Attack seems like a strong word, but it helps to describe the situation we in rural Ontario find ourselves.
It's a war. We have propaganda coming out of the mouths of Ministers of the Crown. We have fifth columnists in the guise of school boards sinking ships with their overworked lips. We have weapons used against us such as the hated and feared funding formula. We have traitorous groups made up of Mayors, Reeves, Councillors whose municipalities are getting fancy new schools to replace the perfectly good but about-to-be-closed schools of their neighbours. We have secret war plans worked out by sleazy school board administrators which suddenly explode onto the scene creating havoc in the community. We have local propaganda in voice and print spewing from communication officers to mislead and abuse the local people who elected their boards.
And we have victims. Children dragged away to another community like displaced persons. Local school bus businesses deprived of their livelihood by foreign infiltrators. Home owners whose property values began to subside as soon as the school closure was announced. Children losing the exercise they used to get from walking to school.
Perhaps the biggest loser in all this is the social contract which we have enjoyed in this country: the contract by which we have the opportunity to choose who will be our representatives in all levels of government and boards that do their best to represent the people they serve.
Complaints about politicians have always been a normal part of life, but in rural Ontario it seems that everything the government is doing is contrary to our common interests. Few of us feel that we have any influence on any government policy or actions.
The McGuinty government has brought about this change. It seems that everything that we in rural Ontario want from them is denied; everything that we absolutely do not want is being forced on us. Our rural way of life is being laid waste. Our communities' best features are being held against us. Our greatest achievements are being treated as failures. Our major vital contributions to the society at large are treated with scorn or ignored.
Nearly all the ministers in the McGuinty cabinet have taken to denying that there is a rural-urban divide in Ontario. They are saying that we are all the same, working together, even though at the same time they are conspiring against us just as if they were laying land mines on out pathways.
Even our own local school board has been co-opted to undermine us. A spokesperson for the Avon Maitland District School Board proclaimed that the Accommodation Review process conducted in this area of North Huron was conducted in complete and total compliance with the Ministry Guidelines and the board's policy. Everyone in this village of Blyth knows that is completely false, and yet that false position is what is held by the Ministry of Education to be true and accurate. A lie becomes the official position about our community!
The social contract is so important but a very fragile thing. It depends on trust, goodwill, integrity, transparency, competence. When any of those qualities are missing, the social contract collapses. The Avon Maitland District School Board lacks all of those qualities just as the Ministry of Education lacks them. The social contract is in really jeopardy.
Surely there are some trustees who have the character and fortitude to stand up for a higher standard of leadership than we have seen from this board.
Brock Vodden
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