There are sometimes in life where you get a stain on something and, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get it out. Or maybe it’s a church tune that you can’t get out of your head, and it’s gotten so bad that you find yourself whistling Be Not Afraid in the shower.
My point is that sometimes there are things that never go away, as much as you might like them to.
So there’s these cameras.
They were intended to be part of an anti-auto theft effort where they would be positioned at identified locations around town for the purpose of identifying stolen vehicles in transit between Toronto (where they were stolen) to Montreal (where they get shipped out for resale in places like Dubai).
That whole plan fell through when the OPP started tripping all over themselves and deciding that they needed to pull out of the scheme, a joint effort between the police force and local communities. This is not at all unusual because the OPP has always been a difficult dance partner, something built squarely into their institutional DNA.
So now that the original purpose was scuttled, the question remains as to what to do with the cameras involved and the the three cars that were also to be part of the anti-theft campaign.
Let’s never mind about the cars for the moment, as apparently they’re all locked up in a secure compound, wherever that might be.
It’s the cameras I want to talk about today.
Yemen Electric is good to go, in that they’ve got the locations identified and the wherewithal to make it all happen. Because cameras are cameras, right? And if they’re not going to be put to use nabbing car thieves, surely they can be put to use in some way that advances the public interest.
“But wait just a cotton-picking second!” says some working group tasked with “advising” Council on what to do with these things.
I’m all for political acumen, and I’m all for surveying the landscape to ascertain any threats, barriers, or impediments. But the working group, whoever they are and however they were composed, may be trudging down the “too clever by half” road when they worry that there might be public pushback on the cameras, primarily in light of the on-going theatrics of our premier who has as much said that he’s going to eliminate all speed cameras. Apparently he thinks they’re a tax grab despite them, the cameras, being his idea in the first place.
The working group feels there’s a risk that people in town might get up in arms at having cameras positioned around town. There’s a number of reasons why they could likely afford to be less cautious.
First the cameras are not speed cameras, or radar cameras, so there’s that.
Second, even if they were, recent poliing shows that the majority of Ontario residents support the use of speed cameras in areas that have been shown to be dangerous due to driver speeding and driver irresponsibility. It appears most of us don’t feel such cameras are that big of an intrusion in our daily lives, but I can see the odd yahoo who refuses to slow down to not like them. But I rarely consider the viewpoints of yahoos when I do my critical thinking. There’s always going to be angry dogs barking, since barking is their default response any time they feel somebody is trying to tell them what to do, so they’re not the type to be reasoned with. Ignoring them comes to mind as a plausible tactic.
Third, and practically, how many people are even going to notice the installation of cameras much lees have the time and effort to complain about them?
Will this turn into a battleground on What’s Up Renfrew?
So, as per the working group, in the box those cameras remain, after many months of being in those boxes, never to see the light of day because we can’t get working groups — which are advisory only — to get out of their own way long enough to make anything happen.
Put the blasted things up already.
As to the cars, sell them. Don’t let the OPP snag them for their own purposes. Sell them and get something back for them, surely a better option than having them simply sit and depreciate in storage, stagnating. They’re already a year away from their model year, maybe even two years. So how long are we going to sit on these things before we can find somebody or group of somebodies willing to make a decision on them without worrying about every possible reaction from the peasantry?
The peasants know nothing of any of this. They’re too busy struggling to live their lives to worry about three cars in storage that got here through grant money for a discontinued program.
My thanks to the working group for the time put in and the advice rendered.
But now it’s up to Council, a body of some degree of ditheration. They, too, can sometimes try to be too cute for anyone’s good. And I honestly see them dithering on this as well.
In the end, it only matters what they think, and what they do.
As for me, my call is to simply put those cameras up and move on to something else.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 