Category: Ethics and behaviour

More Chinese Wisdom: Confucius and Council

Council / Ethics & morality / Ethics and behaviour / PoliticsLeave a comment

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I was reading The Analects, this weekend, in the recent Penguin Classics edition translated by Annping Chin, a book I acquired on my recent mini-vacation in Toronto (one of about 30 books I purchased – a good trip for me). Confucius – Master Kong – is remarkable for his relevance to today’s politics and his insight into human behaviour, especially in a bureaucracy. Chin’s version is wonderfully clear and accessible, and her notes help clarify the passages where Westerners like me might find difficulty in understanding context (historical and cultural). My purpose in reading The Analects this time is to ……… click below for more ↓

What’s Up With Tim Fryer?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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Fledgling councillors may be excused for gaffes, gaucheries and solecisms they make in their first month or so in office. They’re new, inexperienced, dazzled by their recent election success, so we cut them some slack. And there are all these shiny things to distract a councillor: procedure, voting, reading, motions, shuffling paper, approving minutes, showing up… But after more than six months, one expects them to know what they are doing and get down to the business of the municipality. And we expect them to have read ALL the relevant legislation, policies and codes that govern them. Councillor Tim Fryer ……… click below for more ↓

It’s Official: Collingwood is Closed for Business

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Taxes2 Comments

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As I predicted, Collingwood Council officially closed the town to business, growth and development, last Monday night. And just for good measure, council sprinkled the ground with the salt of malice, just to further deter a particular developer from building here. Which sends a message to everyone about how this town respects and values development. Anyone who doesn’t think this is about ideology or doesn’t know this is a personal and petty vendetta hasn’t been paying attention to local politics this past decade. The process of closing our municipal doors to business started earlier this year when council raised our taxes and our ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood Turns a Blind Eye to Hydro One Sale

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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It would seem that much of Ontario, and many of its stronger municipal councils, are voicing opposition to the province’s ill-advised plan to sell Hydro One to a private, for-profit group, and are writing to the premier to protest.* The popular sentiment is that selling an essential utility like hydro – that brings the province almost $340 million annually – makes about as much sense as throwing your paycheque out the car window while giving the car keys to a total stranger. It will only make us less competitive and less attractive to business and industry. It will hurt small ……… click below for more ↓

Connection Got It Wrong

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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The story in this weekend’s Connection about Block 9 underground parking incorrectly suggests council is doing something right when it was actually trying to do something wrong. But they tried to take credit for doing good when their efforts at malice failed. I expect mistakes like this from the Enterprise-Bulletin because it doesn’t have anyone on staff with a history that goes back very far (aside, that is, from the generally bad, mistake-prone writing that makes it painful to read…), but not the Connection. The story notes: After a short in-camera session, council voted unanimously to allow the developer to build underground ……… click below for more ↓

Block Nine Revisited

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies5 Comments

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I went down to the harbour today to take a couple of photographs of the piece of town land known as “Block 9.” I wanted to show my readers just how little a piece it is and what condition it’s in now. The aerial photo above shows the property outlined in orange (the photograph is several years out of date, but the property lines remain the same). The photograph below shows the land from the northwest corner, looking southeast. Notice the water that has collected because the land lies much lower than surrounding properties and has no drainage (no, it isn’t ……… click below for more ↓

Sit on Your Hands

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies2 Comments

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Sit on your hands and don’t do anything. That’s in essence the advice in the editorial of the Enterprise-Bulletin, June 3. It’s a strongly anti-business message: telling the business community, the municipality, developers, and everyone around us that Collingwood is, once again, closed for business. Which coincides with the anti-business attitude of several members of the current council, but is hardly good for the community’s economic health. The editorial concludes: By all means, let the waterfront plan and the strategic plan pursue their course and hold off any decision’s (sic) on Assaff’s Block 9 ask until after that time…* Hold off developing ……… click below for more ↓

Waterfront No-Brainer

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour2 Comments

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Two terms ago, the public and media often referred to council as “the gong show” – no doubt from the number of inane comments and witless questions made at the table. One wonders if that nickname should not be revisited for this term. This week’s gong for inanity goes to Deputy Mayor Brian Saunderson for his comments after a public presentation by a local developer about purchasing an unused bit of town land. Saunderson clearly hasn’t grasped the procedure by which council members should not comment on or to delegations, and only ask questions of clarification. But why should he ……… click below for more ↓

Killing Our Culture

Collingwood / Council / Culture / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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Collingwood has killed Jazz & Blues at the Station – a popular, long-running, local cultural event second in audience only to the Elvis Festival. It brought some of Ontario’s top jazz and blues talent to play at the Museum. The hundreds of people assembled every Wednesday for the free concert – sometimes more than 400 in a single night, many of them coming from Blue Mountain, Clearview and Wasaga Beach – will be disappointed. As are the organizers, who have been trying unsuccessfully since late last year to get the town to commit to promised funding. All those people who came downtown ……… click below for more ↓

Openness and Transparency?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Municipal PoliticsLeave a comment

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Legitimacy is earned through accountability. Accountability is produced through transparency. Those words are from an opinion piece by Ian Lee, published in the Ottawa Citizen, back in 2008. Important words; words that should be carved above our own council table in large letters. Although it seems like he was writing about Collingwood Council, Lee was actually writing about the need for more accountability and openness in the public sector, especially about stating expenses and costs of federal government projects and initiatives. Lee wanted to “…ensure the accountability of public policy expenditures to Canadians – who pay the bills – thereby ensuring ……… click below for more ↓

Illegal or Just Inappropriate Meetings?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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Collingwood’s three standing committees consist solely of three members of council, each.* These committees of three each hold regular, published monthly meetings, hear public delegations, address public issues, post an agenda, receive staff reports, vote on issues, have recorded minutes, have staff to record them, and make recommendations back to council. In other words they are treated identically to any regular council meeting.  Their recommendations are read into the council minutes and voted upon. Yet none of these committees has a quorum (majority) of council on it. When one person is absent, as has happened several times since they were struck, the committee consists of ……… click below for more ↓

Chinese Wisdom

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

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As I promised in an earlier post, here are some of the epithets and sayings found in some of the Four Books of the Chinese canon. I think these are particularly relevant to politics, especially local politics. Hence my commentary after several of them.* Wikipedia gives us an overview of Confucius’ political philosophy in the Analects: Confucius’ political beliefs were rooted in his belief that a good ruler would be self-disciplined, would govern his subjects through education and by his own example, and would seek to correct his subjects with love and concern rather than punishment and coercion. “If the ……… click below for more ↓

The Not-My-Fault Dance

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Taxes / User fees and costs2 Comments

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There’s a story in this weekend’s Collingwood Connection about the PUC board meeting this week. The board confirmed that council’s dumping unexpected costs on the utility will mean an unplanned increase in the cost of your water this year. One of our council representatives tried to dance around it as if he wasn’t among the causes of that increase. This hurtful rate increase happened because council unwisely moved the budgeted cost of hydrant maintenance from the town’s fire service budget – where it had had been for years with no additional impact on taxes – and stuck it on the PUC (without consulting the PUC board), where it will ……… click below for more ↓

Someone’s Paying Attention

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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I was glad to see the Connection is attending and reporting on some of the council standing committee meetings. The media need to be there to shine a light on what seems to the rest of the town as a secretive, unaccountable process. At least the Connection is paying attention. The story that came out of the meeting is titled, “Lobbyist registry could make things complicated: Collingwood town clerk.” Apparently the EB didn’t think it was worth writing about. The EB doesn’t get it. Clerk Sara Almas told the committee: “Not only does it capture developers and contractors, it could include ……… click below for more ↓

Not Getting It

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Writing & Fiction2 Comments

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In a recent opinion piece in the Enterprise Bulletin titled “Swayze overused by council?” EB reporter/editor Paul Brian comments, I think the overuse of Swayze is outlandish and it is not congruent with the tough financial situation of the town.* Like much of the EB’s increasingly vague reporting since former editor Ian Adams left, the paper’s current editorial staff doesn’t seem to understand municipal politics. The reporting on many local matters raised at the council table show a naïve ignorance of both the issues and the processes at stake. The EB’s budget reporting this year was so flawed it should have been posted as ……… click below for more ↓

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