Whooee! Well friends an' foes, we ain't been hearin' much about First Nations' land claims and Caledonia an' negotiations too much lately. I live closeby to the Six Nations Reserve and I get the some local papers so I'm maybe a little more informed on what's been happenin'. The latest news I got is the gummint's made an offer of $26 million to the Six Nations to settle a claim for the Welland Canal.
The claim goes back to 1829 and the gummint's just got around to makin' an offer. The funny part is the gummint's in a bigass hurry fer a yes or no from the Six Nations folks as to whether they'll accept that offer. The natives been waitin' 170-odd years. I reckon the gummint can wait til they talk it over amongst themselves.
The $26 mil is fer about 2000 acres of land that was flooded when they built the canal. It comes out to about $13,000 an acre. I figger it ain't a bad offer but that's up to the Six Nations fellers an' gals to decide. While they're decidin' , they can maybe compare that $26 mil to some other recent gummint spendin'.
Something that caught my eye about the same time as I heard about that $26 million was a story I seen about how the fix-up job up at Bruce Nuclear is about half done and it's already $300 million over budget. The guys in charge don't seem to be too worried or apologetic. The public purse is gonna pick up about half of the over run. We're gonna be payin' an extra $150 million on top of the $2.75 billion already goin' into refurbishing two reactors up at Bruce.
The public share of the over budget amount is 5 times that $26 mil we're offerin' the Natives. $26 mil's startin' to look kinda small. I wonder if the nuclear guys'll wait 170 years to get paid.
While we're ponyin' up an extra $150 million just fer the cost over runs at the nuke plant, our gummint's makin' us feel good by shellin' out a big $15 million to green energy projects. Whooee!
I just seen somethin' about the victims of the Walkerton water fiasco have been paid $65 million, so far. Lot's of 'em ain't been paid nothin' yet but it's only been 8 years. I wonder if they'll still be waitin' 170 years from now.
While the Six Nations folks is ponderin' that $26 million offer, they might wanna read about how the Ontario gummint's gonna give $100 million to bigass timber companies. The timber outfits'll probbly be patient if they hafta wait 170 years fer their dough.
They might also wanna think about how the dumbass gummint is throwin' $520 million into ethanol. Ethanol ain't a solution fer nuthin' except fillin' commodity brokers' bank accounts.
$26 million's soundin' more like chickenfeed all the time.
JimBobby
2 comments:
i'm pleased by your commentary, and i like the way you link these numbers together. too often i come across a blog by some non-native guy who's still believing the colonial myths we were taught in our history books or on those damn heritage commercials.
thanks for writing, and i'll check out some of the articles you link to.
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