INDEPENDENT is no longer a dirty word in this province. Until very recently, I was willing to compromise, since three of the parties seemed very close to my views. But NONE of them stood for all of them. The following are the main points of my platform and the reasons I am asking for your support and votes now. RSCs IF you look at its map of the province you will see that to the Regional Service Commissions, New Brunswick is a whitemans world. The entire province is divided up into 12 RSC districts and not one First Nations community is included. I believe that they should have FORMALIZED inclusion in what stands to become, if it isnt already, a third level of government here. As a startup organization it is already absorbing over $34 million of taxpayers money. For our money it might as well become more representative and democratic. MUNICIPALITIES ACT NO mayor should ever have to put up with the kind of obstructionist crap I have had to put up with here for the last 27 months. The governing act must be substantially overhauled. As it now stands, parts of it would not even stand up to court scrutiny anyway. It places more power in the hands of the unelected and leaves the elected with no choice but to put up with breaches of trust that would get someone fired in any other viable democratic OR industrial concern or business. Yet the fact is that the Municipalities Act IS currently being revised - and by the very unelected people it most empowers. This is simply unacceptable to me as a citizen, as a New Brunswicker, as a Canadian and as the Mayor of Perth-Andover, New Brunswick. The act needs, among other things, more teeth. If it had them, we would be able to but probably wouldnt have to fire some people. They would know better than to bite us in the first place. FLOODS We need to launch a substantial lawsuit against NBPower - and we need to do this now. Our businesses suffered grievous losses in the last flood and our residents and this community almost as much in the decades since we have been beset by floods after the building of the downriver dams, the mismanagement of ALL the dams and the failure to even begin to control clearcutting especially in the watershed. This is still going on. NB Power under one government after the other has not even BEGUN to take care of our river or rivers as they promised or implied that they would when those dams were being erected. Even without such promises the responsibility was built-in. They have a covenant with us and they have not ever lived up to it. The river must be substantially dredged for long stretches. The banks must be reinforced. Businesses need to be helped with their floodproofing - or relocation. We have seen our villages stripped and damaged and businesses ruined without even the most nominal compensation. And what can possibly compensate for the uncertainty that has become endemic all along ALL our waterways? Yet one government after the other has resisted all our suggestions to provide for greater protection and more immediate and effective monitoring of the dangers we face, not just during spring runoff, but, in a new thermal age, after every substantial rainfall. HEALTHCARE WE cannot build even attractive retirement or bedroom communities throughout Carleton-Victoria without immediate, effective healthcare services here. We cannot expand our natural resources industries without full-service ER facilities close at hand. We dont have this now. NONE of the three main parties are seriously committed to this and in fact they are all seriously committed to its opposite. Closing hospitals, cutting services saves money. But doctors and nurses and hospitals save lives. HYDRO-FRACKING NO. It is simply not safe and is provably ruinous to the environment. And not financially viable either from the public or provinces point of view. Since exploration contracts typically include the proviso that companies have the RIGHT to exploit any viable reserves they find, we cannot even allow them and must take steps NOW to reject those already signed. FORESTRY THE Forestry Agreement is so obviously unfair, to other woodlot owners, to sawmills, to the environment, to the public at large that it must be rejected out-of-hand. It must be TERMINATED at once. YOUTH AS A HUMAN RIGHT, and as part of the revision of the Municipalities Act, I would like to see it established AS MATTER OF LAW, that a set percentage of every provincial and municipal budget, MUST be expended on programs and infrastructure for youth. That way municipalities, such as my own, would not find it possible to sit on hundreds of thousands of dollars of liquid assets while so little is being done for the young people in our care and they have so very little to do here, educationally and recreationally. We try, but none of us do enough. FARMING FARMING has become all but unsustainable here. That can be changed. We need to help farmers AND THOSE WHO WOULD BE FARMERS, to move into whole new areas of agriculture - such as the growing of hemp, for textiles, hops and grapes, for examples. Done properly and on a large enough scale PROVINCIALLY this can totally transform not just farming but our flagging tourism industry and has the potential to create or support offshoot industries besides. THESE are some of the main points of my platform. Since no other candidate or party supports all of them, that is part of the reason I have decided to run. I am asking for your support, not because one man or one MLA can accomplish any of them, but to indicate to ALL the other parties that these are things in which we believe and for which I stand.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 01:10:39 +0000
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