Opinion
For $69,000 pay plus $13,000 expenses shouldn’t city council be a full time job?
The Mayor makes $132,000 plus expenses and it is considered a full time job and our city councillors make only $69,000 plus expenses and they are considered part timers. Some hold other full time jobs as employees or business owners and some are retired with numerous pensions.
The $69,000 alone still means $5,750 per month, or $1,327 per week and if considered full time at 40 hours per week means $33.17 per hour. Don’t forget they get expenses for phones, mileage, travel etc for and $13,000, plus free meals at events so it is lucrative for a part time job.
Seriously how many part time jobs get you $80,000 per year? Very few.
So, let us classify city council as full time, and expect full time effort. They would have more time to dedicate their time to city affairs, perhaps be more demanding of staff and administration’s reports and recommendations. Being the first priority for councillors would make for a more knowledgeable council, would you not agree. They would be able offer more input into council agendas and issues.
There other issues to ponder about our city council. Should we bring in a ward system, perhaps 4 wards with 2 councillors in each ward? The citizens would know more about their candidates as there would not be 29 candidates to choose from. The elected councillors would be more accountable to their constituents, rather than just having a shallow support base spread throughout the city.
Another item to consider is term limits. If a politician cannot follow through his promises in 6 years, what makes you think he will do it 26 years? Incumbents enjoy the name recognition, but their support usually decreases after 2 terms. Yet it is still hard to unseat an incumbent who enjoys the perks and pay of a lucrative part time job, no matter what they say.
The next election is 10 months away, we should think about growth and adapting to a new age. Maybe it is time to look at changes as the city has only grown by 195 residents since 2015. Perhaps a new way to run the city is in order?
I think it is time to consider and explore all options. Don’t you? Just asking.
International
Elon Musk praises families on X: ‘We should teach fear of childlessness,’ not pregnancy
From LifeSiteNews
By Stephen Kokx
As fertility rates across the West plummet, Musk has consistently warned about the coming population collapse.
Elon Musk is continuing to spread the word about the importance of families.
On X this week, Musk sounded the alarm in response to a post that claimed birth rates in Sweden and Britain are now at their lowest levels since 1749 and 1938, respectively.
“Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy, we should teach fear of childlessness,” Musk said.
While campaigning for Donald Trump in Pittsburgh this past election cycle, Musk had shared a similar message while speaking to an abortion survivor.
“There’s nothing greater than having a kid,” he said. “I get more joy in my life for my kids than anything else … having a child will make you happier than anything else in your life, ever.”
Musk also used that opportunity to blame schools for “terrifying” girls and women with the idea that “getting pregnant is the end of your life” for why they are not having as many children as they used to, echoing remarks he made to Tucker Carlson in October.
After President-elect Trump’s landslide victory earlier this month, he announced that Musk will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with businessman and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Musk said on X that “either we get government efficient, or America goes bankrupt. That’s what it comes down to.”
As fertility rates across the West plummet, Musk has consistently warned about the coming population collapse. While he has never adopted the true pro-life position, he has pointed to birth control and abortion as contributing factors to the demographic crisis and has also pushed back against the absurd claims of climate extremists that a reduction in population is necessary for the future of the planet.
Last year, responding to the surprise passage in Ohio of a radical pro-abortion amendment, Musk said men and women have been misled regarding the harms of abortion.
“Many men also fear that they will be unable to have ‘fun’ if abortion is outlawed,” he wrote.
Children are “absolutely” one of the most fulfilling things a person can have in life, he said.
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
It’s Time To Stop Church Arsons And What Fuels Them
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Religious freedoms and the right to worship have been a recognized hallmark of civilized societies for centuries. The preamble of Canada’s constitution says our country is built on the principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God and the rule of law. In defiance of both, almost 600 Canadian places of worship have suffered arson in recent years. Nothing could be more unCanadian.
The stats were revealed by Member of Parliament Marc Dalton following a formal inquiry to the federal government. The response showed 592 arsons had been set on places of worship between 2010 and 2022. they rose from 58 in 2020 to 90 in 2021, then down to 74 in 2022.
The peak coincides with claims made in May of 2021 that the remains of 215 school children had been discovered on the site of the former Kamloops Residential School.
Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a subsequent wave of church burnings “unacceptable and wrong” he also called their likely motivations “real and fully understandable.” This hardly doused the flames.
These arsons far outnumber those made on Canadian churches in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan, which opposed non-Protestants and non-whites. In those years the KKK desecrated Sarnia’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. They killed ten people when they set Saint-Boniface College in Winnipeg on fire. They also burned the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Quebec. In 1926, three Klan members were jailed after they blew up St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Barrie, Ont.
The Klan soon fizzled out, seemingly unlike these recent church burnings. The 110-year-old Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses Catholic church burned down in Trois-Rivières, Quebec last month, but whether arson was involved has not been confirmed.
The presence of bodies underneath the former residential school in Kamloops has not been confirmed either. A 1924 septic field could also account for soil anomalies found there by ground-penetrating radar. Eight million federal tax dollars spent to investigate the site have yielded no remains and details on how the money was spent are sketchy. It’s high time the site was excavated to confirm or rule out the graves and do autopsies on any corpses found there.
Federal funds also fuel the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), the Orwellian title for a group that fuels resentment against socially conservative organizations with negative characterizations. On August 7, CAHN published “40 Ways To Fight The Far-Right: Tactics for Community Activists in Canada” thanks to $640,000 from Ottawa.
“White boys and men make up the majority of people involved in hate-promoting movements,” the handbook explains. Pro-life and pro-parent groups, CAHN says, are among those “characterized by racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, anti-2SLGBTQ+ views, and pro-colonialist/ anti-Indigenous bigotry.”
CAHN says the Catholic-dominated, pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition is a “hate movement.” Liberty Coalition Canada, a legal defence organization, and the activist organization Action4Canada are similarly denigrated for their alleged belief that Canada was founded on Christian values and attempts to reassert such values.
Meanwhile, the CAHN guide advocates “antifascist” doxing, including infiltration of right-leaning organizations. getting people fired, and ending friendships.
Dalton’s Bill C-411 the “Anti-Arson Act” would do more to deter hate-motivated crimes than CAHN ever will. The legislation would punish those who set fires and explosions at religious places. A first offence would get a mandatory five-year jail sentence, while subsequent offenses would prompt seven years.
When respect for the supremacy of God and the rule of law fail, rights give way to wrongs. It’s time to stop the fires and the disputable claims that fuel them, and restore respect for people of faith, their right to worship, and their places of worship.
Lee Harding is a Research Associate for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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