Cam Guthrie

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It’s a good thing that baseball season opened today. For one thing, it is the officially legislated first day of summer, but that’s not the only reason. The Blue Jays are about to show us how well a minor league all-star team can compete in the bigs. That will take our minds off all the ugly stuff happening in the big bad world of politics. There are a lot of things pissing me off these days and they all have a common cause. Common cause starts with C and that stands for Conservatives. Scratch the surface of any bit of political nastiness and you willRead More →

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I have family members in four different countries, and they are all a mess. Not the family members, the countries. Or three of them. I don’t pay very much attention to Australia. One of my nieces is there on a student visa that runs out soon. She’s nearly finished a PhD in some electrical engineering thing and will be coming home to Canada before too long. It’s the other three countries I worry about. Canada, the United States, and not-so-Great-these-days Britain. They are all run by people who pretend to work for the citizens but really do the opposite. Whatever they do to make thingsRead More →

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On Christmas Eve, Lynne and I watched the Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. It’s something we try to do every year. It is based on a novel Charles Dickens wrote in 1843 and has a lot to do with poverty. Early in the story, a pair of bleeding-heart liberals come to Ebenezer Scrooge’s office raising money for poverty relief. Are there no prisons? Scrooge asks. Are there no workhouses? He sends them away empty-handed. Later, the Ghost of Christmas Present shows him two starving children. The boy is Ignorance, the ghost tells Scrooge, and the girl is Want. Society should beware them both,Read More →

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With less than two weeks left until the City Council election we see some ballot box issues crystallizing. These are the issues that candidates hope will be front of mind when you stand at the ballot box on October 22. Let’s look at some of them. Experience Should this be a deciding factor in our choice of Mayor? Experience on Council is important, but so is real life experience outside city hall. Managing the city is not in the Mayor’s job description. The Mayor chairs meetings and leads the governance process. City Council hires a Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to manage the city. The CAORead More →