Blogs Moose Country

In case you have not heard already, the OPP’s wage contract will see an across-the-board raise throughout the province of 8.55% in 2014 — meaning every constable on the Bancroft-area force will be making $95,000 a year.

A little overtime, a little court time, every officer has the potential on being on next year’s Sunshine List of civil servants making over $100,000.

Bancroft Coun. Paul Jenkins, head of the budget committee, figures this could represent a 2.5% increase to property taxes since, as it stands now, the cost of policing takes up 23% of Bancroft’s taxes.

In dollars, it costs each household $640 a year to pay for policing, despite the union saying the provincial average is $160 a household.

Now don’t take this as a shot at our local police, because it isn’t? They do a great job.

The problem is the a very dated formula now being used to calculate policing costs which must be renegotiated, with the good news being that Bancroft Mayor Bernice Jenkins has been asked to sit on the provincial committee with the head of the OPP’s municipal policing bureau.

The policing costs, frankly, are not sustainable.

In detachment commander Mark Wolfe, Bancroft has someone who understands the dilemma.

And that’s good news for ratepayers.

Note: If you can help with the cause I write about here, there is a Trust Account for young Austin Chapleau at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Acct # 937320029580. No transit number is needed. Any Scotiabank can process.

There is a note at the bottom of the flyer circulating town announcing an upcoming fundraiser for young Austin Chapleau, and it reads as follows:

“We, as a community, can make a difference.”

I suspect there are few among us who do not know the tragic story of 15-year-old Austin Chapleau, and the severe burns he endured while trying to extinguish a grease fire and keep it from burning down the family home in Maynooth.

He is a very brave young man.

Over the course of my career, I have seen too many burn victims. With third-degree burns to 60% of his body — to his face, and his arms and his chest, — he is currently at Toronto Sick Kids hospital for what will be a long and arduous haul.

My prayers go out to him and his family.

So, what can we do? Well, there is a benefit at the ANAF in Maynooth, beginning at 10 a.m., on Sunday, April 21.

We can help by being there, donating what we can, either through money or silent auction items, and joining the community in making a difference.

Like I said, the kid is just 15. He was making dinner for his siblings while his single mother was at work at Vito’s in Bancroft.

In my books that makes him a hero.

As I wrote recently in a national editorial for Sun Media, the New York Times recently showed that its famous slogan of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” also includes the right to print garbage.

In a editorial timed around NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s “Kill Keystone” trip to Washington, the Times basically wrote Barack Obama’s script to nix the pipeline, or otherwise live with the guilt of ignoring” humanity’s most pressing dangers.”

Yes, climate change, and the Times’ vision of a world “ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, and devastating droughts and other destructive forces created by climate change.” Their words, not mine.

It was hardly responsible journalism.

What the Times failed to address, however, is that the U.S. burns carbon-spewing coal like there actually is no tomorrow to worry about, almost a billion tons a year.

No did it mention there is still no viable alternative that would suddenly see Americans no longer needing to import some 300 million barrels of oil a month from human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela, as opposed to ramping up the 97 million barrels it imports monthly from its democratic Canadian neighbour by endorsing Keystone.

No, instead, it printed hyperbolic garbage.

Let me start by saying I have this framed cartoon of a man standing neck deep in snow, and shaking his fist in the air while shouting at the top of his lungs, “Damn you Mike Harris!”

When that cartoon was published, Mike Harris hadn’t been premier for five years, yet they were still blaming him for everything.

News flash. Mike Harris has not been premier of Ontario for 10 years now.

Perhaps the time has come to blame someone else, as I was reminded by a letter to the Bancroft Times by Bill Cheshire who, like many, is still blaming Mike Harris for everything.

Why is that? Yes, Mike Harris made deep cuts and downloaded many items onto the agenda of municipalities, but what have successive Liberals governments done to right those alleged wrongs over the last 10 years?

The answer, of course, is nothing.What they’ve done, instead, is drive up the debt and drive up the deficit — so much so that taxpayers actually need someone like Mike Harris to help them again.

There is no arguing this. Blaming Mike Harris for today’s mess is like blaming John S. Macdonald for years of Queen’s Park screw ups.

Who’s he? you ask. It’s a good question.

He was Ontario’s very first premier.

SUN NEWS NETWORK need your help. Tell the CRTC that you support Sun News.

Recruit your family and your friends – Sun News is 100% SUN Canadian owned and operated.

SIGN HERE: http://canadiantvfirst.ca/