History repeats itself

When summer rolls around, everyone is thinking about taking a vacation. The kids are out of school for a few months, and the weather is just right. So why not get away?

That same attitude, it seems, is also over at regional headquarters.

Later this summer, a number of regional councillors and staff will be making their way to Europe – thus far, stops in France and Spain have been confirmed – to investigate anaerobic digestion, whereby compost and organic material is used to generate biogas and, therefore, power.

Now, this won’t be the first time that people from Durham Region are heading across the pond to investigate a new source of power generation. Back in 2007, 16 regional councillors and staff went on a whirlwind eight-day tour of the continent to look into the possibility of burning waste to generate power. This was back when the Durham York Energy Centre was a mere proposal, and not the nearly $300-million facility that it is today.

What is concerning, however, is how much was spent on that first trip. For an eight-day trip that saw councillors visit several different countries, the taxpayers were hit with a bill of $192,000, or approximately $12,000 per person. That comes to about $1,500 per person per day. There are plenty of people of Durham Region that don’t see that much on a biweekly paycheque, let alone daily.

Back in 2007 in this newspaper, the editorial stance was that while investigating something like this is necessary, a six-digit trip to Europe is not.

“We do not dispute the necessity of sending over a contingent to explore first hand incinerators like the one proposed for Clarington. It makes sense to see how these facilities operate and the impact they have in order to make an informed decision about whether or not to support it,” reads the editorial from Aug. 1, 2007.

“But given that we live in an era of video-conferencing and high tech communications that could have been exploited to save money, it appears irresponsible and excessive.”

Now, nearly a decade later, a very similar situation has arisen. The region would be wise to learn from lessons of the past, and not dole out thousands of dollars for a trip to Europe.

This, after all, is the same council that debated on end about throwing in an extra $100,000 at budget time for social services in the region – a motion that narrowly passed with a 12-11 margin. Why is it so hard to decide to spend money on others when, apparently, it’s easy to spend that on themselves?