April 24, 2008
When Aboriginal Appeasement Minister Michael J. Bryant visited Cayuga on April 22, 2008 I had the pleasure of being in attendance with many residents, and as I sat listening intently to his words, I found myself a bit confused as he appeared to be avoiding giving any real answer to the questions posed to him, but surely no member of the Liberal government (appointed by Dalton McGuinty no less!) would try to swerve us.
March 5, 2008
The Director of Central West Region for the Attorney General’s office John Pearson went before a Justice of the Peace this morning in Cayuga court and deemed the assault committed against me in August 2007 to be too “trivial” to pursue. He asked that the charge be dismissed and as the crown has absolute authority over these decisions, the Justice had no choice but to put an end to my unresolved private prosecution of Councilor Buck Sloat.
CD98.9
Haldimand County council has decided to provide legal representation for one of its councillors facing a charge after a incident last summer. On January 9th, Councillor Buck Sloat was charged with assault stemming from a private complaint filed against him. Allegations are that Sloat assaulted an individual at the county offices while on break from a council meeting in August. That month Gary McHale, who has made headlines in Caledonia before, faxed the OPP and politicians asking for police protection from Councillor Sloat.
The request was made due to an alleged altercation between Sloat and another man outside council chambers earlier that month, and that fact that McHale feels Sloat has a personal hatred towards him. Under a by-law passed in 2002, council ensured that public servants exercising duties in good faith would be protected from personal and financial risk from claims and actions with respect to matters arising out of County business. This incident is believed to fall directly under that clause.
By Donna Pitcher
At the Council meeting February 4th, 2008, council voted 6-0 in favor of having the County Lawyer represent Councilor Buck Sloat. Councilor Sloat appeared in the Cayuga Courthouse Wednesday February 6th, 2008, with the County Lawyer and Councilor Grice at his side.
I don’t really have a problem with a member of council being represented by the county lawyer if in fact the problem is of an “official” Haldimand County Matter. But when a council member is charged under the Criminal Code, that is a whole new ball game!
February 6, 2008
Deputy Mayor of Haldimand / Council member Buck Sloat made his first appearance in a Cayuga court this morning to answer to the assault charge laid I laid against him stemming from an August 2007 incident.
Accompanied by Councilor Craig Grice and a Haldimand County lawyer, Sloat appeared before a Justice of the Peace who remanded the matter until March 5 at 9am.
Update: 01/10/2008 8:55pm: This site has reached #11 of 100 in the wordpress blogs of the day “growing blogs” section for today. Wordpress is currently hosting 2,131,522 blogs. My thanks to all of the readers.
January 9, 2008
After much effort by myself and Merlyn Kinrade, a Justice of the Peace has signed a criminal charge of assault against Haldimand council member Buck Sloat, and he will have to appear at the Cayuga court house on February 6, 2008 at 9am to answer to the charge.
The foundation of the law and order that we are fighting to see upheld clearly states that Mr. Sloat is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, so please consider all statements below to be alleged until such time as they are proven.
The circumstances are somewhat unique as the OPP refused to lay this charge and I had to go to court personally to get it done.
By Gary McHale – www.CaledoniaWakeupCall.com
According to the Mayor it is Mr. Sloat who is directing council to pass the motion to read the Mayor’s Email. Mr. Sloat attempted to clarify this point by getting Mr. Pearce to state that Sloat wasn’t the one behind the motion.
But is wasn’t too hard to see which council member was leading the charge because Mr. Sloat made the debate over the motion very personal – directly attacking the Mayor and her staff.
While Bartlett, Boyko and even Grice tried to find a middle ground it was clear Mr. Sloat would settle for nothing but all emails in his hands.
When Bartlett and Boyko presented the argument that no one wanted to read the Mayor’s email, Sloat was clear – I want her Emails.
Mr. Sloat’s argument was he missed an event that the Mayor went to and that was because she didn’t give him the email. The Mayor’s answer is that her staff forwards all emails that are either labelled Mayor & Councilor or includes a request to another council member.
I guess Mr. Sloat didn’t think that maybe this event he is so concerned about didn’t have his name on it in the email. Maybe the person who invited the Mayor didn’t include Mr. Sloat’s name and that is why he didn’t get a copy.
Mr. Sloat is an experienced council member and I would ask why he cannot get people in his riding to email him directly instead of going through the Mayor? He does have an email account so why not ask why the person in his riding failed to email Mr. Sloat directly – maybe because Mr. Sloat wasn’t invited.
Mr. Sloat claims that he had nothing to do with creating the motion. Somehow his views are the ones expressed in the motion and somehow it just happens to be a personal problem he claims to be having with the Major but he didn’t help create the motion.
Read the full story here.
By Gary McHale – www.CaledoniaWakeupCall.com
One of the more surprising things that I heard at the Council Meeting last night was Boyko’s speech about how the first resolution title “Mayors Office Correspondence Management” was being called ‘Snooping’. He used the word more than once to refer to resolution that council had before it the previous week.
He didn’t say that someone may think it is snooping or that people have told him it may be snooping, he was very clear that “it is snooping”. Boyko is an experienced councillor and who am I to disagree with his inside information on why last week’s motion was put forward.
What is surprising is that according to Boyko’s judgement of the resolution, Ricker, Bartlett, Sloat and Pearce, who all had a hand in creating the resolution and/or bringing it forward, were trying to snoop.
Well quite the judgment call by Boyko towards the people who created and brought forward this resolution. Again let’s be clear, Boyko didn’t say that someone may think it is snooping, he declared it was snooping.
The solution to the snooping, for Mr. Boyko, was to have the new CAO (Chief Administrative Officer) be the one reading the email.
So let’s get this straight, Mr. Boyko saw the resolution to Ricker’s, Bartlett’s, Sloat’s and Pearce’s snooping was to have the New CAO be what?… the chief Snoop?
How is controlling who is snooping change whether it is snooping?
How is a paid snoop any better than an elected snoop?
By Gary McHale – www.CaledoniaWakeupCall.com
One has to hand it to Grice for informing the public about the Revenge factor as the motivator behind the Email motion. During the debate about the Email motion Grice did a little speech in which he talked about a united council. To be more exact he was pointing to the press release by the council that blamed Harper and Harper alone for the ongoing problems on DCE.
The Council was united that the OPP shared no blame. The Council was united that McGuinty should not be blamed at all. Grice and all the councillors wanted to blame Harper alone and thus they issued their press release.
Grice stated last night that the Mayor publicly went against this within a few short hours.
Grice and Council were completely united that it was time to help McGuinty’s re-election campaign and say almost word for word what McGuinty and Fantino have been passing by the public as the truth for months. What McGuinty wants most is for the public, just before the election, to think that he has handled Caledonia properly.
How exactly, Mr. Grice, was Harper to stop the attack on the CHTV camera crew?
It is the OPP not the RCMP who police Caledonia – maybe you didn’t notice that point?
How exactly, Mr. Grice, was Harper to stop McGuinty from buying DCE? How was Harper to stop McGuinty from appealing Judge Marshall’s decision?
How was Harper responsible for appointing Fantino, the bully who has you so scared to speak out because he threatened to sue you?
It doesn’t take much logic to conclude that in Grice’s mind the council needs access to the Mayor’s email to ensure that she doesn’t speak out.
Now Mr. Grice didn’t directly say this – what politician directly says anything? But he talked about how upset he was by the Mayor’s actions over the press release and this he did while debating the email motion.
Grice didn’t say the motion was needed so he could know about events in the area or because he was missing being invited to such events. He didn’t talk about how the motion was to allow for better bonding between the Mayor and the new CAO – those were Boyko’s and Bartlett’s speeches.
How, exactly, is passing this email motion to help?
He stated, “Will this solve the problem? No. Will it help? maybe”. I got one clear message from Mr. Grice’s speech – How dare you mayor speak out. We told you what to say.
Fortunately for Haldimand County Mayor Trainer is no puppet.
Last week councillors were told to “Beware” by the county lawyer. What exactly are they to ‘beware’ of is not completely clear since the letter has not been made public. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs warned the Council to seek legal advice, but again it is not completely clear why since council stopped the Mayor as she was reading it out.
The new improved resolution by council was to remove them from the list of people intercepting the Mayor’s email.
Now I am not saying that these possible charges would hold up in court nor am I saying that a local council has the authority to override the Criminal Code of Canada. What I am suggesting is that council suddenly wanted their names off the list of people ‘intercepting’ the Mayor’s email.
Read the full story here. Much more at www.CaledoniaWakeupCall.com
Here is the resolution to deny your privacy.
Ist Resolution – Aug. 3, 2007
Resolution Re: Mayors Office Correspondence Management
WHEREAS THE Mayors’ office receives a considerable volume of correspondence through written or electronic form;
AND WHEREAS THE MAYOR has acknowledged in the past that management of this correspondence, especially e-mails has been overwhelming to the point where many e-mails may go unanswered of otherwise not responded to;
AND WHEREAS the management of this correspondence is critical to the effective operation of the County;
AND WHEREAS the dissemination of this correspondence to the remainder of Council as well as the Clerk is if utmost importance to successfully conduct the business of the Corporation;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED;
THAT ALL correspondence sent and received through the Mayor’s office including all e-mail addressed to the Mayor by title or name, be copied to all councilors as well as the County Clerk;
AND THAT the Mayor’s assistant implement this direction for all hard copy correspondence;
AND THAT the General Manager of Corporate Services through the information Systems Division ensure that all e-mail sent to the Mayor by title or name, is automatically copied to all Councillors and the County Clerk;
AND THAT any questions or concerns from Councillors regarding specific correspondence to the Mayor’s office be first directed to the Mayor for a response and if required, the matter be referred to Council in Committee under the “Inquires, Announcements and Concerns of Councillors” part of the agenda.
August 13, 2007
Lots of detailed information about this historic meeting is being made available via this site, www.voiceofcanada.ca and www.caledoniawakeupcall.com so I am going to just give you the straight brutal facts as they happened.
Democracy in Haldimand County is now dead. Your right as a citizen to communicate privately with your elected Mayor was Squashed in an unprecedented and unthinkable vote at tonight’s Council Meeting.
Buck Sloat voted that your privacy in speaking your mayor means nothing
Lorne Boyko voted that your privacy in speaking with your mayor means nothing.
Leroy Bartlett voted that your privacy in speaking with your mayor means nothing
Tony Dalimonte voted that your privacy in speaking with your mayor means nothing
Don Ricker voted that your privacy in speaking with your mayor means nothing.
ONLY Craig Grice had the guts to stand up and vote against this absurd resolution which violates the privacy of each and every citizen of Haldimand.
In very weak and thinly veiled attempts to justify their votes, Buck Sloat stood up and angrily proclaimed that he missed out on attending a private function for which the invitation was sent to Mayor Trainer. If someone wanted him at their function, is it not logical to assume they would send an invitation to him?
Leroy Bartlett offered the explanation that this is nothing personal against the Mayor (which of course it is) and that this is about better communication between the offices of the Mayor and the soon to be replaced Chief Administrative Officer.
Lorne Boyko repeated the same propaganda that this is about a “good relationship” between the Mayor and the CAO. A good relationship based on the complete undermining of the authority of the Chief Executive Officer of the County, Mayor Marie Trainer. If that makes sense to anyone, please feel free to comment and explain so that I too may understand this twilight zone logic.
Kudos to Craig Grice for having the guts to stand up in the middle of this insanity and say that he has no interest in the personal email of the Mayor.
Congratulations are also in order for the way Mayor Trainer handled herself against these jackles tonight. She made it very clear that at no time did any member of Council have the guts to say to her face that they felt there was a problem with the way the email system works, that this is an outright attack on the privacy of her constituents, and many other excellent statements that will be reported on in the coming days. She also made a point of explaining to those in attendance after the vote that your emails to her are no longer private.
Audio and Video from this meeting will be coming soon on www.caledoniawakeupcall.com
Much more detailed information is forthcoming. Those are the basics of tonights Council meeting. Your rights mean nothing to your councillors, and they feel they have to right to undercut the authority of the CEO of the County Mayor Trainer because one of them missed a function that nobody sent him an invitation to personally.
Jeff Parkinson Jeff@CaledoniaWakeupCall.comAugust 8th, 2007
Each and every resident of Haldimand County who cares about Democracy is needed in Council Chambers this coming Monday night August 13th @ 6pm as Council continues to try to force through a resolution to deny the public the right to privacy in their correspondence with Mayor Marie Trainer. Council was forced today to defer this issue until Monday by a request from the Ministry to investigate whether they are even legally allowed to pass such an absurd resolution and the issue will be spoken to on Monday night at 6pm.
I have just returned from spending 2 days in Cayuga at Haldimand County Council meetings and have witnessed with my own eyes Haldimand Council fighting desperately against democracy and the citizens who elected them.
As those who read the previous post by Mark Vandermaas are aware, Council set forth a resolution that they should each be copied every email and every piece of letter mail coming and going from the office of Mayor Marie Trainer. This is being done out of sheer contempt for the fact that Mayor Trainer refuses to join them in becoming puppets for the McGuinty Liberals. Many residents do not wish to speak to their Council member because they will not receive a response or would prefer to receive an honest one so they go to the only person they know still speaks for and represents them, Mayor Trainer.
This was designed to sneak through quietly by being on the Tuesday morning after a long weekend and buried in the agenda for the day with other business so nobody would notice. Donna Pitcher – Haldimands Unheard Voice made us aware of the situation and I attended yesterday August 7 along with Mark Vandermaas, and some citizens of Haldimand.
JeffParkinson.ca 