The Citizen, 2015-12-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2015. PAGE 5.
Sean Terala seemed like a nice enough
guy – but would a ‘nice guy’ run
across the room at a party and
knock down an innocent woman, breaking her
wrist? Jennifer Connell didn’t think so.
She’s the woman Sean Terala knocked down –
and she’s sued him for damages – $127,000
worth.
But life is seldom as simple as the bare
bones of a story would suggest. There were, as
they say, extenuating circumstances. For one
thing, Jennifer Connell is Sean Terala’s aunt.
And the ‘assault’ occurred at Sean’s birthday
party.
His eighth birthday party.
It happened like this: Sean was trying out his
brand new bicycle – his first two-wheeler –
when Ms. Connell arrived at the party.
When he saw her, Sean dropped his
bicycle, yelled “Auntie Jen, Auntie Jen!”
and ran across the room to hug her. “I
remember him shouting ‘Auntie Jen, I love
you!’” says Ms. Connell, “and there he was,
flying at me”. They met, she fell, her wrist
snapped, she sued.
Which is how an 11-year-old kid (the
accident happened three years ago) wound up
sitting in a New York courtroom, beside his
father, facing the full majesty of U.S.
jurisprudence. The judge threw out the case,
but a reporter noted that the boy appeared
‘confused’.
No, really?
I suspect a lot of schoolkids are feeling a tad
confused about the whole question of violence,
real and perceived. They see their dads
cheering themselves hoarse as 250-pound
linebackers hurl themselves at each other,
mayhem aforethought; then they go to schools
where a policy of ‘zero tolerance’ for any kind
of aggressive play is in force. No
roughhousing, no tag, no dodgeball, no
pretending to be The Green Lantern or Wonder
Woman.
There is a word for this educational policy.
The word is ‘stupid’.
In Britain a Parliamentary subcommittee has
released a report concluding that ‘no risk’
schoolyard behaviour is in fact, misguided.
“Risky play,” the report says, “involving
perhaps rough and tumble, height, speed,
playing near potentially dangerous elements
such as water, cliffs and exploring alone with
the possibility of getting lost, gives children a
feeling of thrill and excitement.”
Risk, concludes the report, is an essential
component of a balanced childhood. Yes, there
will be cuts, scrapes, bruises, panics and
maybe even fights.
You know – like in real life.
Kids learn from that. They learn how to
communicate, how to win – and lose. How to
follow the rules and the consequences of not
following the rules. They learn how their
bodies move and how to channel their
aggression into acceptable competition, rather
than naked domination.
But more than that, studies show that
denying kids those experiences is actually
counterproductive. Kids who don’t get to
‘bleed off’ their natural aggression on the
basketball court or the soccer field actually
tend to be more violent in later life.
Children, the report concludes, actually need
to take risks.
My question: how did we become so dumb
that we needed a parliamentary subcommittee
to tell us of that?
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Just over a month ago I wrote about how
scary the Hydro One cost increases were,
especially given how poor of service the
utility provides to Blyth. Little did I know that
there were significant problems across the
board for the formerly-completely-publically-
owned utility.
While I still hold that Blyth has some of the
worst electrical service I have ever
experienced in my life, apparently Hydro One
has been failing its customers across the board
according to the 2015 Annual Report of the
Office of the Auditor General.
The 780-page document is available for your
perusal online at www.auditor.on.ca and it
shows how the provincial government (and
don’t misread that as Liberal government,
since many of the problems are likely legacy
issues inherited by several different govern-
ments) has failed the people it represents.
Feel free to call me a one-trick pony if you
must, but I’m going to focus on Hydro One
herein because, to be honest, to try and
encapsulate the summaries from the 780 pages
of information is not only beyond the space I
have here, but likely beyond my
comprehension in some places. Fortunately for
me, however, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk
and her office have done a fairly good job of
surveying Hydro One and summarizing the
problems they are running into.
“Hydro One’s customers... have a power
system for which reliability is worsening while
costs are increasing. Customers are
experiencing more frequent power outages,
largely due to an asset management program
that is not effective or timely in maintaining
assets or replacing aging equipment, and an
untimely vegetation-management program
that has not been effectively reducing the
number of outages caused by trees.” (2015
Annual Report of the Office of the Auditor
General of Ontario Page 248)
There it is, in black and white. Hydro One’s
services are lacking to say the least while
prices (in my opinion) have skyrocketed.
Getting down to brass tacks, things really are
getting worse for the company which has
recently been looked at by the Premier
Kathleen Wynne and Liberal provincial
government as something to be parcelled off to
generate income.
According to the report, over five years, the
number of outages have increased 24 per cent
and are lasting 30 per cent longer. Over that
same five-year period, Hydro One’s costs to
maintain the transmission system have
increased by 31 per cent.
The amount of work necessary to bring the
system into good working order has also
increased substantially.
The company’s preventative maintenance
order backlog the company has increased by
47 per cent over the last four years from 3,211
orders to 4,730. The cost for meeting those
orders has grown 36 per cent, from $6.1
million to $8.3 million.
For me the real kicker is that Hydro One is
lying so it can continue to gouge customers.
Those are pretty big and bold words (that
could be considered libelous if it weren’t for
the fact that the company has been caught with
its pants down).
According to the report, Hydro One has not
been replacing “very high-risk assets” despite
the fact that it uses the cost of replacing those
high-risk assets when applying to increase it
rates from the Ontario Energy Board (OEB).
“We found Hydro One was not replacing
assets it determined were in very poor
condition and at very high risk of failing, and
it used these assets in successive rate
applications to the Ontario Energy Board to
justify and receive rate increases. Power
transformers that are identified as being in
very poor condition should be replaced at the
earliest time possible; however, Hydro One
replaced only four of the 18 power
transformers it deemed to be in very poor
condition in its 2013-2014 application used to
obtain rate increases and instead replaced
other old transformers rated in better
condition. These transformers are at a higher
risk to fail, and we found two power
transformers being rated in very poor
condition and resulted in outages to customers
lasting 200 minutes in 2013 and 220 minutes
in 2015.”
The report goes on to state that in a similar
application for rate increases for 2015-2016,
Hydro One listed 34 power transformers at
“very high risk” but failed to disclose that only
eight were slated for replacement. The
decision will result in Hydro One having to
seek $148 million more in the future to replace
those 26 remaining transformers.
Add to the above information the fact that
the information provided by Hydro One to the
Ontario Energy Board was inaccurate to begin
with and it’s starting to appear that privatizing
the electricity industry was a horrible idea to
begin with. The report indicates that 27 of the
41 transformers replaced in 2013 and 2014
were not properly identified.
The company also utilizes internal
employees for up to 55 per cent of project
costs according to the report, however “it does
not regularly analyze or benchmark its internal
costs to industry standards to assess whether
they are reasonable.”
What does that mean? Well you know when
people joke about the government spending
hundreds of dollars on a hammer or thousands
on a toilet seat? That lack of benchmarking is
what can actually result in ratepayers footing
bills 10 times higher than they should be.
All said and done, Hydro One ratepayers
have forked out $37 billion more than they
should have between 2006 and 2014.
I won’t delve any further into the report
because, well, I really don’t have to. Hydro
One is not doing its job. It’s increasing prices
while decreasing service.
While I’m not going to suggest setting aside
the weekend (and likely then some) to pour
through the document, I will say that, as
taxpayers, it’s on Ontarians to be aware of
these kinds of reports and what they cover,
even if you only read the summaries of each
thing reviewed in the report.
These are the kinds of issues that taxpayers
should be worried about, not whether Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau is entitled to having
his childcare paid for or not.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Tiered terrorism
As 14 more people lost their lives and
others were injured as a result of gun
violence, the first question being asked
on various news outlets was whether or not the
perpetrators were terrorists.
The news anchor was asking someone on
scene if there were any indications that those
who shot dozens of people at a San Bernardino
centre for those with developmental
disabilities was a terrorist and to me the
immediacy to jump to that question – knowing
that the anchor is clearly driving at the post-
9/11, ISIS definition of a terrorist – made me
ask myself who exactly is a terrorist?
To me, someone who kills 14 people in an
unprovoked attack is a terrorist. I don’t need to
know their name or their background. Yes, it is
of interest to me if the shooters have ties to
ISIS, as is apparently now being reported, but
with the number of gun deaths in the U.S.
these days, terrorism, it seems, is becoming
some sort of sick qualifier – whether it be for
the situation’s importance as a news story or
where we should place it on our fear meter.
It’s as if someone who kills 14 people is bad,
but if they’re not “a terrorist” then it’s just bad,
not horrible. If it’s terrorism, then it’s a whole
different kettle of fish and we should be very
afraid – whereas if it’s a random act of
violence that took the same number of lives,
we can wrap ourselves in that fact like a warm,
safe blanket, content that it won’t happen
again; that it was just that one time and it’s
over now.
Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old man who
killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, was
a terrorist, simply because he wasn’t Muslim
and he wasn’t radicalized or extremist – all of
these terrorism buzz words being thrown
around these days – doesn’t change that.
On Friday, the New York Daily News
declared Wayne LaPierre, leader of the
National Rifle Association (NRA), a terrorist.
The newspaper listed LaPierre alongside
Lanza, as well as Syed Farook, the San
Bernardino shooter, and a number of other
shooters, labelling them all as terrorists.
The thing they have in common is that
they’ve all killed large groups of people (with
the notable exception of LaPierre – however
the newspaper is of the opinion that he has
indirectly done so through his pro-gun stance
and the NRA’s platform). What they don’t have
in common are things like Islam, extremism
and being radicalized.
While I hate to agree with the notoriously-
sensational New York Daily News, it does ask
an important question: who is a terrorist?
This debate comes at a crucial time for
Canada, the U.S. and, really, the world, as
Syrian refugees seek safety in other countries
around the world. This may be the most
divisive issue I’ve seen in the last 10 years.
There are those who want to open their hearts,
and their country, to those in need and there are
others who are convinced that the refugee
crisis is an elaborate plot by terrorist
organizations to sneak people into countries all
over the world and essentially start World War
III (if it isn’t already in its infant stages with
ISIS and Russia circling the wagons).
I guess what I’m getting at is that there
shouldn’t be a tiered system when it comes to
terror. One kind of terror isn’t worse than
another and one incident certainly shouldn’t
serve to grab our attention more than another
simply because the shooter meets some sort of
criteria. What happens then is that the life of
one victim becomes more important than
another, which is a dangerous precedent to set.
Other Views
Kids at play: a dangerous species
‘I told you so’ sucks as an adult