This is a council so marked by internal strife, bumbling, ethical lapses, and general meanness that at the same meeting Caslin made his proclamation, Welland Councillor Paul Grenier made an emotional plea for the end of the toxic politics of the chamber.
The cold war between some factions of regional politicians has turned hot, and the lack of self-reflection and sober thinking among their ranks is astonishing.
Niagara’s politics are sick. The symptoms, like a wet cough that bespeaks a serious lung infection, are easy to see. If the proper cure is not administered, the illness will simply get worse and the body will grow ever sicker and weaker.
If math isn’t your thing, that means that 62.4% of citizens who could have voted chose not to. How many of those people, I wonder, have complained about Petrowski in the last week, or about or council as a whole since the 2014 election?
I wouldn’t call it a happy ending. But it might be a chance for a better future. Maybe. If everything goes right and with a little luck, it just might be. Readers of the Grant Rant will remember I wrote a few columns recently about a pair of teenagers who were living on the streets …
A councillor under investigation by the integrity commissioner has managed to start a process that could kill said investigation by claiming the code of conduct could be – and I swear I am not making this up – unconstitutional.
In episode 2 of the Grant Rant podcast on NPN we look at regional chair Alan Caslin’s take on the local economy and Port Colborne councillor David Barrick’s bizarre attack on the town of Pelham.
I won’t deny where actual progress has been made in Niagara. What I am asking for, what the citizens of this region ought to be demanding from Caslin and the rest of the council he leads, is an honest appraisal of the region.
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often,” wrote Mark Twain. “And for the same reason.” There is a timeless truth to Mr. Twain’s eloquently barbed observation of politics and, I suppose, a kind of comfort. We are tempted, living the bubble of our present circumstances, to suppose the politics of our place and time is …
Whatever that audit would find – good, bad or ugly – would finally allow the NPCA to move on and restore some measure of public confidence.
Instead, the NPCA is insisting on a more time consuming and costly process.
The Grant Rant 
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