Cheers & Jeers

Jeers: to absolutely asinine drivers. The RCMP launched a set of speed traps in the province this week, and on the very first day, wrote tickets for 85 speeders. In case you think they were out there trying to pad their numbers — and ticket fines — by nailing drivers who were just a few kilometres over the speed limit, the slowest driver ticketed was travelling at 125 kilometres an hour, while the fastest leadfoot was tracked at 165 km/h. In old-fashioned terms, that’s more than 100 miles an hour. Perhaps the province needs more speed traps — the RCMP seems to spend a week or so with high-profile takedowns, then everything returns to speeding-as-usual. An interesting aside? In Ontario, speeders caught driving at more than 50 km/h over the posted limit now face fines of up to $10,000 and licence suspensions — driving that fast is simply called “stunt driving.” And while we’re talking about Ontario, here’s a little snippet for those of you who like to text and drive: last Saturday, a texting driver on the 401 was so oblivious to the world around her that she failed to notice a police car, its lights and siren on, trying to pull her over for speeding. The driver failed to notice the officer even after he pulled alongside her vehicle, rolled his window down and waved, trying to get her attention. She noticed the police officer only after she finished texting and put her cellphone down.

Cheers: to elections and absolutely unrelated provincial funding announcements. The week’s total? Thirty press releases either announcing provincial government funding or announcing the announcement of funding last week, and that was by mid-afternoon on Friday. The announcements were made by a variety of touring cabinet ministers and MHAs. One of the announcements? Money for a Bay Bulls offshore site, and Business Minister Derrick Dalley says the timing of the announcement is mere happenstance: “This is not about an election. We’ve been working on this project for some time. My staff at the Department of Business, we have several applications before us, coming at different times of the year. We do due diligence, a very thorough process, as we work through these projects, and it just happens we’re at a stage where we got our work completed, and now’s a good time to get this out the door.” Good to know. Expect more completely-unrelated-to-the-election announcements in the upcoming weeks, spontaneously increasing as we approach the completely unrelated date of Oct. 11.

Jeers: to efforts to privatize parts of Canada’s search and rescue (SAR) operations. The federal government is calling the plan an effort at “alternate service delivery,” and the federal government had this to say about the plan: “The government of Canada will consider all options to ensure the best possible SAR service to Canadians and best value for taxpayers.” Now, after seeing the same government’s plan to shut down the Maritime Rescue Sub-centre in St. John’s, which part of that statement is the more important element? The “best service” part, or the “best value” part?