Editorial

If you thought it was expensive to build a new library, the initial estimates for the long overdue overhaul of the Meaford & St. Vincent Community Centre may shock you. While the $7 million cost of Meaford's new library, completed in late 2020, was cause for significant debate with many suggesting the cost was too high, over the past few...

Rather than shining a bright light on 'overpaid' government workers, Ontario's antiquated 'Sunshine List' casts a shadow on the real struggles of Ontarians, and true inequity found here and beyond our borders. We've had the annually published Sunshine List for more than a quarter century now. Back in 1996 when the Mike Harris Conservative government passed the Ontario Public Disclosure...

Before a final vote on the municipality's new burn bylaw on Monday, members of council engaged in a lengthy, but productive conversation focused on some amendments being sought prior to final approval. Though council had unanimously approved the new burn bylaw two weeks prior, over that time members of council heard from some ratepayers and they brought the concerns they...

Spring has sprung, the birds are chirping, and nearly all of the pandemic restrictions under which we've been living for more than two years have been lifted. And while we might expect to be collectively chuffed with all of these positive developments, instead, no matter where we turn, we are seeing and hearing division amongst us. While we should be...

As the pandemic has turned endemic, most COVID restrictions have recently been lifted with the remaining restrictions to be lifted in the near future, allowing us to live our lives in a new normal. As of March 21, we will even be free of the often contentious mask mandate in most situations, welcome news to many. At the start of...

With a municipal election to be held in October, we will soon see candidates announce their intentions to seek a seat on council, and voters will be faced with the task of sorting through the candidates in hopes of finding some that suit their needs as municipal councillors. But what should we be looking for? What makes for a...

I had a conversation with a friend recently and he expressed frustration with the municipal tax increase for this year. He suggested to me that it is nonsense that members of council couldn't find areas to cut, and he suggested further that they should begin with their salaries. “How much do you think they make?” I asked, a little shocked...

Like others, I was taken by surprise with the news of the Meaford Library Board's decision to appoint municipal CAO Rob Armstrong as CEO for the library. In Ontario per the Public Libraries Act (PLA), it is not local councils who make the decisions regarding library operations, it is the Library Board that holds that responsibility. So though I have...

It would not be unfair to suggest that Council's paid parking pilot project has been a muddled mess since its very inception, and this week Council yet again reversed course on their own plan. In November of 2021, I wrote that members of Council were requesting so many exemptions from their planned expansion of the program from Memorial Park last...

If you've been feeling like the entire world has gone crazy, you are not alone. Protests on Parliament Hill, a potential war brewing on the Russia-Ukraine border, continued friction over pandemic protocols, volcanoes erupting, outrage over the latest statements by celebrities or politicians, everywhere we turn there seems to be chaos, confusion, and frustration. Perhaps what we are seeing is extreme...