TO THE EDITOR:
I read with interest Richard Charest’s letter concerning there being two Ontario’s: Toronto’s GTA and the rest of us. Frankly, I agree with his idea of there being two Ontario’s, though I am doubtful that politically separating them could be pulled off in the real world.
But regarding his outrage at this two-tiered level of importance, he is not the first. Many residents of Northern Ontario, long feeling ignored by Queens Park, have advocated over the years for the same thing. Nor is this point of view limited to only this province. Many, perhaps most, residents of British Columbia who live outside of Vancouver (the GVA if you will) say the same thing. There is Vancouver and there are the rest of us. And the same phenomena appears in Quebec as well. Many there have a sense that there is Montreal (occasionally Quebec City is included) and separate from those, the rest of the province.
I suppose this is to be expected – unfair and infuriating though it is. Most politicians, in the end, pay attention to only two things: votes and money. And we here don’t have a lot of votes here, while Colacem has a ton of money.
Imagine the reaction of Premier Ford, though, if Colacem proposed building their huge cement plant adjacent to the voter-rich Toronto suburbs of Vaughan, Richmond Hill, or Markham. I think we can rest assured that his reaction would be very, very different than the cold silence we received from his government, and the feds, to our concerns.
COLIN AFFLECK
CHAMPLAIN TOWNSHIP
