Moose Country

Making A Difference

Mark Bonokoski — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 23:30:25 +0000

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.

Hyperbolic Garbage

Mark Bonokoski — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 18:50:16 +0000

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.

The Blame Game

Mark Bonokoski — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 23:46:16 +0000

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.

Help the Sun News Network Get A Fair Shake

Mark Bonokoski — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:23:01 +0000

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/

No Wynne

Mark Bonokoski — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 01:03:06 +0000

Despite the fact the Ontario Liberals deserve no more chances at running the province — or arguably running it into the ground — they might have stood a chance if they had chosen Sandra Pupatello as their next leader and premier.

With Kathleen Wynne, however, they are back to where they belong — a long shot at best.

Pupatello was the one among the slate of candidates with a hint of fiscal conservatism, something direly needed for a government facing a $10-$12 billion deficit.

Kathleen Wynne, on the other hand, is a social liberal, and about as left as one can get without throwing on the orange T-shirt of the NDP.

And then there is her sexuality. Even the ultra-liberal Toronto Star put this high in their story. “Let’s not be coy,” it wrote. She’s Ontario’s “first openly lesbian leader.”

Does this matter anymore? Well, in big metropolitan centres, it probably doesn’t mean much, but it will mean more than nothing. In rural Ontario, however, it’s an entirely different kettle of fish.

Dalton McGuinty left Ontario in a mess, and bailed like a rat leaving a sinking ship.

Sandra Pupatello was not part of that crew, and it cost her the leadership.

Somewhere Tim Hudak is smiling.

Too-Kool-Aid

Mark Bonokoski — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:20:52 +0000

People, especially young people, seem to be drinking up Justin Trudeau’s Too-Kool Aid without checking the soda jerk’s lack of credentials.

Now that Marc Garneau has stepped up, however, hopefully these same young people will come to realize Trudeau is a space cadet compared to former NASA astronaut Garneau’s real-deal accomplishments.

In the often shallow world of social media, Justin Trudeau has swooned his way into the mindset of young voters like Justin Bieber has with tweens.

But he has done so on looks, childish prose and his old man’s name, not on talent or policy.

If Trudeau (BA, BEd, LOL) were a school teacher with any other surname, and with only four years in Parliament, he’d be laughed off the stage.

Marc Garneau (C.C., CD, PhD., F.C.A.S.I), by comparison, has all the right stuff, and a CV any political party would covet belonging to its leader.

The fact that he is already being called the “backup candidate” and the Liberals’ “insurance plan” must be terribly disconcerting for a candidate like Garneau who, by virtue of his qualifications, should own the green light for lift off.

This country needs great leaders in opposition.

Thus far it has none.

Be A Buddy, Not A Bully

Mark Bonokoski — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 23:21:16 +0000

Back on what would have been Amanda Todd’s 16^th birthday, I spoke to a Grade 6 class at Bancroft’s York River Public School about bullying.

I asked the class how many had been victims of bullying, and everyone raised their hand.

Then, when I asked how many of them had been a bully themselves, the result was the same.

All were guilty. At least they thought they were, when it was more likely that they weren’t.

But they had been sensitized. And this is good.

We all should be more sensitive.

The kids were prepared. For a week, leading up to the official anti-bullying week, they had been studying up on a five-part series I had written a number of years ago about a 15-year-old boy from Brampton who had hanged himself after he could no longer take the abuse he was getting at school.

The reason he was targeted? He had acne.

Big deal, right? Like being fat, or short, like having to wear glasses or having a birth mark, like being poor or being rich, like being gawky or whatever it is that supposedly gives bullies a reason to be bullies.

In other words, any reason or no reason at all.

Four of the posters given to me by that class now hang on my office wall. They’ve learned about believing — as in believing in themselves.

It’s a huge step down the right road.

Why The Union Hush?

Mark Bonokoski — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 23:17:29 +0000

It wasn’t that long ago that our public service unions were screaming hard times — leading protests and running to the consensus media for sympathy — over the government’s Economic Action Plan to cut almost 20,000 public service jobs.

Remember, Canada was — and still is — in the midst of a recession, and the public service had already bloated by 35% during the years the Harper Conservatives were hamstrung by the limitations of a minority government.

Then they got their majority.

It’s been almost two weeks now since Treasury Board boss Tony Clement announced that the promised slashing of public service jobs was halfway to its goal, and that 10,900 positions within the federal government had already been eliminated.

Yet the unions were mum. Why is that?

Could it be that the nation’s capital, top-heavy with union headquarters and home to the majority of public servants, was largely spared the knife?

As Canadian Press reported, statistics compiled by the Public Service Alliance of Canada indicate only 35% of the job losses actually came out of the national capital region, with the other 65% spread across the country.

No wonder there is such silence.

Lest They’ve Forgotten

Mark Bonokoski — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 02:16:36 +0000

This being Remembrance Day weekend, it should be disheartening to all Canadians to know that a group of severely-wounded Afghanistan veterans are taking our country to court so they don’t have to spend the rest of their disabled lives in poverty.

One of them, Major Maj. Mark Campbell, for example, is a 32-year military veteran who served in Cyprus, Bosnia and Afghanistan, and who lost both his legs in 2008 in a Taliban IED explosion.

The lump sum payment forced upon him by current rules will come nowhere close to taking care of his needs, and his family’s needs.

And so he, and others, are forced to go to court to get a fair shake for the sacrifices they made.

It doesn’t seem fair because it isn’t.

And what about the Royal Canadian Legion having the beg the government to cough up more than the $3,600 given to bury even the most impoverished vets from the Second World War and Korea. Try being properly buried today for $3,600.

It just cannot be done.

We owe these old vets more than short shrift.

So I sent a little message to Veterans Affairs in a national Sun Media editorial last week.

Show some respect, honour the sacrifice, and pay what is needed.

Lest you have already forgotten.

Order Paper Deaths

Mark Bonokoski — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 00:43:46 +0000

When the Ontario Liberals prorogued the legislature, and all the rats began leaving the ship — name them as they jump … Dalton McGuinty himself, and Dwight Duncan, Chris Bentley, two lieutenant rats — everything on the order papers died.

Contempt allegations against Chris Bentley died, and all the reasons to hang a whole slew of Liberals also died with the prorogation.

And, because McGuinty, Duncan and Bentley announced they were also not seeking re-election, the electorate can’t even get even with them at the polls.

It doesn’t seem fair, does it?

Nor does it seem fair that, because of the prorogation, those of us who live in the colder parts of Ontario will not get the promised break of the HST being removed from home heating fuels.

That, too, was on the order paper.

So, because of McGuinty’s proroguing of the legislature to dodge a litany of embarrassing and costly scandals, he is also sticking us with the continuation of a 13% tax on heating our homes.

That burns me up. Up in my neck of the woods, people on fixed incomes are barely getting by.

A break on heating their homes in the winter would have been nice. But McGuinty is not nice — which is something I have been telling you for years.

Not that it does any of us any good.