Jun 05, 2013


Re: Ambulance Service Cuts!

I'm writing this letter after experiencing another frustrating day at work. I've worked as a paramedic for Frontenac County for the past eight years. I was born and raised, and continue to live in Central Frontenac. Having this personal connection to the area poses some challenges in my field of work; I often treat friends, neighbours, and family members in times of illness and injury. But it's this connection that makes me very passionate about my job and our ambulance service.

As a resident and a tax payer, I am very concerned about the layoffs of four paramedics and the loss of an ambulance in the City of Kingston. Despite what our county warden says, this will have a very negative effect on the entire County, not just the City of Kingston. You see, as ambulances become dedicated to emergencies within the City limits, it is the ambulance dispatchers' job to find other available resources. These are found in the rural areas of the County; Sydenham, Parham and Snow Road stations are used to provide emergency standby coverage for the City if they're available. This standby coverage ensures that ambulance response times within the city stay at, or slightly above, the response time guidelines for the urban area set by the County, while response time standards for the rural areas go completely out the window. Response times can easily exceed 50 minutes in some areas as a result of these standbys. Today, I spent over three hours providing standby coverage, as a DIRECT result of these recent lay offs. I spent an additional three-and-a-half hours on standby as a result of Sydenham and Parham ambulances being busy dealing with emergencies in their own areas. For over four of those six-and-a-half hours on standby, my partner and I were the only paramedics available to respond to emergencies from Harrowsmith to Plevna, from Arden to Maberly and everywhere in between - an area that is normally covered by three ambulances and six paramedics.

The worst part is, it wasn't even a busy day for emergency calls. What would have happened if there was an accident on the highway with more than one patient? We can only transport one patient at a time. How long do you think it would take for the second ambulance to arrive? Where will it be coming from? As summer time arrives, and the tourist season approaches, historically the call volume in the rural areas increase with the seasonal population growth. These cuts are going to affect someone at some point; it's only a matter of time. Living in the country, longer response times are inevitable, it's just a fact of life that we need to accept. But what we shouldn't accept is what our elected officials have already done, which is removing an ambulance from service, making an already bad situation much, much worse. I really don't want to be the one who has to tell you that we couldn't resuscitate your loved one because it took us too long to get to you as a result of these service cuts. Write, e-mail or call our county warden and county councilors and demand that the ambulance service level be restored to pre-May 20th levels, before something bad happens.

It's only a matter of time.

Ryan Conboy


Re: “It’s highway robbery”

(South Frontenac Council report, May 23, 2013)

“…a salary increase in 2014, which will match the salary of the highest paid police service in Ontario.” In some Ontario cities 40 percent of the force took home more than $100,000! In Windsor a first-class constable will make about $90,000 in base pay next year.* We have to match that?!

In Detroit (America’s most dangerous city) the highest paid police officer takes home US$53,237 a year**, and probably has a much tougher job. With crime in steady decline, and police wages going in the opposite direction, could it be that too many police officers are policing too little crime in South Frontenac, and maybe being paid too much to do it. In South Frontenac crime may not pay, but fighting it sure does.

John Blackwell


Tax Dollars in Education

I hope you will publish this because I am really mad and I’m sure that most people will want to reconsider what should happen to our tax dollars.

We don’t have enough doctors and the universities say they must charge medical students even more than the already outrageous fee because the province won’t pay more. Meantime, about half of us are women, probably 5% of Ontarians are gay, and about 20% are atheist, and our taxes go toward the Catholic schools so that they can teach their kids to be anti-women, anti-gay and anti-atheist. Also all churches that go tax-free should be looked into for their possible hateful teachings.

Give those tax monies to helping our schools raise kind useful tolerant adults who are ready to live in a civilized world in the hope that some day there will be such a world.

Carmen Gowan


Hinchinbrooke School

As the taxpayers of Central Frontenac yet again receive municipal tax bills with increases way above those in the general cost of living and in their incomes, they learn of Council’s warming to the idea of purchasing the old Hinchinbrooke Public School.

A building determined by the School Board to no longer serve the purpose for which it was designed but which some on council think might make a suitable fire hall - a building in need of major renovation - a building that would incur significant ongoing operating and maintenance costs.

I ask Councilor Francis Smith’s fellow councilors to pay particular attention to her when she says, “What I think is missing here is a business case scenario to take a look at who would be in the building and who would pay for what.”

This building should be purchased only if doing so has been demonstrated to be the most economical means of providing the facilities needed by the township. If income from user groups is needed for financial viability, it should be clearly demonstrated that the cost of such use is fully recoverable and that the user groups are prepared to make a meaningful long-term commitment. New services should not be proposed to justify acquisition of the building.

Council has committed to “consider purchasing the property” if the feasibility study it has now agreed to support, yields positive results. History shows that municipal projects of this type are prone to running out of control and going way over budget. Council must not allow this to happen. Before giving serious consideration to purchasing this property, they must ensure, firstly, that the study covered all of the issues involved and that it provides a comprehensive and realistic forecast of the immediate and ongoing costs associated with the buildings acquisition; secondly, that they are fully informed of the costs of alternate approaches to providing comparable facilities.

Council must not permit the old Hinchinbrooke school to become an albatross around the necks of Central Frontenac tax payers.

Michael Wise


Re: Marijuana, tobacco and alcohol

I thought that I was too old to take issue with "Letters to the Editor" but I cannot ignore the letter from Peri Livesey (Cloudy Thinking on Marijauna, May 30/13), answering the original article about the pernicious weed, MaryJane (Municipal Drug Strategy, May 23).

Someone (I don't know who) said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics". Saying that there are zero deaths attributable to marijuana is like trying to prove a negative. 37,000 deaths from tobacco? Not so. Those thousands of deaths are caused by ingesting smoke, and a multitude of carcinogens resulting from the burning, and inhaling of all sorts of noxious weeds. Marijuana is less destructive to the user and others as compared to alcohol consumption? Says who? Many know me as a recovering alcoholic (Seven years and counting) so I am not an innocent in the matter of substance abuse, and to say that "people don't get stoned... and do not kill themselves and others while driving stoned" is the most egregiously fatuous and self-serving nonsense I have ever read (politics notwithstanding). Driving while under the influence of ANY intoxicant is criminally irresponsible, and to postulate otherwise is equally irresponsible!

People who want to "feel better” should get up in the morning, look in the mirror and admit that everything they do each and every day has an impact on the world at large. That impact can be positive or negative, depending on the moral compass of the "man in the mirror", not dependant on some chemical assistance to help you sneak through your own life.

Ray Fletcher


Fewer councillors? NO!

There is a disturbing trend these days towards ever-smaller municipal councils - less democratic representation for ordinary citizens in a "bigger-is-better" world. Residents of North Frontenac are currently discussing a proposal to reduce our township council from seven members to five, cutting local ward representation by half, from two councillors per ward to one.

This proposal is a bad idea for many reasons. In practical terms, it would reduce the access we have to our elected representatives, and increase even further the workload each one carries. This would inevitably cancel out the supposed cost savings - minimal in any case - since the work would still have to be done and paid for, whether by extra staff or extra hours for the remaining councillors. Council members already put in many hours of hard work, and increasing the load would make it very hard to get qualified candidates willing to run for election.

The harm to local democracy would be even greater. Having just five councillors would limit the range of voices and restrict debate around the council table. If even one ward representative had to miss a meeting, her/his ward would have no voice at all in the decisions made there. It is quite possible that if both the mayor and deputy mayor were elected "at large", a single ward could end up with a majority of the five votes, leaving the other two populations largely disenfranchised.

There are ways in which, yes, we should think of our amalgamated municipality as one unit with common goals. However, for that to work fairly and effectively, we need a dynamic balance of input and voices from the various quite different communities scattered across our large territory. To do that, we need to keep our ward system intact and support a full council of seven members. The public meeting at 1 p.m. this Saturday should make this point very clear.

Helen Forsey


Reaching out to Scott Reid

Over the past several months, I have been heartened to see so many Frontenac News readers write to complain about the intellectually dishonest and insulting “surveys” from our Member of Parliament, Scott Reid. It is clear that people are not buying these disingenuous efforts to “reach out”, when they are really intended to drive, not seek, public opinion and to provide the Conservative Party’s infamous database with contact addresses for future fundraising.

Were Mr. Reid really interested in reaching out to a concerned constituency, he might start by providing his public response to a few issues in the national news over just the past 60 days.

What is Mr. Reid’s position on the corruption uncovered involving several Conservative (and at least one Liberal) Senator, the role of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff in providing cash to an elected official (a potentially criminal act), and the Prime Minister’s own defence of Mr. Wright, Mr. Duffy and Ms. Wallin right up until the moment they got caught?

How does Mr. Reid feel about Mr. Duffy campaigning for the Conservative Party at events while drawing expenses for his Senate job, double-dipping by him and seemingly an illegal campaign contribution to the Conservative Party by us, the taxpayers?

What is Mr. Reid’s position on the recent decision by Judge Mosley that fraud was committed in the 2011 election through robocalls directing voters to non-existent voting locations using information only available through the Conservative Party’s information database (while noting that no one could be identified for punishment because the records had been wiped clean)?

Would Mr. Reid comment on Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s office directing the Public Services Commission to amend a report in order to drop its findings of political interference concerning the appointment of one of Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s staff to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency?

How about the arrest on fraud charges of Arthur Porter, Mr. Harper’s appointment to head the Security and Intelligence Review Committee?

Or maybe Mr. Reid can explain how 16 appointments to 6-figure salaried positions with the Social Security Tribunal (replacing employment Insurance referee boards) just happen to be donors to the Conservative Party?

But the questions that I would really like to see Mr. Reid “reach out” about is how the party that came to power claiming to want to clean up years of Liberal corruption and entitlement found itself behaving in exactly the same way just two years into their majority and how Mr. Reid intends to be accountable for that situation.

Daniel Wilson

Support local
independant journalism by becoming a patron of the Frontenac News.