They're driving me batty!

Look what Buster caught!

No, not the bat Buster caught, plucked out of the air at 3:50 a.m., but the loud music that went from 4 p.m. until at least 12:15 a.m., when I popped in my iPod ear buds. The Otty Lake BLues Cruise, with tourists on the lake having a loud party with an amplifier system.
I caught the bat with our butterfly net to get the screaming, scared, little creature in the net. Wish I could capture the noise makers as easily!

This morning I was listening to On the Dock, with Megan Thomas in Sudbury: summer long-weekend radio.
They interviewed three cottage country politicians:
Kawartha Lakes: Ric McGee
-75,000 permanent; 40,000 seasonal residents.
Haliburton/ Algonquin Highlands Councillor: Carol Moffat
-16,000 residents; 40,000 seasonal
Camden County in SW Ontario: Bill DeLoughy
-11,000 residents; up to 40,000 on a visiting weekend
Muskoka, where I used to live, would get nearly a million people up on a long weekend.

Charlie Green Road - very remote!

Beautiful cottage country

They spoke of the difficulties of meeting the municipal wants and needs of seasonal visitors. They spoke of gravel roads, remotely going around the lake, with poor EMS access.
Local Taxes Pay for Local Services
With waterfront properties having higher taxes, they demand better services, yet delivering firefighting crews to an island, for example, is difficult. Volunteer firefighters need jetskis, as well as snowmobiles as tourist season is no longer confined to summer, or the shoulder seasons.

Milford Bay , Ontario,Volunteer Crew Equipment

Lanark County

While the interviews with mayors of cottage towns are illuminating, they leave out the conflicts between summer residents, renters and permanent residents. We moved from a lovely retirement home on a lake, where we had cottaged for 50 years, to a lovely rural piece of land.

Renters have no love for the land, for peace and quiet, nor respect for land, lake and environmental laws. Fireworks every night for two weeks in a row. Children driving jetskis, 40-something jetskis drivers doing figure eights for hours, teens racing their powerful machines, some running alongside water skiers. Bonfires during fire bans. I have a photo of a man urinating off of his boat into the water while we sat with our afternoon coffee.
Adult children, or teens, will take over the cottage on a weekend, and bring booze and ATVs, and loud partying into the night. I praise our EMS crews, the OPP that I call in the wee hours as the drunks loudly party on the lake, and our volunteer firefighters who work tirelessly. Critical Incident Management is a whole new level of training for hard-working crews who respond to these tragic situations.

The near-misses of 2011 were frightening. But 2009 was the worst. More drownings in Muskoka

Drowning statistics for Muskoka are appalling (2009) 

Bonfires can so easily go wrong,
this one on a property with boat-only access.

Our Ontario Provincial Police (OPP): 25% policing calls are related to crime; 75% mental health, escort mentally ill, noise violations, handling nuisance bears, they do it all!

Bonfire on a hot summer day

Bonfires
Unfortunately, the maximum fine for illegal brush burning is $300. A pittance.

Fire destroys Muskoka Lakes boathouse

We see bonfires all around the area. Brushfires, bonfires, burning of wet leaves. 

Pension underfunding

 News headlines remain fearful. I do not hesitate to say more fearmongering.
A recent Globe & Mail headline: 

I say that with employment rates rising in Canada, we are on our way back to recovery.  The recession is not to blame for automotive industry failures. Bad investments, or the global markets downturn, are a small factor compared to underfunding of pensions over the long-term. The markets are improving slowly, but steadily.


Yes, 60% of Canadians do not have private pension plans, but these are not the people on which the story focuses. It focuses on these formerly tidily employed individuals; a Nortel manager,  a steel worker ($70,000 / year for building cars, plus huge medical benefits), and other private sector workers whose private pensions are underfunded. I am not sure for whom the Globe is lobbying, but these nicely pensioned workers may have to sell their homes and move to smaller ones and eschew travel for staying home.
This article points out, in part,

• 84% of public service workers have pensions.
• 78% of these plans are gold plated defined benefit pensions
• 25% of private sector workers have a pension plan
• 16% of these plans are gold plated defined benefit pensions
• 11 million workers, or 60 per cent, of Canada’s workers have no pension at all
• 8 million or 45 per cent, have no pensions or registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs) 

I do not feel badly for the men highlighted in the article. It is the part-time worker (primarily women), our hourly waged employees, who will have to rely on Canada Pension for their retirement years. Underfunded pensions should not be taxpayer problems. Big business made mistakes (Nortel, Air Canada, the automotive industry), but how can the rest of us be called to carry the burden of corporations filing in bankruptcy court?

We cut back immeasurably in order to retire. My pension is small, having retired early from teaching. We live simple lives, in a smaller home. We pay big bucks for group health care. We realize we may have to find part time work at some point. We may have to move to an even smaller home. But that is reality. I find these retired folks sitting on their pension laurels wearisome.

Bleeding Hearts

Ontario Today’s story revolves around two issues that profoundly impact taxpayers. It appears that journalists are advocating for the government to continue to fund the FNTI, a university designated for aboriginal graduate and postgraduate students. I wonder if CBC is a registered lobbyist and who will be responsible for this funding? No doubt it is a great cause. There is no question that a Nation (the Native Community) should be funding a specialized university. This school is an exclusive school setting. It is a center that gears its philosophy to meet the needs ot fhte aboriginal community, its potential clients. But why should all taxpayers fund a virtually private institution? Why can the money not come from Native Nations?

Taxpayers have donor fatigue and most are not in favour of another drain on short tax dollars. The Federal government is sending out flyers asking if we would be in favour of a 5% GST, rather than the current 7%. In our family we are not. We want to pay GST, taxing consumer goods which we are able to afford, to put money towards an infrastructure that improves our quality of life: health care, education, and other initiatives which other taxpayers seem to believe we can ill afford.

The next Ontario Today next story pertained to a case before the courts today. I am not sure who might be the target audience or is CBC intends to lobby the judge making the decision. Why put on the air one side in one party’s point of law? I can understand the case having taught during my work career. The fact is that the school board’s all have a policy keeping third parties out of the school and the classroom. One year I had two autistic children, 5 learning disabled children, a gifted child, one child with neurofibromatosis and I benefited from an EA for a half day every day. To add yet another child needing a specific program, and another adult in the classroom, would weigh heavily on an already burdened classroom teacher. We are in the field of education not therapy. This child belongs in a setting which best meets his needs and the needs of all the other children in the classroom.

Special education funding is meant to be dispersed equally and fairly amongst all special needs students. It is not meant to benefit particular children. This funding goes towards an EA in a classroom to support a clustering of special needs students. Again, taxpayers do not want to fund any more than is already being spent. This woman’s child is being taken care of in a center, a perfect setting for a special needs child with lower class sizes and better trained specialists.

I am tired of these sad stories with little in the way of background, presented by someone seemingly lobbying on their behalf with little education and training in the field. We can only have a sob story that does not take into account the needs of those involved professionally, as this case, in particular, is before the courts.