TOYOTA BOSHOKU CANADA, INC.
Join us for a
Sat., Dec. 22nd, 2018 9am - 1pm
free public skate!
Woolwich Memorial Centre
Pleasure skaters young & young-at-heart, hockey players and first timers alike are all invited to bundle up, lace up and come out for a spin on the ice. Warm your hands with free hot chocolate & popcorn for the first 150 patrons.
24 Snyder Ave S. Elmira, ON N3B 2Z6
12 | 13 | 2018 VOLUME 23 | ISSUE 48
ST. JACOBS’ STONE CROCK CHANGING HANDS VENTURE PAGE 26
COMMENT PAGE 10
PROVINCE SHOULD GET HWY. 7 BACK ON TRACK ANOTHER STOP ON SANTA’S LIST
www.OBSERVERXTRA.com COUNCIL / WOOLWICH
Questions remain despite account of e-voting woes Woolwich council wants more details about what went wrong on Oct. 22 STEVE KANNON
Santa Claus was the guest of honor at the Elmira Legion’s Hungry Man Breakfast on Sunday, while the Woolwich Thrashers Sledge Hockey team were on hand to help with the event. Among those visiting the big man himself was Thrasher team member Dustin Hoag. See more photos on p. 9. [FAISAL ALI / THE OBSERVER]
Hwy. 7 project on hold pending provincial review STEVE KANNON HAVING ALREADY SPENT SOME $120 million on the project, the province is unlikely to halt work on the new Highway 7 between Kitchener and Guelph, say local officials. The Ford government is reviewing its finances, however, meaning there’s currently no timeline for
completing the highway. Discussed for decades, the new route finally saw actual construction work begin in 2015. Earlier this year, however, the province announced it would be taking another look at the project. “We are currently reviewing all projects and spending committed to by the last government, and
taking the necessary steps to make sure we are best positioned to provide quality, safe and efficient transportation options to all Ontarians. One of the projects currently under review is the new Highway 7 from Kitchener to Guelph,” said Ministry of Transportation (MTO) spokesperson Kersondra Hickey in an email. An MTO work-plan
called the Southern Highways Program 2017-2021 lists only “beyond 2021” as the timeline for completing the new four-lane highway. When construction got underway in 2015, the project was expected to take five years to complete at a total cost of about $300 million. To date, the ministry has HWY. 7 | 8
THE COMPANY THAT DROPPED the ball during Woolwich’s first foray into electronic voting offered up an apology, but likely not enough information for the township to decide whether or not to continue down that path. Woolwich, Wellesley and some 50 other municipalities saw online voting systems slow to a crawl late on election day, October 22, prompting the vote to be extended by 24 hours. Appearing before council Tuesday night, Dominion Voting System’s representative Susan Yates attributed the problem to a thirdparty supplier of internet services. Dominion had calculated it would need bandwidth of 100 to 200 megabits per second (mbps). To be sure, they increased that by a factor of five, to 1 gigabit per second, when arrang-
ing for bandwidth from its service provider, which has been under contract since 2010, she explained. The company checked the level of service had been in place, and then verified that again during tests held while advance voting was going on. When the system slowed down about 6 p.m. on voting day, Dominion discovered its service had been dropped down to 100 mbps. It took 90 minutes to restore full service. “They didn’t provide what we had requested, unfortunately,” she said While the system had bogged down, there were no issues with security, Yates stressed. That prompted Coun. Larry Shantz to question the company’s process for ensuring the third-party service was up to snuff. “Is there a way to test VOTING | 7