From B.I.G.To B.I.I.Ger To B.I.I.I.Gest

For all of you cynics out there, you should hang your head in shame. Premier McGuinty made a major announcement for Windsor. Can you believe it. It took 5 months of dedicated, full-time effort, probably with teams of experts, for this to happen. The "Border Implementation Group" has become the "Border Initiative Implementation Group." BIG has become BIIGer.

The appointment of Michael Kergin should also cause us great excitement. He has a job to "to deliver a new Detroit River crossing no later than 2013." I hate to be a wet blanket but wasn't that the timetable of the Bi-national Partnership already that everyone has said is too long to wait? I thought the Premier wanted to expedite matters

I do think that Mr. Kergin is the right guy though. From his biography, I see that he was posted in Cameroon, Chile and Cuba, all underdeveloped areas. He should be right at home in Windsor after the auto industry takes away thousands of jobs from here and with little in the way of economic develoment in view!

We should be grateful for small miracles. It looks like 34 government people will be involved in the project. If they are all out-of-towners, we will have a few people replacing the hundreds of auto workers who will be leaving for St. Thomas and Oakville.

Kergin "will work with provincial officials, the federal government and the City of Windsor." It is clear that a former Ambassador is needed to work with these warring factions if we are ever to get a solution.

I wonder if the City is now snubbing its former ally. Not a word in the Press Release from our Mayor who praised the Premier previously. If you see the Mayor with a black eye, it is because he was hit across the head by a 2 X 4! The Feds and Province have just told him in no uncertain words that they have no desire to spend money to follow or carry out his billion dollar short-term dream. They know there is NO short-term problem at the border so why spend the cash!

The Feds have voters to buy in the next election with their budget surplus for heaven's sake. They cannot waste it on matters like our economic well-being. And Ontario is now a "have-not" province so we don't have the money at all

The Mayor may as well cancel the Schwartz contract and save some fees that way rather than keep spending money to pay for services that are not required any longer.

I also notice that Mr. Salmons' name was not mentioned in the press release. Now that would have been rubbing it into the faces of his former bosses at City Hall.

I believe that the weather helped the Premier today. I understand that his plane could not arrive in Windsor so he did his conference by phone. Better that way than to be laughed out of Windsor after this joke of pretending to be concerned about what happens to Windsorites or the economies of North America.

I bet the Americans will be mad that they are not included in this. Pretty soon we will see BIIIG: the Border International Initiative Implementation Group.