Here are some charities taking online and / or phone donations. I have not investigated efficiency of all these charities yet (as a policy, I do not donate to charities unless at least 70% of my donations reach the victims. Some charities have huge "administrative costs" where most of your contributions end up in forms of salaries and advertisement. Sad but true).

I am personally going with Doctors Without Borders. 

The Canadian Red Cross 1-800-418-1111
Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders) 1-800-982-7903.
Unicef Canada 1-800-567-4483.
World Vision Canada.
The Humanitarian Coalition.
The Mennonite Central Committee 1-888-622-6337.
Save the Children.
Plan Canada 1-800-387-1418.
The Salvation Army in Canada 1-800-725-2769.

Another offbeat post.  If you can spare some money for Haitians, Ottawa will match your donations dollar-for-dollar.  Another reason to give. 

More than 100,000 people may have died in the Haiti Earthquake. I am not pushing any specific charity, but please consider donating some money to people in Haiti.  They are in desperate need of our help. 

Two pillars of accountability are answerability and enforcement. 

Answerability requires public officials to provide information about their actions and justify them to the public.  This requires both accessibility and transparency.  Some public officials tend to be inaccessible.  Very few ever state their values in writing.  If they are not both accessible and transparent, then they do not wish to be answerable. 

Enforcement implies that an institution responsible for accountability can sanction the offending party or individual.  Often this is absent as well. Except in extreme cases, voters have to wait until the next election.

Democracy cannot function without true accountability.  Even if there is a democratic process, without accountability it’s not a real democracy.  

I am committed to completely accountability.

A web feed (news feed, RSS feed, syndicated feed) allows users to subscribe to frequently updated content. All blogs, all news sites and most personal websites have feeds readers can subscribe to.  It takes the need to frequently check the site away.  You get notified when there’s new content.

Why does milton.ca not have feeds for every subsection (it does for the main page.  Even if you are in a sub-section, you only get RSS for the main page)?  I want to see the list of all registered candidates for the 2010 municipal election. I do not want to have to check the document every day. Instead, I want to be able to subscribe to the feed, so I get notified in my RSS reader (I use Internet Explorer for it) whenever they change that page. 

[Shameless plug: you can subscribe to my RSS feeds by either clicking the feed icon in your browser or by clicking this link, if you use an external application.]

If elected, I promise to be accessible, transparent and representative.

1. Accessible:  Today you can contact me via this website, e-mail, facebook page, twitter or cellphone.  That will not change.
2. Transparent: I will continue to be fully transparent. I am not always right and you will not always agree with me. However, you will always know where I stand.  In fact, I am even publishing all campaign donations online.
3. Representative: I work for us.  I will represent you and only you.  I am not here to serve developers, builders or any other special interest groups.

I will consider the opportunity to be your spokesperson in the council an honour.  For further details, please see my campaign page.

Regular readers of my blog may not be surprised to learn that I have decided to enter the race for the Local council for Ward 8.

I am not going to make vague and ambiguous promises. I am not promising to change the world, bring about world peace, end world hunger or to teach every bad driver how to drive. However, I do unconditionally promise to be accessible, transparent and representative (full commitment).

A councillor is supposed to listen to his or her constituents and represent their interests in the Council. Those who know me know that I can do that very well.

I want to improve the quality of our lives, and those of our children. You can get highlights on my campaign page (or drill in deeper to get a whole lot of details).

If you support me then perhaps you’ll consider fanning me on facebook to show support. You may also consider making a little campaign donation.  Every bit helps.

[ps: I have disabled comments on this post. Please leave a comment on my campaign page instead.  Thanks so much]

A comment was posted in response to my post: What makes a good councillor.  The main question was:

…what do you think a councillor should do when a group of his/her constituents asks for support for something that is in opposition to his/her principles?

You can read the comment and my response here.

Earlier this week Mayor Gordon Krantz announced that he’d seek re-election.  Two days ago on hawthorne villager a long-time Milton resident, Marshall Horner, threw in his name as a Ward 7 candidate for the local council.  He plans to announce his platform and more background information after he is nominated on Jan 4th.  For now he said: “If I am elected, I will stay in touch with my constituents and, any other resident of Milton who asks for my help.” 

Stay tuned.

It’s not their views on policies as much as their principles (see here for the difference).  More importantly, a councillor needs to listen to his or her constituents and represent their interests in the Council.  An inaccessible councillor cannot possibly be a good representative. Unfortunately, we have a couple of these in Milton. 

Encouraged by Jan Mowbray, Mike Cluett and Jennifer Brooks at the Rurban Fringe (here and here), I have spent a few weeks shopping almost exclusively in Milton.  I even bought clothes and shoes in Milton.  I also went just a little out of my way to buy Canadian-made products, instead of imports (provided that the quality was same or better and the price was in the same range approximately).

I live in Milton, I work in Milton and now I shop exclusively in Milton as well, buying Canadian as much as I can.  Feels good!  Try it.

http://www.miltoncanadianchampion.com/opinions/article/290502

DEAR EDITOR:

A few months ago I found myself really frustrated at the pace of construction on Derry Road.

As a result, I started petitioning the Region of Halton to expedite the construction of the CN Rail underpass between Bronte Road and Scott Boulevard on Derry Road. I set up a website to reach residents who wanted to e-mail their councillors to express frustration over the Region’s infrastructure plans. When I finally took the petition off-line last week, a total of 374 residents had sent e-mails via my website at http://zhamid.ca .

I’m happy to report that regional council passed the budget December 16, allocating $2.4 million for the design work to be done in 2010. The construction, subject to the future council’s vote, can start in 2012 and will take 18 months to complete. This means we may get an underpass on Derry four years sooner than it was originally planned. I would like to thank all 374 people who signed the petition. I would also like to thank Halton’s public works department staff for including the design work in the 2010 budget, Regional Councillor Colin Best for championing it, Halton Regional Chair Gary Carr for supporting it, regional council for passing it and the Champion for covering it.

The subdivisions west of the rail tracks are completely cut off. I shudder to think what would happen if there were a medical emergency and an ambulance got stuck waiting for the train to pass.

Let’s hope that we never have to find out.

ZEESHAN HAMID, MILTON

Click here to expand the rest of this article

Here is a depressing news related to my previous post on retirement saving.  An RBC survey found that only 35% of Canadians will contribute to RRSP in 2009.  Worse, 45% of those above 55 are not doing any retirement planning whatsoever.  Worse yet, 32% of Canadians have not even started saving for retirement yet.

It’s the realm of Federal (or at least Provincial) government but I am a big fan of some forced savings in this case (CPP and Old Age won’t cut it). 

Vieux-Québec has done a great job maintaining its unique character.  Can Milton do something to achieve same level of success? 

Milton still has a lot of growth left.  As many new neighbourhoods get created, town planners have an opportunity to define the character of the entire future city.  What can Milton do to achieve a more European-esque look and feel? 

Essentially look at the main historic downtown and think about ways to achieve the same feel, likely via townhomes and 3-4 storey condos, on all arterial roads like Britannia, Loius St. Laurent, James Snow (it’s too late for Derry, unfortunately).