Who Are These People? The 2022 Waterloo Regional Council Candidates Edition

For myself, Carin and anyone else who needs it, here is a rundown of who exactly is running for Regional Council in Waterloo Region in the upcoming municipal election courtesy of Melissa Bowman of Citified.

With so many current Councillors choosing not to run again, there won’t be a lot of parking votes in familiar places. There are a lot of new things to learn, so lists like these are going to be even more helpful than usual.

Today’s post will focus on who is running for Regional Council this Fall.
Note that only the municipalities (Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo) have representatives directly elected specifically as a regional councillor. The townships (North Dumfries, Wellesley, Wilmot, and Woolwich) are automatically represented by their mayor.
I have listed all of the candidates alphabetically, by municipality. Candidate names are linked to their website, if they have one. I have also included a direct statement or quotation from candidates’ websites or social media that outlines their priorities or platform (when available).

Extinguish This Foolishness

I’ve been meaning to say something about The Tyre Extinguishers for a while now. In case you don’t know who that is, it’s a group of vandals disguised as protesters who pop up in neighbourhoods around the world including several right here in KW and slash the tires on people’s vehicles, particularly SUVs. It’s a form of climate activism, so they say. To me it sounds more like an excuse for criminality, but potato potahto. Whatever it is, it’s not a particularly effective way of winning over hearts and minds. If it’s going to be anything, it’s going to be a fine way of getting someone killed one day, whether it be someone in need of immediate medical attention or some punk who gets caught destroying the wrong person’s property. Neither of those is a good option, to be clear.

The Record published an editorial recently that sums up my feelings pretty well. Deflated minds are deflating SUV tires in Waterloo Region

What these scofflaws did, first to about 30 vehicles in the Stanley Park and Glasgow Heights areas two weekends ago and then to 45 SUVs in Upper Beechwood and Beechwood Forest last Friday night, cannot be written off as reasoned political action. It was not a minor inconvenience to a significant number of SUV owners, either.
In fact, deflating someone’s tires could have serious ramifications for anyone depending on quickly using their vehicle for an important matter. Imagine coming out of your home with a sick relative you need to take to an emergency room to find you can go nowhere because somebody flattened your tires. What about a worker who needed to get to their job but couldn’t and lost a day’s wages? What about the vehicle owners who were unable to pump up their own tires and had to call someone in and pay them to do the job? And what if someone damaged their vehicle by driving it before realizing one or more of its tires had been flattened?
No, this was not a gentle reminder to a random group of SUV owners about their connection to climate change; it was a violation of their personal space and an attack on their property.

And it’s just stupid.

As a person who exists on this planet, I’m aware of climate change and have my concerns about it. And of course, to whatever extent it’s going to matter because ultimately the planet is going to do whatever it wants, we should absolutely change a lot of our behaviour for our own sake and for that of future generations so we can safely enjoy this place for as long as we can. But doing a series of crappy, illegal things to strangers isn’t going to help us reach that goal any faster. It’s just a distraction from the real work that people are trying to do. Maybe that work isn’t being done quickly enough for you. That’s certainly a debatable point. But if that’s how you feel, debate it. Don’t just act like a prick and call it a day as though you’ve accomplished something high-minded and important. You haven’t and you won’t. Not this way.

Make More Inconvenience

I understand wanting to be secure and prevent crime, but this seems a bit much.

If you’ve gone to a Rogers store during business hours recently and were wondering why the door is locked, the company wants you to know it’s the result of a policy change aimed at preventing robberies and fraud.
The Canadian telecom giant now requires customers to show a piece of government-issued identification before entering a store — a rule that has some experts and customers in Toronto raising their eyebrows.
“The safety of our team members and customers is of the utmost importance to us,” said Rogers spokesperson Chloe Luciani-Girouard in a statement to CBC Toronto.
“Several measures have been put in place over the last few years to improve safety in the stores, including robust training, upgraded cameras, and enhanced door screening policy.”

Rogers says it’s a national policy that was implemented over a year ago, but the company also says it only applies in certain stores, although it does not specify which ones or where they’re located.

Um, if it’s a *national* policy, shouldn’t it apply *nationally*? I know that’s a lot to ask because it’s only what the word means, but try to work with us here, guys.

Picking and choosing where to enforce it is just going to confuse people. It’s also going to make things extra fun for blind dudes such as myself. Is the door locked because it’s closed or because they need me to show ID? I’ll have no idea unless someone happens to be around to tell me, so I’m likely to just give up and go home. Or perhaps I’ll go to someplace less annoying that also sells phones. Someplace like another country, because everyone who sells phones in Canada is annoying. But at least everyone else doesn’t require you to identify yourself outside of a locked door or even more concerning, make eye contact with a camera…at least not yet.

Oh, and what are you supposed to do if the circumstances that have you needing to replace your phone also involve your ID being stolen?

I don’t think this was thought out very well.

Don’t Make Me Tell You Again Again

Male with two lifetime driving bans caught driving again, say police
Just going to go ahead and ask the obvious question here. How is it possible to be banned for life from the same thing twice?

But perhaps more importantly, why? What good is it doing? Clearly not much.

Let’s think about this a moment. Getting banned from driving for life once isn’t the easiest thing to do. The system tends to give people quite a bit of rope, often quite a bit more than it should. So this almost certainly isn’t this fella’s first rodeo. But that ban had such an impact on him that he went out and did enough to earn himself a second one. It was probably easier to catch that one than it was his first, but still, he did it. And now he’s out here looking for a third!

So now the question is why is he out here? When are there going to be consequences that mean something? When is there going to be help?

Once he violated lifetime ban number one, why was he not immediately put in jail as some sort of long-term offender? Why was he not detoxed and given ongoing counseling? Why was there no fine with an eye-popping number in the five or six figures? Why was he not released from jail only to go to his job if he has one or to do community service and then come back? Why wasn’t it made clear that there was no prospect of release until at a minimum, the fine with the big numbers was paid?

Ideally, the legal system should be operating with the goals of rehabilitation and deterrence, not as a catch and release revolving door. It should be obvious by now that the way we’re doing things simply doesn’t work in far too many cases. We should be doing so much more and doing it so much better. Why aren’t we?

A Guelph male subject to two lifetime driving prohibitions for impaired operation was arrested Tuesday after he was caught behind the wheel.

Just after 4 p.m., officers saw the male driving on Eramosa Road near Woolwich Street and knew him to be a prohibited driver. The vehicle was stopped and the male arrested without incident.

I Love Seth Meyers’ Trump Impression

Perhaps there are people who do a technically better one, but Seth Meyers does my favourite Donald Trump impression. Admittedly I haven’t seen every Trump impersonator there is, but nobody I’ve seen does quite as good a job of capturing just how weird and out to lunch the guy can be.

As an example, I offer you this Closer Look segment from a couple nights ago. Just wait until he gets into talking about the birds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA7oPTCeUZw

If you’re like me, at times it’s so funny and ridiculous that for a moment you almost forget that right now, in real life, there are people in positions of power who have chosen to abandon any sense of integrity they may have ever had in order to hitch their wagons to…that. Or that a not insignificant number of people voted for it and made it President. Or that many of them still think it was a good idea and will do it again if they get the chance.

Damn, I’m sad now. I think I need to watch the geese thing again.

The Sony CFS-C7 CHORDMACHINE


I have no idea what 1982 Sony was trying to create here. It seems a bit too sophisticated to have been intended as a toy, but nowhere near sophisticated enough to be taken seriously as any sort of musical instrument or recording device. It occupies a strange space somewhere in between, and therefore winds up accomplishing mostly nothing. But I suppose that might explain why it failed to make it out of Japan or the early 80s.

I’ll say this, though. I understand why they might have sold a few at first. Had I seen one of these at a store or a friend’s house back then I would have pestered the bejesus out of my folks until they bought me one. It has a microphone! You can sing along with the radio! You can make your own music on it! It’s a tape recorder! But after that initial excitement, I doubt it would have taken long to realize its very obvious limitations. Once that happens, the novelty wears off, word of mouth catches up to it and your future prospects are toast.

It Sure Sounds Like The Ford Government Is Fixing To Screw Over All Of Our Education Workers

They haven’t come right out and said it, but you don’t just have the province’s education minister toss a column into a widely read newspaper especially not one with a conservative slant like the Toronto Sun that’s going to be sympathetic to an anti-union message without having some sort of inclination in that direction.

Yes, students have a right to learn. But the people who make sure that learning happens also have a right to be paid. Education workers, whatever their role, are the sorts of people that you almost can’t overpay based on what’s expected of them. Five days a week, ten months a year, they are tasked with raising everyone’s children. They take care of them before and after school. They keep them safe. They teach them important life skills and life lessons. They have fun with them. They counsel them. They take them on trips. Run their sports and music programs. They do everything possible to help them grow into responsible members of society. And then they go home and take care of their own families. Most of us wouldn’t last a week doing what they do. And yet, we have this god awful provincial government out here in public picking fights with them, threatening to strip them of their rights and treating them as though they should be happy taking whatever scraps we feel like giving them and shutting up. They treat healthcare workers similarly, they just aren’t always as noisy about it.

To be clear, I’m not saying cave on every single union demand. But actually negotiating in good faith would be nice. Basically, the opposite of what you’re doing with the blustering and the hard caps on salaries, maybe try that. You might even find that qualified people want to keep working for you.

As the summer draws to a close, families are looking forward to the beginning of another school year.
After years of pandemic disruptions and what feels like never-ending education union strikes, children and their parents deserve an uninterrupted return to normal.

Our commitment is clear: we will stand up for your child’s right to learn, from September right to June. Nothing is more important.
Education unions need to get on board with keeping kids in class without disruption, instead of strikes and withdrawal of services. These are not subtle threats. Language like, “if we do not get our 52% wage hike demand, then expect strikes” is what some would call ‘schoolyard bullying.’
Students need to be front and centre in these negotiations. Instead, at least one union is pushing an increase in wages and benefits that is more than the combined education budgets of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Go, Dog, Go.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, I kept hearing about tons of people adopting pets because they were feeling alone and isolated. I said to Steve, “How long until the surrenders start?” Aren’t I the optimistic sort?

If we had stopped time when this piece was written, everybody could laugh at me and say I was an old grump and I shouldn’t have worried. But time went on, and my worst fear came true. tons of pets of all kinds are being dropped off or abandoned. I know it’s complex. I know that food prices are going up and there’s a vet shortage, but I think a lot of these people simply decided the pets were too much trouble now that they headed back to work. Now that they were no longer bored and alone, they no longer had time for them, so they gave them up. This sounds just like what happens when people get their kid a puppy for Christmas and when the puppy is no longer cute, they give them up.

This would bug me anyway, but it really bugs me right now. Even though some would call me a “royal turd”, I have put a lot of thought into finding Tansy a new home, and if I thought she would have been happy staying with me, I would have kept her without question. Finding her a new place was done for her benefit. Also, I have offered to help out financially if anything came up that the person couldn’t afford. I’m not kicking her out of my life. I just think she would be happier in a bigger place with access to all the fun things I probably couldn’t provide.

Also, I didn’t just decide I couldn’t do it anymore and surrender her somewhere. I agonized over where I thought she should go, asked a lot of questions, and weighed all my options. I also told the person that if it didn’t work out, give her back to me and I’d find someone else. I’m staying in her life. I’m going to see her again.

It kills me to see people just deciding that this animal that they said helped with their mental health is too much work, dropping them off, having no idea where they’ll end up. Some of these animals had been adopted from rescues. Now they’ve been abandoned again, probably compounding the issues they already had.

And some of the issues could have been prevented if people put some thought into what they’re doing. If you adopt a dog, and you spend all your time with said dog, you have to know that if you leave it alone, it’s probably not going to go well. So before you head back to work, start getting your dog used to some alone time. Get some training ideas. Actually anticipate what your dog might need before you head back to work just hoping for the best. If you look at adopting a dog, and you are warned that they have high needs, think about whether you are able to keep giving the dog what it needs when your life returns to its normal level of activity. If you can’t imagine that working out, maybe don’t adopt that dog!

There was one sentence from that optimistic blog post that stuck out to me.

But if this survey proves anything, it’s that our pets helped us through the most challenging of times, and that as long as we continue to cherish and nurture our bond with them, they’ll be there for us during tough times again.

Or you could just dump them off as soon as they become inconvenient.

Incorrect Error Message

So I’ve found another flaw in that smart laundry system I love to hate.

They have these value codes you can buy online and add on to your laundry card so you only have to minimally interact with the laundry card topper upper machine, which works for me, since working with that thing is a struggle on a good day. I decided to buy a big code so I won’t have to worry about refilling the card for a while and I can just go down there and do laundry without worry. So I bought $90 worth. I know that sounds silly, but like I said, I didn’t want to deal with it for a while because every time I want to fill it up, I have to chase someone down and ask them for help since the machine is a big screen, and I never know if I’ll get a willing person or an arsehole, a smart person or a clueless one.

Here’s where it gets dumb. Since this system doesn’t let you check your balance on line, I was having to estimate how much money I had left on the card. I thought I was below $10. So I went to add the new big ol’ code. When I entered it, it said “incorrect code.” I thought that was weird because I had memorized the darn thing. What was wrong with the code? Was the Washboard system handing out bum codes?

I asked somebody how much money I had left on my card and I had over $10. Since it only allows you to add up to $99, I took a guess that maybe my code was perfectly correct, but I added more money than the card could hold. I called their customer service line, and that was the problem.

After all that explaining, I have a question for the genius who designed the error messages on the laundry card topper upper machine. When you try to over-fill your card, why doesn’t it say something like “limit exceeded.” instead of “incorrect code”? That would be like your car telling you to fill up your tank when you needed to change the oil. It doesn’t seem helpful at all.

But I guess it could be worse. I heard from someone else whose laundry room was all touchscreens on the actual machines and wifi-enabled and she had to boop qr codes just to use the machines…which would be a real pain when you can’t see the qr codes. At least our laundry system’s problems feel like they’re easy to fix. Now if only someone would fix them…