Send Dwight A Message Too: DO THE DEAL

Some big surprises at the last Citizens for Jobs Now! meeting. This is the new name for the citizens grassroots movement that CIBPA started which has now expanded dramatically beyond just the Italian business community.

First obviously is that they have added other organizations in the City as supporters: business, labour and ethnic. As an example, the Union running radio ads on the border road is a supporter now with 3 of the members of their Executive at the session!

Second was that so many people are coming out to their organizational meetings, over 50 at the last one. A number of other people apparently sent emails saying that they had other commitments and could not attend. If this level of attendance can be maintained, it will become a serious force in this City quickly.

There are clearly parties there with different points of view, some of them conflicting. Importantly, people are burying these differences since they have all agreed that the purpose of what is being done is to get solutions and to get them now. There is the feeling that opposing views can be overcome if people just sit in a room together and negotiate.

No one there could understand frankly that if the City and Province are $100M apart on the border road as the Mayor claimed (of course they are not but that is another story) that there was no coming together. The fear expressed was that we could potentially lose out on $1.6B of investment and the jobs that would be created over such a small percentage of the total investment. It is almost beyond belief in our economic dire straights.

The anger and the frustration in the room could be cut with as knife. You could just feel it. No one can understand that with billions of dollars ready to be spent here by the Governments and private industry for border crossings nothing is happening but bickering.

Rightly so, the politicians at all levels are getting slammed. While the group is meant to be non-partisan and not pointing the finger of blame because that is not conducive to a solution, it is not too hard to guess whose name comes up the most as the one blocking the creation of thousands of high-paying jobs.

However, the big shock to me was that Spanky's name came up too. Yes our Minister of Finance and local MPP, Dwight Duncan, was attacked for not doing anything but posture by more than one person and in rather strong terms. His "take it or leave it" attitude respecting the jail was NOT viewed very well by many of the attendees because jobs would be lost here.

Interestingly, it seemed to me that most people there did not make the connnection between Dwight's warning on the jail as the warning re the DRIC road opposition. Can you imagine if the Province and Feds pulled out!

Dwight was absolutely slammed and mocked over his Facebook page above. Whoever dreamed up that ought to get a lesson in local politics in a City with the highest unemployment rate in Canada.

DUH!!!! Dwight, we can get through all of this, whatever "this" is, without thinking very hard in the most obvious way possible.

You would think that the Minister of Finance would know the answer without having to ask constituents:

DWIGHT, DO THE DEAL!

Gee, I bet that was a shocker to you, dear reader.

However, we ought not to be too critical of Dwight since he is doing something new according to the Toronto Star. He has other more important things on his mind. He is learning how to grovel for us:

I think Dwight knows he has real financial problems building the DRIC road through a P3 deal. Perhaps once he knows he actually has money from overseas that he can use to finance the road (as was done in BC with the Port Mann Bridge) considering the economic collapse that destroyed the P3 market, we will see some action. Not until then in my opinion. After all, that was never contemplated in his Gong Show promise to have money starting to come in here in in 2010.

And do not be surprised if the first Provincial road action is the expansion of E C Row which Eddie will support to help out his transportation hub dream/vision. That will save some big bucks too for the have-not Ontario.

We'll know soon what will happen when the Minister of the Environment makes his decision and decides how long he will stall this off to help out his Cabinet colleague.