News and views....

A few things to mention today....

First is the up and coming provincial elections. I'm not going to bother too much with which party said what (with one exception I'll mention later). I wanted to talk about the referendum. We, as Ontario citizens are being asked if we want to continue with our current electoral process or vote in favour of a new one. The new process being the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system.

The MMP way of doing things does have it's advantages and I would strongly encourage everyone to actively seek out information to make an informed decision about which you will support. At this time, I don't think I can't support the idea even though I like the principal.

Here's my reason. If the MMP is successful then each party will get to add members based on the percentage of votes they get. For example, if party A gets 40% of the seats but 50% of the votes, then they can add members until their seat count reaches 50%. Here's the catch (for me), the added members are not elected.

We as citizens will be subject to decisions made in part by politicians who are not accountable to the citizenry. They don't have to go door to door looking for support and votes for election day in order to collect government salary and benefits. I have a REALLY strong objection to this.

So at this time, I can't support the idea.

Next is the millstone around the Tory neck; that being funding for faith-based schools. A lot of folks are making a stink about this and I think it isn't necessary. Reason being that I don't think faith-based schools will take government money because of the required strings.

Right now, private schools hire who they want to hire to teach their classes. The teachers there don't have to have certification from the College of Teachers of Ontario, sometimes not even a University degree. They are only really required to be active members of that particular sect of faith.

If the private school takes government money, they really aren't going to be private anymore; and I don't think as a whole they're going to go for that. Granted, this is just my opinion.

Finally I wanted to mention a concert Jaci and I went to last night. Doing a tour in southern Ontario is a group of singers from Bournemouth, England. Specifically they are the Boscombe Songsters. In concert with the corps band they made for a perfectly enjoyable evening and we opened our home to three of the singers last night.

It was a joy to host Chris, Ben, and Niall last night and I hope the rest of their stay here in Ontario is as great as the first bit.

That's all for now.

Be well all.