By getting out and enjoying the beautiful weather this week, it felt like I sweat out a good portion of the pounds that I gained during the lockdown.
Unfortunately I was . . .
likely delirious from sun exposure.
Just because we’re in the midst of summer and opening our society back up doesn’t mean that our non-COVID related problems have gone away. In fact, they’ve likely compounded in the time that our focus has been centred on the virus that’s killed more than 5,400 people across this province in a matter of weeks. The problem is that when you have an overarching crisis like COVID-19, everything else seems to fall by the wayside.
Quebec accounted for the vast majority of coronavirus cases in this country, despite making up just under a quarter of the overall population. There needs to be a reckoning about how we house our seniors in this province and the rest of the country, as they have been disproportionately counted among the victims.
Prior to the pandemic, the loss of the local obstetrics unit was the hot-button issue in the region. How outrageous is it that many local mothers-to-be have to travel to Gatineau or out of province to give birth? While the local health authority had previously promised that they would have it back online by September, it seems likely that COVID will delay such an ambitious goal.
It’s not only about attracting workers to our region, it’s about retaining them in the long term. Pay increases or other incentives are a good start, but if services and amenities are lacking in the region, these folks are likely going to leave for the convenience of the city. It’s the same for our emergency services, who are constantly seeking out new recruits.
The heart of this community was ripped out when Smurfit-Stone closed their doors in 2008. There needs to be a strong anchor employer for this region to get back on its feet, a place that will provide a decent wage to its employees and additional traffic to nearby businesses. Local officials have several projects on the go and recently acquired some funding earmarked for investor attraction. Lets hope these ventures bear some fruit. It can’t happen soon enough. The closure of the Fortress Mill in Thurso last year may provide an opportunity for local forestry operations, but it’s an opportunity we will have to seize.
Currently, our region pays around a million dollars a year to ship our trash to Lachute. In the short term, an easy solution would be to reduce the amount of trash produced per person, but that doesn’t resolve the underlying issue. Why are we paying for trucks to travel more than two hours each way, only to dump our garbage in a landfill? There is an MRC committee currently working on the file, but surely there must be a more environmentally-friendly way to dispose of our waste.
Speaking of waste, there’s a whole pile of radioactive refuse sitting upstream from our county, its future unclear at the moment. Whether it’s a former reactor sitting on the shore of the Ottawa River in Rolphton that’s slated to be entombed in concrete, or the million cubic metre mound of “low-level” waste that’s planned for Chalk River, these choices have consequences that will outlast our lifetimes by centuries. Since our society has benefited from the use of nuclear energy we have a responsibility to clean up the mess in a responsible manner and make no mistake, disposing of radioactive material will come with a hefty bill.
With the new cases of COVID gradually subsiding, we now have the luxury to refocus our efforts on the problems that preoccupied us prior to the pandemic.
Caleb Nickerson
