First You Say You Do...And Then You Don't...And Then You Say You Do...And Then You Don't...So Whatta Ya Gonna Do?

Once again, Oshawa City Council is demonstrating its grossly misguided, rudderless, and waffling leadership in playing fast and loose with your tax dollars.

That commercial slogan, “You’re in good hands with Allstate,” certainly cannot be applied to our City Council here in Oshawa.

Their self serving moves to wipe out your local neighbourhood political representation and bring us city wide elections for all city politicians, a move only designed to facilitate their own political careers while grossly reducing political accountability, attests to that.

At the March 3, 2008 City Council Meeting, Councillor Mary Anne Sholdra told me as much when she said with the "General Vote", she’d now have a much easier time getting re-elected. Perhaps this is why she voted against every single question designed to provide citizen information about the change and supported every single question to bring about the less democratic general vote.

A less accountable General Vote Council that cannot be defeated at the polls can do anything to you and perhaps this is why this City Council has implemented so many controversial, alarming and costly decisions. An unaccountable politician can bulldoze like a dictator, be damned public opinion or the public good.

Besides the Cullen Miniatures purchase, the UOIT student housing issue, the $12 Million redevelopment of City Hall apparently to provide more palatial office space and more presidential council chambers for city politicians, this post describes another example of the irresponsible actions of an unaccountable City Council which has continued to run up debt despite already being the highest taxed region in the GTA.

At an in-camera meeting on January 24, 2007, Oshawa City Council voted to spend $500,000 to hire a PR firm to promote Federal Government Assistance for the development of our waterfront and marina.

In a time when Mayor John Gray was promoting and supporting a 9% property tax increase and also promoting cutting back of services as well as fee increases for others such as the use of our taxpayer funded recreational facilities to reduce the ability of families to fund their child’s participation in activities like hockey, swimming and soccer, all of which would help decrease the major epidemic of child inactivity and obesity, this half million dollar expenditure is a serious misplacement of priorities.

It is all the more ludicrous when the most efficient promotion of Federal assistance to our waterfront should simply result from the mayor picking up the phone to chat with our three area Government Member Federal MP’s.

Surely as past President of the Oshawa Federal Progressive Conservative Association, you’d think he would get a friendly ear from our Conservative Members including Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who holds the Federal purse strings, Minister of International Cooperation, Bev Oda, who also holds a seat at cabinet where all important decisions are made, and backbencher Colin Carrie who should be well-positioned to lobby in Oshawa’s interest with his fellow influential Conservative Oshawa area MP’s.

Even Minister Flaherty ridiculed this expenditure stating it was a total waste of public money and he could hear the “flushing” sound of your tax dollars all the way to his office in Ottawa. He stated it would have been far more prudent and more cost-effective for the mayor to pick up the telephone to speak to him and the other Oshawa area MP’s.

Finance Minister Flaherty probably and deservedly felt that the Mayor’s failure to utilize him and the other local Federal government members undermined public confidence in their service to the Oshawa community. End-running our influential Federal Members will do us little good and will probably leave them sitting on their hands when the question of Oshawa’s waterfront comes up. No one would have ever considered this "end run" when Ed Broadbent was our member!

When Oshawa Council came “halfway” to its senses on January 28, 2007 (Page 46), it “tabled” Phase 2 of the PR effort costing $385,325 approving only Phase 1 PR funding of $134,675--still a ludicrous expenditure when one realizes that the Federal Government had hired David Crombie, probably Canada’s greatest advocate for the preservation of waterfronts and the development of eco-friendly waterfront nature trails and bike paths to investigate and report on the matter.

Crombie has submitted his report which we are assured will be relased to the public. Undoubtedly though, Crombie would have supported his waterfront vision for Oshawa, the only residential community on Lake Ontario without a recreational marina.

Compounding the problem, however, City Council advocates of the full half million dollar funding, realizing some opponents of the spending (Councillors Marimpietri, Neal, and Parkes) were absent during the March 3, 2008 city council meeting, slipped in a motion by Councillor Pidwerbecki seconded by Councillor Nicholson to re-introduce re-opening the question and it passed on votes of Councillors Cullen, Henry, Kolodzie, Nicholson, Pidwerbecki, Sholdra and Mayor Gray. Councillor Lutczyk was the only councillor present with the sense to oppose re-opening the question.

Like Finance Minister Flaherty, can you hear the sounds of flushing of your hard earned tax dollars down the toilet? At an average house assessment of about $3000, this expenditure consumes the residential tax of you and about 160 of your neighbours.

Now let me go out and count the houses in my neighbourhood to see if my neighbours and I can cover this expenditure with our house taxes! I don't think we can!

I smell some rot somewhere in this!

Be prepared for more of this Oshawa. The heavy handed and ham fisted council you are now seeing is only a start to worst days ahead under the general vote when guaranteed re-election will make politicians far less accountable to your wishes.

And you, Oshawa, by your inaction in regards to the loss of ward voting, are letting the politicians do this to you.

Violated UOIT/Durham College Students must act to Protect the Freedoms of Canadians

I have always been one to speak up for democratic justice and act to protect the sanctity of the rights and freedoms we have as Canadians. Thus I worked for a number of years to successfully bring ward voting to Oshawa personally presenting the case at a 21 day OMB hearing in the early 80’s.

This effort was important in bringing accountable and representative government to our city and the change was important in bringing vibrant progress to this city and a breed of politician whose electoral success was dependent upon serving the needs of people.

The first ward elections turfed half of the council out of office because ward elections require politicians to work to solve constituency problems and are accountable to voters to do this. General vote politicians got turfed out because they concentrated only on promoting their name since that was the name of the game in getting elected.

Today, I am addressing another injustice in Oshawa…the recent searches through UOIT/Durham College student housing to find leasing documents.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states:

1) Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. (Part 1, s8)

2) Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances. (Part 1, s24 (1))

3) Where, in proceedings under subsection 24 (1), a court concludes that evidence was obtained in a manner that infringed or denied any rights or freedoms guaranteed by this Charter, the evidence shall be excluded if it is established that, having regard to all the circumstances, the admission of it in the proceedings would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.(Part 1 s24 (2))

Despite Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the articles cited above, City officials with police and locksmith in tow entered student residences to find evidence to charge property owners with bylaw infractions. In so doing, they subjected students to unreasonable search and seizure contrary to protections guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the basic Constitutional Law of the country.

The above sections of Canada's constitution clearly state that those whose basic Canadian rights were violated can seek recourse through the courts and in this article, I am counselling those students affected to do just that. I am counselling them to seek legal recourse to protect their rights and those of their fellow Canadians and am working to distribute this information to UOIT/Durham College students. Interested readers should read the Canadian Civil Liberties Association statements regarding citizens right's of privacy.

Students affected need simply file a complaint at the closest police station or to a police officer dispatched to their home that their rights of unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms have been violated by the City of Oshawa who took unreasonable actions against student privacy when in fact the action should have taken place against the property owners whom the city felt were skirting city bylaws and whom they wanted to hold to account.

Only the police can lay the charge, but they need a "complaint" in order to begin their investigation. Once the case has been investigated, a charge, if warranted, is laid against the offenders, and then the case is passed to the Crown Attorney to prosecute the case which is the first stage in the students getting retribution for the offence.

Offended students can seek this legal recourse without cost and legal awards may very well pay the bulk of their tuitions and other educational and housing expenses.

City politicians must learn that they cannot take advantage of the vulnerable…that they cannot simply run over ratepayers and citizens as they have done with the ward/general vote issue.

Had the politicians been properly advised, they would have known that Section 24 (2) of the charter prohibits any evidence seized through these unreasonable searches from being used in a court of law to prosecute infringements of city bylaws in any case and so the action by the city supported by the mayor and politicians was singularly and unbelievably ludicrous in this country, an affront to the rights and freedoms of Oshawa residents as delineated in the Charter, a public relations disaster, and no doubt made our city council once again the laughing stock of the nation.

The problem becomes even more outrageous when one realizes that the city itself was party to the infringements that they are now trying to reel in through renovation approvals they gave throughout the building process.

Affected students should review the following of many “Unreasonable Search and Seizure” Supreme Court Cases of a much more serious nature than having rental housing arrangements that were problematic for the city and indeed decide to take police and legal action against the unjustified invasion of their privacy.

1) A school vice principal detained and searched a student in presence of police officer and confiscated drugs…found to be illegal search and seizure

2) Police installed tracking device in car of suspected murderer…less intrusive search in car than in home but still found to be too intrusive..Supreme Court found evidence obtained through tracking device inadmissible in court

3) Investigation and Enforcement Officer of the Ministry of Environment compelled Inco employees to submit to questioning and to produce documents and other materials related to dumping of chemicals and other materials into waterway. The Supreme Court found the Enforcement Officer in an abuse of process as he had no statutory authority to compel Inco employees to submit to questioning or to produce documents related to the issue in question.

4) Police attended at a residence at 4:00 a.m. and executed a search warrant as part of an investigation for possession of a firearm and stolen property.
Six police officers entered the suspect's residence, two of whom had guns drawn. The firearm was subsequently found to be permitted and registered to the plaintiff. The court found that the police violated the plaintiff’s rights to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by s. 8 of the Charter as the circumstances did not justify a night search of a private dwelling, the degree of force used was unreasonable, the investigation of the firearm registration was careless, and police seized numerous items outside the scope of the search warrant. Compensatory damages in excess of $3000 were awarded to the complaintant.

We have cited a variety of search and seizure complaints all of which were upheld by the Supreme Court and all of which would seem to be far more serious than city bylaw infractions and the attempt by the city to find and seize housing rental documents in order to prosecute owners of rental units.

RCMP spokesmen described the whole search and seizure investigation process acceptable under Canada’s constitution at a recent international crime symposium.

Like our fight to retain ward voting for Oshawa which serves people and the city best, we have a responsibility to future generations to be ever vigilant to protect our liberties to ensure that our country remains the best and free-est in the world.

Oshawa…The head of the pack again, eh---NOT!

Oshawa city council has again distinguished itself across the country with another first! NOT!

FIRST--Oshawa Council voted on April 30, 2007 to return to the general vote for the election of city council for no reason other than to protect their council positions until their death or resignation. They rigged a plebiscite question to confuse voters and skew results the way they wanted, refused to provide any public information about the question or the reasons why it was being asked and now at 160,000 become the largest city in the country to use the general vote without municipal political parties. They know that with an impossible general vote election ballot with close to 100 names, their ability to raise the necessary $35,000 campaign funds through political donations from their political favours and their ability to grab the press over the term of council, that they will be the only candidates familiar to the voters and thus will be impossible to dethrone. This method of election means that city council is not accountable to the citizens and they can rule dictatorially with impunity…something they are presently doing in regards to University/College student rental housing. As an Oshawa "First" for the country, we may have the only city council in the country that puts their personal electoral interests ahead of the public good….shame!

SECOND—With police and a locksmith in tow, Oshawa Bylaw Officers enter private student residences without permission searching bedrooms for rental documents. In most parts of the country, we’d call this a “break and enter.” We might understand this uninvited entry in the event of criminal activity…but for student rental documents—never! With no doubt, this is an Oshawa “First” for Canada.THIRD—As another Oshawa “First” in the country, Oshawa politicians devise a bylaw to license and control student rental accommodations in a defined area of Oshawa. This is blatantly discriminatory against the owners, some of whom had been approved for up to 7 bedrooms by city planning officials and had plans approved by the building inspections department. If the city succeeds in closing this student housing area, the students will simply move further afield. In the process though, the city inconveniences students in causing them to live further from their studies and drives up student rents.

FOURTH—City Council calls a public meeting to get input regarding their bylaw. Despite an overflow crowd with many legitimate and intelligent concerns being raised by spokespeople, not one voice I heard spoke up in defense of the proposed city bylaw. No matter, if citizen experience with the general vote/ward vote issue is any indication, the meeting was a sham anyway. Council will plunge ahead and do what it wants no matter the opposition. The real test will be comparing the bylaw council passes with the draft distributed at the meeting.

The large turnout at this meeting resulted from the real and immediate personal financial consequences to everyone involved. Unfortunately, the ward/general vote issue did not attract the same attention because the consequences to the public while just as real were unfortunately more abstract. People have not yet realized that this kind of irrational council action will be repeated by a general vote council that is not accountable to the people because councillors know they are not in danger of being voted out of office for irrational and irresponsible actions.

On the other hand, perhaps council action will motivate those affected to solidify their organizations and work for the defeat of council at the next election. With the general vote, block voting of the size represented by those concerned will be able to turf the whole council out of office.

I would be pleased to lend my efforts to any such organization