Spreading knowledge & understanding
Dear LHSC Board of Directors and Diane Beattie,
I want my $451,000 back. That’s right, every single penny of severance that was recently afforded to Diane Beattie after the LHSC Board of Directors forced her to resign.
When a scandal like this one breaks out, there is no reason whatsoever that such gross misconduct should result in such a comfortable severance. $451,000 is almost two years worth of Ms. Beattie’s annual pay ($250,000 – not bad, huh?).
My esteemed readers,
I don’t know if you know this or not, based on reading past posts, but I quite enjoy my civil liberties. I like having a driver’s licence, I like being able to walk around town without constantly being watched (except for the areas of downtown London with surveillance cameras), I like that police need probable cause to pull me over or arrest me, etc.
I was recently on vacation in the Azores (archipelago of 9 islands about 1,500km from the coast of Portugal, in the Atlantic Ocean) and late one night I got the spur to begin writing my next blog entry. Though it’s taken me this long to finally sit down and begin fleshing it out, at least I’ve finally gotten to it.
After being exposed to nothing but European news for almost 2 weeks, I began thinking about ways that Canada could improve it’s government in (probably) 12 months or less. Some of these require lengthy explanations, others don’t because others have done the explaining family. So let’s get right into it!
Seeing as we have entered construction season here in Canada (a.k.a. spring and summer), I thought it prudent to collect some things that other cities have been doing that I think we ought to be implementing here in London (in some cases especially since we’re known as the Forest City) and other Canadian cities ought to be at least contemplating.
Let’s start with a great example from Vancouver: The roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre has been turned into a green roof. What does that mean?
A few years ago I became a supporter of the NDP. I listened to Jack Layton and his vision for Canada and was inspired. Not to mention that I couldn’t stand Paul Martin and the Liberals seemed to be agreeing more and more with the Conservatives on issues that I did not.
Recently it has become apparent that indeed, I am a centrist. I don’t tolerate overly polarizing views or people very well (though I do hear them out on the issue and give them their opportunity to explain their rationale) and would much prefer to see people get to the bottom of an issue, brainstorm all of the possible solutions and then pick the best. Sadly that doesn’t happen very often in this “democracy” of ours where few-to-no MPs actually listen to their constituents after gaining power.