Perspectives by Rev. Arlyce Schiebout

In an effort to provide support to local communities our Government has taken action through Canada’s Gas Tax Fund. 

In recent years, the Gas Tax Fund has been extended, doubled, indexed and made permanent. 

These improvements to Canada’s Gas Tax Fund provide predictable, long-term funding for Canadian municipalities to help them build and revitalize public infrastructure while creating jobs and long-term prosperity.

The Gas Tax Fund is providing Ontarians, including the constituents of SDSG, with stable funding that will have a tangible impact on their quality of life and the long-term sustainability of their communities. 

Through the Gas Tax Fund, municipalities across Ontario have benefited from close to $4.7 billion in predictable and flexible funding for local priorities since the program began.

Municipalities have been able to distribute these funds into drinking water, wastewater infrastructure, public transit, community energy systems, solid waste management, and local roads. By investing these funds in important local infrastructure we are creating jobs, promoting growth and building strong, prosperous communities across Canada, and right here in SDSG. 

As announced in Economic Action Plan 2013, the eligible categories for the Gas Tax Fund will be expanded and the Fund will be indexed at two per cent a year in $100-million increments, starting in 2014. 

This represents $21.8 billion in flexible, long-term funding for municipal infrastructure. 

This expansion will now allow municipalities to invest in projects supporting culture, tourism, sport and recreation; disaster mitigation; broadband communication systems; highways; short-line rail; short-sea shipping; brownfield redevelopment; and local and regional airports. 

In 2013 to 2014, SDSG municipalities have received the following funding to support its local infrastructure priorities: Cornwall – $2,819,953; South Glengarry – $395,094; South Stormont – $384,051; North Stormont – $207,639; South Dundas -$323,621; North Dundas – $340,339.

I am confident that Canada’s Gas Tax Fund provides long-term funding to help SDSG communities build and revitalize their local infrastructures.  

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Transitions

People and institutions are always changing. We are always in a state of transition it seems.

We make the transition from fall to winter – although maybe grudgingly. 

Our families change as deaths, births, marriages, divorces and illness occur. 

Our local community changes due to the social and economic pressures of our time. 

Our country changes as our governments strive to protect and provide for all of us.

Transitions are processes. They are not goals. It is not a product that we consume. It is even a bodily process and not only emotional or intellectual or even a spiritual one. 

The very cells in our bodies are changing and making transitions and renewing themselves every day. Yet we remain recognizably ourselves. 

As much as any of us living here is part of a community, faith or otherwise, at the same time we always have to be open to making transitions, and not be afraid of that six letter word- CHANGE.

We all know what happens when we have stability without change. We become stagnant. We curl up in our favourite chair. The chair is called  “this is the way we have always done it”!

Communities of faith – churches – are transitioning too.

We need to be fully aware of the effects of our culture on the church as we are part of that culture outside of the church buildings. 

Perhaps the real scariness of the changes in our lives lies in admitting that God can work in each of us however, whenever, and through whomever or whatever means that God chooses.

Our faith in God is not a one size fits all kind of faith. This has to be worked out by each individual whether you are part of a faith community or not. This is a daily and life long process. Change is about seeing ourselves and the ordinary people in our families and the people who surround us every day and seeing them in a new light. 

It is good to remember that it is not about us, and it is always about God!

Rev. Norine Gullons

Sth. Dundas Evangelical

Lutheran Parish

Morrisburg/Williamsburg

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