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Dear Editor
The Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW), Owen Sound and Area, took the time and made the effort to bring to our M.P.'s attention that the 2015 Federal Budget did not have much content that addressed the needs of women.
CFUW's mandate is to improve the lives of women and girls, especially through making education, job opportunities, contraception and child care financially and physically accessible.
Concerning education, CFUW explained the need for more Transfer Payments to the Provinces, earmarked for post-secondary education, resulting in lower fees for students. The M.P.'s office did not reply to this request but skirted the issue by describing the amount of money that the federal government is transferring to the provinces and that 'it will continue to grow moving forward.'. Not a satisfactory or relevant reply. The other measures, including the Red Seal and Blue Seal Apprenticeship Certification deal with heavy equipment training, the trades, and are mostly male oriented. Not a good example.
There was no specificity in the reply to our request for measures to ensure the economic security of women.
We had a very specific request concerning public housing, that Housing First's (a program to provide housing for homeless people) financial support not decrease funding for Women's Shelters. The response was ...
Dear Editor
Living in Grey/Bruce, given the space we feel around us, it's hard to get a handle on world population. What does it mean to have 7.3 billion people in the world when you live in our counties? Well, in thinking about it, I decided to consider population density. In Grey/Bruce we have on average 47 people per square mile. While we have folks clustered in smaller areas like Owen Sound, if you spread them out, that kind of makes sense. So what is the population density of the earth? If we take only the arable (capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops) portion of the earth, the population density is 1,354 people per square mile, almost 30X more.
That means, if we wanted to be fair and took our "share" of the world's population, we would have 4.5 million people living in Bruce/Grey. Sounds to me like a scary number and a situation I would never want to face. With 4.5 million people, we would quickly wipe out many of our resources and be in trouble in very big ways.
I personally like the size and space of things up here so I then wondered...
Dear Editor,
Hello, my name is Dawn. I wanted to share my experience with you and your readers.
Let me preface this with I am not looking to induce an ethical debate. For or against doesn't matter to me when relaying my experience to you.
Yesterday I took my 8 year old son to an appointment at LCSC Childrens Hospital. We stayed at the Lamplighter, (which is a fun place for kids, I may add). After my son's appointment, the hotel shuttle picked us up.
On our way back to the hotel, we were approaching an intersection. I wasn't paying attention, until my son screamed "Oh my God!! Is that a ripped up baby?" The attached image is what my baby, and the general public, saw outside a Children's Hospital.
Mr Miller responded to comments I made in the press recently regarding the impact of the Trans-Pacific Parternship trade talks on Bruce Grey farmers; however, he seems to have misread or misheard what I said. For example, I did not say free trade was against Canadian interests. We in the NDP believe trade with other countries is very much in our interest. However, I did ask our MP whether the TPP would hurt some of our farmers in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound.
Mr Miller's answer is an emphatic: "Trust us."
Hmmm ... I seem to remember promises of Senate reform and getting Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau instead. And veterans coming home wounded only to be snubbed by a Cabinet Minister. I remember commitments to bring well-paying jobs to communities outside Alberta. And I see a 'Universal' Child Care Benefit glad-handed out before the election only to be taxed into a pittance after.
If our government won't tell us what they're doing, we are forced to rely on news reports and economic analysis. According to those, some from other countries, Canada will have to give up supply management to get a deal. There seems very little doubt about that.
OPEN LETTER TO MR. MILLER, MP.
The media is still writing about Mr. Duffy's supposedly fraudulent spending of thousands of dollars, but very rarely about Auditor General Mr. Michael Ferguson's spending of $23.5 millions of taxpayer money to find $991,917 in supposedly illegal Senate spending. This means 23.7 times more for the investigation than the actual benefit. Only in Canada? Mr. Ferguson's enquiry cost is an insult to hard working taxpayers, it is outrageous and ludicrous. He has abused the public trust. One "good" from the study: it exposes the greed and waste of our overpaid high level bureaucrats.
The auditor general should be investigated for the excessive spending of $23 millions. I think that a competent accounting firm, in the real world, could do the auditing for less than one half of a million, still a lot in comparison to the benefit. Beside, the RCMP has already uncovered most of the senator's falseexpense claims at a (hopefully) much more reasonable cost.
Did Mr. Ferguson himself benefit from all those millions? Were there other beneficiaries? In comparison, a senator makes $138, 700 per year, a total for the 105 senators amounts to 14.5 millions per year, well below Mr. Ferguson's spending for just an investigation!!
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