Today, The Honourable Aileen Carroll, Ontario’s Culture Minister and Minister Responsible for Seniors and The Honourable Peter Fonseca, Ontario’s Minister of Labour, will be visiting our offices for 2 separate editorial board round table discussions. Both Ministers will be meeting with editors of our sister subsidiary publications, and also with editors/journalists of our own diversity media network.
Regular readers of this blog might recall similar discussions we had in early March with Ontario Energy Minister George Smitherman, and (now Federal Liberal Leader) Michael Ignatieff.
With recent provincial funding announcements, including the Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund, Ontario Arts Council, the $43 million to the 6 GTA cultural attractions agencies, and recent moves to help temporary foreign workers, hopefully there should be a lot to talk about.
I’ll be attending these round table discussions and blogging live via my Twitter account, so if you have any questions or comments, please “direct message” me. We should begin around 1 pm with Minister Carroll, and about 2:30 with Minister Fonseca.
UPDATE: the press conference with the Hon. Aileen Carroll will begin at approximately 3 pm … the press conference with the Hon. Peter Fonseca will begin at approximately 2:15 pm.
Bob Foster says:
May 4, 2009 at 9:35 amAsk Culture Minister Aileen Carroll where she stands on the property,that was once home to Alma College in St.Thomas,Ontario.The college burned to the ground in May of 2008,and even though 2 of the 3 buildings survived the inferno,Minister Carroll has failed to respond to Alma supporters for 11 months,on possible provincial designation for the 2 remaining buildings.Jim Coyle,the provincial affairs columnist for the Toronto Star featured the Alma story in his column in Aug 2008,and still the minister did not respond.She seems to be badly neglecting her duties as protector of built heritage in Ontario.For a more complete background on our fight to get this property designated,many of the same my letters,that Ive sent to Minister Carroll have also been published on Ian’s City Scope blog,he is a reporter in St.Thomas,where beautiful & historic college stood for over 130 years,and he has been kind enough to chronicle my long battle with this minister,who in 11 months,has only responded once with a standard form letter.She needs to be called on the carpet for her poor handling of Ontario’s built heritage,she boasts in the legislature about the improvements to the heritage act,but never steps up to use it,instead she is allowing many historic buildings to fall.Please read my letters to get a better understanding of this ministers disregard for our built heritage.
Ian’s City Scope Blog:
http://ianscityscope.wordpress.com/category/alma-college/
Sincerely,
Bob Foster
Brampton,Ontario
admin says:
May 12, 2009 at 7:09 pmThanks for your comments, Bob.
To readers of this blog, and in the spirit of true transparency, Bob submitted his comment a few hours prior to our editorial board room meet-up with Minister Carroll. On any normal day, I would have received it and raised the issue during the Minister’s meet-up. Unfortunately, due to an internal email conversion the weekend before, I did not receive Bob’s comment in time to raise at our meeting.
The New Mainstream™ » Frank Klees says:
June 4, 2009 at 10:48 am[...] — from Ontario Premier, the Hon. Dalton McGuinty, to other provincial ministers such as the Hon. Peter Fonseca, Hon. Aileen Carroll, and Hon. Jim Bradley, and Metrolinx President Robert Prichard. So, to those [...]