Unhelpful Help
December 6, 2025
Years ago, while in a Zoom meeting, a fellow libertarian told me about a conversation he had with a friend who, despite being like-minded politically, was voting for a Liberal MP in his riding.
“Why are you voting for him?” he asked.
“Because he was so helpful,” the friend replied.
“What did he help you with?”
“He helped me get around all the regulations,” the friend said, even though it was the same Liberal government the MP represented that created all those regulations.
Fast forward to present day.
The City of St. Catharines (read: unionized staff acting without the consent of your “elected” officials) recently announced a month-long promotion for three hours of free weekday parking downtown. Just enter a special promo code in their HONK app, they said.
“St. Catharines Downtown Association executive director Kat Dodge says they want every visitor to feel welcome and cared for when visiting the downtown core this season,” was one of the lines in the press release.
Of course, this all begs the question as to who actually wants to visit the downtown core at all, let alone pay for the privilege. But I digress. In any event, being forced to use an app to park hardly screams “feeling welcome and cared for.” You don’t need an app to park at Fairview Mall or the Pen Center. To say the least, Dodge really missed the boat on that one. Once again, rather than sticking up for her involuntary members and lobbying for the removal of the smartphone-only parking racket the staff have been shoving down our throats, she just parrots the staff’s narrative like a good little girl. One can only wonder whose side she’s on. People like her need reminding that BIA stands for Business Improvement Area, not Business Insolvency Accelerator.
No doubt, when posting the details of this promotion on Facebook, the staff expected a flood of gratitude for their “help.” Instead, they got a firestorm of negative comments. Clearly, I’m not the only one who feels this way. The censors kept reaching out. “We’re here to help,” they said.
While reading those comments and adding a few of my own for the staff to hide, for some reason, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the aforementioned conversation.
This “promotion” is the equivalent of the staff erecting a 10-foot-high barbed-wire, chain-link fence around the downtown and then expecting people like you and me to be eternally grateful to them for helping us scale the fence.
But if they were really trying to help, they’d get rid of the fence entirely.
Naturally, after reading this, one might ask where is Mat Sendzcoe Siscoe in all this? You know, the man who occupies the office of mayor. One of his jobs is to provide oversight of the staff on our behalf. A good mayor would have something to say. Maybe even overrule the staff’s edict.
But as we’ve long since learned, Sendzcoe Siscoe is anything but a good mayor. All we’ve heard from him are the sounds of crickets. That and a few selfies. He’s good for that. Nothing else.
In the end, this is just one more prime example as to why we need to start giving a shit on election day.
We can’t afford another term of this useless vassal of the staff.
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