{"id":41337,"date":"2021-01-23T09:54:11","date_gmt":"2021-01-23T14:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/?p=41337"},"modified":"2021-02-09T18:28:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T23:28:26","slug":"railroaded-nose-stretchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/23\/railroaded-nose-stretchers\/","title":{"rendered":"Railroaded – Nose Stretchers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Frank<\/em> magazine employed an effective and evocative word when reporting on dubious political statements back in its heyday: \u00a0nose stretchers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What\u2019s a nose stretcher?\u00a0 Think of Pinocchio when he told tall tales.\u00a0 Think of actor Leslie Nielsen in the movie, Airplane<\/em>, whose proboscis grew each time he uttered soothing words to calm the frightened passengers without regard for the facts.\u00a0 Nose stretchers!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trainloads of nose stretchers have been told about the 2012 axing of the Northlander<\/em> passenger train by the publicly-owned Ontario Northland Railway (ONR).\u00a0 Some are thigh-slapping side splitters in railway circles.\u00a0 Here\u2019s one from the Ford government\u2019s 2018 election promise book: \u201cReinstate passenger rail service to the North, at a cost of $45 million for refurbishment and operating costs.\u201d <\/em>Advance notice of this \u201cdetailed\u201d promise \u2013 no doubt fully studied and costed by rail-savvy political advisors \u2013 came from Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli, who told his Facebook fans on November 25, 2017 that his government would \u201cbring back Ontario Northland passenger rail service by the end of our mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nose stretchers like those are rolling again thanks to typically vicious partisan politics, desperate glances at the ticking election countdown clock, and enough feeble attempts to cover political cabooses to fill a railway yard.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a classic from the North Bay Nugget<\/em>: \u201cFedeli said the infrastructure that supported the service from Toronto to Cochrane has been \u2018decimated.\u00a0 A lot was lost\u2019 by the decision to sell off the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC)\u2026\u00a0 Among those assets was the closing of the Ontario Northland office at Union Station in Toronto, and a number of stations along the route were closed and have fallen into disrepair.\u00a0 \u2018The infrastructure is gone,\u2019 he said.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, not quite.\u00a0 It was Mike Harris\u2019 Conservatives who mortally wounded the ONR, playing privatization games with it while also slashing the daylights out of public transportation funding across Ontario.\u00a0 It was the Harris government \u2013 not the Wynne Liberals \u2013 that derailed the ONR, putting it on and off the auction block, stuffing its board with friends and starving it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As for the former Ontario Finance Minister\u2019s claims about missing track, that deserves an award.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure CN will be wondering what tracks the Grits removed from their Toronto-North Bay line.\u00a0 In fact, track has been added at public expense on the south end of the privately-owned CN line for the extension of the provincially-funded GO trains from Richmond Hill to Gormley.\u00a0 And CN has installed smooth-riding welded rail on portions of the Washago-North Bay segment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When it comes to those \u201cmissing\u201d stations, they aren\u2019t.\u00a0 They were closed due to a lack of those pesky commodities required to keep them open for business: passengers and passenger trains. As for a ticket office at Toronto Union Station, it would be interesting to hear how it could be such a vital cog in this politically-wound machine that its absence is holding up progress.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Extending these nose stretchers has led to that infrastructure going from \u201cgone\u201d to \u201cgutted.\u201d “When the Liberals cancelled passenger rail, they really gutted the system right from Union Station to the stations all the way up the line. There were tracks removed as well.”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nose stretcher alert!\u00a0<\/strong> But I\u2019m impressed by the plethora of strategic railway knowledge the MPP has acquired since the ONTC became his cause de jour.\u00a0 This may be due to the February 2020 ONTC board appointment of a Fedeli childhood friend in Southern Ontario.\u00a0 He collects toy trains and choo choo trinkets.\u00a0 He emailed me his appointment news and a magnanimous offer: \u201cGlad to have you as my \u2018shadow\u2019 for your objective assessments and opinions.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There\u2019s more, but I\u2019ll reserve the juiciest morsels for my upcoming book.\u00a0 One involves Fedeli labeling me in the June 5, 2019 edition of Northern Ontario Business<\/em> as a consultant with a \u201cself-serving agenda.\u201d\u00a0 This was after he asked on July 27, 2018, if he could host a North Bay launch of the rail plan I was commissioned to produce for All Aboard Northern Ontario, the Temiskaming Municipal Association, and the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association.\u00a0 He even suggested a friendly snapshot to celebrate All Aboard Northern Ontario\u2019s acceptance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The gentleman may have been irked by my release of a December 2018 email from an ONTC vice-president who opposed a relaunch of the Northlander<\/em>, calling it \u201cone of those political minefields that never dies.\u00a0 Vic will ultimately find this out if he isn\u2019t catching on already.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Perhaps he was harbouring a grudge because I declined the party\u2019s invitation to serve \u2013 for free, of course \u2013 as co-chair of its Transportation and Infrastructure Policy Advisory Council in 2016.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Still, you clearly see that rail passenger service in Northeastern Ontario will be back on the rails in \u2026 well, soon?\u00a0 In November, Fedeli told the Nugget<\/em> that his government is \u201cpushing hard\u201d for its return.\u00a0 He pointed to its recent last-minute studies and surveys as clear indicators of this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since 2019, Fedeli has advised patience, repeating his plea in the Nugget<\/em> just a few weeks ago: \u201cThere are a lot of balls in the air. We want to do it right. We don\u2019t want to take any shortcuts.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBalls\u201d is an interesting word choice.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a nose stretcher.\u00a0 Nor is this last nugget from the Nugget:<\/em>\u00a0 \u201cBut Fedeli admits, there is still no timeline on when [the Northlander<\/em>] will return.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank magazine employed an effective and evocative word when reporting on dubious political statements back in its heyday: \u00a0nose stretchers.   What\u2019s a nose stretcher?\u00a0 Think of Pinocchio when he told tall tales.\u00a0 Think of actor Leslie Nielsen in the movie, Airplane, whose proboscis grew each time he uttered soothing words to calm the frightened …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":41341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,2870],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","category-rroaded"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 08:18:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41337"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41342,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41337\/revisions\/41342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}