By Peter Shurman
It has been a little over a month since the provincial legislature resumed sitting after the abbreviated autumn session.
Sitting in the legislature has been an eye-opening experience for me and I have enjoyed meeting with various residents from around Thornhill on subjects of concern to our community as a whole.
Over the past few months, I have had a variety of roundtable meetings with stakeholder groups representing a broad range of interests from across Thornhill. Such groups include a wide range of ethnically based organizations, ratepayers groups, parents concerned over funding for autism treatment in schools, business organizations, professional associations and the list goes on.
My activities at Queen?s Park have been shaped by the information gathered from those roundtable sessions. I speak in the Legislature regularly about the fact that autistic children have a right to education despite the shameful policies of the McGuinty government. I developed a petition on the need to extend subway service to Vaughan, and another petition on the need to provide more residency spaces to internationally trained medical graduates.
More recently, my efforts have been focused on the subject of the unequal and unfair application of the Smoke Free Ontario Act. There is no such thing as a safe cigarette. It is estimated 37 percent of all cigarette sales in Ontario are illicit. According to a recent study by the Ontario Convenience Store Association, 24 percent of cigarette butts found around schoolyards are contraband. However, the McGuinty government chooses to ignore the sale of contraband cigarettes to minors and instead focuses its attention on law-abiding convenience store owners who, at the end of May, will have to remove ?power walls? or face prosecution.
All the while, the illegal sale of tobacco to minors continues unabated and ignored by the premier and the minister of health promotion.
It certainly has been an interesting first six months for me at Queen?s Park. As I look forward to the rest of the term, I encourage all residents of Thornhill to contact my office with any concerns they may have.