Category: Ethics and behaviour

Timeline of the original Collus share sale

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Ethics and behaviour / Utilities: electricity and waterLeave a comment

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With the pending yet pointlessly vindictive Saunderson judicial inquiry – a punitive, self-serving exercise expected to cost local taxpayers of between $2 and $6 million (and potentially much more!) – I thought it might be useful to reprint in one post the timeline of the sale of half the share of Collus to PowerStream in 2011-12. I’ve posted much of this previously, in separate posts, but I also spent several days combing through online sources and archived documents to ensure I had a comprehensive timeline. There are a few related notes included that underscore the electricity market in flux in ……… click below for more ↓

Really? Another sole-sourced lawyer?

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Election 2018 / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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Collingwood hires lawyer for judicial inquiry. That’s the headline on a story in the Connection. Do I understand this story correctly? The same sole-sourced lawyer who encouraged Brian Saunderson and his council puppets to launch a judicial inquiry that may cost taxpayers $6 million or more has been appointed to to be “legal counsel for the judicial inquiry”?* Anyone remember this promise by Brian Saunderson to… Change the purchasing policy to ensure there can be no sole sourcing of any contract for goods or services over $25,000, no exceptions. And yet there was no RFP for a position that could ……… click below for more ↓

Brian’s new campaign slogan

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Election 2018 / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Humour & SatireLeave a comment

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Brian Saunderson needs a new campaign slogan, now he’s officially filed papers in his ill-fated race to become mayor against the hard-working, well-liked, ethical, community-minded, former police chief, John Trude. It’s not good enough for Brian to run on his slogans from last election – “I’ll Show ‘Em Who’s Boss!”, “My Way or the Highway!”, “Why Be Open and Accountable When Secrecy and Deception Get My Way So Much Better?” and the local favourite, “I’ll Get Even With All of You!” Last election, he launched his campaign on the coattails of a phony OPP investigation based on innuendo, wildly unfounded ……… click below for more ↓

Plutarch on listening, and The Block

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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“[W]e observe that… the great majority of persons …practise speaking before they have acquired the habit of listening.” Plutarch wrote that in his essay De Auditu, or On Listening. Reading those words immediately made me think of that group we have on Collingwood Council who never listen to anyone but themselves and frequently speak without any apparent thought behind their comments: The Block. And, no, I don’t expect any of them to heed his words of wisdom or advice on this or any other subject. First, that would require reading, and reading is antithetical to all of them because it ……… click below for more ↓

Jeffrey’s snout back in the trough

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour4 Comments

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Last Monday The Block snuck a motion into the meeting without putting it on the agenda: to allow Councillor Jeffrey to pursue her personal political goals at taxpayer expense, and chase another seat on the FCM (Federation of Canadian Municipalities) board – even though she failed to win re-election to the board in May, 2017. At the upcoming FCM meeting in Halifax she can wine and dine on your dollar. Of course The Block didn’t want it publicized beforehand because they knew it would arouse community ire. After all, The Block have raised your taxes THREE times in three years, ……… click below for more ↓

Block bullies are at it again

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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May 14’s council agenda (p. 40-49) contained yet more evidence of The Block’s bully-boy tactics and pettiness: a complaint made to the integrity commissioner against our mayor. They damn her no matter what she does. This complaint was filed by someone who might charitably be called the Block’s pet barnacle for his concreted attachment to them, dragged along by their momentum without any of his own. He’s also nicknamed the “frequent filer” for his habit of filing FOI requests against people he doesn’t like, apparently looking – unsuccessfully – for something evil in their emails he can then share with the ……… click below for more ↓

Deception, The Block, and EPCOR

Collingwood / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Publicity & Communications / Utilities: electricity and waterLeave a comment

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The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) is currently conducting hearings about the proposed sale of our publicly-owned electrical utility, Collus, to the for-profit, out-of-province corporation, EPCOR. Several documents have already been entered into the record and you can read them here. Most of them are fairly technical and steeped in opaque legalese, but download and read this one: EPCOR_IRR_SEC_EPCOR Collingwood MAADs_20180503.pdf. There’s some interesting content here and I think it’s stuff that The Block, the town and maybe even EPCOR don’t want you – the public – to know about. After all, The Block and town administration conducted this whole process ……… click below for more ↓

John Brown’s letter got the attention it deserved

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

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It went almost unnoticed, but on the agenda for the April 30 Collingwood Council agenda was a letter from the former interim CAO, John Brown, with eight questions (and some comments) about the CAO’s report on the costs of the upcoming judicial inquiry (item eight in the Consent Agenda portion). The letter itself is unsigned (see it here) but the agenda notes the author’s name. Not even the local media picked up on it. It’s curious that not one of The Block bothered to have it pulled for discussion or request that staff answer the questions from their former mentor and ……… click below for more ↓

Doherty’s Magic Money Fairy

Collingwood / deception & secrecy / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Taxes / User fees and costs3 Comments

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At 3:55:20 in the video of Monday’s Collingwood Council meeting, Councillor Deb Doherty utters the self-congratulatory claim that she is “glad” the costs of the upcoming judicial inquiry to pursue the Block’s maniacal conspiracy theories are not coming out of “taxpayer funds on an annual basis.” I can hear your head shaking. Where does she think money comes from? And since taxes are calculated yearly, is there any other sort of taxation aside from an “annual basis”? Well, read on… This bit of financial wisdom comes from the same councillor who last year expressed bafflement over what dividends are and ……… click below for more ↓

Council kills Collingwood construction

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Publicity & CommunicationsLeave a comment

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Collingwood council – dominated by The Block – has voted to cripple the booming construction industry in town. A bylaw passed this week prohibits, “…operation of construction equipment to Monday to Friday from 7 a.m., to 7 p.m.” according to a story in the Connection.* This means The Block have really put a damper on construction, making it even more difficult for developers to get homes finished on time, hurting the workers who depend on those jobs, delaying new home buyers from moving in and creating yet another liability situation for the town. The article notes: This deals with major ……… click below for more ↓

The costs of the Block’s conspiracy theory

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Utilities: electricity and water2 Comments

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$6.2 million. That’s how much it cost Mississauga to have a judicial inquiry into its utility Enersource, back in 2011. That inquiry was initially estimated to cost $2 million but the costs more than tripled, according to a story in The Connection. Imagine what The Block’s judicial inquiry is going to cost us in Collingwood. Millions and millions more. They’ve already admitted it will cost taxpayers around $2 million. But none of them have even the slightest idea of what’s involved, who has to be called, who pays what, or what the process is. They just swallowed the bait on ……… click below for more ↓

The Block Bullies

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

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Like all schoolyard bullies, The Block use aggressive tactics intended to intimidate and cow anyone who stands up to or disagrees with them. From their phony, trumped-up OPP investigation – which after five years hasn’t produce a single charge, nor have any of the alleged miscreants even been interviewed by police – through the debacle of how they handled the sale of Collus, to bullying the hospital, to their puerile judicial inquiry, The Block are hellbent on their vendettas. This is a group that continues to set the bar lower at every turn. This latest bit of dirty politics shows ……… click below for more ↓

Our treasonous council

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Utilities: electricity and water3 Comments

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If Collingwood Council operated at a higher tier or government – say the federal level – they would be called treasonous and taken to court for their culture of deception, their attacks on our democratic and civic institutions, and for their ongoing betrayal of the public trust. But because they are only a municipal government, they can merely be called despicable while we await the next election. The latest act of desperation in the dungheap of this term is the recent motion to demand a judicial inquiry into the sale of 50% of our electrical utility to PowerStream last term. ……… click below for more ↓

Thoughts on local municipal governance

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

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A popular political theory presents two basic and often contradictory models of how elected officials should (or do) behave as representatives. One is as a delegate: solely acting as a representative of the people who elected them. The other is as a trustee, serving (or attempting to serve) everyone under their governance. In practice, these are not absolutely discrete, but are practiced in combination with one another, as situations dictate or according to how vocal the electors are.* How is this practiced here, in Collingwood? Yes, I know, the notion of The Block actually having or understanding a theory of ……… click below for more ↓

Madigan’s motion jeopardizes town

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Staff and administration2 Comments

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On January 15, Councillor Bob Madigan made a motion (seconded, of course, by his puppetmaster, Deputy Mayor Saunderson) to limit the progress of the Indigo/Eden-Oak/McNabb development at the south end of town. Madigan’s motion demanded that, …council provide no further approvals to the Eden Oak/McNabb development until such time as council as a whole has the opportunity to review the concerns expressed by the neighbouring residents and agree upon any mitigation options. (Yes, I wondered who wrote it for him, too… whoever did it wasn’t very bright because he or she failed to identify what those mitigation measures should entail, ……… click below for more ↓

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