THE REALITY ABOUT TRUSTEE INFIGHTING

Luisa D'Amato's Opinion column in today's Waterloo Region Record is titled "Trustees have one last chance to get it right". Luisa has been writing about our local school boards for as long as I can remember. She has been professional but blunt and indeed scathing at times. It appears as if little has changed since my run in with the Waterloo Region District School Board and their majority of lapdogs pretending to be trustees.

I found senior administrative staff at the Board back in the late 90s to be disgusting. They were nothing if not blindly loyal to the teachers and their unions. They were not interested in either the truth or in trying to solve serious problems with bad apple teachers in their employ. Obviously the Ron Archer case was an extreme one but one which shines a spotlight on the internal protectionism and non accountability of teachers, much less the school board itself.

Luisa refers to the Code of conduct as thoroughly undemocratic. She also refers to trustees sitting in judgement of their fellow trustees as a "kangaroo court". She is right on both counts but what is the real reason behind their animosity? At the moment trustees can't hold any staff or teachers accountable when they are liable to censure under the idiotic Code of Conduct just for listening to criticism of staff and then not immediately challenging that criticism. That is nuts. Similarly trustees are not allowed to keep Board staff and administrators on the straight and narrow because trustees are prohibited from criticizing anything they do even when student achievement is in the toilet.

The problem in my opinion isn't trustee infighting. Thank God they are fighting because otherwise the majority of trustees who go along with these asinine Codes of Conduct and asinine rules forcing trustees to always speak glowingly about Board staff and administrators would have absolute free rein to continue the WRDSB's long history of self congratulation, back patting, puffery and putting teachers' unions and staff miles ahead of students' and parents' interests.

KUDOS TO BONG/MARIJUANA PROTESTER

Anybody still doubt that the war on marijuana is all about greasing the wheels of our judicial system? In other words keeping police, judges and lawyers employed and well paid? Think about it. Remove all marijuana offences whether using, possessing, selling or growing from the criminal code and boy will that ever free up the courts, and all the staff involved on our taxpayers dime to pursue other "anti-social' activities.

Jeffrey Shaver of Cambridge has pointed out the absurdity of our judicial system from top to bottom. Why did the Waterloo Regional Police bother to charge him for marijuana possession when he had a legal medical marijuana card on his person when arrested? After he protested in front of the police station while smoking marijuana he was charged again and then the charges dropped. His marijuana has since been returned from his second arrest but not from his first. That is why he was outside the Kitchener courthouse yesterday morning again smoking marijuana apparently without incident. Come on courts, police and prosecuters give your heads a shake. The clear and obvious near future is total decriminalization of marijuana plus this guy has a medical license to possess and use it. he has totally made you look like a..holes. Drop the remaining charge and return his property to him which you stole in the first place. The law truly can be an ass. See the article in today's Waterloo Region Record.

STUPIDITY & CRUELTY OF OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Yesterday's Waterloo Region Record carried an article titled "Solitary confinement violates charter right to life: lawyer". Both the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of canada are delivering closing arguments to the British Columbia Supreme Court in a lawsuit against the Attorney General of Canada over the use of indefinite segregation in prisons. Quoting statistics the lawyers are advising the court of the numbers of prisoners who have committed suicide while in segregation across Canada. This also includes here at the Kitchener Prison for Women where Ashley Smith at the age of nineteen killed herself by strangulation while guards watched her. Various international groups and other countries have long banned indefinite segregation and or put severe limits on the time that inmates can be put in solitary confinement.

WRPS OFFICER ARRESTED FOUR TIMES SINCE THIS PAST JANUARY

Well it's probably pretty obvious that something is way out of whack with either this particular officer or with the Waterloo Region Police service or with both. Four times in the last eight months. Hmm let me think. I was charged eleven times in a row by the idiots in blue although only arrested twice I believe. When the smoke cleared I had one petty Trespass conviction, ten of the charges dropped and the Crown advised the Waterloo Regional Police in writing that they would no longer prosecute me on any trespass charges that the Regional Police laid on me. Kind of gives you an idea of the pettiness and stupidity the upper echelons of the WRPS are capable of, doesn't it?

Speaking of ingenuous don't you love the decency of the WRPS in not identifying the officer charged for the fourth time "To avoid identifying the victim". He's already been identified three times. Gosh whomever could it be?

It looks as if breaching court orders and terms of release seems to be the big problem. These factors figure prominently in proposed reforms of our court system and especially our bail system. Sometimes it appears as if the bail terms are essentially devised to be onerous and in order to make it next to impossible for the accused to comply with them. Bingo he gets rearrested. Is that the kind of crap that is going on here?

Waterloo Regional Police and Police Board, it is way past time to get your shit together. You are making laughing stocks of yourselves and very successfully bringing the administration of justice into disrepute. Last Saturday's Record carries the story titled "Police officer arrested four times in eight months".

LYING SCHOOL BOARDS & MUNICIPALITIES TAKE NOTE

Lily livered, wimpy bureaucrats working at public institutions do not have the right to ban or prohibit other people simply because those white collared, wusses are "afraid". This has long been the local School Board's game in spades. It especially works if the parent they don't care for is male. "Ooh we have an angry, agitated male saying mean things to us." It is their typical kind of crap.

Today's Waterloo Region Record has an interesting article titled "Court says ban from town hall property is unconstitutional". An upset Town of Fort Erie had a local and fairly loud male protester who was outside the town hall with a megaphone. Police were called and he was arrested and then banned from town property. An idiot Superior Court Justice upheld the ban last February and so the protester appealed to the Ontario Court of appeal and won. That Justice made it clear that the evidence of town employees who claimed to be afraid of the man was flimsy at best. The Justice also stated that "Violence is not the mere absence of civility". So here's the lesson WRDSB and local municipalities : Even lying about a citizen being "agitated" or "angry" isn't adequate reason to issue them trespass notices. In a nutshell WRDSB - go fuc. yourselves.

CORRUPTION LET ME COUNT THY MANY SPLENDERED FACETS

I admit it's not easy. When an individual or group have been caught red handed in behaviour that screams either dishonesty or corruption, it's difficult to look at them in the same light ever again. Whether the issue was the manufactured crisis around the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee, the park in Breslau, the gravel pit in Winterbourne, Election Financing cheating and coverups, you name it; trying to observe the latest issue and Woolwich Council's reaction to it objectively and with an open mind requires a serious effort.

The latest problem has been around for a long time. It has been kept below the radar and out of sight for a very long time. Woolwich Township have literally decades if not fractions of centuries experience in so doing. Uniroyal Chemical came to Elmira, Ontario in 1942. They had federal government contracts in hand to manufacture explosive stabilizers. Our town Council whether Elmira alone or as Woolwich Township incorporating Breslau, St. Jacobs, Elmira, West Montrose, Conestogo, Maryhill etc. managed to keep the imminent and obvious destruction of our drinking water aquifers on the back burner for almost half a century. That's world class politics and coverup my friends. The environmental stink and groundwater destruction behind the Breslube plant in Breslau was also kept very low key. The shut down of nearby municipal wells was attributed to the world's toughest bacteria in the Grand River rather than to industrial solvents and oils from Breslube. At one time they had P.C.B. contaminated oils floating on the water table behind their property. Again hardly made a ripple publicly.

The latest issue is methane production from the Bolender Park Landfill in and around two businesses and several homes. Rather than provide inexpensive methane warning devices to these homes and businesses, Council would rather negotiate privately with one of the businesses in order to put a new methane collection system on his property. All this at the same time as they are publicly lying and saying that there are no concerns. It's possible that they are telling the truth if they personally have no concerns for those at risk.

To date neither Council nor Staff have advised why they feel that everything is just dandy. I've seen the methane concentrations in the Conestoga Rovers Reports and they are above the 20% LEL (Lower Explosion Limit). To me they are rolling the dice and hoping for the best. Of course when their number comes up and there is an explosion they can do exactly the same thing they did when the wells became poisoned, namely obfuscate, deflect and distract.

SCHOOL BOARDS ALWAYS KNOW BEST

According to them at least they always know best. According to them they are fountains of knowledge, common sense, logic and clear thinking. They would also like us to believe that their first priority are the students with decency, respect, decorum, morals and ethics thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately absolutely none of this is true.

Our school boards are grossly politicized bastions of partisan politics. They are all about power, authority, prestige, political ladder climbing and money. Their sense of self-entitlement from the bureaucrats, trustees, administrators, consultants, union leaders and some teachers is second to none. They use and abuse their power and influence to protect their empires and will crush any legitimate opposition that is not as strong and unprincipled as they are.

Today's Waterloo Region Record expands upon their most recent inherent lack of common sense and logic. The title is "Police looking into teen's drowning". Yes the police are involved with the absurdity and negligence involved in the drowning of a fifteen year old boy on a school trip last month. No foul play was not the cause. Criminal negligence or gross stupidity however have not been ruled out.

The Toronto District School Board have apologized to the dead teen's family. This School Board's dysfunction is nothing new whether political infighting or Trustees alleging financial/electioneering wrongdoing by their colleagues. The Board had passed rules demanding that all students on the school trip to Algonquin Park must be able to pass a swimming test prior to the trip. The drowned teen had failed the test. Now we find that a grand total of fifteen of the thirty-two students had failed the swimming test. They all went anyways and one of them is dead.

All hail the Toronto District School Board.