Dear Editor:
Recently I received an email from Donna Burns, the local Ontario Landowners Association (OLA) representative, requesting I forward it on to others which I was happy to do. The OLA membership now numbers over 15,000 people across the Province of Ontario, and when the membership in an organization of that magnitude are all on the same page and decide to marshal their forces, they represent a formidable group indeed.
After reading Ms. Burns’ submission in the “whitewaterevents.ca” website forum, feel free to forward it along as well, because contrary to the opinion of her detractors, Ms. Burns is a highly principled and very dedicated member of our municipality, working long hours under great pressures at her own expense, despite the efforts of a number of people to marginalize her and most especially the efforts of one particular individual who should have been terminated long ago. Nevertheless, Ms. Burns is not given to being easily deterred nor indeed will she be deterred.
Ms. Burns is fighting to ensure Whitewater Region is not going to be drowned in the flood of rules, regulations, and repressive control policies drafted up in Toronto, and then forwarded to the Renfrew County planner Charles Cheesman for implementation, working in concert with J2PG consultant Brian Whitehead, desperately flogging the County Official Plan Amendment #11, which they were confederate in drafting, and are now promoting to get approved before Mr. Cheesman retires in 18 months.
But, after watching the January 27th council video on the Whitewater municipal website, it’s clear that Mr. Cheesman is intent on dissuading the Council, and by extension the Whitewater electorate, from drafting our own official plan.
Well, from my perspective, Mr. Cheesman can huff and puff until jelly beans comes out of his ears, and he can think whatever he likes, but at the end of the day it’s not the agenda of a bureaucratic functionary like Mr. Cheesman that must prevail here. It’s the will of the Whitewater electorate, because not for a moment do I believe the electorate are going to sit idly by and allow their homeland to become another Toronto Fiefdom dictated to by the politicians and unelected bureaucrats in Queen’s Park who are determined to turn our region into a regulatory stunted rural backwater region to the future detriment of us all.
This is our homeland folks, not the socialist engineering project that big city politicians are determined to control by regulating every aspect of our lives employing any means to do so, against the best interests of our people, such as the ongoing assaults on our property rights and freedoms, as well as the cherished traditions our fathers and forefathers passed down to us from one generations to another. We will have greatly dishonoured the memory of those who have passed on before us and all the hard work they have done, if we were to remain silent and allow the County Official Plan Amendment #11 to pass without doing everything in our power to stop it.
Yes, we elected the present council to serve and protect our interests, but they need the tools to do so, of which the two most important tools are having the correct information in making their decisions, and knowing they have the support of the Whitewater electorate.
As for the role Ms. Burns and the Ontario Landowners Association can play in all of this – they have the knowledge and numbers plus the ear of a sitting member of our provincial parliament, which in the near future will be of a great service to the Whitewater council .
Do not be deceived by the assurances of Mr. Cheesman and Mr. Whitehead, because at the end of the day no matter what they say, or how many assurances they may give, their goal is to have the Official Plan Amendment passed by the Whitewater council. If they are successful in doing so the decisions made affecting our lives and the future of our municipality will no longer be made by us, they will be made in Toronto, and there will be no one to blame but ourselves if we fail to oppose passing the County Official Plan Amendment cobbled together by Mr. Whitehead and Mr. Cheesman.
Standing in opposition to all of this are the OLA members who are fighting to stop what’s happening to municipalities all across the province, and thus the voice of Ms. Burns’ long crying out in the wilderness of public apathy, should finally be heard and taken seriously during the most critical period in our regional history, because in order to retain the autonomy of our region and ensure the future of our people we have to draw up our own official plan.
Letters of support to this effect need be sent to Reeve Terry Millar for presentation at the upcoming committee meeting on Wednesday, March 2, when the County Official Plan Amendment will be under discussion once again. I have every confidence that Reeve Millar and his fellow councillors will represent the best interests of our municipality once the wishess of the electorate are made known to them.
In the interim, a petition opposing the County Official Plan Amendment is being drawn up with respect to the provincial policies Toronto politicians are attempting to force on our municipality, in a calculated effort to first, gain control over our local affairs, and then regulate us into submission. Therefore, in my opinion and the opinion of many others, Mr. Whitehead’s involvement in the official plan process should be terminated and another planner be hired in his place, because the Official Plan Amendment being promoted by Mr. Cheesman and Mr. Whitehead is a textbook example of the ongoing provincial control agenda designed to put an end to the decision making powers of all Ontario municipalities. An agenda, by the way, which first began in earnest with the forced amalgamations that former Ontario Premiere Mike Hsrris imposed upon us 15 years ago using the threat of “Amalgamate or we will do it for you.” And now we are dealing with the consequences of what we “Didn’t Do” back then – “We had damn well better do it now,” because what we were coerced into doing during amalgamation, was only Phase One of what the provincial government is trying to do to us now with official plans.
Never forget that former Premiere Mike Harris is on the public record threatening us into amalgamating and spending our financial reserves, after which he downloaded the costs onto our municipalities, and once we were past the point of no return Premier Harris had the gall to tell critics of amalgamation “Amalgamation was only voluntary,” which proved Premier Harris to be a liar considering the public threats he made when the amalgamation process began, of which the introduction of the Official Plan process in 2001 represented Phase Two of an agenda to end the autonomy of all municipalities across the province. And, in the coming Third Phase of this agenda you can expect to see Renfrew County being amalgamated into one big district and then be subjected to the kind of centralized socialist government tyranny that will forever end our right to self determination, the character of our homeland and the future of our children, which is something we cannot allow without a fight.
A petition protesting the proposed Official Plan Amendment will soon be made available across Whitewater Region where they can be signed by the public, after which these petitions will be collected and hand delivered directly to the Reeve and his fellow council members, not to the municipal office of Whitewater CAO Christine FitzSimons.
Now is the time to make your voices heard where it counts folks, because once local control over our municipal affairs is ceded to Toronto we will never get it back, and that is why the proposed Official Plan Amendment must be rejected despite the assurances of Mr. Cheesman and a decidedly unbalanced influence dwelling in our midst.
As a result, we need to support the Whitewater council by bringing the collective will of our people to bear in defence of our regional future, because despite whatever delusions Mr. Cheesman may be entertaining to the contrary, this is the Ottawa Valley and the real power lies with us, and once the court of public opinion is in session and the jury examines the evidence and delivers their verdict, bureaucratic functionaries like Mr. Cheesman will then come to understand it’s the Whitewater electorates interests that count here – not his!
To sum up, the article sent to me by Ms. Burns’ for distribution is just one of the many other such matters careening down the track towards us, and as such her email represents a dire harbinger of even worse things yet to come.
With respect to such matters I will be sending a copy of both the County Official Plan Amendment as well as a draft copy of the proposed bylaws for the entire Whitewater Municipality to the whitewaterevents.ca website where you can see for yourself what is being proposed, and thus I respectfully recommend that you read it and encourage others to read it as well.
For what it’s worth that’s my considered opinion ladies and gentlemen, and having expressed that opinion I will leave the determination of what it’s worth up to you.
Thank you for your time
and consideration.
Donald E. Broome
Cobden
Note: here is a link to the Renfrew County Revised Official Plan
Copy and Paste the following link in your web browser
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/DraftCountyOfficialPlan%20Review%20June%202015.pdf
