Letters to the Editor

LINDSAY

ADVOCAT E

Frank Smith gets it right

A non-politicized, wonderful, real magazine article. I’m referring to Frank Smith’s opinion piece, a teaching article. (“The Big Lie says ‘progress’ is good” June edition of the Advocate.) Hear it loud and clear folks, there are “only four things that we really need... Everything else is superfluous.” Joe Berta, Bobcaygeon

Indigenous wisdom would be a welcome addition

We should want nothing less than to investigate the lands and documents of every residential school in Canada.

Since 1954, we successfully branded ourselves around the world as peacekeepers in the spread of Western philosophy. The proof of our true commitment to “Westernization” of the world and the lie of Canada in the role of “chief peacekeeper” can be found within our own borders.

This falsehood continues to this day. It must stop with us. We say it with our admired immigration policies but perpetuate the opposite with our schooling and collective conventional wisdom about the Indigenous and other cultures. If we adopted a fraction of Indigenous and other cultures’ wisdom, Canadians would be infinitely better off. Wesley Found, Lindsay

Federal and provincial support needed in the cultural sector

My sincere appreciation to publisher Roderick Benns and associate editor Nancy Payne of The Lindsay Advocate for the opportunity to contribute to the recent article, “State of the Arts: Do we support Arts & Culture strongly enough?” The article was a thorough and fair representation of the accomplishments and challenges within the sector, providing an accurate overview of the past and present status of the sector.

However, for myself, the question regarding our municipality and its support of the cultural sector goes far beyond the borders of our community. Our municipal government has done an excellent job of working to increase support for the cultural sector, even throughout the economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic; however there is a much larger, critical issue of a lack of support for many 4

rural organizations within the levels of federal and provincial support for rural municipalities. While the levels of funding within the various funding opportunities are healthy, the flow of monies into rural communities is restricted due to being overlooked by disconnected levels of decision-making within our federal and provincial levels of government. With limited insight into the challenges of being an organization in a rural municipality, geographical parameters are set for the various federal and provincial funding bodies that have smaller rural organizations competing with large urban organizations, with the rural organizations only being successful at being consistently denied. How can we continue to ask more of our municipality when our federal and provincial governments do not support our rural communities strongly enough? Susan Taylor, Lindsay Executive Director, Kawartha Art Gallery

Fund physiotherapy for stroke survivors

As we approach Ontario’s election day of June 2, 2022, a campaign question should be, “Which political party will finally provide OHIP funding for physiotherapy for stroke survivors between ages 20 and 64 and eliminate age discrimination in Ontario stroke treatment?” Jim McEwen, Bowmanville

Councillor’s ‘defensive manner’ questioned by reader

I have been following the off-road vehicle task force and the recommendations it has made to the city and to city council and the submissions to the Advocate from various sources identified in your magazine.

It would be reasonable to believe that the members of the task force were likely selected for their interest in the subject matter, or their expertise or familiarity with the activity and the related impact the activity would have on the participants and the affected community. I am therefore quite surprised at the comments Councillor Pat Dunn made in response to Dr. Natalie Bocking’s recommendations. Dr. Bocking was quite clear that her recommendations were health and safety oriented with the only mention of legal consequences being made in her reference to “enforcement of the rules must be stringent.” It is unclear why Mr. Dunn would immediately respond in a defensive manner asking Dr. Bocking “Is it appropriate to punish those who hadn’t committed a crime?”

As the person leading this task force, it is surprising that Mr. Dunn would confuse a preventive measure as a punishment. Mr. Dunn’s background as a former police officer with the OPP would surely make him recognize the difference between a preventative measure and a punishment. Mr. Dunn should also be familiar with the importance of placing public safety first and foremost above recreational activities.

Our community playgrounds are just one example of a preventative measure designed to help ensure public safety. Apparatuses that were deemed a safety risk to all children were removed from community playgrounds with the intent that it would help ensure the safety of our children.This was not a punishment to those children who had done something wrong, it was simply a preventative measure to protect our children. It is unfortunate when an individual’s objectivity is tainted in such a manner that it would place the safety of our community and the participants of this recreational activity in danger. M.D. Bruyns, Cameron

Climate change criticism

I wish to examine some of the claims made by Bill Steffler in his letter, “ORV use contributes to climate change-related deaths” (June Advocate).

He writes that of the CO2 emissions over the last 300 years, half have occurred since 1980. Well, that could be true only if you ignore the fact that presently, 96 per cent of all CO2 emissions are from natural sources — oceans, volcanoes, etc. We must assume then, that the writer is referring only to CO2 emissions from human sources, in which case it seems quite curious that he has to go back 300 years to come up with that statistic, since we weren’t burning fossil fuels 300 years ago. Most of us have lived through the 1980s to the present and have witnessed the miraculous advances that have been achieved in technology and wise use of our natural resources to dramatically improve our quality of life. He also writes that transportation is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s actually 15 per cent. The letter writer also states that encouraging more ORV use makes us complicit in thousands of deaths per year. From fatal accidents, perhaps, but from climate change? By that reasoning, cutting down a tree in our backyard makes us complicit in the wholesale clearing of millions of acres of forest for agricultural purposes.

Carl Sweetman, Lindsay

Quantify

Numbers that matter

Kawartha Lakes has plenty of size going for it in many different ways

250 The number of lakes in our far-flung city

2Our rank in Ontario for the physical size of our municipality, second only to Greater Sudbury

Source: City of Kawartha Lakes

Italy

Life in Italy is more balanced in favour of workers compared to Canada.

For instance, Italian workers have about 30 to 35 paid holidays each year. Accord-

ing to the International Labour Organization, in addition to the European Union-mandated four weeks of vacation, Italy has 12 national paid holidays. And in December, employees are paid a Christmas bonus roughly equal to a month’s salary.

In Italy, if you don’t use all your vacation days in a given year, they carry over to the next year.

Getting married in Italy also has its rewards — such as 15 days of paid holidays. 5

Arts support should be voluntary, says reader

When I read State of the Arts: Do we support Arts & Culture strongly enough?” in the June edition of the Advocate, I wondered to whom the “we” referred and what was meant by the word “support”?

We are each an individual, and we encounter other people as individuals too. Each one of us possesses unique interests, circumstances and personal resources with which to make choices. My wife, for example, has more interest in arts and culture than I do, and she spends proportionately more of her time, attention and money on those interests.

“We” is a collective term that applies to many individuals. In a collective sense, “we” have supported arts and culture through taxation for many years and could further increase those taxes. This would be unfair to many individuals who have other uses for their hardearned incomes.

Instead, what if we could greatly reduce taxes to enable the possibility of greater voluntary support for arts and culture? Consider that the average Canadian family remits over 50 per cent of annual earnings to taxes imposed by all levels of government — it was only 38 per cent in 1961. The tax-financed public sector has grown massively since John Diefenbaker was prime minister. This relentless expansion has contributed to much of the subsequent rise in the cost of living.

Should Canadians be expected to support the arts and culture sector through more involuntary tax remittances? Alternatively, we could roll back the tax burden to 38 per cent, thereby enabling Canadian families to voluntarily spend on their individual priorities — arts and culture included.

Gene Balfour, Fenelon Falls

Lindsay’s welfare is determined by rural-leaning councillors

The recent Kawartha Lakes City Council approval for the operation of recreational off-road vehicles (ORVs) on Lindsay’s paved streets and trails has exposed a serious flaw in the administration of this municipality.

The city of Kawartha Lakes was cobbled together by the provincial government in 2001 without the initiative or support of most of the population.

A referendum held on the amalgamation in 2003 showed that the citizens of Lindsay remained in opposition. Since municipalities exist under the authority of the province, the referendum results were simply ignored.

In approving ORV use in Lindsay, seven councillors voted to allow, while only one councillor and the mayor voted against. Six councillors, an overwhelming majority of those voting, do not represent the residents of Lindsay who will be the ones impacted by the ORV allowance.

The one councillor who voted against the motion reportedly stated he had concluded that the vast majority of the citizens of Lindsay he represents were strongly opposed. Nevertheless, those councillors representing citizens living outside of Lindsay who will not be negatively impacted by the allowance easily carried the day.

Forcing both rural and urban people to share in the decisions of a united municipality must inevitably lead to inequitable decisions as demonstrated by this matter. Under the current municipal construct the residents of Lindsay will continue to be governed by people who demonstrate little interest in the town’s welfare. Now along with poultry in our yards we will have ORVs on our streets.

B. Morris, Lindsay

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