We are now well into the Dog Days of summer. The weather is still hot, and we really don’t want to have to think about the cold weather to come.

But deep inside we know summer will end. So even if we don’t act right away we are starting to think about preparing for winter. Thoughts like “Is there enough wood in the pile?” and “Should I start cutting a bit on cooler days?” or “Should I call to get the furnace looked at before too long?” are popping into our brains as we sit on the porch at the end of another hot summer day.

There is something else we are faced with this year, and it will come about before any of the really cold weather hits.

On October 6, there will be a provincial election, the third election in less than one calendar year. Many of us are feeling election fatigue. We already have voted in new municipal councils and given the federal Conservative party a majority.

But we need to pay attention to the provincial election, because, if anything, it will have a greater impact on our daily lives than either of the others we have suffered through recently.

It is the decisions the provincial government and its vast bureaucratic framework make that determine how the hospitals and clinics, schools and roads are managed and paid for.

And the province gets a whole lot of our money. Not only do they collect provincial sales and income taxes directly; much of the money we pay in federal income taxes and municipal property taxes ends up being spent by Queen’s Park.

The provincial election campaign, which is basically waiting in the wings until after Labour Day weekend, will be a one-month affair dominated by attacks against the incumbent Liberals for their tax policies and for a series of scandals and failures that inevitably crop up after eight years in power.

As voters we will be facing a bit of a dilemma because we may not have a palatable option in front of us.

Ideological preferences aside, the Liberals have been in power eight years and after eight years it is usually time to 'throw the bums out'. All things considered that might be what Ontarians want to do this time around, and it is hard to believe Premier McGuinty’s claim that Liberals are going to be coming forward with a “series of exciting policy proposals” during the campaign.

But the 'Tim Hudak' Conservatives have not offered any concrete alternatives either, except to say they will cut the HST from Hydro bills and will “cut job-killing red tape” and “get tough on crime.”

What we do know is that the previous Conservative government created a whole set of problems and transferred a lot of the tax burden to municipal taxes. They kept provincial taxes and forced property taxes up. We pay for a portion of policing and ambulance and education as part of our municipal property tax bill. The Liberals did not change all of this, but they did moderate it a little bit through transfers.

This makes it even more of a concern that Tim Hudak is not really saying what he plans to do.

Andrea Horwath and the NDP are still claiming that cutting tax loopholes for rich people and taxing corporations more heavily will enable us to increase spending on health and education without raising taxes.

Essentially none of what has been proposed thus far by any of the parties really amounts to a reason to support any of them.

In the case of our own LFL&A riding there will be relevance to the local race this time around. The margin of victory last time out was less than 1,000 votes for Randy Hillier over the Liberal candidate Ian Wilson, making it a potential swing riding, although even Liberals do not expect to gain many, if any, seats this time around. But they would dearly love to unseat Randy Hillier and may put some extra resources into LFL&A.

Conservative incumbent Randy Hillier's political career started when he railed against the bureaucrats that run provincial ministries and against urban bias in government. He ran for his party’s leadership and finished last, but threw his support to Tim Hudak, making him a force in the party. This has already been demonstrated when Hudak did not intervene when the longest-sitting member of the party, Norm Sterling, was supplanted by a Hillier ally in a neighbouring riding.

Against him, the Liberals have former Central Frontenac mayor, Bill MacDonald, who will be talking about bringing provincial dollars into the riding; about how much the Liberals have brought in and how much more can be brought in if he is elected and the Liberals are returned to power.

Most elections are determined by the way the leaders handle themselves and react to the media and the public. This often supplants both the underlying policy questions and the campaigns at the riding level.

So even though at this point the Liberals are trailing in the polls, it will only be in the heat of September’s campaign that we will have any real indication of what will happen.

It will be interesting to see if the local campaign takes off.

Until then, as we sit on the porch at the end of another hot summer day, just like the woodpile and the furnace, we might think about politics a little but we will then turn away to look at the sunset or get another beer from the fridge.

September will be here soon enough.

Editorial by Jeff Green

I have a theory that there is an eight-year "best before" date on governments in Canada. It comes from the fact that, quite apart from all of the machinations about independence and right/left splits that took place while I was growing up in Quebec, the provincial governments always lasted eight years or two trips to the polls.

It was a regular pattern. We threw the bums out, then four years later, just as the warts were starting to show in the formerly fresh-faced government, we reluctantly gave them a second chance. Four years later we threw the bums out again and often elected the first set of bums all over again.

Ontario politics haven’t followed exactly the same pattern. Until the mid-’80s the conservatives were in power forever. Then the Liberals had a run that might have lasted longer, but for a miscalculation by then Premier David Peterson that limited his tenure to five years. Bob Rae and the NDP then had a single term, followed by eight years of the Harris Conservatives.

When the McGuinty Liberals took power, there were a lot of broken links in the political system in Ontario that needed to be fixed. Municipal amalgamation and ham-fisted downloading, as well as a broken relationship with teachers and school boards, were the legacies of the Harris years that the Liberals went about repairing. Buoyed by a strong economy, the Liberals had a lot of success, and were re-elected rather easily four years later.

Then the cracks began to show, both in the provincial economy and in the way the Liberals operated. Not only was authority centralized in the premier’s office, information also became tightly controlled and there have been a number of creeping scandals, including e-health and ORNGE (the air ambulance system)

Still, last year, the Liberals won a third mandate, although just barely, ending up one seat shy of a majority. This opened up the inevitable questions about how long this third mandate would last and how long McGuinty would remain on the job. In retrospect, it might have been cleaner for all concerned had the Liberals narrowly lost the election instead of narrowly winning it.

At this point all we have to go on is speculation, but whatever the real reasons are for McGuinty’s sudden departure and his rather vague talk about “party renewal”, it must be said that the whole thing is unseemly.

After spending months talking about the need to cut government spending in order to maintain the two key programs the Liberals have championed, education and healthcare, the premier has not only resigned leaving the budget deficit intact, but he has also shut down the legislature indefinitely until a new premier is chosen.

McGuinty served for seven years as leader of the opposition and nine years as premier, but his legacy will be forever tainted by this decision.

Dalton McGuinty used the now infamous tool of prorogation to shut down the elected parliament of the day, which throws all ongoing legislative business out the window.

This, McGuinty’s last act as premier, will be remembered for what it is - a cold, calculating, and ultimately self-serving act of desperation.

Quite a come-down from his “Premier Dad” persona.

The idea is that a new leader will be elected in February, and instead of recalling the legislature, will go right to an election, so the vote will take place before the house comes back into session.

It will not work.

The Liberals will not recover from all of this with a new leader and a snap election, and unless there is a huge swing to the NDP in Ottawa and suburban Toronto, Tim Hudak will become Premier of Ontario by next summer.

The Limestone District School Board announced last week that grade 3, grade 6, and grade 9 standardised test results have shown a marked improvement this year.

Under the heading “Students show progress in math and language skills” the board announced that while the percentage of grade 3 students attaining the provincial standard in Reading and Math was down by 1% this year (to 60% and 62% respectively), results for Writing were up by 4% to 70%.

The grade 6 results showed an improvement of 4% in Reading (to 74%), 2% in Writing (to 70%), and 6% in Math (to 54%)

Further, the board said that the trends over the last five years are generally up by as much as 10% in most categories/

Grades 3 and 6 Limestone students lag behind the provincial average in all categories, however. The percentage of Grade 6 students achieving the reading standard was 1% below the provincial average; writing scores were 4% lower; and math scores also were 4% lower.

Among grade 3 students, the number of Limestone students reaching the provincial standard is 6% lower than the provincial average in all three disciplines, Reading, Writing, and Math.

There is also quite a discrepancy between different schools in the board. While numbers are not published for schools with small student populations, the results for Harrowsmith Public School, which were well above the provincial average in 2010-11, by as much as 30% points in some cases, tumbled in 2011-12. Grade 3 reading results now lag behind the board and provincial average, while the writing and math results remain slightly above the provincial average. The grade 6 results show Harrowsmith students exceeding the provincial average in reading and writing, while they are below the provincial and board average in math. Results at Loughborough Public School show grade 3 reading levels exceeding the provincial average by 9%, while the writing and math results are higher than the board average but lower than the provincial average.

The grade 6 reading result, at 81%, is well above the provincial and board averages, as are the writing and math results.

The results at Prince Charles School in Verona saw improvement in 2011-2012 in some areas, but they remain well below the board and provincial average in all categories.

The results at North Addington Education Centre in Cloyne were similar to those at Prince Charles - some significant improvement but still a major lag behind the board and provincial averages.

In the grade 9 math testing, Sydenham High School students, with 67% of applied students and 88% of academic students meeting or exceeding the standard, stand comfortably above the provincial average.

Not so for Sharbot Lake High School, where only 50% of academic students met the provincial standard (the provincial average is 84%) a drop of 35% from last year, when 85% of grade 9 Sharbot Lake academic students attained the standard. The applied results for SLHS were not released because the sample size is too small.

At North Addington Education Centre, none of the results were provided because the sample is too small.

Parents will receive individual student results in the coming weeks.

LFL&A MPP Randy Hillier has been charged under the Smoke Free Ontario Act and will appear in court on July 24.

According to Hillier, the situation arose when a member of the Leeds and Grenville Public Health Unit came to his constituency office in Perth to do an inspection.

“He found a case of empties in a corner behind a fridge,” Hillier said, “and there was a cigarette butt in one of the empty bottles. They said that the beer bottle was a potential ash tray and it is prohibited to have ashtrays in public buildings, so they charged me.”

Hillier will be challenging the charge.

“It is just ridiculous to say a beer bottle is an ashtray. Anybody who buys beer can be seen as defying the Act.”

The News contacted the Leeds Grenville Health Unit for comment.

Yves Decoste, representing the Heath Unit said that Mr. Hillier was charged “under the section 93D of the Smoke Free Ontario Act. The specific charge is ‘failure of an employer to ensure that no ashtrays or similar equipment are present in the workplace.’”

Mr. Decoste refrained from comment when asked if the ashtray in question was in fact an empty beer bottle.

“The details of the case will be made public in provincial court,” Decoste said. “He has contested the charge and he will appear in court in Perth on July 24.”

The fine for the offence under the Smoke Free Ontario Act is $325 (including the provincial surcharge)