For the past 15 years, the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre has been a model of selfless voluntarism.
With the vision, personal caring and dedication of the founders, employees, volunteers, corporate and private patrons, the centre has progressed and grown to become an internationally recognized model of good urban wildlife rehabilitation and conflict resolution practices — the best in North America!
And for this reason it attracts funding from other provinces and the U.S.A. Too bad organizations can’t be nominated for The Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award, this one would sure qualify!
But we are going to lose this unique Ottawa gem forever unless our city and provincial politicians act now.
Six weeks ago, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources unexpectedly declared Ottawa-Carleton a rabies “high risk” zone.
On July 23, the ministry swooped in and raided the centre to remove its permit and confiscate the animals entrusted to its care.
To include Ottawa in the high risk zone, the ministry declared its data showed raccoon rabies moving north toward Ottawa, and that this was an immediate health crisis.
But the ministry’s own data shows that the disease is moving away from Ottawa. In the June issue of “The Rabies Reporter,” the ministry boasts: “However you look at the raccoon rabies situation, it is a good news story so far in 2002. …In Eastern Ontario, raccoon rabies is way down.”
So what’s going on here? Where’s the crisis?
Looks a lot like a “manufactured” crisis to me. As the old saying goes, “Follow the money.” Could it be that MNR can’t argue for continued high levels of rabies research funding if they’ve already won the war against rabies. Did they label Ottawa as a rabies “high risk” zone as a smokescreen to further their own goals? I don’t really know, but I sure do wonde.
We deserve an explanation and anapology!
This is urgent! City politicians must take a stand to ensure that a progressive wildlife response continues to be available in Ottawa!
If we lose OCWC, we’ll never get it back again. And it will cost us real green tax dollars out of all of our pockets when the City has to pay a staff to deal with the multitude of problems created . . . much less for much more.
Eric Snyder,
Ottawa
Govt. can’t see past procreation
The government of Canada is opposing gay marriages because it says the purpose of marriage is procreation and child rearing.
So far, two gays cannot produce a child (of course, they could adopt, or bring in an extra person to help with the procreation part, but let’s leave that aside).
Does that mean that the government is planning to forbid marriages of women after menopause?
Or will the government require a fertility test of both partners?
Tom Trottier
Albert Street