YorkRegion Article: Markham store charged for Christmas opening

YorkRegion Article: Markham store charged for Christmas opening

The archaic Retail Business Holidays Act

This letter was published in the Markham Economist on Jan. 15, 2011.

Re: Grocers probed for holiday hours (Jan. 6)

Thanks for running the story of the three businesses that remained open during Christmas and New Years in Markham.

It is time to reconsider the entire Retail Business Holidays Act that stipulates which businesses may be open on the nine statutory holidays each year.

Stores that are fortunate enough to be in tourist areas are exempt, except on Christmas. This is arbitrary and unfair to everyone.

Markham is certainly one of the most diverse communities in Canada, possibly North America. So why should a sweeping government edict like the above Act apply here, indeed why should it apply anywhere in the province?

Many will recall that prior to June 1992 Sunday shopping was illegal in Ontario even though many businesses flouted the law. It was not until 1996 that Boxing Day shopping was “allowed.” Imagine if in the present day an arbitrary statute prohibited Sunday or Boxing Day shopping.

I believe businesses should be free to operate at their own risk. If people do not want to shop on statutory holidays then those businesses that are open will suffer. On the other hand if stores are open at their own discretion, employees will have the opportunity to earn money and shoppers will have more choice. I suspect that shoppers will “vote” with their feet and shop, and an archaic, anachronistic law will disappear finally.

Our police services have better things to do than charge otherwise law abiding retailers as might yet happen in this instance. Those three businesses should be commended for leading in this matter.

Are universities "Too Asian?"

Newly elected York Regional Councillor Joe Li wants Maclean's magazine to formally apologize for publishing an article called "Too Asian?". Li condemns the article in comments published in the Markham Economist this week and he wants Markham council to do the same.
The article actually ends up praising Asian students for tending "to be strivers, high achievers and single-minded in their approach to university."

I was a former high-school teacher in a Toronto school with a large Asian population and I agree with the Maclean's article, generally the Asian students were among the best students at my school, its true.

I think Mr. Li, and Councillor Mike Layton (son of Jack) of Toronto, who made the same objection are most disturbed by the headline, for which Maclean's apologized. Don't these guys having anything better to do like continue to mismanage their various municipalities?

From what I have seen in my conversations with Joe Li (also Asian) and his efforts so far, he proves that making group racial generalizations is not a good idea and often not true.     

Time-of-use billing and Green energy

I sent this letter to the Markham Economist recently but it was NOT published. For those of you who live in the area, you will understand my message.

The letter did appear in the winter issue of the Libertarian Bulletin, the newsletter of the Ontario Libertarian Party.

Re: Time-of-use billing and Green energy

To the Editor,

Like many in Markham, I received the form letter from Power Stream, our electrical utility, that starts like this: “The Government of Ontario, as part of its plan to create a culture of conservation…..” Yes, a culture of conservation; Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals have struck again, in yet another effort to legislate our behaviour and to create to some ill-conceived utopia.

Rather than creating a culture of competition and free enterprise, where citizens of Ontario are given more choice in electricity suppliers at lower cost with less government interference, we get the opposite.

In the area of electrical production, where the Ontario government has a monopoly through Ontario Power Generation, McGuinty has sworn to shut-down low cost coal burning power plants and replace them with high cost solar and wind power generators that work only intermittently.

McGuinty has been convinced that the evil fossil-fuel burning power plants, will somehow harm the planet, so in the best interests of your great grandchildren (maybe) we will now be given the option to pay twice as much for our peak power usage or choose to do our laundry late at night or on weekends. How that helps the planet I’m not sure.

The problem is really not the price of electricity, because these prices are in line with the neighbouring States of Michigan and New York. The problem is that McGuinty has committed Ontario to long-term deals for alternative energy at outrageously high prices through the Green Energy Act.

The Ontario government will need greater revenues to fulfill contracts with companies like Samsung and its sweetheart deal with the province.  Electricity costs will rise, so much so, that residents of the coldest parts of Ontario may experience “fuel poverty” as five million British citizens who are on welfare do now. The additional fuel costs will hit poor and fixed income individuals hardest. For the rest of us, these ill-considered obligations will act like yet another tax during a very fragile economic recovery.

The Green Energy Act needs to be repealed and electrical production needs to be privatized. The next opportunity to fix the problem is less than one year away.

The REAL effects of global warming rhetoric

If this doesn't make you skeptical of the climate change hype, nothing will.
The McGuinty Liberals (with no real opposition from the Conservative, New Democrats or Greens) have decided that global warming needs to be stop as soon as possible, and you my fellow Ontarians MUST pay for it whether you want to or not. You will have no choice in the matter, its already been decided. Ontario will be closing all of its cheap electricity producing coal-burning power plants by 2014. Only one political party actively opposes this, only one political party seeks to open up energy production to competition so consumers will have choice, the Ontario Libertarian Party.
This link to a blog posting from a group headquartered in Scarborough Ontario explains their view.