Gordon Prentice at Large - Politics in Newmarket
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- Written by: Gordon Prentice
For the local press the big question is what I am doing on election night. Have you planned anything with your supporters? 
I am being pressed to give an answer. As if that’s the biggest issue.
What’s happening? Where are you going to be?
Why?
Personally, I’d rather the local press ask Tom Vegh why he didn’t deliver on specific promises made to the voters in 2018. I’d like them to ask Vegh why, in his election flyers, he invents membership of task forces that don’t exist.
Why does he make false claims for keeping tax rises low? Why does he take money from people in the development industry? Why does he vote to open up 12 square miles of open countryside for development? Why does he vote against his own Mayor, John Taylor, instead of supporting him?
Why does he dissemble when the facts that contradict him are readily available?
Why wouldn’t he debate with me?
Disqualification
And why don’t they ask him how he felt about facing disqualification after the 2018 election for spending over the statutory limit on self-funding? How did he feel about being bailed out by people in the development industry?
Why didn’t he speak in the debate on John Taylor’s motion at York Regional Council to give a capital grant of $1M to save the Inn From the Cold from itself becoming homeless?
Why are our local press and media so incurious? Why don’t they just ask him?
Why does Tom Vegh lie? Serially.
No.
They just want to ask what I am doing on election night.
Gordon Prentice 21 October 2022
Cartoon from the Comic Shop, Main Street South, 2018
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- Written by: Gordon Prentice
Yesterday I stumbled upon a YouTube video from the UK Parliament marking 20 years of televised proceedings of the House of Commons. 
I had quite forgotten that I played a minor supporting role in Tony Blair’s first Prime Minister’s Questions on 21 May 1997.
I look a lot younger than I do today and the question I put to Blair was, on reflection and with the benefit of hindsight, delivered with too much intensity.
I point an accusing finger at the benches opposite.
"Does my right hon. Friend appreciate the indignation and outrage felt among bus passengers in north-east Lancashire, who have been left high and dry by Stagecoach? Even as I speak, bus fares are going up, services are being cut, drivers are leaving in droves and the situation is in crisis. Is not such a situation, where private monopolies have driven out public interest, a shaming indictment of the previous Government's policies?"
I still have the tie.
Use the red bar at the bottom of the screen to scroll to 26 minutes 25 seconds in.
Gordon Prentice 21 October 2022.
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- Written by: Gordon Prentice
I have been blogging about sewage for years. 
It’s an important topic but, understandably, few of us want to talk about it.
Last year, with a Provincial election around the corner, the Ford Government paused York Region’s plans for a new wastewater treatment facility in East Gwillimbury. The Environment Minister, David Piccini, told the Legislative Assembly the Region’s plans were stale. He wanted a team of experts to look at the issue afresh and come up with recommendations. (Graphic: the project as described by York Region)
On 7 October 2021, he told MPPs:
“The proposal provided by York region in 2014 calls for a new waste-water treatment facility to be built in the town of East Gwillimbury. It would treat about 40 million litres of sewage per day. York region refers to this facility as a water reclamation centre and its process would involve four levels of treatment for waste-water, including microfiltration and reverse-osmosis waste-water treatment technology. This is leading-edge technology and its use in the Upper York Sewage Solutions project would be a first for Canada. The project also involves off-setting programs for phosphorus to reduce phosphorus through a variety of stormwater measures, such as retrofitting existing stormwater management ponds through the Lake Simcoe watershed.”
“If passed, this bill will lay the framework, and this government will establish an expert advisory panel to dig into the options and their associated bodies of water and advise on the best possible solutions. I look forward to the expertise they will bring in a variety of areas, including land use planning and waste water infrastructure.”
So, we wait to see what they come up with.
The treated wastewater either goes up to Lake Simcoe or down to Lake Ontario. It could also be used for irrigation.
Gotta go
But its gotta go somewhere.
As it happens, at an event a few weeks ago I found myself at the same lunch table as my new MPP, Dawn Gallagher-Murphy.
I delicately ask her what her views are on the North York Sewage Solutions project.
She says she will follow the recommendations of the “expert panel”.
I tell her:
“No! No! No! You cannot sub-contract your judgement to a so-called panel of experts when you haven’t read their report or their recommendations.”
Surely, being an MPP means more than organising Corn Roasts and BBQs and cheering from the sidelines.
She should have a view on this critically important policy issue. Even if it is only provisional.
A blank stare is not really good enough.
Gordon Prentice 20 October 2022