Raise the Hammer

Good on Ms. Horwath and the NDP for calling this bad deal what it is. Time to start fresh with some actual community engagement.

I want to thank Andrea for her email, particularly its clarity in terms of her position. A lesser leader would have provided a generic "let's all work together" response. Her position is direct, informed, and comprehensive. If only our other elected officials in Hamilton were so clear.

BTW, Council at the GIC meeting today voted to defer the swing space vote for a week.

Comment edited by H+H on 2012-02-27 17:15:07

Well, I've never voted for an NDP candidate before... never even considered it actually. Andrea Horwath's email has got my attention. If she can help to make a better deal happen, she's got my vote at the next election.

I wonder if will swing a lot of weight with the NDP heavy ranks of the school board trustees?

Andrea who???

Trustees vote to look at keeping board offices in core

That's great Andrea. There are options and compromises.

Now what can you do in your political capacity to help?

I wish Andrea would send such a loud & clear message regarding Hamilton's Light Rail efforts!
She's been oddly absent on that super important, PROVINCIAL file!

Teri Pecoskie of the Hamilton Spectator reports that the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board voted 8 to 2 tonight in favour of establishing a joint task force with Hamilton city councillors to look at possible downtown sites for the Education Centre and presenting its findings to the School Board in a month: http://www.thespec.com/news/local/articl...

Maybe she should run for mayor? She could get a lot more done and would come in with some respect.

I agree. I'm trying to find something in there, but it doesn't say if any action is happening. It's boiler plate copy. I would like her to take our concerns to our Minister of Eductation, in person and plainly point out that the gov shouldn't be funding or supporting something that contravenes their own density/Places to Grow Act, destroys a good building and is just financially wrong for the tax payers.

And the response took a while, to be honest, her email has been included with all the board emails (Matt Jelly's pieces) with our blasts it took two months. And this is not new, this started in 2007, with an agenda to make the downtown not doable at all costs and come up with tons of excuses as to why they have to move to the mtn. It used to be all about the service vans remember that? I still don't know what is wrong with the current building and location, other than it doesn't provide enough easy parking.

This is one time I'm happy the City is taking so long with a project. There are so many elements that need to come together, we just need one to fail and the deal is off. Horwath can use her power with the ministry and with the NDP Board. We might not get the Health Centre but then again Mac still has Brailey's money and with that they are suppossed to build something downtown. Don't forget this will also make The Right House vacant. This deal is bad all around.

Stephen Harper, Rob Nicholson, John Baird, Jim Flaherty, Diane Finley, Peter MacKay, Tom Lukiwski and Vic Toews, along with the rest of the Conservatives are liars, cheats and thieves! Bill-C10 threatens to throw many in jail longer and needlessly! Bill C-11 would strip Canadians of even more rights to what we already own and censor our flow of information! Bill-30 will strip us of our privacy! Now lets not forget the G20 fiasco, Vic Toews immortal speech about Canadians being pedophiles, the planned pension cuts, they place gag orders on those they appoint to various studies so that if the studies turn up data contradicting their ideals, they can suppress the data, or their election fraud, and now they can't even get our budget out on time!
The fascist Conservatives would turn our country into an Orwellian nightmare! How can they even call themselves a legitimate government?! How dare they act like they have our best interests in mind! Who do they think they are telling us what we need and how to live our lives?! They're the middle management and we're the ones who hired them! We should be telling them what we want and how we want it!
Canada needs to rise up march on Ottawa and occupy the parliament! We need to take back our country, remove the Conservatives from power! Our government, as a whole needs to be dismantled and rebuilt (that goes for those other parties as well. I'm looking at you Liberals and NDP. Fat load of good they've ever done for the country)! All our political parties have ever really done to us has been to divide Canadians. This only serves to make us easy prey for predators in the night! I say no more! Canadians need to stand up as one, divided by zero! Those that would appose the will of the people need to be taught a lesson, followed by some good old fashion tarring and feathering, finish with banishing traitors from Canada! Finally Canadians need some laws that allow us to force referendums on the government and punish corrupt politicians who think they can screw with their people, their employers, you and me! Fellow Canadians I implore you raise up and shout out your discontent for the horrible state of our country and the world for that matter. Shout from every mountain top (email, letters, phone calls, blogs, forums, twitter, youtube, ect…), "WE WILL NOT STAND FOR CORRUPTION WITHIN OUR GOVERNMENT! WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT AS OUR FREEDOMS ARE SLOWLY ERODED! WE'RE COMING FOR YOU HARPER REGIEM! EXPECT US!" Let the voice of the masses resinate as one, thundering and deafening our oppressors. Keep screaming and screaming, every day, all day, don't stop screaming until this country is ours again!
'Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!… You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the windows, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
'People shouldn't fear the government, the government should fear the people!'
For more information, check out www.cananon.info

Are you being obtuse on purpose, it took that long because they took that long to go public with there decision.

How did this email end up at RTH? Did someone from staff email her, or did she send it in on her own volition?

This was her reply to everyone who emailed her about the BoE.

kudos to McHattie & Farr. Great to see someone that (hopefully) can effect the outcome acting!

Thanks, but that didn't answer my question. Was this a direct reply to an email sent by RTH staff, or did she send it to RTH staff as a new email?

You still aren't answering!!!

Who sent the email. Did she reply to something sent to her, or send this in response to the feedback she was getting at large, or did she/does she monitor this site and send it based on what's been written here?

I don't see why this is so difficult to answer. I am probing because it will help shape my opinion - is she being reactive or proactive?

I have to say, up until this point I've been kinda disappointed in our Provincial reps' lack of engagement in our municipal issues. Obviously it's not really their purview, but the silence has bothered me. I hope that this is a new trend from Horwath et al.

She sent this in response to me to something I sent to her.

Based on comments from others here, it looks like she sent the same response to everyone who sent something to her.

And as Ryan posted above, highlighting the word "response" in italics, (and as he's pointed out below) this was a response to an e-mail RTH sent her.

So she sent the same e-mail RESPONSE to everyone in RESPONSE to individual e-mails sent to her.

I guess this is what bothers me about this then. Like Pxtl says, the silence from anything above the municipal level on this has been disappointing, but not unexpected. One who is dialed in to the area (her local office is what, 2 blocks away from this site?), at least in my opinion, could be speaking by saying something in the media - be it at Queens Park, to Council, in the Spec, hell, even on a blog like this. Shouldn't an elected representative be paying attention to their riding? I wish that someone who is a member of government would be paying attention to the local picture. That's why it matters to me.

Sidenote: Was any of this sent to other members of provincial parliament, or to federal parliament members or parties?

Comment edited by DowntownInHamilton on 2012-03-01 22:37:38

Response can mean 2 different things: A direct response to something such as a 'new' message sent, or in response to all the furor raised over the BoE situation. A 'in general' response. Sorry for not understanding it the way as the rest of you (seems to happen a lot here).

Well, if RTH used the same e-mail list I did, which was at the bottom of Matt Jelly's RTH article about his third video on the BoE situation (the one where he interviews Joseph Singer) then it was sent to the following people:

tim.simmons@hwdsb.on.ca, robert.barlow@hwdsb.on.ca, studenttrustee@hwdsb.on.ca, judith.bishop@hwdsb.on.ca, ray.mulholland@hwdsb.on.ca, todd.white@hwdsb.on.ca, laura.peddle@hwdsb.on.ca, lillian.orban@hwdsb.on.ca, wes.hicks@hwdsb.on.ca, alex.johnstone@hwdsb.on.ca, jessica.brennan@hwdsb.on.ca, karen.turkstra@hwdsb.on.ca, dlcouncil@hamilton.ca, lbroten.mpp@liberal.ola.org, ahorwath-co@ndp.on.ca, presdnt@mcmaster.ca, mattjelly@gmail.com

I believe the "dlcouncil" e-mail sends the message to the entire city council, it was sent to the area's Minister of Education L. Broten, and the President of McMaster University, as well as the HWDSB trustees (and Matt Jelly).

So it doesn't look like this was sent to one other member of provincial parliament, and no federal members or parties. That's IF RTH used the same list. They may have cast a wider net and sent it to more people. You'll have to wait for RTH's confirmation on that.

I'm not sure if other users personally e-mailed more MPs or MPs about the issue.