Random Thoughts – Omar Khadr, Minimum Wage, Our Mayor and More
July 17, 2017
1. I don’t know what’s worse, Justin Trudeau giving $10 million of our money to a terrorist or those who still defend our adolescent prime minister.
2. As the Ontario Liberals prepare to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour, the silence from the mayor’s office has been deafening. If you may recall, Walter Sendzik campaigned on a pro-business platform and regularly posts selfies of himself together with small business owners, the group that will be hardest hit by an increase in the minimum wage.
While it is true that minimum wage is not a municipal issue, he never hesitates to add his two cents worth on Liberal-endorsed hot-button topics like climate change that fall well out of the scope of municipal politics. So it would hardly be inappropriate for him to issue a strong show of support for the small business owners in St. Catharines. Instead, he pleads the Fifth, proving once again that when it comes to sticking up for his city or sticking up for the Liberals, the latter shall prevail.
2a. In a recent edition of the sub-Standard, Doug Herod opined that he didn’t expect Sendzik to get any serious challengers should he seek a second term. I seriously hope he’s wrong. Sendzik used to be a great ambassador for the city. Nowadays, he's just an increasingly annoying ambassador for the Liberals.
3. I find it interesting how Sendzik becomes so full of righteous indignation when Donald Trump pulls out of the Paris climate accord, a non-binding agreement that the U.S. government never even approved, yet he suddenly clams up when his BFF Justin gives $10 million to a terrorist.
4. In the latest issue of the Garden City Current, the city advises any citizen who witnesses someone in the act of painting graffiti to call 911. You can imagine the shock I felt as someone who has lived most of his life in a city where a pedestrian being hit and nearly killed by a car isn't even deemed a reportable offense. Yes, I’m still bitter.
5. A rotund woman passed me on the trail north of Allanburg yesterday. As she went by, I thought I smelled cookies. Eau de Oreo, perhaps.
6. In the nearly three years since leaving the SPRM, I have put on over 8,920 miles on two wheels. In those travels, I have visited every Niagara municipality in addition to Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville and 14 different municipalities spread across two counties in the Great State of New York.
6a. Don’t ask me what that figure is in kilometers. I don’t do Trudeau-metric.
7. I recently reviewed the 43-page document the Region provided regarding the proposed GO hub at the St. Catharines train station. There were plenty of flowery pictures, but not a single word on making the station less inaccessible via public transit. As things currently stand, it would probably take me longer to get to the train station than it would to get to Burlington from there. I’m getting the feeling that this issue isn’t going to be seriously addressed until years after the first trains roll in. If, in fact, they ever do.
7a. I would have loved to have gone to the open house last month if it wasn’t for the fact that it was held near that same difficult-to-access train station.
7b. Has anyone on the committee looking at the GO hub ever used public transit?
8. Tell me that the Nevada parole board is not about to release O.J. Simpson. Please.
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