H2O Plus, the creator of sea-derived skincare, proudly announces its partnership with Lake Ontario Waterkeeper. Their collaboration demonstrates a mutual commitment to restoring and protecting the world’s most vital resource. It also represents a natural evolution of H2O Plus’ original water-inspired concept.

“Our alliance with Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is a natural fit,” said Bob Seidl, President and CEO of H2O Plus. “Our shared vision for clean, plentiful water is a mission that’s inherent to both of us. It’s at the heart of H2O Plus’ 20-year heritage.”

Marking the international launch of Sea Pure™, H2O Plus’ first all-natural skincare collection, this philanthropic effort underscores the brand’s regard for marine life. Sea Pure™ reveals naturally younger-looking, age-resilient skin by harnessing the power of sea moss, sea lavender and other marine-sourced nutrients.

Beginning October 16, 2009, H2O Plus will donate 100 percent of the proceeds from their limited-edition Sea Pure t-shirts to Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and other water conservation charities. The organic cotton t-shirts feature the Sea Pure™ natural product seal, which states that the formulas are 100 percent vegan and biodegradable; free of synthetic fragrances, parabens, petrochemicals, phthalates and sulfates; cruelty free and against animal testing.

“Lake Ontario Waterkeeper is honoured to partner with H2O Plus. Every dollar they help us raise and every story they help us tell will bring us one step closer to a swimmable, drinkable, fishable Lake Ontario,” said Krystyn Tully, Vice President of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.

As part of their collaboration, H2O Plus and Lake Ontario Waterkeeper will host a series of exclusive in-store shopping events. A percentage of profits from the events will support the organization’s efforts to foster clean water initiatives while training individuals to be local water guardians.

H2O Plus’ entire array of sea-derived skincare, spa, bath, gifts and accessories can be found through the company’s retail stores, the company website at www.h2oplus.com, or by calling 1-800-242-2284.

For more information on H2O Plus please contact:
Kerri Lee Ross or Rhiannon Yarrow of Siren PR at 212.625.3500
or Kerri@sirenpr.com/Rhiannon@sirenpr.com

For more information on Lake Ontario Waterkeeper please visit the website www.waterkeeper.ca or contact Krystyn Tully at 416.861.1237 or krystyn@waterkeeper.ca

Yesterday, council voted to put out a request for proposals to vendors who could check for toxins in the air after fires, spills or other crises. That’s a reversal of the city staff recommendation to continuing to use the Ministry of the Environment (MOE).

The move was prompted by a blaze last year at Archmill House Inc. in Ancaster, when it took the ministry nine-and-a-half hours to produce air quality results. Ancaster Councillor Lloyd Ferguson said by that time the worst of the fire was over.

Bill Bardswick, the regional director of the MOE, said the ministry is the only organization outfitted with high-tech air monitoring equipment that can properly measure air quality. He argued that though private contractors could get to the scene faster, their equipment wouldn’t show the full range of toxins in the air.

City staff also say that MOE representatives are already dispatched to serious fires that would require air monitoring.

However, a clearly frustrated Ferguson said during the Archmill fire the ministry failed to provide adequate information about the plume of smoke drifting above his ward and whether his constituents should evacuate.

“Dammit, I wanted to go on the news and say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is what’s in the plume, make your own decision,’” he told committee yesterday.

City staff have been instructed to report back to council before awarding an air monitoring contract to a private vendor. A preliminary search showed the city would likely pay $7,000 to $12,000 for each emergency.

Mayor Fred Eisenberger and councillors Maria Pearson and Brad Clark voted against issuing the call for air-quality contractors.

A parcel of land with a septic system, a parcel of land where road salt is used and the storage of agricultural material on another property are a few of the potential threats to the city’s source water intake area, Otonabee Region Conservation Authority environmental services manager Meredith Carter said.

“Many of those are easily dealt with. We’re not looking at industrial waste or toxins,” she said.
Carter gave a presentation to council at the planning committee meeting to update it on source water protection activities. An assessment report on potential stresses and risks is projected to be done by late May and the creation of a source water protection plan with policies and regulations would be done in 2011-12.

Carter told council that Peterborough is the second largest city in Ontario to have its source water come entirely from a surface water system. Peterborough gets its water from the Otonabee River.

Council received the report for information.

Coun. Bob Hall warned council about taking responsibility for the source water protection process, as mandated by the province.

“The Clean Water Act basically came out of the tragedy of Walkerton, however the rules and regulations will be downloaded … and borne by the property tax owner,” he said. “This will be extremely expensive. It will have a major impact on operating budgets in all municipalities.”

Nearly two years after a mass swim for action, the city is moving ahead with a $400,000 plan to revitalize Richardson Beach, the bath house and Macdonald Park.

City councillors have approved spending $280,000 on improving the park and beach area and $100,000 on repairing the 91-year-old bath house. Another $10,000 will be spent on fixing up the Newlands Pavilion.

Despite their success, the two men leading the effort say dealing with city hall has been like swimming against a strong current.
“It’s been a frustrating experience in that there appears to be a lot of interest in it, and political will, but getting it on the front burner has been quite difficult,” said David McDonald who, along with Jamie Linton, organized the 2008 swim.

“The good news is that the budget looks rather substantial. It’s certainly better than where we were 12 months ago. This has been many years in the making,” said McDonald.

McDonald’s main concern is that even though $400,000 has been budgeted for the revitalization it may not upgrade the facilities enough to make the park attractive to swimmers.

“The building’s in pretty rough shape and the change rooms are dank and dingy. It smells like urine,” McDonald said. “In my opinion, the change rooms need to be gutted and re-done.

“These are important things. All these structural things need to be done, but both Jamie and I hope when it’s done it looks like there’s a substantial aesthetic change.”

McDonald said three city councillors — Rob Hutchison, Bill Glover and Vicki Schmolka — have been instrumental in moving the project forward.

Schmolka described the work done last fall and what’s to come this year as “a positive first step.”

“What it will do is encourage people to relate to the lake more and we’ll see how much people like the idea of swimming there,” she said. “I think it’s the start of encouraging people to come back.”

For decades, Richardson Beach was a popular swimming hole. But not for the past 30 years as pollution made it unusable and the large rocks and algae made the waters difficult to navigate.

Last fall, city staff cleared the beach area — actually a large limestone rock shelf — and they will do the same this year in a regular basis.

Part of the park budget will include hiring a student to keep the rock debris, which gets washed into the swimming area by waves, cleared away.

“You need to have somebody go in on a regular basis to clear the stones,” said McDonald. “You have a beautiful shelf of limestone you can walk out knee-deep and start swimming in. It’s a natural swimming location.”

On dry land, some of the improvements will include:

* new pathways and accessible ramps to the pavilion;

* a terrace area with accessible picnic tables

* additional bike racks and car parking;

* additional trees.

McDonald said the budget for the beach is still tiny compared to other city expenditures.

“I guess it’s a bit frustrating when you look at what we spend, as well as talking about building an indoor pool for 25 million bucks,” he said.

What the city needs now, Mc- Donald added, is a waterfront master plan to make the entire shoreline more inviting for Kingstonians.

“We’re not done,” he said, raising the possibility of another mass swim for awareness. “We see this as a significant first step that’s going to need to be a lot more significant over the years.

“We’re delighted something is happening but we’ve got to keep the pressure up.”

As part of its sustainability objectives, Waterfront Toronto is committed to using the latest, best technologies to wherever possible treat and reuse soil.

Waterfront Toronto has submitted an application to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) for a Certificate of Approval under Section 27 of the Environmental Protection Act to store, transfer, and process soil at an approximately 8.2 hectare site at 294, 320, and 348 Unwin Avenue.

As the first step in the development of a Soil Recycling Facility, Waterfront Toronto is conducting a pilot test to evaluate the technical and economic performance of the soil treatment technologies that may form part of this facility, prior to making any larger-scale commitment.

Revitalization of much of the 800 hectares of the waterfront area depends on the ability to treat soil that has been impacted by former industrial land uses to an environmental condition that allows them to be reused in future residential, parkland and commercial areas.

At a full scale of operation, a future Soil Management Treatment Facility would receive up to 2,500 tonnes of impacted soil per day to a maximum of 600,000 tonnes of soils per year. However, for the pilot phase of operation proposed for 2010-2011, a smaller scale facility operating on approximately 50,000 tonnes total capacity is planned.

This smaller scale of operation, using technologies that have been successfully applied in areas such as Europe and the United States, will allow Waterfront Toronto to better assess the effectiveness and economic performance of currently available soil treatment technologies, and allow us to optimize operational parameters such as dust and noise control before committing to a full scale facility.

We hope you can join us at our open house meeting to learn more. Members of the project team will be on hand to discuss the project, answer questions and share ideas.

Public Meeting Details:
Thursday, March 11, 2010
6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
South Riverdale Community Health Centre
955 Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario

For more information:
In the meantime, if you have any questions or would like more information please contact Andrea Kelemen at 416-214-1344 ext. 248 or akelemen@waterfrontoronto.ca

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper’s submitted a comment regarding this project.

You hear that sound? That’s the sound of nearly half a billion taxpayer dollars landing on the doorstep of Atomic Energy Canada Ltd.

It includes the $300 million that showed up in the 2010 federal budget last week. That money will cover “anticipated commercial losses” and “continued development of the Advanced CANDU Reactor.” It will also help fund “safe and reliable operations at the Chalk River Laboratories.”

What was less visible last week was the $182 million that was squeezed into a supplementary estimate in the 2009 budget to address a cash shortfall caused by “unexpected technical challenges on Candu reactor refurbishment contracts.”

We’ve heard that one before.

Of that, about $72 million will go toward ongoing repair of an isotope-producing research reactor in Chalk River that has been shut down since May 2009. It brings the total for that fiscal year to more than $840 million. Over two years, we’re talking more than $1.1 billion.

This, by the way, is “investment” in a crown corporation with a commercial business the federal government is planning to sell off. So far, the best guess is that Atomic Energy’s Candu operation won’t fetch more than $300 million. Not quite the return on investment Canadians deserve.

So here we are, federal budget 2010, and what does the federal Conservative government also do? It lets a hugely popular renewable energy incentive program die, and it lets a highly respect clean-technology funding agency run dry.

Ottawa’s ecoEnergy for Renewable Power program was launched in 2007 to create an incentive for developers of wind, solar, hydroelectric and geothermal power projects. The four-year program, backed with $1.48 billion in funding, paid out 1 cent per kilowatt-hour for the clean electricity generated from participating projects.

The 1-cent incentive recognized, in the absence of a price on carbon, the emission-free profile of this power. It proved successful, so much so that all the money has been allocated a year ahead of schedule and two years before similar U.S. support comes to an end.

Last week’s budget, however, failed to extend – let alone expand – the program. “We’re perplexed,” said Mark Rudolph, spokesman for the Clean Air Renewable Energy Coalition. Its 22 members, by the way, include Shell Canada, Suncor Energy, TransAlta, ConocoPhillips Canada, and Enbridge.

Rudolph said the throne speech talked about the need to become a clean energy superpower and lead in green job creation, but the government is moving in the opposite direction.

And nuclear power, he said, won’t achieve either objective in the near term. “There is nothing ‘shovel ready’ about investing in nuclear technology,” said Rudolph, pointing out the long timeframes required for regulatory approvals. “You can’t build a reactor in 10 years.”

Ontario will do okay. It has a feed-in-tariff program that will keep investment here. But for the rest of Canada, the federal incentive is much more important. Rudolph fears investors will take their money and jobs to the much more certain U.S. market.

Robert Hornung at the Canadian Wind Energy Association speculated that the federal government is downloading responsibility in this area onto the provincial governments. “We are shocked and disappointed that it has chosen not to extend a cost-effective program that facilitated record levels of investment and job creation in Canada’s wind energy sector in the midst of the recession of 2009,” he said.

Let’s remember that these wind projects stretched across Canada, creating a more equitable distribution of investment and jobs. Contrast that with the carbon capture and storage projects that have attracted $500 million in federal government investment over the past year just in Alberta.

Meanwhile, Ottawa-based clean technology funder Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) was shut out of the budget. The federal agency began its mission in 2002 with a $550 million fund that’s nearly empty. It has requested a refill so it can continue what many consider a vital mission.

For every dollar of public grant SDTC awards to a clean-technology project it requires that another $2.40 come from project partners. The result has been a flow of more than $1 billion into up-and-coming clean technology companies. These are job creators of the future that might otherwise shrivel on the vine.

SDTC still has $80 million in the bank, so for the most part 2010 will be business as usual. The agency has been told by the feds to wait patiently for the next budget in 2011. So what the market is left with is more uncertainty.

There were some welcome tidbits in the federal budget. It devoted $100 million over four years to help the forestry sector deploy clean technologies to become more efficient. It threw in another $80 million to support residential energy retrofits.

It also expanded the list of clean technologies that qualify for accelerated capital cost allowances, which is considered a major tax benefit for investors in new equipment. Equipment used in industrial heat recovery and in district energy systems now qualify.

Still, as the Pembina Institute points out, the United States plans to outspend Canada 14-to-1 per capita on renewable energy and 2-to-1 on energy efficiency in fiscal 2010. Even then, there’s concern by some south of the border that the United States isn’t doing enough compared to China and some countries in Europe.

“It is through a failure to act that the United States will suffer economically,” according to a new report from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank.

If the U.S. stands to suffer, then what does that mean for Canada?

Perhaps last week’s federal budget is being misread. For example, there is $2 billion going toward renewing Canada’s social housing stock, and $4 billion toward provincial, municipal and territorial infrastructure projects.

“These investments will create jobs and ensure that Canada emerges from the economic downturn with a more modern and greener infrastructure,” according to the budget.

Greener infrastructure? That would be encouraging, except for the lack of green strings that are tied to that $6 billion. For all we know, it could go toward building drafty houses and putting Band-aids on obsolete infrastructure.

Ever get the sense we’re walking the wrong way up an escalator?

April 23-May 1, 2010

Application Deadline: March 10

• Comeback of a Charismatic Native: Restoring the Atlantic Salmon to Lake Ontario
• Managing Storm Runoff and Non-point Pollution in Major Metropolitan Areas
• Energy Pros & Cons: Coal, Hydro, Hydrokinetic, Geothermal & Wind (including off-shore facilities)
• Threatened Species Case Study: The American Eel
• Toxic Hot Spots: A Report Card on the Pace of Remediation in Great Lakes “Areas of Concern”
• Ballast Water Technology and Salt Water Shipping in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway
• Water-Level Regulation and Wetland Habitat
• Effects of Global Warming on Shallow-Water Ecosystems in the Great Lakes Basin

About the program:
IJNR, the Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources, is inviting applications for its Great Waters Institute, a weeklong journey in parts of Ontario and New York that will examine a wide variety of topics in the Lake Ontario watershed. Water-related themes will unify the content of this roving field-based journalism program. This year’s fellowship will start and end in Toronto, Ontario. Although the expedition will focus predominantly on the Lake Ontario watershed, the content of the program is designed to be relevant to journalists who work throughout the Great Lakes region and beyond.

The Great Waters Institute is a program of learning and professional development, organized and led by journalists. Fellowships will be awarded to up to 14 competitively selected reporters, editors and producers (perhaps including one or two graduate students)—all in pursuit of better, more informed coverage of natural resources and the environment.

Journalists accepted to participate in this program will start with an in-depth examination of the successes and failures of storm-water management and non-point runoff in the Greater Toronto Area, including a firsthand look at the latest technologies being implemented to control runoff, water quality and beach health in one of the largest cities in the Great Lakes region. The group will examine lessons learned in Toronto and the possibility of replicating these storm water technologies in metropolitan areas throughout the Great Lakes region.
Journalists will also examine contaminated sites at two key “Areas of Concern” in Lake Ontario. They will revisit the pace and progress of remediation at these two toxic hotspots as well as dozens of similar sites on both sides of the international border. Journalists will hear leading scientists describe the latest recovery efforts for the American Eel, which, by some estimates, once constituted 40 percent of the fish biomass in Lake Ontario. Today the eel is a listed as “threatened” in the Province of Ontario. Fellows will meet shipping officials, scientists and environmentalists at one of the region’s leading ports, as well as a key section of the Welland Canal, to discuss issues of ballast-water management and the latest technologies to prevent the introduction of aquatic invasive species to the Great Lakes ecosystem.
Also during the trip, Fellows will make a series of field visits to explore several renewable-energy platforms, either proposed or already implemented in the Lake Ontario watershed, that include geothermal, hydrokinetic, onshore and offshore wind facilities. They will head out onto the water with scientists who monitor the spread and effects of one of the latest exotic species to enter the Lake Ontario ecosystem. And they will strap on hip waders to accompany fish biologists as they walk into Lake Ontario tributaries to release juvenile Atlantic salmon as part of a multi-year restoration effort.

IJNR’s field programs are designed by journalists for journalists. Each program emphasizes the importance of context and perspective while covering issues of the environment, economic development, public health and rural communities. IJNR encourages better reporting and storytelling in order to increase public awareness and understanding of natural-resource issues.

IJNR Fellowships cover all field expenses, including meals, lodging, chartered bus and excursion fees. If necessary, a modest stipend is available for help with travel expenses to and from Toronto—the program’s hub city. Newsrooms are asked to cover salaries while participants are “on assignment” during the program, so that journalists are not expected to use vacation days or comp time to attend.

About the Great Waters staff:
Peter Annin, the architect and leader of the Great Waters Institute, is an IJNR associate director and a former Chicago-based correspondent for Newsweek. He is also the author of The Great Lakes Water Wars, an award-winning book about water tension in the Great Lakes region.

Frank Edward Allen, IJNR’s President, is a former bureau chief and environment editor for The Wall Street Journal.

The Joyce Foundation and the Royal Bank of Canada are the primary sponsors of this program, but IJNR also receives funding from more than 20 other organizations representing a wide and balanced spectrum of interests and viewpoints. IJNR insists on editorial independence in all its programming.

How to Apply:

Email applications are preferred.

Please email a statement of interest (less than two pages), a resume, a reference letter or supervisor’s endorsement and four work samples to:

Contact@ijnr.org

Or mail a hard copy to:

IJNR Fellowship Selection Committee
PO Box 1996
Missoula, MT 59806

The application deadline for this program is March 10. Applications must be received in Missoula by 5 pm Mountain Time on that date. Early applications are encouraged.

A current passport is required for this program.

For more information, please visit www.IJNR.org or contact Peter Annin at Peter.Annin@IJNR.org/(608) 278-8005, or Frank Allen at Frank.Allen@IJNR.org/(406) 273-4626.

The data is on the City’s website if you want to review it. A comparison to previous years suggests that Kingston may be on its way to one its worst sewage pollution years yet. Since other cities do not publish similar information, it is hard to tell if the city is doing better or worse than its neighbours.

We do know that other cities with combined sewer systems have struggled to keep up with the unusually mild and wet winter. The City of Niagara Falls was one of several that pumped sewage into local waters to prevent backlogs in people’s basements during massive January rains.

These ailing, aging sewage systems are just one of the driving forces behind a new regulation from the Canadian Government. The regulation will replace the general prohibition against polluting fish habitat with a very lengthy technical set of rules about what Canadian sewage treatment plant operators can and cannot do.

A preview of the 70-plus page regulation is available online. We expect the official public consultation period begin later this month.

The new regulation could be good if it maintains the existing rule that no one can harm fish or fish habitat. Our communities will be better of if it goes beyond that general prohibition to provide technical guidance about how sewage treatment plant operators can make sure that bacteria, pharmaceuticals and other sewage by-products do not harm us, the environment, or our access to water.

If the regulation eliminates the prohibition, then the 70-plus pages of dense technical language could be a cover for a devastating rollback to an important environmental law. If the regulation allows sewage treatment plants to continue to pollute with impunity for another generation, then it will also fail our communities.

Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and other members of Waterkeepers Canada are reviewing the proposal now to see what it means for the future of Canada’s waters. For a more in-depth discussion, we encourage you to listen to this week’s episode of Living at the Barricades. Mark Mattson and Krystyn Tully talk to Colin Mosier about sewage in Kingston and Fraser Riverkeeper Doug Chapman about his ongoing struggle to clean up Vancouver’s sewage.

Music in this Show
Rain, Rain, Rain by The Rheostatics
I Can’t Stand the Rain by Seal
Kiss the Rain by Billie Myers
Cold Rain by Vangel, from Swim Drink Fish Music

Listen to the show
Listen to this week’s show online (right-click to download).
Subscribe to the Living At the Barricades Podcast via iTunes

Read the original posting here.

This permit has an expiry date of November 30, 2019 with the following taking:

Source of water: Sump 1
Purpose of taking: Quarry dewatering
Maximum rate per minute (Litres): 23,400
Maximum number of hours of taking per day: 24
Maximum volume per day (Litres): 17,502,000
Maximum number of days of taking per year: 365

Source of water: Sump 1 (Ready-Mix)
Purpose of taking: Industrial, other
Maximum rate per minute (Litres): 500
Maximum number of hours of taking per day: 24
Maximum volume per day (Litres): 720,000
Maximum number of days of taking per year: 365

Source of water: Sump 2 – operates only when Sump 3 is offline
Purpose of taking: Quarry dewatering
Maximum rate per minute (Litres): 0
Maximum number of hours of taking per day: 24
Maximum volume per day (Litres): 0
Maximum number of days of taking per year: 365

Source of water: Sump 3 – operates only when Sump 2 is offline
Purpose of taking: Quarry dewatering
Maximum rate per minute (Litres): 0
Maximum number of hours of taking per day: 24
Maximum volume per day (Litres): 0
Maximum number of days of taking per year: 365

By all accounts, André Marin has done a sterling job as Ontario’s ombudsman since his appointment five years ago.

Among other accomplishments, Marin created a special investigative unit that has completed more than 20 reports on a wide range of topics, from cancer drug funding to problems with Ontario’s lotteries to ensuring new homeowners get what they pay for. Another investigative team he created has blown the door off secret meetings at the municipal level of government.

Given Marin’s laudable track record as the provincial watchdog, you would have thought his reappointment by the McGuinty government for another five-year term would have been a slam dunk.

After all, members of the government have gone out of their way to praise Marin. Premier Dalton McGuinty himself has, on more than one occasion, paid public tribute to Marin’s work and welcomed his constructive critique of a provincial government that can sometimes run amok or be prone to inertia.

“It’s great to have a guy like this who is nipping at our heels on a regular basis. He forces us to move. I think that serves the public interest,” McGuinty said in one interview.

So it must have been surprising to Marin and other keen observers of the provincial political scene to learn last month that the ombudsman will have to reapply for his job in an open competition.

Let’s be clear. New Democrats have consistently called for an open competition for the appointment of officers of the Legislative Assembly, such as the ombudsman and the environment commissioner, among others. Furthermore, as “officers of the assembly,” these office-holders must have all-party support.

And Marin, to his credit, has expressed a willingness to have his performance assessed and subject to the scrutiny of an open competition.

But given the way this drama has unfolded, at the 11th hour of Marin’s five-year term, we can’t help but believe cynical politics are at play.

With the next provincial election campaign a little more than a year-and-a-half away, we can only assume the McGuinty government would like nothing better than to rid itself of an effective – and at times harsh – critic.

Marin’s reports garner headlines and plenty of public attention. And they always point to government failings and shortcomings. Hardly the kind of thing an incumbent government needs as it strives for a third successive majority.

If the McGuinty government were truly serious about the integrity of the appointment process, it would have launched it well before now. The amount of time and effort needed to fill a position like the ombudsman is greater than the six weeks before Marin’s term expires.

The government should look no further than the still unfolding, plodding process to find a new integrity commissioner. More than three years since that process began, the selection committee – made of up MPPs from all parties – still hasn’t come to a decision.

Given that example, a truly transparent and open competition – if that’s what the McGuinty government intended – should have been launched much earlier. Instead, we’re left with an ombudsman in limbo.

If he appeared to be caught off guard last month, Marin can be forgiven. Late last year, McGuinty reappointed the privacy commissioner for a third term with a simple stroke of the government pen. With the expiration of his first term quickly approaching, Marin had every right to assume he’d receive the same treatment.

At the time of the privacy commissioner’s reappointment, New Democrats raised concerns about the lack of transparency. A perusal through the record of debate at Queen’s Park shows we aren’t the only ones uncomfortable with the existing process, or lack thereof.

None other than current Finance Minister Dwight Duncan once mused about formalizing “a process for appointing officers of the assembly that rightfully ought to be done in as non-partisan a fashion as we can.”

We’re glad Duncan agrees with us and we’re equally glad to share some ideas on how to proceed.

First, the ombudsman’s term should be fixed at 10 years (just like the auditor general), instead of the current five.

Second, there should be no reappointment. Once the 10 years are up, you hand the job to someone else.

Third, the incumbent ombudsman should automatically keep the job until a successor is named. That is to say, there should not be interim, short-term appointments, as there have been in the past.

We think our proposals are reasonable and would remove any suggestion of politically motivated actions on the part of governments in the future.

Given the important role the ombudsman plays in protecting the interests of Ontarians, we think it’s only fair.