Common Ground | Terrain commun Responsive Government

We can help with the battle against climate change by ensuring that septic systems (particularly, but not only, on lakefront properties)are operating properly. Oh, I've heard the argument that "we've had a septic system all our lives and we know when it is not working". They (the self anointed experts) made the same claim in North Frontenac Township and, upon checking, 41% of the septic systems were found to be deficient. ...more »

Lawsuits are often settled by the use of non-disclosure agreements - sometimes these are important to protect people's privacy, but too often they are used to prevent the public from becoming away of behaviour by corporations that are important to public saftey or to important issues. The use of such clauses has come up in areas such as sexual harassment - but this also matters in areas where products are unsafe or companies ...more »

I believe that compulsory voting is a generalised view that democratic election of governing representatives is the responsibility of citizens, rather than a right afforded citizens constitutionally to nominate representatives.I believe that voting is a civil responsibility on par with taxation, jury duty, compulsory education and/or paying child support. In my view, by introducing an obligation to vote, all citizens ...more »

Yes, I said "impose" these things on all Ontario municipalities - because currently the Province of Ontario will do so only, if and when, a municipality votes to request it, but the problem with this is that many city and town councillors across Ontario are voting against these two measures - usually out of self interest. I believe that the Province of Ontario shouid amend all applicable legislation to impose mandatory ...more »

The undemocratic “first-past-the-post” electoral system currently utilized to elect members to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario is biased towards major political parties and corporate/unioninterests. It also gives gives the same level of electoral influence to sparsely populated, low dense ridings located primarily in rural areas which experience slow and even negative population growth with those heavily populated, ...more »

The small proportion of women in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario reflects the inequality of women in society - and political parties have to date been unable to provide a means or mechanism to resolve the gross inequality of representation. I believe that gender balance achieved by having an equal number of men and women elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario would provide greater democracy and lead to policies ...more »

I believe that elected officials should be responsive to the will of the people at all times, not only during election periods. As we all know many MPPs break their promises and governments, especially majority governments, can and do operate as virtual dictatorships between elections. The Government of Ontario should introduce legislation that would ensure that individual MPPs would be recallable by the electorate. ...more »

In my Constitutionally protected opinion, situtations like the alleged bread price fixing scheme among some sell known retail grocers is more widespread than we would like to believe. Many industries with a few large firms in the marketplace have pricing power and they appear to act in unison to keep prices and profits high. Price fixing may occur through price leadership (and "followership"--is that a word?), tacit ...more »

Effective Citizenship Engagement In our democracy, it ought to be possible for the citizen who informs himself or herself about the issues and systems that affect them, their families, their friends, and people whom they don’t know personally, to be able to turn to government (when it seems appropriate), and ask questions and provide suggestions, with every serious expectation of due attention and response. ...more »

The Ministry of Transportation should be tasked with reviewing the option of raising the maximum speed limits for both urban and rural highways to 120km/h and 100km/h respectively in such a way that allows these limits to be enforced as they are in British Columbia and other countries so that Ontario drivers can be less subject to serious collisions and speeding tickets.

Current petition process in Ontario is still paper based. I think an electronically based petition will improve government's responsiveness and reduce long term costs of running it.

I find some of the subjects relevant to me and some not. Are any comments and votes forwarded the liberals, hopefully so as I would like my comments and voting on various topics to hopefully make a difference.