Winter at Last

Allan Gardens: Early morning, late January

This week I had the mixed pleasure of attending a meeting at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) conference, held this year at the Sheraton Hotel on Queen Street West.

Mixed, because while it is always nice to get out of the office, there's no real role for public servants at these meetings.

These are meetings of cabinet ministers -- in this case the ministers of Agriculture, Infrastructure and Municipal Affairs -- and constituents -- in this case a consortium of mayors and reeves from eastern Ontario who wanted to talk about gaps in cell service. There are stretches of lonely country road in their part of the province where you may be able to drive your car into a ditch, but, once you have so done, you will not be able to call 911.

No for-profit provider of cell services can make any money extending service to these areas, so the representatives of the rugged, independent, small-government-tax-cut-and-Doug-Ford-supporting scions of ex-urban and rural Ontario gather in the presence of aforesaid Ministers and ask for a handout largely financed by latte-liberals like me who live in areas of sufficiently high density that we pay for our own cell service. And now we will pay for theirs too. (If you click through to the video of Doug Ford, his speech starts at about 3m40s).

I have nothing to do with cell coverage in my day job, but there was a small chance someone at this meeting might ask a question about the similarly high-density-settlement-subsidized natural gas expansion program that the ministers either would not know, or could not fake, the answer to. 

But, ministers can always fake an answer, so I was just room meat, along with a couple of dozen others, straining to hear the conversation of people sitting ten feet away, half of them with their backs to me.

The meeting was symbolic. After greetings jocular enough for the Elk's Lodge, the mayors gave a presentation to the ministers that the ministers had already seen. Then the ministers made statements that they had already made the day before. This was a disciplined, staged, foregone conclusion of a meeting.

After the meeting was all but over, talk turned to a recent reversal of proposed changes to planning law. In a trust-building show of candid vulnerability, one of the ministers admitted that they had let the messaging get away from them. They wouldn't make that mistake again. "The environmentalists," said the minister, "set the story in the paper. But I want to assure you," he continued, earnestly, "that we govern for the majority."

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

26 cm of snow
on the back patio