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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2017-02-16, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2017. PAGE 5. Other Views Jobs with a Experts are predicting that in the next couple of decades 40 per cent of current jobs will be replaced by robotics or artificial intelligence. So if you have kids, what job can they count on as that seek careers? My suggestion, if the Donald Trump influence spreads, is to urge them to become lawyers. The Donald must have grown up with the Vince Lombardi quotation "Winning isn't everything: it's the only thing!" piped subliminally into his nursery. His ultimate put- down of anyone who dares to disagree with him is "he's/she's a loser." Understandably, given this emphasis on winning, the word "compromise" has been deleted from his dictionary while "confrontation" has been printed in large, bold type. (Is there any other type than bold in Trump language?). Many people seem to admire Trump's win - at -all -costs attitude so if they copy his viewpoint there's going to be a lot more confrontation and a lot less compromise in everyday life. Hence the prosperous future for lawyers. There should be a startling increase in the demand for divorce lawyers, for instance. Those who have made a marriage work for a long period of time, know that you have to compromise. You can't win all the battles — unless one of the partners is willing to accept anything dished out to her. If, however, both partners, inspired by Trump, decide they must win every argument and have every decision go their way, there won't be very many marriages that last longer than a month. If a marriage does endure long enough to produce children, the win -at -all -cost parent is future? Be a lawyer. Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk in for an all-out war. Kids are notoriously self- centred and stubborn about getting their way — which is why so many people compare Trump to a spoiled child. There's aways been a tug of war between the kid who wants what he wants and parents who knew the kid shouldn't get it. This battle has been tipping towards the kids in recent decades as prosperity has taken away the easiest argument: "we can't afford it". Meanwhile the two -income family parenting model that brought about that prosperity has left parents worn down to the point they give in rather than fight. If, inspired by Trump, they begin insisting on winning these battles again, it's not going to be a pretty sight. Child - welfare advocates are likely to insist lawyers be hired to protect the interests of the "vulnerable" children. Parents in turn will need their own lawyers. Neighbourhoods are likely to change if two Trump -like neighbours move in side by side. Having someone blow the snow off your driveway? You'd better make sure none of it lands on my property or it's "see you in court"! Don't let the smoke from your barbecue drift into my yard and pollute my air! Your kid kicking the soccer ball better not let it land on my lawn or you'll hear from my lawyer! Donald Trump did promise good, middle- class jobs and if we all just act like him, we'll get lots of jobs among not just lawyers, but judges and all the staff it takes to keep the court system working. I mean he's certainly set the example himself, keeping several law firms busy either defending him and his companies from those who were suing him, or using the courts as a sledgehammer to bludgeon people who can't afford to match the clout of his expensive legal team. Trump's won so often that it must have been a shock to him when U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last week upheld the temporary injunction against his ban of visitors from seven Muslim countries. The President's tweeted reply was, as it has been so often in the past: "See you in court". No doubt the Trump presidency will make work for plenty of appeal court judges and lawyers arguing cases all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. But even employing as many lawyers as he does, Trump can only create so many jobs in the legal business. To really have an effect, we all need to be like Trump and decide to become winners. Those of us who accepted the wisdom of the Rolling Stones lyrics "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes well you might find you get what you need" will have to replace it with their more Trump -like anthem "I Can't Get No Satisfaction". If we all adopt Trump's winning attitude and never compromise, we'll not only create more jobs for lawyers but for police officers, emergency ward workers, prison guards and, eventually, soldiers. Rehashing the same old schtick Years ago, when I first started writing opinion columns for The Citizen, I wrote about the practice of providing gift baskets for medical professionals as a way of saying thank you for staying in the community. I wasn't for the practice, in case you didn't read or didn't remember the column, because I chose to work and live in Huron County after I had spent time training for a career at a school away from home. I felt that, if there was enough here to draw me in, that should be enough for the medical professionals. While the practice of giving away those gift baskets still doesn't sit well with me, what really bugged me was the fact that the organization that is responsible for them, the Wingham and Area Health Professionals Recruiting Committee, is a primarily taxpayer - funded group. This group, which this year wants $33,000 from North Huron, $7,700 from Morris- Turnberry, $941 from Ashfield-Colborne- Wawanosh, $7,802 from South Bruce and $13,076 from Huron -Kinloss to fund its activities, is responsible for attracting medical professionals to the area. Don't get me wrong, it's a noble goal to try and compete with bigger, better -equipped hospitals drawing medical professionals away from small-town medicine. However, I don't think that welcome baskets and other gifts are where an organization like that should be focusing its attention. That committee has two years' worth of operating funds saved in a reserve fund which, for those of you who don't read council minutes cover to cover like we do here in the editorial department, means there is approximately $150,000 sitting and waiting for a purpose. Most of the money the committee brings in is tax dollars from its member municipalities (as shown above). That means that most of that $150,000 is your tax dollars (if you are a property owner in one of Denny Scott Ai Denny's Den those municipalities). When I first wrote about this, back before I got married, started a family and maybe even before I was a taxpayer, I wrote about how frustrating it is that no fields other than medicine are recognized in such a way. Actually, I wrote about how I was still waiting for my welcome basket. Since then, you might say I've matured. You would probably be wrong, but you might say that. Now, I'm not wondering where my basket of trinkets purchased with taxpayer dollars is, I'm wondering why we aren't addressing the concerns that led to the troubles behind recruiting health professionals to the area. Why do we have a recruitment committee focused on attending conferences and spending $61,000 annually on a recruiter's salary and benefits? No really, that's what the committee pay for a professional recruiter who, for at least the last year, has no official tangible results. Heck, even a professional recruiter brought on to fill the director of emergency services was only estimated to cost $21,000 according to North Huron Chief Administrative Officer Sharon Chambers. Back to the issue though: why aren't we focusing on the underlying problems instead of spending money, to paraphrase a North Huron councillor, putting makeup on a pig? That $150,000 sitting in reserves could be used to upgrade aspects of the hospital and new medical campus being built in Wingham which, in my mind, will do far more to attract medical professionals than a recruiter ever could. That kind of money could definitely help with the approximately $11 million combined hospital redevelopment project being fundraised for by the Wingham and District Hospital Foundation. Think about it, would you rather do your job in an outdated office because someone told you how great a time you would have or would you rather see an office that's with the times because the money that's available is being focused on keeping the facility up-to-date. If you boil it down, finding a doctor wouldn't be that much different from finding someone to fill any other in -demand position. To borrow a line from a famous film, "if you build it, they will come." We don't need gift baskets and over -paid recruiters (and yeah, I'll go on record as saying anyone who gets paid $61,500 for nine months of work and produces nothing is overpaid) when we could take these tax dollars, these dollars that are from the people who make a living in this community, and use them to create a workplace and community deserving of doctors, rather than trying to convince people we have a workplace and community deserving of doctors. If my message of focusing on bettering the community to attract doctors is lost on councillors making these budget decisions, I will present an alternative: tie off the purse - strings until we see some results. Councillor Trevor Seip, during North Huron's recent discussion on this issue, hit the nail on the head — there needs to be an observable return on investment for the tens of thousands of dollars given to this committee. Let the group use that $150,000 for the next two years and, if they still can't produce the needed medical professionals for the area, make the tough decision and demolish and rebuild the group from the ground up with better municipal oversight and a focus on returns. It's what your ratepayers deserve. Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense Marking territory Just a few weeks ago I started a column with the same sentence I'm about to write: This is not the first time I have written about this, nor do I feel it will be the last. At the time, two weeks ago, I was writing about the concept of a single -tier government at the Huron County level, which had once again reared its ugly (in my opinion) head. Central Huron Council has voted to abolish its ward system. Now, I should point out, this vote is not yet final. The final vote on the proposal will happen at council's first meeting next month, set for Monday, March 6. I have written about this idea before because it's not new. It's not even new to Central Huron. It was just a number of years ago that they went from three wards down to two. Huron East Council has also discussed this several times, with a few councillors very keen to abolish the ward system. I have been consistent in my criticism of this proposal. Whether it be Central Huron, Huron East, Morris-Turnberry or my home of North Huron, I feel it is a bad idea. This insistence on stripping communities of their identities is one I'll never understand. These communities all have storied and proud histories and to sweep them all into the same dust bin is to do the same to that history. Sure, there will be people and historical records (such as The Citizen) that will remind new residents of the good old days, but with time those stories and identities will disappear. That's not the worst of it. With residents voting at -large we will have urban centre residents running the show. Just like we have in Ontario, the most populated areas have the most people, and therefore the most candidates, the most votes and the most say. Think of the role Huron County plays in Ontario. We have a population of about 60,000 compared to the 2.6 million people in Toronto — Over 6 million if we expand to include the GTA. Do Huron County residents feel like major players in Ontario's show? You would be hard-pressed to fmd a resident who will answer "yes" to that question. Residents of rural communities will see their representation diluted. They will have fewer candidates and fewer residents to vote for those candidates and soon they will have fewer decisions that take their concerns into account. I agree that the Municipal Act has complicated things. A loophole in the Act states that as long as a person is a resident of the municipality, he could run in any ward he wants. This could lead to people representing wards with which they are unfamiliar. In hosting an all -candidates meeting for the 2014 election, I had to give a cross-border candidate running in Blyth, directions to Memorial Hall. Do Blyth residents want someone who doesn't know where Memorial Hall is, making decisions that will affect their future? How connected was that person to the community he wanted to represent? In municipalities like Central Huron, Huron East and North Huron, life is so diverse from ward to ward. In Central Huron, for example, there is farmland, rural properties, lakeshore properties and an urban setting. All of those need to be governed differently. Wards are important. Elected representatives need to know their community and the people they serve. Lose the wards and you lose that sense of community and you have people from "away" governing you at an arm's length which is something we so despise at the provincial and federal levels. Don't do it at the local level. If councillors make these decisions, they have no one else to blame.