Just who exactly is or was Your Voice for Bolton?

This supposed citizen’s group, apparently representing a handful of residents and business owners in Bolton has been claiming to be the “Voice” for Bolton over the past several years. But who exactly are they? In response to their antagonistic stance towards the Town of Caledon on many issues, other citizens have declared that this organization is certainly NOT their voice for Bolton or Caledon.

Over the past ten years, it appears that only one development corporation, one local politician and one local lobby group have opposed the new Canadian Tire Facility and Bolton Residential Expansion Study (BRES) Option 3. That’s not a voice for Bolton that sounds entirely inclusive, respectful or representative. The decision to go ahead with the Canadian Tire Facility in Bolton was approved by both the Town and the Province of Ontario. It seems like all of this “Voice” has more to do with litigious land development speculation interests around BRES Option 6 in the south of Bolton for the benefit of a few rather than the long-term economic and environmental benefits for the whole of Bolton and Caledon’s citizens.

As far as Your Voice for Bolton (YVFB) is concerned, there are only occasional pronouncements now from Kim Seipt, the Treasurer of the “incorporated grass roots community group”. However, their raison d’etre has come and gone with the building of the new Canadian Tire Facility, and so apparently has much of their membership.  At the BRES Pre Hearing Conference this past September, Ms. Seipt assured the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) that “Your Voice for Bolton” was still an incorporated entity.

However, calls to Service Canada and Service Ontario on March 9, 2018, revealed that the Your Voice for Bolton Incorporation status, #001893501, is also gone, dissolved on December 4, 2015 by the Service Ontario Companies Branch due to lack of communication.  Possibly unaware of that fact, the group was still identifying itself as “incorporated” in official documents on September 25, 2017. As of the time of this publication, the “incorporated entity” had yet to be revived, and current membership numbers, if any, yet to be confirmed.

Originally formed to lobby against the new Canadian Tire Distribution Centre, the “group” has now turned its attention to lobbying against the Town of Caledon regarding employment land designations in Bolton. Specifically, the BRES Option choices that are now the subject of the OMB Case No.: PL170058.

In this case, YVFB spokesperson Kim Seipt is a participant at the OMB pre-hearings, supporting the Region of Peel decision against the Town of Caledon.  The group, which numbered roughly 250 at the peak of their Canadian Tire protests, claims to be made up of “concerned residents of Bolton, residing and/or operating businesses in the community.” However, the Canadian Tire Facility has been up and operating at full capacity for some time now and nary a whisper from those “concerned citizens” about the horrors that YVFB predicted.

In fact, the only time any controversy emerged lately was over misleading information discussed at a meeting held by Regional Councillor Annette Groves that the Canadian Tire Facility was running a Town financed shuttle bus service to bring workers in from Brampton. That turned out to be as false as the “hydrogen bomb” scare first reported in 2014 by Toronto Star urban affairs reporter San Grewal (Grewal is no longer employed by the Star).

Canadian Tire reintroduced the hydrogen fuel cell project in 2016 and again Grewal stoked fears about “hazardous” hydrogen, reporting that residents were “angry” and “shocked’ to learn the plan had been approved. He reported that “Kim Seipt, the spokesperson for the group Your Voice for Bolton, where the facility is located, said her members are ‘incredibly disappointed’ that the hydrogen plan might get pushed through without a public approval process” for “a potentially dangerous facility like this.”

Keep in mind, YVFB was already unincorporated at this time, and no public consultation process was needed to approve the future use of very safe  hydrogen fuel at the Canadian Tire Distribution Centre. This remains a perfect example of how to use sloppy, misinformed and incendiary “news” reporting to manufacture a crisis.

Regional Councillor Groves was also quoted in Grewal’s 2016 article as saying, “I am disappointed with the way the town (of Caledon) is handling this again.” She must have been very disappointed because she was also the only Caledon Regional Councillor to vote against the Town of Caledon at the Region of Peel. The 2016 BRES vote led to the current OMB case pitting Caledon against the Region of Peel. Groves chose to support YVFB and Option 6 over the Town of Caledon’s choice of Option 3.

It seems that a few people do not like the Canadian Tire Facility or the Town’s idea of employment lands anywhere close to some of the BRES lands in south Bolton, particularly anything that might interfere with residential development in Option 6 near Mayfield and Coleraine. If you are involved in land development, real estate and home design you want as much residential development as you can get. Employment lands just don’t pull in the big bucks that come with rows of ticky-tacky little houses. However, the Town of Caledon is about much more than one development project.

The trained and talented engineers and urban planning professionals from the Town of Caledon staff spent ten years deciding that the Option 3 land further north was the best bet for the Town. They looked long term with real fiduciary responsibility to the benefits of building infrastructure linking the south to the higher land north using today’s dollars. Start with Option 3 and then plug in to the already built sewer and water and energy infrastructure as we move south from Castlederg and Gore Road to Mayfield Road and Coleraine.

That would put Option 6 last on the development list, and that would make certain vested interests very frustrated. And that frustration needs a voice. On the other hand, the majority of citizens who think our Town planners did a fine job over the last ten years in carefully choosing Option 3 believe it is better that the BRES be done wisely and well for the good of us all, rather than rush into a decision that benefits only a few.

Now, I was wrong about Trump and Ford (never thought they’d get elected to positions of “leadership”), so I may have missed something here. But there is a history and a pattern that connects land development to profit, power, privilege and politics. And not necessarily for the good of “the people”.

The way I see it.

***

Skid Crease  (originally published as an opinion editorial for Just Sayin’ Caledon)

p.s. The new Canadian Tire Facility in Bolton will be holding an Open House this spring … for all of our citizens.

Note: Requests to Kim Seipt and Your Voice for Bolton for an updated membership list and executives list had not been answered by the time of publication.

On February 22, 2018, Bill Rea, the Editor of the Caledon Citizen, published an opinion commentary on bullying, gun violence and gun control, titled “No Easy Answers” in which he asked a final question: “Who’s got a solution?”

Well, Bill, I have a really easy solution. And it comes straight from the student survivors of the Parkland shootings who witnessed the murders of seventeen of their classmates and teachers. Ban assault weapons and bump fire stock accessories, eliminate multi round magazines, improve and enforce background checks, and raise the age of purchase for any firearm to 21. For starters. Immediately. The students may not have had a solution to teenage angst and anger, but they sure had a solution to gun violence. Control access to the guns!

This will not eliminate bullying and psychopathic behaviour. That takes a societal change in parenting and mental health support. The underlying causes of what drives a person to commit acts of violence against others are rooted in poverty, isolation, depression, and anger that “the system” is rigged, the poor get poorer, my firing or expulsion is someone else’s fault, and I’m not gonna take it anymore! As author Issac Asimov so eloquently noted, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

The shootings took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018. Seventeen were killed and seventeen wounded by bullets fired by a 19-year-old former student using an AR-15 style assault rifle that he had purchased the previous February. Over the past year, he had legally purchased ten rifles including the one he used to murder seventeen of his former classmates and teachers.

In the outpouring of national grief and calls for gun control that followed the murders, there arose a clarion call from The National Rifle Association (NRA) defending the right of Americans “to bear arms” as protected by the 2^nd Amendment of their Constitution.

So, a little history lesson is in order. First, the Second Amendment was an amendment and needs to be amended for the 21st century. When it was written in 1791, the most advanced rifle of the time was the Kentucky long rifle. I say, let every American over 21 carry one of those – no questions asked. When they run out of their two musket balls they can beat each other.

Secondly, the amendment was also designed to give the American people a protective militia until such time as the colonies had a standing army. Last time I checked, the U.S. had formed a regular Army after they lost the War of 1812 to Tecumseh and the British. And the official U.S. Army we know today was formed in 1917 by the United States War Department. Today the U.S.A. has a National Guard and a standing military and no reason for every NRA loving American to carry an assault rifle. So, the need for the Second Amendment has come and gone – get rid of it. There’s a solution.

Thirdly, ban the NRA from any political lobbying and send Wayne LaPierre to Tai Chi classes.

On Friday, March 9, 2018, Rick Scott, the Governor of the State of Florida, signed into law a bill raising the purchase age for firearms from 18 to 21. Other provisions of the law include banning the sale or possession of bump fire stocks, giving law enforcement greater power to seize weapons and ammunition from those deemed mentally unfit, and additional funding for either training and arming select school teachers, or using those funds to hire more armed school resource officers.

The NRA, of course, promptly sued the State of Florida, citing the 2^nd (right to bear arms) and 14^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (the 14^th granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War – the NRA contends their “right to own property” covers assault weapons).

Some in Canada tried to characterize this as an Urban/Rural issue regarding gun ownership. Not so. No hunter or farmer in his or her right mind needs an automatic multi-round magazine military assault weapon to bring home the meat or chase away the varmits. You use weapons like this to kill people. Just be grateful, Bill, that the boy you bullied in school didn’t carry an AR-15.

That is entirely what this discussion is about and the solution is easy, Bill.

***

Skid Crease, Caledon

 *Image of a Kentucky Long Rifle from medievalcollectables.com

There is a certain sense of Alanis Morissette irony in watching two NDP provincial governments bicker over oil pipeline approvals. Alberta on the one hand is trying to defend the construction of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline for economic and employment reasons, and British Columbia is trying to stop the pipeline to protect their Pacific coast for ecological and cultural reasons.  When the right wing flow of Big Oil money hits the left turning paddle wheel of environmental ideology, the NDP provincial grist mill grinds to a halt. Well, if you won’t pipeline our AB oil, we won’t drink your BC wine!

So much for left of centre eco-governance. Well, unless we look to the recent statements of national NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. At the latest federal NDP gathering, he said that his fight wasn’t with the two feuding NDP provincial premiers, rather: “My fight is with the Prime Minister who promised to overhaul our environmental assessment process.” At the same time, he also endorsed the Leap Manifesto. An endorsement that left British Columbia smiling and Alberta stuck in the tar sands.

The Manifesto, spearheaded by Stephen Lewis’ son, Avi, and Naomi Klein, calls for an overhaul of the capitalist economy to wean the country quickly off fossil fuels. While Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley was telling delegates that pipelines are crucial to revive Alberta’s resource-based economy, among other things, the federal manifesto calls for no new pipelines. The “Leap” is really a reworking of then Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s “Green Shift” – a quest to move Canada from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy economy. Lest we forget, that put the federal Liberals into an election that saw the party abandon Dion faster than the Ontario PCs dumped Patrick Brown. And that led to eight years of the Harper regime.

Fast forward to the federal Liberals of today, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is also caught between the sticky bitumen and a hard place, trying to defend his mantra of environmental sustainability and economic security balanced peacefully in a consensual partnership. The problem is that the male economics of Big Oil have a long history of abusing the female ecosystems of Earth, and the environment is now saying “Me Too!”

Jagmeet Singh is absolutely correct; the Prime Minister seems to have forgotten a promise to clean out the National Energy Board of its Harper era appointees, and replace the pipeline approval process with a scientific fact-based analysis involving full participation from all local communities, particularly First Peoples. A promise broken is a trust lost, as the young protester at a BC Town Hall scrum recently reminded the PM. To which he angrily responded, “Really?” And had the protester removed.

Yes, “Really!” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. You made all of Canada a promise. Now either act like a statesman and keep that promise, or behave like a politician and spin it. But you can’t defend approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline with the current flawed process. Nor can you trust a  company that has accumulated over $160,000,000 million in environmental violation fines over the last decade alone with the responsibility of protecting the ecological integrity of the planet’s north west Pacific coastline.

How can we do business with a company that states, on the record, oil spills “can have both positive and negative effects on local and regional economies,” because of the economic benefits related to clean-up efforts. “Spill response and clean-up creates business and employment opportunities for affected communities, regions, and clean-up service providers.” Really? That’s sort of like trusting Dick Cheney and his Halliburton Corporation with rebuilding Iraq after the U.S.A. destroyed it while looking for non-existent weapons of mass destruction. War, like an oil spill, is good for business; it’s not personal.

However, dear bickering and back-sliding politicians, it’s personal for those of us not on the next Elon Musk trip to a space colony.  For 99.9% of us, there is no Planet B. Either make the Green Shift and Leap into a new energy paradigm, or get off the pulpit of false prophets. Either begin the smooth transition to a renewable energy economy, or planet Earth will make the decision for us.

Canada cannot stand on the world stage and pretend to be a productive part of the Paris Accord at the same time it is defending the construction of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline under the current skewed National Energy Board review and approval process.

Our children and our communities are asking that same old question of commitment just like the woman in the Meatloaf song, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, asked,

“What’s it gonna be boy? I gotta know right now! Before we go any further,                          Do you love me? Will you love me forever?”

Yes, or No – we need to know right now.

***

Skid Crease, Caledon