Just Sayin

Events already this year leave little hope that the Windsor Police Service Board is capable of discharging its mandate to provide meaningful oversight to the Windsor Police Service. It appears despairingly inept and out of touch, despite facing pointed criticism from the Ontario Civilian Police Commission in August 2020.

I recently returned from my annual, winter, month-long automobile pilgrimage to the Gulf of Mexico where I visit some family and friends in Fort Myers while on a ‘working’ vacation, and then the Atlanta area on my way back (I’m a Pisces and I’ve always considered the ocean air, salt water beaches, and intercoastal waterways of Florida as a substitute womb ever since I got out and first went there)…

On November 29, 2022, the Superior Court of Justice struck down as unconstitutional the provincial Conservative government’s Bill 124. Passed in June 2019, this piece of wage restraint legislation’s most objectionable provision limited wage increases for approximately 780,000 workers in the public sector to 1% per year for a 3-year moderation period.

A story on CTV’s website in early August reported that, although an overwhelming majority of registered Conservatives supported Pierre Poilievre for leader of the Conservative Party (44% to 17%), most Canadians preferred Jean Charest to become leader of the party, with a larger percentage of voters indicating they would not vote Conservative in the upcoming federal election if Poilievre becomes leader.

Canadians are as politically disparate as the vast and diverse landscape we inhabit. Our elected legislatures need to accommodate the competing interests of a great number of factions — some economic (think agricultural, manufacturing, fishing, energy), some cultural and linguistic (English, French, First Nations, Old World immigrants), and some ideological (conservative, liberal, labour-oriented, religious), including many overlapping and distinct viewpoints in between, on these, and from other perspectives.

Scrolling through social media posts can be as entertaining as people-watching in a crowded mall. If the content isn’t always riveting, the passionate conviction and absolute certitude of some of the views found there can be nothing short of startling.

This summer, Canadians were rocked by the news that the remains of over 1,150 unidentified indigenous children who attended residential schools in BC and Saskatchewan were found in unmarked graves or buried on the grounds of the schools (215 were found at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School; 182 at St. Eugene’s Mission School; and 751 at the former Marieval Indian Reservation School).

That “Honour in Service” is still the Windsor Police Service’s official motto might be the most extraordinary of all the curiosities surrounding one of its officers fatally shooting an innocent pet owner’s dog in its own fenced yard in broad daylight.

On October 17, 2018 the Canadian government passed the Cannabis Act, making the purchase, possession, cultivation, and consumption of limited amounts of marijuana legal for Canadian citizens.
In so doing, we became only the second country in the world (after Uruguay — that vanguard of enlightened social awareness) to legalize recreational cannabis use.

It is as mournful as it is disconcerting that such a large segment of our population is disinclined, or outright refuses, to avail themselves of any of the free COVID-19 vaccinations supplied by our government to fight this pandemic.