Woo-hoo! Mayor John!

Last night in Kapuskasing, Sault Ste. Marie Mayor John Rowswell received the Executive of the Year award from the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities.

Below is the full text from Mayor Rowswell's acceptance speech.

**************************** Good evening,

Thank you Mayor Tom Laughren.

I am delighted to receive this award with my family this evening.

My wife Donna, my daughter Patricia and her husband Grant are with us this evening.

We also have two sons Joel with Ikeka, Donald with Heidi that are accountants and this is month end for them and they wanted to be here, but couldn’t.

We have seven grandchildren, number eight coming in July with Jody and Andrew - Jody, the trip was just too long.

I know why I entered politics and I know why each and everyone of you are here too.

Northern Ontario has their fair share of community-minded caring individuals that want to make that difference.

In 2000, when I was elected mayor, we had a 17 percent unemployment rate, negativity was the norm, and change was needed.

I initiated the mayor growth mandate which led to the destiny diversification plan.

Up to this time, the policitcal will was to downsize, and if you plan to downsize, you only have one direction to go - down.

Plan for growth, you may get something. And we did.

I can tell you today, Sault Ste. Marie is a recharged community, with a full diversification strategy and very optimistic about its future.

We have challenges, but we work to put it in the positive.

Some of you may be aware that I have stage 4 kidney cancer.

Four years ago, they found a softball size tumour in my left kidney, the doctor’s say it had been in me, six to seven years.

My ten years as mayor, cancer has been part of my life.

I have had my left kidney removed, part of each lung, had four to five rounds of chemotherapy and immuntherapy, and presently into another chemotherapy round.

I sometimes don’t have the strength to stand on my own; i may need to sit through the rest of my speech and my family is a big part of my support group that allows me to do what i can still do.

I have talked how much better things are in Sault Ste. Marie, but I will tell you when I was first elected, it didn’t take long to find out that Northern Ontario was suffering from neglect, youth out migration, and loss of hope.

I did not know that the cancer buried deep in me would become a closeness to health care in Northern Ontario and a driving force for real improvements.

I was one of the founding mayor’s for the Northern School of Medicine, third year is being taught in communities around the north because Mayor Lim (Timmins), Mayor Burrows (North Bay) and myself did not want the NOSM just to focus on Sudbury and Thunder Bay.

We wanted a distributed learning model and I can say that Dr. Roger Strausser has done a good job setting up the northern model we first envisaged.

We are now into our second graduation class, but this identified another problem.

About half of the class is going to be family doctors, and will come home; the rest are entering specialties all trained in the south.

Hospital cutbacks across the north, emergengy doctors screaming no access to speciality doctors, where are our NOSM trained new specialities going to practice, likely not in the north.

I want to share with you a study of specialists in ontario and travel distant time for that specialist.

The disparity between northern and southern ontario is so obvious but we in Northern Ontario have becomed used to not expecting any better.

I complained to the federal health minister that the province failed in its responsibilities under the Canadian Health Act where fair and equal offering under OHIP should be provided under uniform terms and conditions.

This was their response: “Reasonable access in terms of physical availability of services is interpreted under the Act using the where and as available decision rule. Thus, residents of a province or territory are entitled to have access to insured health care services in the setting “where” the services are provided and “as” the services are available in the setting."

Northern residents must generally drive one day’s drive for their specialist care.

Our new NOSM specialists need to be welcomed and have access to physician speciality clusters across the north, not just at regional centres such as Sudbury and Thunder Bay, speciality clusters three to four hours apart, and we northerners must work on this plan because it isn’t coming from the province.

If you want better health care, we must do it.

Let us bring our new NOSM specialists home.

Northern Ontario is huge.

We are 88 percent of the province’s land mass, we occupy the centre third of canada.

We are the bond that holds this country together.

Sault Ste. Marie has tried to put a global transportation strategy together that is good for all of Northern Ontario.

We realized Sault Ste. Marie is a good location for an inland container terminal.

The nearest sea containers port is Toronto and Winnipeg.

How do we expect in Northern Ontario to get our goods out if we are not globally connected?

My pet project of 13 years that I have been working on is polar air cargo.

I am going to show a short video of how through Sault Ste. Marie and North Bay, Northern Ontario can be connected globally and not dependent on Toronto.

The same thing can happen with a sea container inland container terminal.

We can be connected globally and opportunities are ours to realize.

Railroads and highways are essential for our resourced based industries.

Their preservation and upgrade is a must.

Remember, to go across Canada you have to cross Northern Ontario to get to get to other side.

Why could not we have an aggressive highway and road building program, to help offset the downturn in the forestry or pulp industry, it is happening in the northwest and put people back to work.

Who is looking after Northern Ontario interests?

Minister Michael Gravelle is trying, but Minister Dan Newman put more in action for Sault Ste. Marie in 2002 than what we have seen since.

The Northern Ontario growth plan is moving just too slow and what real input have we had?

We are allowing ourselves to be steered and definitely accept less than what we are due.

Four years ago, I worked on Northern Ontario energy plan with my NOLUM colleagues.

We found we have the capacity to double our energy capacity and economic development is abundant.

We are presently energy neutral in the north more or less - winter we need some from the south, the summer we give back.

The average age of hydropower in the north is 77 years, well paid for and costs less than a cent per kilowatt-hour.

Four years ago, we were told by Ontario Power Generation they were entitled to the power.

To continue reading Mayor Rowswell's speech, click here.