The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

6- The Oakville Beaver, Friday January 25, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com OPINION & LETTERS The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: The Oakville Beaver is a division of IAN OLIVER Group Publisher Media Group Ltd. NEIL OLIVER Publisher DAVID HARVEY General Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director SANDY PARE Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA ANCHOR Circ. Manager Turn off the lights We want you to turn off your lights. Not right now (although if there is a light on in an empty room, you might want to switch it off), but on Saturday, March 29 when Oakville joins a growing number of municipalities around the world in the Earth Hour Challenge. The challenge began last year when residents in Sydney, Australia turned off their lights for one hour to reduce their ecological footprint. Since then, the campaign has spread quickly around the world. This week Oakville Mayor Rob Burton announced Oakville would join the Earth Hour Challenge and we've climbed aboard as the official media sponsor. Our goal is to turn off every light in Oakville from 8-9 p.m. on March 29. Many people like to think of Oakville as one of the greenest communities in Canada, if not North America. We have a strong network of grassroots environmental groups that are working tirelessly at making our community and the world a better place in which to live. In the last election, our voters spoke out and elected a predominately `green' council. The inclusion of the North Oakville Heritage System in the North Oakville secondary plan has been lauded as the new blueprint for municipal planning. Last year, Oakville was deemed the Forestry Capital of Canada. So on Saturday, March 29 it should be easy to go from being one of the greenest communities in Canada to one of the darkest. Turning off the lights for one hour in Oakville -- and, hopefully, a good portion of the world -- is more than a stunt. It is a symbolic action that will demonstrate we are all in this together. If left unabated, climate change poses a devastating environmental threat to everyone in Oakville and the rest of the world. Turning off the lights for one hour is not a final solution to the problem, but it is a step in the right direction. And maybe by turning off a few lights we can actually shed some light on a problem that many of our political leaders refuse to acknowledge. As the media sponsor for the Earth Hour challenge, The Oakville Beaver will be featuring a series of environment related-articles leading up to that last Saturday in March and beyond. We will be examining what various individuals and groups in town are doing to reduce their ecological footprint. Let us know your plans by emailing editor@oakvillebeaver.com. We will help our readers conserve energy and think green by publishing conservation tips in each issue of the paper. We will also be urging others in Oakville to join us on March 29 in turning off the lights. We will publicize all local businesses that choose to sign up for the Earth Hour Challenge. Together we can make a difference. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Oakville Beaver welcomes letters from its readers. Letters will be edited for clarity, length, legal considerations and grammar. In order to be published all letters must contain the name, address and phone number of the author. Letters should be addressed to The Editor, Oakville Beaver, 467 Speers Rd., Oakville, ON, L6K 3S4, or via e-mail to editor@oakvillebeaver.com. The Beaver reserves the right to refuse to publish a letter. Halton MPP missed the mark on Family Day In the Jan. 19 Weekend edition of The Oakville Beaver, Liberals need to think before taking action: It would have been more informative to your readers if you had identified Mr. Chudleigh as a Tory MPP and as a businessman so that we could take his criticism of Premier Dalton McGuinty's proposed Family Day with a huge grain of salt. BY STEVE NEASE snease@haltonsearch.com Of course Mr. Chudleigh would ridicule the proposal (although his analogy about a pitbull eating Brie and getting sick is a bit ridiculous in itself). As an Opposition MPP, if Mr. Chudleigh welcomed the Family Day idea (as most winterweary Ontarians do), he'd risk being banished from the Tory Caucus. And who would expect a profit-amassing businessperson to welcome having to pay his employees for being allowed to take Family Day off? If all Mr. Chudleigh can criticize Premier McGuinty for is proposing a holiday in the depths of winter, trying to regulate unpasteurized cheese and banning menacing pitbulls, then I'm glad I voted Liberal in the last provincial election. The thought of returning to the draconian days of Tory premiers Mike Harris or Ernie Eves sends a chill through my bones that is unmatched by any shivering caused by the coldest days of February. TOM DOUGLAS Pud The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone 416-340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline.