[All] Resending GREN Minutes Attachment

Tue Mar 12 15:34:22 EDT 2019

Indeed Lori.  Mike Harris Jr’s comments were quite concerning - he went on to say that if people didn’t like what his government was doing that they would get their say at the ballot box in three and half years.  I responded that he might not like what the outcome is and that Waterloo Region had gotten to where we are today through collaboration, dialog and working together between all our levels of government and communities.  

He acknowledged that this works in Waterloo Region and agreed that it was essential to our success but went on to say that most other places in Ontario are just so broken it would never work and that is why his government has to take the approach that they are and how proud he was of how fast they were moving on initiatives.  Again, I responded that speed and quantity of new laws being enacted might not be the best measures of success or of a great place to live but it was clear that Mike felt his job is to bring provincial policy and party dogma to Waterloo and not to take our ideas to the rest of the province.  He seemed far more interested in bringing Doug Ford policies here than representing local constituents at Queen’s Park.

We also spoke about the lack of local citizen participation in consultations and open houses and how it seemed that only developers and well connected business people got notice of these few invitation-only events.  I provided several recent examples and he said that he would look into it and ensure that we were included in the future (Sandra even provided a contact list of names, addresses. e-mails and phone numbers) though I have yet to hear anything further.

It was an insightful meeting and many kudos to Sandra and Susan for working hard to try to build bridges and find positive points.

As for the GREN annual membership fee’s it’s likely easiest to bring it to a GREN meeting or give it to another person to bring.  Alternatively, you can always mail it to John, Greg Michalenko our treasurer, or myself.

Cheers,
Kevin.

-------------------------------------

Kevin Thomason

1115 Cedar Grove Road
Waterloo, Ontario Canada  N2J 3Z4

Phone: (519) 888-0519
Mobile Phone/WhatsApp: (519) 240-1648
Twitter: @kthomason
E-mail: kevinthomason at mac.com

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> On Mar 12, 2019, at 11:42 AM, strothjkl at sympatico.ca wrote:
> 
> Thanks very much Susan- How does one get one’s membership fees to GREN -if we bring the money to a meeting, should it be in the form of cash/cheque?  If it is difficult for some of us to make it out to meetings, is there another way?  
>  
> This line, hi-lited in red, is very concerning: 
>  
> Meeting with Mike Harris –Kevin noted our concerns with Section 10 of Bill 66 and the lack of public consultation. Harris responded that the government is not required to consult.  Wow! Has this always been the case, and we’ve just been lucky that most governments in the past have consulted with the public, when things effected the public, perhaps in order to deal with issues/concerns so they don’t come up later, and possibly stall their progress with items? Or because they realized legislation involving the public is or should be a democratic process?  Just wondering.
>  
> Lori S.
>  
>  
> From: All <all-bounces at gren.ca <mailto:all-bounces at gren.ca>> On Behalf Of Susan Bryant
> Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2019 9:10 AM
> To: GREN <All at gren.ca <mailto:All at gren.ca>>
> Subject: [All] Resending GREN Minutes Attachment
>  
> Hi All-
>  
> The attached minutes in the last message were the wrong version (though the ones in the body of the message were fine, mysteriously). Here's an attachment with the right version. Patience!!
>  
> Susan B
> _______________________________________________
> All mailing list
> All at gren.ca <mailto:All at gren.ca>
> http://gren.ca/mailman/listinfo/all_gren.ca <http://gren.ca/mailman/listinfo/all_gren.ca>
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