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WHERE’S YOUR MONEY GOING?
The Renfrew
Province brings down budget
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Serving the community since 1871
MAPS IN DISPUTE
Year 140, Issue 40
Thursday, March 31, 2011 • 60 pages
Some residents in the Township of Whitewater Region are questioning the verity of mapping that suggests valuable aggregate resources are on their property.
www.yourottawaregion.com
Canadians off to the polls May 2
7
STEVE NEWMAN steve.newman@metroland.com
O, CANADA
Some thoughts from Parliament Hill on the launch of Canada’s 41st federal election.
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Mercury photo by Steve Newman
The Renfrew Mercury is printed on recycled newsprint.
PRETTY IN PEARL Marley Tabar, 3, is joined by her grandmother, Darlene Oattes, during Quail Creek Retirement Centre’s second annual fashion show Saturday. The fundraiser for Renfrew Victoria Hospital’s CT-Scan was a sellout.
For the first time since 2000, voters may have a close election in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke. At least that’s the thinking of many residents who have expressed frustration with Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant’s February comments about search-and-rescue operations in Newfoundland. Critics called her comments insensitive and uninformed; Prime Minister Stephen Harper called Gallant’s remarks incomprehensible; and Gallant said the mediamanufactured event missed the point, namely that efforts are still needed to improve helicopter search-and-rescue response times in Atlantic Canada. Critics refer to Gallant’s recent comments as another gaff in a continuing line of inappropriate comments, including ones about abortion and allegedly-homophobic remarks about Liberal MP Bill Graham. Two of MP Gallant’s biggest critics, understandably, are local opponents, Liberal candidate Christine Tabbert and former local Liberal MP and now Independent candidate Hec
Clouthier. In the 2000 election, Clouthier was upset by then-Reform Party candidate Gallant after he alienated voters with his flippant comments about the long-gun registry. Since then, Gallant has been a runaway winner in the riding, compiling some of the country’s highest riding support, including 61.1 per cent in the 2008 election. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be interesting,” predicted Tabbert of the 2011 election campaign while in Renfrew last Saturday. “I think it’s going to be a very tough campaign,” Gallant told The Mercury of the campaign that ends with a May 2 election. “I think the media is exaggerating our numbers in the polls.” The election was officially underway when Harper visited Governor-General David Johnston to have the 40th sitting of Parliament dissolved. The request came after the Conservatives became the first national government in the Commonwealth to be cited for contempt of Parliament. They lost the Liberal non-confidence vote 156-145 last Friday. See ‘Campaign’, page 5
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