MISSISSAUGAWATCH --Stardate 1.0436 (Mississauga Musings)

MISSISSAUGAWATCH --LIKE. TOTALLY COOL

Yes, second Blog entry today.

Am prepping to head out to Fort Erie in support of fellow Ontario citizens trying to block any potential move by the Fort Erie Mayor to ban videotaping of council meetings. (Or at the very least bear witness and document Fort Erie Council's banning of citizens videotaping proceedings if Council plans to dump down some By-law tonight.)

Anyway, just want to share what arrived in the mail just now --a Season's Greetings card from Andre Marin, our Ontario Ombudsman. Talk about the best thing that happened to me Mississauga-Wise for 2007!

Can't tell you how reassuring it is to know that a real Big Brother is watching out for me as I watch the Mississauga Big Brother.

I hope this will encourage other citizens, citizen-videographers and citizen-Bloggers to get in there and document your municipal councils.

OMBUDSMAN1

OMBUDSMAN2

OMBUDSMAN3

Neat, eh?

Just wait til Mr. Marin finds that MISSISSAUGAWATCH (essentially just my husband and me) plan on launching AMMO (Alternate Media Municipal Observers) which will "watchdog" AMO (Association of Municipalities of Ontario).

That's right, my husband and I are launching AMMO which will take aim at AMO.

After all, if you can't fight city hall, that means it's Impossible to fight city hall. Impossible is impossible. Impossible is an Absolute. There are no degrees of Impossible. Fighting one city hall is just as Impossible as fighting 80 kabillion of them.

So we've decided to take on the Impossible task of fighting all 425 or so Ontario city hall/municipalities --including AMO.

(I'll need a new baseball cap though... and maybe a corporate sponsor.. hmm... maybe I should approach PELCO...)

Anyway.

I didn't get into that "Sharpen Your Teeth: Training Workshop for Investigators" course, put on by the Special Ombudsman Response Team (SORT). It was held in Toronto *sigh* last week. (I suspect that I didn't recognize the Ombudsman's notification email and my MR. DELETE KEY nailed it. And yes, I really am that careless, ask my sister.)

I tried calling and was told that I'd be put on a wait list but that things weren't encouraging because they were receiving applications for the "Sharpen Your Teeth" course from all over the world.

So 2008 means No Sharp Teeth for The Mississauga Muse. Not a problem.

My New Year's Resolution is to show municipalities --and AMO, what it's like to be NIBBLED TO DEATH BY A DUCK!

Signed,
The (Thank you, Mr. Marin and Happy Holidays) Mississauga Muse

P.S. I wish that I had one Peel Regional Police officer with us in Fort Erie...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOWERpelcoTEXT
"I think it's time for the citizens to hold, not only the provincial government responsible for how this legislation ended up being a complete cop-out, but as well, how each individual municipality deals with the important "Right to Know" for its citizens." --Ontario Ombudsman, Andre Marin