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www.oakvillebeaver.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Thursday, June 24, 2010 · 6 The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5571 Classified Advertising: 905-632-4440 Circulation: 845-9742 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. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Letter to the editor Opposition needed on Bill C-9 I am writing to highlight an important issue in our federal government that should be of concern to all Canadians. Bill C-9 is a budget-related piece of legislation that just recently passed third reading in Parliament and is now being sent to the Senate. Known as the Omnibus Bill, it is a whopping 904 pages long, with 23 sections and 2,208 clauses. The bill contains a number of non-budget items, which pose serious dangers for Canada. Among these are measures that partially privatize Canada Post, give Cabinet the right to privatize Atomic Energy of Canada without any input from Parliament and allow the government to transfer funds out of Employment Insurance. But perhaps the most dangerous part of Bill C-9 is the deregulation of environmental assessments for major commercial projects, including energy projects such as oil drilling. The U.S. is now suffering through probably the greatest environmental catastrophe it has ever known, and scientists are predicting that oil from the massive leak in the Gulf of Mexico will likely reach the Canadian east coast. British Petroleum has admitted it had no real plan for dealing with a leak on its deep-sea drilling operations. The lesson from the Gulf disaster is that environmental regulation needs to be tightened on such projects, not eliminated. Since it is primarily related to the budget, Bill C-9 is a confidence motion, and its defeat would trigger an election. Unfortunately, the Liberal Party chose to send too few MPs to Parliament to defeat the bill, even though they have publicly stated they oppose it. I believe this Omnibus Bill is a dirty trick, lumping very different legislation together, and taking advantage of Liberal weakness and the threat of an election to pass unpopular legislation. I encourage readers who share my concern to write to members of the Senate and make their views known. Although it has passed through the House of Commons, Bill C-9 is not yet a law. The Senate can send it back to Parliament with a recommendation that its measures be voted on separately. Readers may also want to contact our Conservative MP to voice their concerns, as well as the Liberal Party to call on it to be an effective Opposition on this matter. The danger of this legislation cuts across partisan lines. Deregulating oil drilling could create a disaster in Canada like the one we are seeing in the Gulf of Mexico. Surely the risk of an election is not so great that we would want tens of millions of gallons of oil washing onto Canadian shores. JAMES EDE, FEDERAL NDP CANDIDATE FOR OAKVILLE NEIL OLIVER Vice-President and Group Publisher, Metroland West DAVID HARVEY Regional 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 SARAH MCSWEENEY Circ. Manager The Oakville Beaver is a division of WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com Suburban Newspapers of America Media Group Ltd. RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canadian Community Newspapers Association THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville ATHENA Award NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER A STRIDE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION: Approximately 150 grannies from numerous Halton granny groups laced up their walking shoes to raise more than $65,000 in early June in the local edition of the first annual Stride to Turn the Tide national fundraising walk. The local walk began and ended at St. Mildred's-Lightbourn School, with pitstops at Trafalgar Lodge and Churchill Place. It was among 150 held across Canada to benefit the Stephen Lewis Foundation's Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign. It was in support of the African grandmothers in sub-Saharan Africa, many of whom are raising their grandchildren after losing their children to HIV/AIDS. Dedicating the summer of 2010 to doing a lot -- of nothing T he summer of 2010 officially arrived this week, and with it a new resolve and determination in our household to dedicate this summer to rest and relaxation and a healthy hedonism. Over the past five years our entire family has become increasingly busy. While I don't think we're quite at the breaking point, we're definitely at the stage where we have to wonder whether we're actually losing the capacity to truly relax, the ability (or, perhaps, the willingness) to totally let go. Sadly, we're not alone. Last month Maclean's reported that, as a society, we are "working ourselves sick," the gist of the stark story being that chronic work pressures are causing us to dig our own graves. And just last week, The Globe and Mail ran a front-page story under the banner: "All work and no play: Why our well-being hangs in the balance." Ironically, I read the Globe story while relaxing at poolside at a resort in Collingwood during a two-day getaway. I'd just returned from a restorative round of golf. There was an ice-cold beer in my hand. I was, for the first time in ages, feeling mellow. The gist of the excellent exposé in the newspaper was a sober antidote to that mellow. According to it: Twenty-five percent of us are "working around the clock, thanks to longer hours at the bank, the grocery story, the gym. Not to mention the BlackBerry. We're more stressed, less rested, and have less time to devote to our kids." Oh, and we're spending less time on social activities which, along with fitness, might be all that's standing between our '24-hourwork-day' and terminal unhappiness. Andy Juniper It used to just be a glib saying: "Get A Life." Now, for the sake of our sanity and our survival, it needs to become our mantra. We're over-worked, over-stressed, and we are rightly asking ourselves: for what? Further, we're not allowing ourselves to have any fun. Why? Great question. In previous generations, people tended to have a clear and defined line between work and play. Work was about 40 hours a week, with some overtime possibly tossed in, and the rest was pretty much play. My parents owned their evenings and weekends. They read books and watched baseball on TV (a game a night, all summer long), and regularly socialized. I read a paragraph of a book before sinking into a coma at the end of an epic day. I steal an inning or two of a ball game on the tube when time allows. And we squeeze a social life out of a calendar that is crammed. Now, I don't want to blame the BlackBerry and its odious ilk ­ no one forced us to buy these devices, or to check them incessantly like the fate of civilization depends on it -- but, they are truly as addictive as crack. And we've become junkies. At the Jays game on Father's Day, I saw a guy staring at his iPhone for nine innings. Maybe we've just come to take our work -- and ourselves -- too seriously. Maybe we need to come to the startling realization that unless we're unlocking genetic codes or curing cancer, our work is not the most important thing in the world, or even the most important thing in our lives. R & R should not be a luxury none of us can afford. For the sake of our happiness and health, the Junipers are dedicating the summer of 2010 to putting our feet up and doing a lot. A lot of nothing. Andy Juniper can be visited at www.strangledeggs.com, contacted at ajjuniper@gmail.com, or followed at www.twitter.com/thesportjesters.