The federal emergency legislation designed to help clear the grain transportation backlog that is expected to be tabled today by the Conservative government is coming with high expectations and numerous demands.

Ralph Goodale, Liberal MP for Wascana, said they are glad the federal government is introducing emergency legislation to help deal with the crisis, but there has to be measures in it to make certain this doesn’t happen again. He said there are four key things that are required in the legislation starting with creating a completely independent agency tasked with monitoring the grain system, measuring the performance of what is happening and reporting on it publicly.

“The system has changed radically over the course of the last three years, biggest change in probably three generations, and there is no overall measuring system to report to farmers and others about the consequences of all this change,” said Goodale. “First of all you can’t manage what you don’t measure, so there’s got to be an independent system that is not controlled by the railways, not controlled by grain companies and not controlled by the government that will collect all the data and publish all the data so that everybody can be fully informed of what actually is going on.”

Goodale said the second measure needed is a procedure called a railway costing review, which was last done in 1992 and is a process where all the revenues and costs related to grain transportation are measured and calculated so it would be known exactly what it physically costs to move a bushel of grain and how that money is shared throughout the system. He said the railways have always said whenever they can be more efficient in moving grain they will share those efficiency gains with others in the system such as farmers, grain companies and truckers, but those words are being taken with a bit of salt now.

“There has been a lot of railway abandonment since (1992), a lot of closure of delivery points since then, different technology in hopper cars since then, the operation of the ports have changed, the grain commission has changed (and) the wheat board is gone,” he said. “It’s time to do another fully comprehensive railway costing review to examine what it costs to move a bushel of grain, what the revenue is available to the railways to move that bushel of grain and how efficiency gains in the system are being shared with all the players or as everybody expects are all those efficiency gains being horded by the railways and not shared with anybody.”

Lyle Stewart, agricultural minister for the Government of Saskatchewan, shares Goodale’s view for a third proposed measure that mandatory service level agreements with reciprocal penalties for non-compliance be implemented. Stewart said the reciprocal penalties on both grain companies and railways for failing to live up to their agreements would be in addition to the $100,000 a day fines imposed on railways in a March 7 federal government Order in Council for failing to meet targets of delivering one million tonnes of grain a week on a sustained basis by mid-April.

To read more please see the March 24 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Neighbours helping each other gain access to running water due to a frozen line this winter do not have to worry about facing costlier bills.

Gary Edom, administrator for the Town of Davidson, said people running a heated hose from their house to their neighbours so they could have pressurized water will not have their water bill affected. He said the town is going to “make it right” for anybody that is helping people affected by the unusual cold that so far has frozen four resident’s lines in town during the past couple weeks.

“It’s copper lines…from the water main in the street into the house,” said Edom. “Exactly where they’re frozen we don’t know for sure. There is no way of telling. It’s somewhere between the water main and the house that they are frozen somewhere down in the ground.”

Davidson Mayor Clayton Schneider said his neighbour, Gloria Zdunich, is one of the people suffering from a frozen line this winter and his family is going to be helping her have access to running water until Mother Nature thaws the ground and frees the line from this winter’s icy grip.

“I got a heated hose from the farm and I hooked it up to my outlet on my house and hooked it into her outlet,” said Schneider. “I have a plug in to keep electricity (running) through the hose, so it doesn’t freeze because when we initially did it we just used a normal garden hose and it froze overnight. Just that little bit of heat in the hose works well.”

Schneider said the fix pressurizes Zdunich’s water system, so along with keeping a tap in the basement running to ward off another freeze she can now get water in the same way she was before. He said to make sure his family doesn’t get overcharged on their water bill for helping their neighbour they took a picture of their water meter when they began the fix and will again once the line unfreezes.

“The difference will be compensated,” he said. “As far as other people that are helping our their neighbour, if they haven’t done that contact Gary to make sure that is looked after.”

Edom said the town brought in a water line thawing machine from Saskatoon to try and fix the problem lines, but there wasn’t enough cables on the machine to reach from the pipe inside the house to the curb stop. He said current has to flow from one end of the line to the other to unfreeze it, so when the machine didn’t work it was decided the most economical way to fix the problem is just to wait out the cold.

“I’ve never heard about this happening (before),” said Schneider. There are “water breaks and all that, but never this. It’s been an unusual year.”

Grades 7 to 9 students from Davidson School, Kenaston School and Loreburn Central School enjoyed a fun day of educational activities last week while also learning a serious message about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

The kids participated in a Talking to Youth Live (TTYL) program put on by the Sun West School Division, Heartland Health Region and the Alcohol Awareness Wellness Network (DAWN). The TTYL program brought the students together last Wednesday at Kenaston Place for a full day of learning activities such as jeopardy, snakes and ladders, tug o’ war, the “What Am I” game and an obstacle course that helped create awareness about substance abuse while also teaching them about healthier alternatives.

“The purpose was to provide the students with the right information regarding drugs and alcohol (and) to give them a chance to be in a fun environment where they can learn about it,” said Sun West addictions educator Liza Dahl. They “talk to addiction professionals, people that work with people who struggle with addictions on a daily basis, and (it) allows them a chance to ask questions and be interested and find out some information.”

Nathan Ruten, a grades 8 and 9 math teacher at Kenaston School, said the activities at the event were geared towards educating the younger-aged kids, so they would know about the subject later on in life when it may become more of a pressing issue. He said having learning games also helps the kids become more engaged in the material rather than just telling them in the classroom to not abuse drugs and alcohol.

“We did snakes and ladders, but before you do it you had to answer a question related to drugs and alcohol and what they are,” said Ruten. “There was the obstacle course where they had to put on the drunk goggles and try to get through the whole thing to see what it would be like to do everyday activities while impaired. (Then) jeopardy, again it’s about educating, as the questions were related to drug and alcohol abuse.”

To read more please see the March 17 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Instead of just fighting fires, Hanley’s volunteer fire department is focussing its efforts on preventing them.
The Town of Hanley recently received a $2,410 (US) fire prevention grant from FM Global, a large commercial property insurance company.
The fire department will use the money to develop pre-fire planning to efficiently collect and track data related local to buildings. This will help firefighters to respond to emergencies and it will assist in their training.
Specifically, the funds will be used for courses to train members to do fire inspections, says Hanley’s administrator Darice Carlson. The funds will also be used to buy a laptop computer and special software that will help firefighters preplan their fire response.
“At FM Global, we strongly believe the majority of property damage is preventable, not inevitable,” says Michael Spaziani, manager of the fire prevention grant program. “Far too often, inadequate budgets prevent those organizations working to prevent fire from being as proactive as they would like to be. With additional financial support, grant recipients are actively helping to improve property risk in the communities they serve.”
The fire prevention grants are awarded quarterly to fire departments and municipal and community organizations worldwide that best demonstrate a need for funding and where the money can have a demonstrable impact on preventing fire or mitigating the damage it can quickly cause.

A wealth of needy Costa Rican and South American people have a new lease on life thanks to the recent kindness of a few charity organizations and the actions of two local humanitarians.

Davidson’s Larry and Judi Packet travelled to San José, Costa Rica, last month to distribute over 30 free new wheelchairs to handicapped people with the help of the Knights of Columbus, the Canadian Wheelchair Foundation and the Active 20-30 International Club. The Packets, along with a group of fellow philanthropists, gave out the wheelchairs to needy people both at their homes in San José and also at the city’s Children’s Hospital.

Larry Packet, a territory district deputy with the Knights of Columbus, said their organization collaborated with the Wheelchair Foundation to purchase the wheelchairs. He said they then partnered with the 20-30 Club chapter in San José, who assessed who needed and should get a wheelchair, to distribute the medical equipment.

“The experience with the Wheelchair Foundation was at first quite overwhelming,” said Packet, noting they actually had around 130 wheelchairs to distribute in Costa Rica, but an union dispute at a Costa Rican shipyard detained 100 of the chairs from being given out during their trip. “We went to some better neighbourhoods to deliver wheelchairs and we also went to some very poor neighbourhoods to deliver wheelchairs. We take a lot of stuff for granted here when you see how other people live. Their houses are…marginalized. They are very poor people and just giving them a wheelchair seems to be a simple gesture, but you can just tell it brought a lot of longevity to their life.”

Some examples Packet said he heard about the difference the chairs would make to people’s lives includes one young boy who needed a wheelchair to be able to attend school and now could do so and another young woman who can now attend and excel at a business college without the burden of worrying about the troubles of her old wheelchair.

“The people at the hospital came from miles and miles,” he said. “One lady drove five-and-a-half hours from Panama to come and get a wheelchair for her son, so it covered a big area. The ones in the container I haven’t heard yet what happened, but the 20-30 Club is going to look after distributing them…I would imagine that the 20-30 Club in Costa Rica has delivered them by now.”

To read more please see the March 10 print edition of The Davidson Leader.