Johnson met with school officials but said they minimized Theo’s experience by refusing to call what happened an “assault.” She said not using accurate language dismissed the harm done to Theo.

We created a word for the specific purpose of minimizing these offences when they occur between youth: bullying. If we were more honest, we would call harassment, slander, verbal abuse, uttering threats, theft, vandalism, and assault by their proper names regardless of the ages of the people involved.

My experiences are mainly from near the northeastern corner of 11 in the 1990s (and yeah, I drove through some bad shit a few times). Evidence of anyone plowing into the banks or through them into the ditch along that stretch was pretty rare back then. Of course, that area may not be representative even for that time period.

I suspect that one of the things that’s changed is training of transport truck drivers and enforcement of laws pertaining to transport trucks. Hell of a lot of those vehicles turn out to be overloaded or defective when they do run an enforcement blitz, and many of the drivers these days come from countries without significant snowfall and should be explicitly trained on how to handle our crappy weather before getting their licenses—but it isn’t a requirement, so they aren’t.

According to hearsay (as in, a friend with family in the area heard it from a local OPP officer) there’s a section of 17 out near the Sault which is closed much more often than it should be these days because the firm subcontracted to keep it clear just isn’t up to the work. Either that firm needs to be replaced by someone who can do the job, or that section of road needs to be improved even before we worry about three-laning anything. And I doubt it’s the only spot with those kinds of problems.

Three-laning the highways won’t help with weather-related issues, no. It may help with transport trucks trying to pass each other on inappropriate stretches of highway running people off the road, though, and similar. Widening 11 and 17 has been recommended in multiple government studies for decades.

Drivers are also not slowing down.

This is the real problem: not slowing down to match conditions (which can sometimes mean dragging along at residential-side-street speeds on the highway). That, and the weather events getting more violent. It used to be that 11 was hardly ever closed, but the number of vehicles in the ditch still seems to have been a lot lower. Of course, it’s possible that we just didn’t pay attention.

Maybe ask him what he did with extra millions JT gave Ontario shortly before he left office.

I’m sure he used it to try to bribe a foreign company into setting up a factory or similar facility in Ontario, because that’s worked out so well for us in the past. Or on ads meant to toot his own horn, whichever.

These are not exactly the first ones that have been defunded or forced to close. Ford and his government just hate the concept, no matter how much the science backs it up. (I leave open the possibility that they hate it because the science backs it up.)

We have a lot of crude oil, but not enough refineries to handle our complete yearly production. So some of it inevitably gets exported (25%? I forget.)

There’s also the fact that not all oil is created equal. Crude oil from the Alberta tar sands is heavy and sulfurous and contaminated with heavy metals. Some products are much more easily made from imported light oil, or from a mixture of types.

Besides just ignorance and Fear of the Different? In my experience, there’s a tendency for small-c conservatives to have a high degree of emotional attachment to traditional gender roles (especially toxic masculinity). LGBTQ+ people don’t adhere to those roles, and show kids that it’s okay not to adhere to those roles. End result: conservatives blame LGBTQ+ people for eroding one of their beloved shibboleths, because the alternative is admitting that they’re wrong.