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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News Record, 2014-05-21, Page 44 News Record • Wednesday, May 21, 2014 www.clintonnewsrecord.com NewsCl Record PUBLISHED WEEKLY — EST. 1860 53 Albert St. P.O. Box 39 Clinton ON NOM 1L0 (519) 482-3443 www.clintonnewsrecord.com SUN MEDIA A Quebecor Media Company NEIL CLIFFORD Publisher nei I.clifford@sunmedia.ca MAX BICKFORD Advertising Manager max.bickford@sunmedia.ca DAWN JOHNSTON Sales Representative cl inton.ads@sunmedia.ca CHRISTY MAIR Front Office clinton.classifieds@sunmedia.ca SUBSCRIPTION RATES 1 YEAR $50.00 (47.62+2.38 GST) 2 YEAR $95.00 (90.48+4.52 GST) SENIORS 60 WEEKS $50.00 (47.62+2.38 GST) 120 WEEKS $95.00 (90.48+4.52 GST) Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, the advertising space occupied by the erroneous item together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged but that balance of advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. In the event of a Typographic error advertising goods or services at a wrong price, goods or services may not be sold. Advertising is merely an offer to sell, and may be withdrawn at any time. The Clinton News -Record is not responsible for the loss or damage of unsolicited manuscripts, photos or other materials used for reproducing purposes. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40064683 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 53 Albert St., Clinton ON NOM 1L0 (519) 482-3443 We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canadian Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities. Canada .43icna Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and the Ontario Community Newspapers Association Wynne's re-election tactics turn desperate So now we find out just how desperate Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne is to get re-elected. She's prepared to campaign on the backs of dead children and thousands of people who were sickened by an E. coli outbreak in Walker- ton in 2000. To take her campaign to that lovely little town on the Bruce Peninsula precisely 14 years to the day from that enormous tragedy is horrifically cynical. "It's important to recognize that decisions have consequences," Wynne said Thursday. "Safe drinking water is not an optional service." "The cutbacks of the 1990s contributed to this tragedy. There was a failure of oversight, a fail- ure of enforcement. Cuts have consequences. We need to learn from and avoid the mistakes of Ontario's past." For his part, PC leader Tim Hudak said he was "disappointed," in Wynne's tactics — and com- pared it to a McGuinty strategy. "I think we're all sad to see the premier of Ontario trying to take advantage of that for political gain," Hudak told reporters. Those of us who covered the events that occurred in Walkerton when E. coli contami- nated the water supply and seven people died will never forget that town's agony. I'll never forget the story of a family, which lost a toddler, a victim of the tainted water. How do you think they feel today being reminded of that terrible loss — purely for political purposes? And Wynne is rewriting history. It wasn't about privatization. The bottom line is that two unionized workers at the Walkerton public utility were fudging reports. They were more concerned about the temper- ature of the beer fridge in their office than the cleanliness of the water. As we heard during the inquiry, they failed to chlorinate the water because they believed peo- ple in the area preferred the natural flavour of the water without chlorine. A broken chlorina- tor was never fixed, tests were mislabelled. They were uneducated and unfit to do the job — and more than 2,000 people paid the price when they got sick. Stan and Frank Koebel admitted falsifying water safety tests and log sheets and failing to properly disinfect the town's drinking water. Stan got a year in jail and his brother got nine months house arrest for their roles in the tainted water tragedy. The well that was poisoned had been prob- lematic for decades. While it's true that Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor slammed the Tories in his exhaustive report — saying the Harris government's deci- sion not to require private labs to report con- taminated water findings to the environment ministry and medical officer of health as part of its privatization program post -1996 contributed to the scale of the disaster — the tragedy still would have happened. And Harris actually went to Walkerton after the report and took responsibility. Now Wynne is raking up all that heart- break, all that pain that the people of Walk- erton went through 14 years ago purely to make political points against her opponent. It tells me someone is flagging in the polls — and desperate to shore up support. Christina Blizzard letter to the editor Fraser Institute author says Canadian oil can make the world a safer place To the Editor; Given Canada's proximity to the United States, we tend to take our peace and secu- rity for granted. This comfortable distance from most of the world's violence has also led us to underestimate how useful Canada might be in defusing threats elsewhere using an item some people overlook as leverage: energy. Canadians might have a general sense that oil in particular, matters to world affairs; but given that Canada has never been a superpower, it has never been responsible for the wider world order to ensure that oil (or natural gas) flow to countries that need it. Given recent devel- opments at home and abroad, that blissful unawareness merits re -thinking. The world received a wake-up call recently in the form of Russian expansion- ism into Ukraine. A full history lesson is not possible here but Ukraine, as with much of central Europe, has had the misfortune to be at the crossroads of aggressors, and sometimes competing aggressors before. In his 2010 book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, historian Timo- thy Snyder recounted the full, tragic history of Ukraine and other nations in the region, being starved, trampled on, warred in, warred over and conquered between the two worlds wars by the Soviet Union and Germany. That's what can happen when a country is at the intersection of interna- tional currents and not, as Canada is, at the edge of a continent with a neighbour and ally with similar liberal democratic norms. I note Ukraine's tragic history because insofar as Canadians think about energy, we rarely think about its geostrategic importance, at least not in relation to Can- ada. But more energy exports from this country might, at least in the medium to long-term, help some countries escape from dependence on Russian energy supplies. At present, on average, European Union countries are dependent upon Russia for one-third of their imported natural gas supplies. The dependency ranges from a high of 92 per cent in Lithuania to one per cent dependency in Ireland. Some major EU economies are highly dependent on Russian gas, such as France (17 per cent) Italy (28 per cent), Germany (30 per cent) and the Netherlands (34 per cent). European governments not only accept this, they've rejected competitors (such as Canada) on spurious grounds. Over the last several years, some politi- cians in the European Union in particular have been actively trashing Canadian oil over the bogus claims of climate activists. Thus, when I wrote of the benefits of Cana- dian energy for world affairs a few years back in a Brussels -based newspaper, anti - oil politicians in Europe replied, denounc- ing oil sands oil because of carbon emissions. But as Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird recently observed, Russian adventurism in Ukraine means at least some Europeans might shift their views on Canadian oil, while on natural gas in particular, addi- tional Canadian -based companies might export more to that region. Single -interest groups and politicians, though, often miss the deeper tectonic real- ity occurring around them. That reality just reared its ugly head once again with the trouble in Ukraine. Dependence on liberal democracies is good and helpful for a sta- ble world; dependence on corrupt autocra- CONTINUED > PAGE 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The News Record welcomes letters to the editor. All letters must be signed and include a daytime phone number for verification purposes. 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