That Tesla Cybertruck is truly something to behold.
It appears that more and more of them are out and about in the wild, so sightings of this futuristic beast are becoming more commonplace. In fact, there’s even a couple in town.
I have to confess I have no idea what it must be like to own and operate one of these vehicles, with their supposed bullet-proof glass, a feature that I’m sure Elon Musk has included in all his personal vehicles, or at least the ones he shuttles around in. I can’t say whether the vehicle could stop an RPG — Rocket-Propelled Grenade — but I did see Musk himself shatter the window with a rock in an attempt to prove that you can’t shatter the window with a rock.
And honestly, when it comes to rocks, why waste them on the truck when you could be flinging them at Elon himself, easily the most loathed man in the world, which is a hell of a statement when you consider some of the people who walk this planet at the same time that he does. So why smash on the monster when you can get your licks in on Dr. Frankenstein instead?
I spent a few minutes before starting this trying to think of something good to say about Randy Briand. It was harder than it may sound, and in the end, I could only really think of one.
I don’t know Randy from a head of lettuce, so in fairness to him, I should make the effort to learn more about him before I weigh-in on whatever it is that he’s all about.
So I did.
Salt of the earth is Randy. Born in Petawawa into a military family, he served himself as a weekend-warrior in the Reserves, an infantry officer by his own account. A school teacher for over thirty years, with a couple of years way up North working with indigenous children before returning home to become an Ottawa Valley farmer. With a resume like that, what’s not to like, for heaven’s sake?
I don’t know of Randy’s formative years, where he developed his belief system and moral and ethical compass, but he apparently went through a catharsis of some sort when he met Grant Abraham, the leader of the Alberta-based United Party of Canada. Abraham either solidified Briand’s world-view or he totally knocked it on its ass, but either way, Briand has emerged as whole, a complete man, one who has found himself a home in a new political party when all the others had failed him.
I went to vote on Good Friday, the first available opportunity to do so.
I showed up at Ma-Te-Way and noticed that both parking lots were fairly busy, but there’s lots of stuff that goes on in that place, and I wasn’t really sure how a stat holiday like Good Friday would impact any of those things, so I just assumed it was the fitness and hockey crowds taking up those spaces.
As I pulled up, I did take notice of a number of people standing outside the main doors to the complex, and it looked from a distance that many of them had voting cards in their hands, but I just optimistically assumed that these were voters in need of a smoke. As a non-smoker, their need to pound back a dart or two before making a big and important choice was something I could understand, although my own choice had never been in doubt. So I clutched my own voter card, and dressed in my Good Friday Mass clothes, made my way to the place where the bright yellow election arrows were pointing, there to exercise my democratic franchise.
When Preston Manning speaks, people listen, that is until they cringe.
The populist evangelical western fear-monger has the kind of voice that ranks right up there with nails on a chalkboard, and it would be a real treat to hear him and American Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. having a conversation. That is, of course, before your teeth started to hurt and your eyes started to bleed.
The son of one of those strange bible-thumping preacher-premiers that only Alberta can produce, Preston seems to have picked up the Social Credit mantra of his father Ernest and carried it forward into the present day.
As a brand marker, a logo represents who you are, what you are, and what you aspire to be. A lot of deliberation goes into the design and construction of one, and many eyes usually pass over a design before it’s selected to officially represent the company or the organization.
It’s not often, in fact it’s more often never, that a company or organization might regret their selection.
The Conservative Party of Canada, also known as the HR Squad (Hard Right) are among the best when it comes to corporate branding and messaging, although a full disclosure demands that I fess up to being mostly opposed to whatever message it is they’re trying to “sell” to the masses. Right now they’re embarked on a Dr. Seuss phase of communication, where everything has to rhyme, or alternatively, nifty little catch phrases that easily roll off the tongue. You know, Axe the Tax,Stop the Steal, Justinflation, Carbon Tax Carl, Kick the Stick, Stop the Mop, Hate the Gate, Shoot the Boot, and any others that the boys and girls down in the basement lab of party headquarters come up with. That Carbon Tax one was the best, in my opinion, in that it rolls perfectly with just about anyone’s name that contains a single syllable. It’s when we get into the second syllable that it kind of comes up short.
But still. Carbon Tax Jagmeet doesn’t work so well, whereas Carbon Tax Singh gets it done.
A number of councillors have made a point of requesting an employee organizational chart for the Town of Renfrew, but they’ve been somewhat stymied by a staff leadership that doesn’t feel inclined to release such a thing, ostensibly because it’s not something they “typically” do.
Which when you get right down to it, is staff-speak for we could if we wanted to, but we just don’t want to.
Which is staff-speak for you’re going to have to try a lot harder to get us to create, then release such information, and we’ll stonewall you until you and the other councillors make us do it through an explicit direction from Council.
I won’t go too much into how impressed I get when somebody tells me something can’t be done, or won’t be done, because, well, that’s not the way we typically do things. A statement like that doesn’t make me want to back off, it makes me want to insist that you go “atypical“ and give me the information that I’m entitled to.
When I was growing up and watching my favourite crime thrillers on television, there was always a point where some mob guy had a gun to some other poor guy’s head and, before dispatching the fellow into the Great Beyond, would offer the absurd comfort by saying “it’s business, not personal.”
I always thought of how relieving it must be that your murder wasn’t a petty personal act, it was just a procedural thing to make things smoother for the bad guys. I mean, thank heavens it’s not personal, right? I suppose it makes all the difference, and offered a soon-to-be murder victim some measure of solace before the Big Bang Theory took on a more, well, personal meaning.
You don’t get that level of courtesy with today’s murderers, and it makes me wonder, where did all the good people go?
Ontario premier Doug Ford has proposed extending so-called “strong-mayor” powers to 169 additional municipalities in Ontario, and the Town of Renfrew is one of them.
What makes a strong mayor out of a mayor?
Simply put, it allows the mayor, as Head of Council, to push forward agenda items without obtaining a majority vote of other members of Council. It’s something usually reserved for large urban areas like Toronto, or Ottawa, or any other densely-populated metropolitan areas.
But Renfrew? And also Arnprior, Pembroke, Deep River and Petawawa? Because they all made the cut, whereas urban powerhouse Douglas got left out, most likely because they’re part of a township government, and I guess we haven’t yet arrived at the point where rural townships require strong mayor powers.
The changes, if implemented, take effect May 1, 2025.
In a lot of things, there’s what we once did, what we do, and what we’re going to do moving forward.
I guess that statement seems to be a reflection of the fact that time doesn’t stand still for any of us as people, and it works that way for municipalities as well.
It’s the old “once we finally get things figured out and solved, something happens to change it” thing. It’s like you finally master your online banking interface, but then they change it to make it “better,” which of course means making it better for anyone not named you.
It’s like that in the garbage business, and by extension, the recycling business.
What was once a Stewardship Model has been replaced by government regulations changing things to a Producer Responsibility Model, which to most of us means next to nothing but to a municipality awash in recyclable materials, as they all are, it means quite a bit in terms of compliance, planning, re-jigging what had already been jigged, and then paying for the whole damned thing. The new regime takes effect on January 1, 2026.
If you thought there was two types of recycling, then you were right. Nothing’s changed in the mixed co-mingled and fibre distinctions, the big choice you have to make once a week when you’re trying to remember which blue box you’re going to lug out to the curb. A blue box full of stuff at the end of the day is usually your answer as to whether you made that choice correctly.
But now there are two other distinctions to recycling, eligible and non-eligible. And so the question arises, what makes eligible eligible?
As simply as I possibly can, things can be broken up into two categories, residential and commercial/institutional/industrial. The first group, residential, is considered eligible, as in edible for continued curbside pick-up, meaning the least amount of change brought by the new government regulations. The second, the businesses and industries that make up the commercial/industrial category, are no longer eligible for this level of service unless the municipality in question decides to take on that additional cost.
Poor Renfrew. To be saddled with eye-watering debt, cutting or reducing services, increasing property taxes, and now some other gawd-awful thing raises its stupid head to demand more financial resources that you don’t have. It’s a spend-more scenario in an environment of spend-less. It’s enough to make any councillor reach for that forty-pounder of rye they’ve been saving for their child’s Confirmation and putting a tangible dent into the thing. They should just go ahead and pass a bylaw allowing councillors, and only councillors, to drink alcohol during council meetings, just to take the edge off things and steady the hand on the tiller.
Currently, Renfrew makes 319 stops that will now be considered to be non-eligible, including every one of the places operated by the town itself. This is currently done at a rate of $15/stop, but you can be guaranteed that a price like that is on its way out the window. It’s these places that are going to be the problem.
If Council were to determine to continue picking up this stuff from these stops, what would that entail? What would that look like? How would it be funded?
Staff has already undertaken a brief survey of the battlefield, and found that some municipalities are already on the road to compliance, as Renfrew is, but have adopted styles unique to themselves. Some continue to pick it up, and others put the responsibility on business owners themselves to get their recycling to a depot specific to that purpose. In one case, in Mississippi Mills, the municipality was quoted a sobering $65/stop for the service, as compared to Renfrew’s current yet soon to be extinct $15/stop. It’s more than a four-fold difference, but Manager Amanda Springer is of the opinion that whatever cost eventually accrues to Renfrew, it’ll be less than the Mississippi Mills quote. So some small solace there.
The decisions facing Council are those of a short-term nature, and of a long-term nature.
It’s times like these where we, as Canadians, usually rise to our challenges. Sorry, where we always rise to the challenge in front of us.
We were there at Queenston, at Chateuguay, at Ypres and Vimy. We more than showed up for Italy and Normandy, and even Dieppe speaks to our courage in the face of overwhelming odds against, some of those odds courtesy of our friends, the British. We fought and won the Battle of the Atlantic.
Were among the most-feared and most respected in Afghanistan, and lost over 150 good people in that demonstration of resolve.
We fought the Americans twice, in the Revolution and War of !812 and turned them back both times. We fought the Kaiser’s army in World War 1 and earned the reputation as “shock troops” by the Germans who were always carefully aware of where the Canadians were along the front line. We fought the best the Nazi’s had at Juno, up through Normandy and into the Low Countries, and liberated Holland before joining the Allied thrust across northern Germany. And we chased the Taliban off of every battlefield in which they faced us.
So, in short, we’re more than up for the most recent challenge, economic war against the United States.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 