Feb 20, 2013- 2:04 PM
If you’re not queasy by the end of the nearly 20-minute video, you’ll have proven to yourself that you have a very high tolerance of domesticated male bovine refuse.
Then again, you already have proven this over the past 20 years of electing and re-electing this man. In fact, citizens of Sudbury, Bartolucci’s unfortunately long career is entirely thanks to our efforts (or, more often, lack thereof).
Every time our MPP refuses to grant an audience to our labour or student unions, Aboriginal leaders or environmental protection groups, he’s showing us that he doesn’t care about the issues that affect us as northerners.
These are, in case you forgot, the issues we’re paying him to care about.
Since I was far too young to vote, I remember hearing complaints about Bartolucci and the decisions that fall in his jurisdiction.
For instance, how long were we willing to let the mismanagement of our health-care system go on for? In his speech, Bartolucci highlights the unification of Sudbury’s hospitals as one of his political achievements.
This is a particularly interesting achievement to highlight, considering the unprecedented amount of time it took for construction to be completed at the Laurentian site.
Moreover, just as soon as unification was complete, we hear that HSN has asked that the decision made in 1996 by the Health Services Restructuring Committee to close Memorial Hospital be reversed.
It’s been one blundering mistake after another in regards to health-care restructuring in this city, and yet it was by his own decision that the MPP left office. The people could care less.
When the minister of Northern Development and Mines did nothing to intervene with the selling of Inco and Falconbridge to foreign investors, nobody seemed to care.
When Vale announced that it had intentions of radically changing the working culture of its Sudbury operations, where was Bartolucci to defend the interest of the North?
When Local 6500 inevitably went on a painful year-long strike, many of us showed up to support our community, but by the time we went to the polls again, we all forgot how Bartolucci was publicly absent for the majority of the largest labour dispute our city had seen in his 20 years in office.
I have no political intentions in writing you, the citizens of Sudbury, this letter. My affiliations are not with the left or the right, but simply with common sense.
I can’t go to a gas station, coffee shop or family function without hearing somebody complain about education, health care or mining in the North.
Constantly Bartolucci’s name is brought up by people, common citizens, who say they have no power against the political machine.
The people have only what power they lay claim to. If we feign powerlessness, than we will become politically impotent obviously, but it is by our own hands.
Even Bartolucci himself said it was becoming increasingly more difficult to give 100 per cent. Can you blame him? What per cent of effort are we putting forward to change our community for the better?
Actually, the sad fact is, if you are reading the local news, you are probably among the few who are still putting forward an effort. I’m probably preaching to the converted.
But how much longer can a small group of individuals fight for the greater good of an apathetic community?
So if positive change comes as a result of Bartolucci’s departure from provincial politics and you hear somebody say, “It’s a good thing we finally got him out of office” please stop and correct them.
We did not get him out of office. He did. We did nothing.
Mathew Ralph
Greater Sudbury
