Driving ourselves to Oblivion

Steve Campbell

For those of you who still think tons of rules help us live a utopic life, with everything in control and nothing left to worry about, I will continue with my rant from last issue.
Loads of legislation makes us – well, stupid. It removes from our own hands responsibility for our own actions. It holds others responsible for our mistakes, and the courts are packed with people who did something stupid, and want to sue the people who did not put up signs like: “Do not climb over the railing” at Niagara Falls, or “High Voltage – do NOT touch these wires with your tongue!”
Remember the elderly gent who decided to jump the four-foot trench at the Bath 1812 celebration? You can bet he would sue – and successfully – because the yellow Do Not Cross tape had vanished somewhere.
For God’s sake! We consider ourselves to be smart individuals, but we dumb down when Mother Ontario takes over – we give away our personal investment in staying safe and healthy.
We become like six-year-olds: “Yes, Your Honour, my mother did tell me not to touch the hot stove, but there were no set-back yellow ribbons or orange cones in place to warn me that it was not a good idea to touch the hot stove. I am also filing a grievance with the mother’s union, to see if I can have her disbarred.”
Remember when we used to use our heads? “Hmmm, that looks dangerous. Maybe I should not walk into that human-sized microwave oven and close the door … even though there are no evident signs posted.”
Far from making us a better, safer society, the government has dulled us into a state of coddled obliviousness, in which everyone else is at fault for our own blithe ignorance.
So, back to out-of-control bureaucracy, as I promised last time.
I have some meaty stuff, but first here’s a good one told to me by a friend.
Her mother died, so she dutifully informed the government of the change, along with the death certificate.
But the government cheques kept coming. She didn’t cash them, even though she had a joint account. She just sent a reminder, again, to the government.
After six months of receiving cheques that would not stop, she said, “Screw it,” and deposited them. Then she sent a letter: “As I have informed you, my mother died on (date). I have checked regularly, and have determined that she is still dead. I do not expect her condition to improve in the near future. Please stop sending the cheques.”
That got action. She received a nasty letter asking her to cough up the money they had sent, or they would charge her with defrauding the government, with accompanying fines and possible jail term.
She did, of course. But I still think this a sweet, if painful, example of the slowly-grinding machines that run our country and our province.
Quite simply, the government is digging into our lives more and more every single day. And there’s no shortage of money for teams of people to enforce the rules.
I talked to a restaurant owner who had officials walk in and demand entry, to measure the length of local fish. The fish were purchased from Harrison Fisheries, where they had already been measured.
This costs money – lots of money – to protect us from – nothing!
McGuinty is carving a legacy path to destroy land and wildlife for IWTs, but I still hear stories of people fined for cutting cattails away from their boat dock, or re-trenching an overgrown farm drainage ditch which is now “a natural habitat for tadpoles,” even though the farmer created that ditch.
Here’s another story from a restaurant owner, who reported the events to me in typical Word on the Street fashion. I have no reason to doubt the voracity of this story.
He refused to pay a $150 bill for a cursory inspection of his propane system, which was determined to be safe and proper. His reasoning: He doesn’t give money to a person and a company he’s never heard of, for peeking at his system. All of his municipal inspectors did not charge for inspections, it was paid for in his taxes. This, in the end, was a provincial inspector, contracted by the government through legislation no-one heard about, and seemingly duplicating the work of the local inspectors.
Then all hell broke loose. Within hours he had the fire department, Hydro One and other local agencies on his site. In short order, he suddenly needed $3,000 in upgrades to operate ‘safely’ – none of them health- or food-related. An independent was brought in, and offered a $3,000 contract to set things right.
This all happened near the long weekend in July, which is prime time for restaurants. The owner said, “We’re losing our best season, what do we do in the meantime?”
The worker said, “If you sign the contract, we’ll come in and do the work in the winter.”
The owner said, “Wait a minute, are you saying if I sign the contract I am suddenly safe to operate, but if I don’t sign, I’m not?”
He shrugged and said, that’s pretty much it. This is what is called a ‘protection racket’ in the Mafia world.
Meanwhile the place is closed, and everyone in the community is wondering what horrible things have happened inside the restaurant, and rumours flew.
While trying to sort this out, suddenly the propane supplier came in and lifted their propane tank. The owner doesn’t know who called the supplier, as he was told he had another week to indicate compliance with the original order for upgrades.
Part of the order was to weld a vent pipe together permanently. The owner pointed out that it was manufactured to be disassembled, as it needed to be cleaned out three times per season. He was told to weld it shut, and bring in a welder to de-weld and re-weld the joint for cleaning three times each year.
Fortunately customers and friends got involved and the problem is slowly resolving.
Probably a lot of people can’t identify with that story, but if you ever try to renovate your home, or dig a trench, it will activate the very machine I’m trying to warn you about.
One of my customers wanted to dig a trench to drain his flooded land, along with the land of his four neighbours. It was a $1500 project, and everybody was in for a $300 share. Six and a half months later, the project is now $15,000, with more ministry hurdles left to cross.
This is a job a farmer used to do in a half hour on a lazy Sunday afternoon with a 3-furrow plough.
Please wake up! We are being neutered daily by stupid legislation, dispensed arbitrarily by those who wield the Holy RuleBook.
And make no mistake. In this modern world, you are guilty until proven innocent. And we all seem to like it that way.