Recent Storm in Ottawa and the Need for Self Sufficiency
Lori Mills
Lori Mills is a long-time resident of the Ottawa area. She joins us today to relay her first-person experience of the recent major storm event that left many without power for numerous days. Lori’s account is an example that illustrates the need for people to become more self sufficient, relying less on the government for help.
On the Beginnings of the Storm….
And then I got an emergency alert. So now this is an hour after the storm. That I’m receiving the emergency alert. Very helpful. At the same time, I got a text message from my parents saying that their gazebo was torn apart and then HELP all in capital letters. So, I said I need to head over there. They live about 12 kilometers [from me.]
It took me 45 minutes to get there. And that was because there were trees down everywhere, power lines were down all over the roads and they had, literally people. Had come and put-up caution-tape to stop people from turning onto the street. There was a fire truck right across the road and they detoured us from what looked like an absolute war zone.
There were trees down on every single property. They were on the houses; they were on the cars. There was one where there’s two cars in the driveway side by side, and a tree had fallen from either side, right on top of the cars. It was so shocking to see. I could not believe my eyes.
On the Tangible Failures of Government …
There was no advanced warning of any kind that I knew of mind you. I don’t listen to mainstream media. So, I suppose it’s possible that they might have warned, but nobody I knew anything about it. And certainly, the hydro trucks were out in full force and they were working, but people would get through on the phone and they would say, you’ll have power at 7:30 tonight and things like that. Which of course didn’t happen.
Any information that you could get and even on the radio at this point, they’re saying they’ll have power restored areas by such and such a time. And I don’t think anybody got power back when they were told they were going to get power back.
Originally posted 2022-06-23 16:44:52.
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for me living in Southern Ontario I have seen the quality of services decline rapidly since the 1990’s privatization of our public services.
in the 80’s we had among the best quality public services & social programs in the wold, they worked because we kept them off the table for profit & were delivered at cost to the tax payer, the government ministries direct hired & trained directly & properly for the job, everything from sanitation to hospitals were their own individual entities the government ministries were created to over see.
in the early 90’s the Conservative governments started privatizing all these services but kept the ministry beard on to imply they were government provided services when they were what we did not want which was US style public / private partnerships, in which the government award the contract to a for profit company to provide the service & still take a cut to fund the ministry who has now been relegated to the status of a general contractor, merely trying to find the one who will do it for the cheapest price & over decades has been corrupted to the company who has greased the palms of the correct politicians gets the contract.
so we have gone from quality at cost direct hire public services providing realized value to the tax payer through the 1980’s to a mess of for profit companies at best competing to do the job as cheap as possible for the respective ministry since the early 90’s so it is not surprising they have difficulty dealing with the unexpected major emergencies like natural disaster power outages.
at this point the system is so broken the people need to demand the right to a parallel society of independent mildly regulated where necessary from food & healthcare through public service options.
the problem being government does not want to give true choice alternatives to their corrupted system & choices & they certainly do not want the public having the right to divert their tax dollars to services of their choice, which is the problem as no one wants to be forced to pay for something they will not use then having to pay again for the same service delivered in a respectful fashion people desire.
I think in the end we are going to have to break with the system & when the majority do we can demand our property taxes be canceled or drastically reduced because we choose to provide for ourselves that which we need.
another great interview
A very savvy lady, Lori!