 from imprisonment in the famous fort of Gwalior by Emperor Jahangir. Guru Sahib negotiated his release, and that of 52 kings and princes, to coincide with Diwali.

To mark Diwali in 2017, our office will again host our Diwali reception on Wednesday October 11, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at Vic Johnston Arena.

Our annual Diwali reception is open to all. There is no charge to attend. Please bring non-perishable food items to donate to the Seva Food Bank.

Our western Mississauga residents are invited. Click here. Our community is served by two main Mandirs (temples): the Hindu Heritage Centre, now a Streetsville landmark; and the Ram Mandir, near Hurontario and Derry. Both held celebratory dinners, which I attended. As well, I annually join our Gujarati friends at the awesome BAPS Swami Narayan Mandir, and attend Diwali Parties hosted by senior Hindu friends.

Lights

Celebrated all over the world, Diwali is the festival of lights. Come join your neighbours for a short Diwali reception.

Diwali (or Deepavali, the “festival of lights”) is an ancient Hindu festival celebrated in autumn (in the northern hemisphere) every year. Diwali is the biggest and the brightest festival in India. The festival spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness. Click here for more background on Diwali.

It is one of the most widely-celebrated festivals on earth, and we ought to have a community reception in our own neighbourhoods. More than 130 people attended our Diwali reception last year at the Vic Johnston Community Center to celebrate Festival of Light. Happy Diwali, or as they say it in Hindi, Shubh Dwali.

Labour Changes

Posted on by October 8, 2017

Rewarding the ‘good actors’

Workplace changes

Bill 148 proposes changes in workplace rules to make the playing field level, reward the ‘good actors,’ and raise Ontario’s minimum wage.

Ontario has introduced legislation called the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017. At the Ontario Legislature, it is called Bill 148. It is the first time in a generation that substantive changes have been made to update Ontario labour and employment laws. At its core, Bill 148 proposes an overdue cleanup of employment and labour-related legislation to close loopholes, reduce ambiguity, reflect the changing work and employment environment, and ‘raise the bar’ on how employees in a workplace may be compensated and treated.

Local employers have primarily asked me about two things: the two-step rise in the minimum wage, and whether proposed changes in how a union may organize a workplace might affect them. These two points were also my own primary concern. I received four separate briefings on the bill, two of which were one-on-one detailed conversations with a trusted friend, Labour Minister Kevin Flynn.

The proposed reforms and changes in Bill 148 will do no harm to reputable businesses operating in a fair and legal way.

Card-based union certification will, in the bill’s proposals, be extended in a very small way: to workplaces in which the workforce is mobile. Examples might include cleaners and security guards. If your employees work from a fixed location, this proposal does not apply to you. For example, most franchisors and franchisees are not affected by this proposal.

Similarly, the proposal to move Ontario’s minimum wage from its current $11.40 per hour to $14.00 per hour at the start of 2018, and to $15.00 per hour at the start of 2019 also affects few of western Mississauga’s employers and work forces, most of which pay (and are paid) more than the minimum wage. Ontario-wide, however, the proportion of the work force paid just the minimum wage has grown in the past decade. Moreover, outside Ontario, competing jurisdictions have caught up with, or are close to, Ontario’s minimum wage.

Getting at the ‘bad actors’

In practical terms, the proposals in Bill 148 level the proverbial playing field. Local businesses that operate in a lawful, ethical and transparent way, and pay their people fairly will feel little, if any, impact from Bill 148. Such businesses rightfully complain about competitors who pay workers cash under the table; compensate workers at the minimum wage and no more; cut corners on safety; misuse unpaid internships to get value for nothing; farm out workers through temp agencies to avoid benefits and similar practices. It is this latter group of ‘bad actor’ employers who will feel the impact of the proposals in Bill 148.

Businesses operating within the law, treating their people well, and paying a fair and living wage will find their competitive position improved within Ontario, and unchanged outside Ontario.

In recent weeks, business groups and economists have confirmed research clearly and repeatedly showing a rising minimum wage puts capital into the economy, and creates jobs.

Bill 148 proposals in a nutshell

  • Raise Ontario’s general minimum wage to $14 per hour on January 1, 2018, and then to $15 on January 1, 2019, followed by annual increases at the rate of inflation;
  • Mandate equal pay for part-time, temporary, casual and seasonal employees doing the same job as full-time employees; and equal pay for temporary help agency employees doing the same job as permanent employees at the agencies’ client companies;
  • Expand personal emergency leave to include an across-the-board minimum of at least two paid days per year for all workers;
  • Bring Ontario’s vacation time into line with the national average by ensuring at least three weeks’ vacation after five years with the same employer;
  • Make employee scheduling fairer, including requiring employees to be paid for three hours of work if their shift is cancelled within 48 hours of its scheduled start time.

More information about Bill 148

Bill 148 in the Legislature

Individuals and businesses made more than 90 presentations to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs at the Legislature during the summer. The legislation is currently in second reading debate in the Ontario Legislature. Incoming e-mail and community reaction in Mississauga is running overwhelmingly (about 500:1) in favour of the proposals in Bill 148.

Not the News

Posted on by September 11, 2017

Front page story that never was

Photo of Mississauga News

The August 24, 2017 Mississauga News used an old file photo to assert that Mayor Crombie publicly took issue with the Province during a time when she was out of town on vacation.

Some egregious errors just have to be called out and corrected. One of those is the front page story (or non-story) in the Mississauga News August 24 edition. In an all-caps headline over a stern picture of Mayor Bonnie Crombie, it shouts out “Crombie Blasts Province.”

Except that:

  • The picture used on the front page of the Mississauga News is not from an announcement. It is an old file photo (and not labelled as such) from Mayor Crombie’s 2014 election, certainly not from any 2017 event at which she took issue with another level of government policy;
  • Did the Mayor ‘blast’ the Province while on vacation in Europe, which is where she was when she found out about the headline? Mayor Crombie did not convene a news media event to make such a statement;

So what is the kerfuffle about?

At the early August meeting of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) in Ottawa, AMO released a statement urging that one percentage point be added to the Ontario provincial sales tax, with the proceeds of that sales tax going to fund municipal infrastructure costs. Many mayors, including Bonnie, were asked to echo the need for municipal infrastructure funding to be more broadly-based than an exclusive reliance on property taxes; development charges; and user fees. These are all the revenue sources that cities have.

The ‘ask’ is an appropriate option to municipal infrastructure needs, and ought to give rise to an informed discussion. The manner in which AMO asked it to be implemented is not. It would, if implemented as asked by AMO, create one tax regime in Ontario that is different from every other province. If you are a national retailer (and most of them are headquartered in Ontario), you would rightly point out that your ability to do Canada-wide pricing would be gone, and it would make Canadian operations and marketing much more difficult, and more expensive.

U.S. states and European countries do levy sales taxes whose proceeds build roads, improve water and other municipal and regional facilities. Cities are indisputably the wealth creation engines of the 21st century, and funding them should not be intermittent, or one-off initiatives. Ontario has a number of programs to fund rural municipal infrastructure. The Ontario gas tax rebate helps urban areas afford to replace buses, and underwrite transit services.

How to use the sales tax to fund infrastructure

Prices fluctuate. Products and services go on sale. Some things go up, some things come down. Would one percentage point make much of a difference?

It would if it were in your face for each and every transaction.

It wouldn’t if Canada treated sales tax like most other jurisdictions, as part of the price of the good or service. If something is quoted as 50 Euros, that price includes all applicable taxes. If something is quoted as 50 Canadian dollars, that price attracts an added $2.50 in federal Goods and Services tax, and another $4.00 in Ontario Harmonized Sales Tax, for a total of $56.50. That’s the problem.

Retailers love the status quo, though they really shouldn’t. The status-quo makes the base price seem low. And vendors advertise the price of the product as the base price, not the price that is all-taxes-in that the purchaser really has to pay. When the federal government moved to replace the old manufacturer’s sales tax with the superior, and more broadly-based Goods and Services tax in the 1990s, a few retailers tried including the new tax in the price of the products they sold (as the old manufacturer’s sales tax was). It didn’t work. Their competition just advertised a lower base price, and that’s what consumers chased. To do the forward-looking thing, it has to be a universal and level playing field.

The western provinces, who are the only ones in Canada without a Harmonized Sales Tax, are now at a crossroads. It is easy to crow about a balanced budget when agricultural products, minerals, forest products and fossil fuel energy products are selling at high prices, as they were until a few years ago. With petroleum looking like it will stay in the $50 US per barrel range for an extended time, and slow global growth dampening other commodities’ prices, building a provincial economy on invisible (to the consumer and voter) royalty streams doesn’t seem like a good long-term bet.

A new tax-included pricing regime, which is what AMO should be requesting, needs to be Canada-wide in scope. Perhaps now is the time that the western provinces need to listen to their own provincial think tanks and policy advisors who have been advising them to convert their provincial sales taxes to the harmonized model for years. In Alberta’s case, this means implementing a provincial sales tax. In the course of making this conversion, the feds, in this scenario, would need to restore one percentage point of the GST, removed during the previous decade, raising it to six percent, and dedicate that one percentage point to the municipality in which it is collected. This is how to do what AMO, and its counterparts in other Canadian provinces, are asking. And it is a good, sustainable option which might also be good public policy.

What would the invoice look like?

Here is how the status-quo compares with tax-included pricing, and with the regime AMO should be asking for. Allowing for the normal fluctuations in pricing at the discretion of the retailer, let’s look at equal invoices side-by-side.

Legacy Invoice

The status-quo: How an invoice looks now.

Tax-Included Pricing

Tax-Included Pricing: Without adding the proposed one percent levy asked for by AMO, this is the same invoice using tax-included pricing.

The AMO Ask: This is the same invoice as the cities should be asking for it. It uses tax-included pricing, and uses the Canada-wide CRA to extract one percent of the transaction value, and remit it to the city in which the transaction took place.

The friendly initiative

Posted on by July 18, 2017

Consensus-building in the Midwest

The newspapers, and the various party membership blurbs, make a lot of the initiatives by the Prime Minister and the various provincial Premiers to outreach to the U.S. governors and Congress, and reinforce the growing and continuing mutual value of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Less well-known, because the newspapers don’t consider it eye-popping copy, is the next level of outreach: among the U.S. states and Canadian provinces and among U.S. Members of their Legislative Assemblies, U.S. state Senates, and Canadian Provincial elected members. It’s also where the cross-border relationships are really cemented.

As an Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament, I have had the opportunity to participate in a number of such conferences and meetings during my time representing the good people of Lisgar, Meadowvale and Streetsville.

I normally stick to the essential local and Ontario business in my local communications. In this time of cynicism and skepticism about the very institutions and agreements that have put Ontario on the path to being the Great Lakes Basin’s first trillion-dollar economy, perhaps we should peek into the ways our neighbouring states and provinces work together, and share the prosperity we jointly attract by doing what we each do best.

Ontario: the Great Lakes Basin giant

Ontario is by far the largest – by land area, population, and economic activity – province or state in North America’s Great Lakes and Midwest regions: those portions of the United States with which we share a border. And like any good partnership, Ontario’s relations with states such as New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and the other states and provinces in our regional ‘neighbourhood’ transcends such metrics as I-win-and-you-lose, or I-take-and-you-give. The reality is that we equally share a much larger pie whose benefits we would not have any other way than by partnership.

The automotive trade is Ontario’s biggest sharable industry. In a modern vehicle assembly plant, such as we have in Ontario at Windsor (Chrysler); Oakville (Ford); Oshawa (General Motors); Alliston (Honda); Cambridge or Woodstock (Toyota), a completed vehicle rolls off the assembly line at the rate of about one per minute. Most of those vehicles cross a provincial or national border to be sold, just as many of those vehicles we buy in Ontario are themselves made elsewhere. During manufacture, whether in Canada and the USA, parts and sub-assemblies welded, bolted or incorporated into those vehicles arrive on precise schedules from locations all over North America, which of course includes Mexico.

It would be hard to say where a car or truck is actually made, based on the origin of the parts that comprise it. Indeed, many of the Rules of Origin documentation show clearly how thoroughly integrated the manufacturing economies of Canada (mostly Ontario), the USA and Mexico are. A motor vehicle can cross the border more than half a dozen times before it is finished. Much the same applies in most other facets of the manufacturing economy on both sides of the border, and to the agricultural and commodity markets.

Most importantly about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Canada and the USA is that it is balanced. Each country benefits about equally. It is also lifting Mexico’s economy, and providing hope for the people of the world’s largest-population Spanish-speaking country.

Team Ontario in the Midwest

That’s what makes it important not only for U.S. and Canadian legislators to get together and understand one another’s strengths and needs, it also underlines how vital it is that elected representatives share what they learn with the people who depend on them.

One of those Canada-U.S. forums is the Council of State Governments, an entity in which Canadian provinces participate as equals, taking our turns hosting meetings as well. This year’s Midwest Legislative Conference was in Des Moines, Iowa in July. It’s an American Midwest state I had not visited before. With Ontario’s Speaker unable to attend this year, I was Ontario’s official representative, joined by MPPs Toby Barrett (PC, Haldimand-Norfolk) and Wayne Gates (NDP, Niagara Falls). Toby is an authority on agricultural issues, and Wayne brings his labour background to the conversation. And we are friends as well.

The U.S. Midwest States are the heartland for the 63 million American voters whose ballots elected the current U.S. federal administration. Most state houses are Republican, as are Midwest Senates, and most state governors. One might have expected a portion of the talk to be about the actions and events in Washington. None of it was.

Wind power in the Midwest

The U.S. states have focused on the business of moving forward with their local and regional priorities. In Iowa, some of its key manufacturers left in recent years for cheaper-labour locations. Iowa, like Ontario, saw some of its industrial renewal in a move toward clean energy. Iowa helped convert a former appliance factory into a facility to build wind turbine towers. A short distance away lies a facility that makes wind turbine blades. Wind is a key element in Iowa’s power grid and industrial strategy. More than a third of Iowa’s electricity today is generated from wind turbines. They even have a wind turbine on the Iowa drivers’ licenses.

The U.S. Midwest has some of North America’s most dependable winds. Occupations relating to renewable energy are among the fastest-growing in the USA. The median wage in Iowa for a wind turbine technician is about $60,000 US. Roughly 4,000 wind turbine technicians are currently working in the USA. Wind in the United States now surpasses hydro as America’s number one source of renewable electricity, with 84,000 megawatts of installed capacity. We have 12,000 megawatts installed in Canada, mostly in Ontario.

Said one of my state colleagues to me in July, “When a farmer leases land for wind, about 95 percent of that land is still available for cultivation. Our farmers look at wind turbines as a drought-resistant cash crop. In fact, wind serves as an effective farmland preservation strategy. If you are from a rural region in the wind belt, and you are not developing wind, you are missing the boat.” In America, 71 percent of installed wind turbines are in low-income rural areas. Wind will drive 248,000 U.S. jobs by 2020, with some 33,000 of those jobs in manufacturing.

Ontario has led Canada into the 21st century’s renewable electricity reality. Our province built a renewable energy manufacturing and service sector from nothing to more than 30,000 jobs since 2009. Delegates from Saskatchewan and Alberta, two heavily coal-dependent provinces also in the prairie wind belt, paid close attention to renewable energy’s economic potential in Iowa. Quebec is building wind turbines all along the south shore of the St. Lawrence, where the North Atlantic wind blows.

The states and provinces discussed and adopted a joint resolution in support of energy trade, and North American energy security. The NAFTA agreement was discussed in a number of sessions and in different ways. The Midwest in Canada and the U.S. gets it. NAFTA is synonymous with ongoing progress and prosperity. A joint resolution in support of NAFTA expressed the consensus.

Fresh perspective on issues

  • Pulitzer Prize winner and National Humanities Medal, Isabel Wilkerson is the author of the best-selling book The Warmth of Other Suns. She talked about the post-war migration of some six million African Americans from the deep south to the northern states;
  • Author Denise Kiernan talked about the women whose work at Oak Ridge Tennessee was pivotal to the development of the atomic bomb in World War II;
  • In a nod to mythology and history, legislators took a short drive to an Iowa attraction called Living History Farms. There, along with a recreation of a 19th century prairie town, much like Upper Canada Village, was a cleared Iowa field, where re-enactors (who were all ball players) in 1919-era White Sox uniforms played baseball with attendees in a modern-day Field of Dreams. I very much enjoyed playing some pitch-and-catch;
  • Iowa hosted a full-scale State Dinner at the stunningly beautiful Legislative Building in Des Moines to wind up the conference, with Canadians and Americans joining together to sing both national anthems;
  • And the next time the Midwest states and provinces meet will be in Winnipeg in the summer of 2018.

If our current times offer one ray of hope, it has been that the men and women at the state and provincial levels have ensured that we do not take the world’s largest, most successful and most productive trading relationship, and allow it to be guided by the wind of rhetoric, but rather steered for the benefit of the people it now effectively serves.

Canada Day 2017

Posted on by July 24, 2017

Celebrating Canada with a friend

Whatever the challenges and opportunities of the days before, and those that follow, Canada Day is a time to smile, wave the flag, listen to music, enjoy the young summer, and celebrate the country. Whether it is the country we and our families had been born in, or the land that we or our family came to, Canada Day is about the country every other nation tries to be.

Yes, it was time to make a few speeches. At every level, our elected officials kept those remarks mercifully brief. Canada’s 150th birthday belonged to the people who gathered together in back yards, neighbourhood barbecues, town squares (like Streetsville), or by the tens or hundreds of thousands in all our city centres.

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On Canada Day, I took a friend with a proven ability to help people smile, our cat, Merlin, and we went out to meet people and celebrate. Merlin makes everyone smile. Everybody wants to pat Merlin, hold Merlin, and cuddle Merlin. The children of many families who have recently come to Canada often regard cats as feral animals. Just a moment with Merlin, as with his predecessor, the late Obi-Wan, dispels any apprehension anyone may ever have had about what a joyful animal a cat is.

Merlin and I met the Sikh seniors in Erindale Park. We saw the neighbours in Churchill Meadows, and ducked for shelter during a sudden downpour in mid-afternoon. In the evening, Andrea and I brought Merlin to Streetsville Square to meet the neighbours. Merlin even met his dog-friend, Joey, who belongs to Emily Cathcart. Joey and Merlin appear to genuinely like one another. On his walks in the neighbourhood, Merlin has a few other regular dog encounters, and appears to like a few little dogs his size.

Canada at 150 years young was an occasion to enjoy with friends and family. Andrea, Merlin and I helped people do exactly that. Have a wonderful summer, and celebrate our country’s Sesquicentennial right through New Year’s Eve.

Graduation Remarks 2017

Posted on by June 29, 2017

Through history, and into the future

Parents and students ask me each year for a copy of my graduation remarks. With minor variations, this is the core of my 2017 graduation addresses to our schools during spring 2017 graduation ceremonies. Feel free to share this post on your favourite social medium, or to print copies. See the buttons below the post.
Bob speaking at graduation.

Thank you to the nine elementary and secondary schools who invited me to join them for spring graduation ceremonies in 2017. This photo was taken at the St. Joseph Secondary School graduation at the International Centre on June 28, 2017.

Graduation addresses normally focus on the next steps in the lives and academic careers of our graduates. In 2017, at Canada’s 150th anniversary as a nation, I would like to offer you a perspective on the last century and a half, and the balance of this century, your role in all that, and see if I can do it in about two minutes.

Canada was home to about 3 million people in 1867. Ontario then contained about as many citizens as Mississauga and Brampton do today. Ontario in the early 19th century had adopted a policy that education was not merely a right, but an obligation. We were the first place in the world, in the history of the world, to do that.

That meant folks in 1867 were having an informed discussion about a union between Upper and Lower Canada, now Ontario and Quebec, along with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Folks in 1867 were concerned that the victorious Union Army in the United States, at the end of the American Civil War, an army then marching westward across the North American plains might just keep coming north into Canada.

The British didn’t seem concerned one way or the other. Canadians needed to make a decision, and made one. We became an independent nation, all three million of us.
It worked. Manitoba became part of Canada in 1870, British Columbia in 1871 with the promise of a transcontinental railway. Prince Edward Island joined in 1873, and Saskatchewan and Alberta were formed in 1905. In the end, the American stayed on their side of the border.

Fifty years later, in World War One, British officers had never heard soldiers and junior officers speak as Canadians did to their superiors. Nonetheless, the dialogue worked then too. The Canadians emerged as the conflict’s elite force. Nearly all 600,000 soldiers who wore the uniform of the Canadian Corps served as volunteers. No opposing unit that ever fought the Canadians wanted to do so again. Canada’s population was 8 million during the Great War.

Canada was 20 million strong in 1967, Canada’s Centennial Year, as normal global migration pattern resumed following more than half a century of conflict, recession and conflict again.

Canada celebrated being a society without social classes, a nation that had learned to provide for ourselves in a fair and compassionate manner, as we embraced global languages and cultures in a way not seen anywhere in the world, before or since.

There are 36 million Canadians today, in Canada’s Sesquicentennial Year. Now it’s your turn. There are some challenges ahead. None of those challenges are to be feared. You are equal to all of them, as those who came before you were in their day. You are the pride and the flower of the future of our families, our communities, our institutions, our Provinces and our country of Canada.

Most of today’s graduates will be around to celebrate Canada’s 200th birthday, our bicentennial, in 2067. Many of you will see the entire 21st century through, and be alive and vibrant to breathe the air of the 22nd century.

Going forward is about being bold and daring, just like the generations before you, and the generations you will raise to follow you. Have fun. Take Canada to new heights of excellence during your lifetime.

The Province of Ontario is proud of you. Congratulations on your graduation. Thank you very much.

Traffic Advice

Posted on by June 29, 2017

New red light cameras in Peel Region

Hey good buddy! Got your ears on? Here’s the location of some new electronic ‘county mounties’ in our neighbourhoods. We’re talking red light cameras here.

A number of years ago, I was thinking of what new year’s resolution I could make, and work on to ensure I kept it. I settled on trying to change some behaviour on getting through yellow lights. Overwhelmingly, during the past several years, I have opted for prudence rather than expediency, and not tried to run yellow lights.

This brings us to an advisory from the Region of Peel on new locations for red light cameras in and around Lisgar, Meadowvale and Streetsville.

The Province has nothing to do with red light cameras. However, this post is a tip to help you avoid a traffic ticket that is foreseeable and preventable.

Lisgar:

  • No new locations.

Meadowvale:

  • Derry Road and Winston Churchill;
  • Derry Road and Copenhagen.

Streetsville:

  • Britannia Road between Terry Fox and Mavis.

Erin Mills Parkway:

  • Erin Mills Parkway and Eglinton;
  • Erin Mills Parkway and Credit Valley Road;
  • Erin Mills Parkway and Folkway Drive.

Clarkson:

  • Winston Churchill Drive and Bromsgrove.

What to look for

Red light camera sign

Intersections at which a red light camera is used must be marked with this sign.

Red light camera locations need to marked with a sign advising motorists that a red light camera is in use at that location. If you run a red light at such an intersection, the cameras mounted on poles at that intersection photograph the offending vehicle, and the owner is then sent a traffic ticket.

These traffic tickets can be pricey. And worse, your insurance rates take a big jump for the next three years. In fact, you end up paying more, much more, in increased insurance premiums than you do in the traffic ticket fine. That insurance premium practice is something with which I disagree vehemently, but that is a different topic.

School Capital Funding

Posted on by June 22, 2017

Funding for Catholic school upgrades

Catholic funding announcement

Announcing capital funding for four western Mississauga Catholic schools affected by the East Credit Pupil Accommodation Review in 2016 at the Dufferin-Peel Board offices. With me, from left: trustees Bruno Iannicca; Sharon Hobin; Anna da Silva; Bob; Luz Del Rosario and Mario Pascucci.

Four Catholic elementary schools in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board received Ontario capital funding for school infrastructure to more effectively use elementary school space as the Board consolidates school enrollment. The announcement happened at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board offices on June 13. The total value of the contracts at all four schools will exceed $3 million.

  • At St. Valentine School, retrofitting, renewal, site preparation, and four new portables will enable the consolidation of St. Gertrude School. Two regular classrooms will be retrofitted to create two new full-day kindergarten classrooms. The full-day kindergarten playground will be expanded, and other upgrades will include sidewalks, asphalt repairs and lighting;
  • At St. Gregory School, one new portable, site preparation and such renewal work as new windows, new asphalt, painting and sidewalk repairs will accommodate the consolidation of St. Gertrude at that school;
  • At St. Bernadette and at St. Herbert Schools, renewal work such as painting, new asphalt, sidewalk repairs and flooring; as well as windows and air conditioning (at St. Bernadette) will enable both schools to accommodate the consolidation of St. Dunstan School.

Work at these four schools are among 120 such school infrastructure projects across Ontario. School buildings are more than bricks and mortar. They are where the future is born in the minds of the children who will see Ontario through the 21st century.