Voters need to give this serious consideration at the next election. Does the candidate understand their job is to direct the bureaucrats? It's not to take direction from them.
Fanastic article. As a person who lives in Cavan-Monaghan which is the poster boy county of waste ,corruption, and dead wood leadership I concur. The leader of this wasteful county makes 180,000/ year. There is a population of less than 10,000 residents.
What has kept the country from total insolvancy has been the realestate boom which will be in hibernation for at least the next 4 or 5 years.
For a comparison of garbage collection I have a property in Toronto. On garbage day they not only pick up the garbage bin which holds 4 to 5 large bags of garbadge but will take appliances, furniture ,pretty well anything.plus blue box
In Cavan monagan they pick up 1 bag of garbage that is in a clear bag to make sure we have sorted through it. Taxes paid 9,000 /year.
Jeff, I hear you. It isn't much better in Selwyn Township. There are too many 'employees' in these municipalities. And too many top dogs collecting big salaries for doing not much.
I see this same game being played out in Sudbury. Amalgamation many years ago set the decline in motion. Ask a question of your Mayor and councillors, and it is met with an air of hostility, dismissal, silence, or nonsense. How dare we ask questions! Council Chambers everywhere.
Few have not experienced the socialist-communist regime operating at the 'local' level starting in 1985 when the UN took over governance of Canada.
Even fewer know how we got to where we are today ... and it's not about 'electing' the wrong people. In fact, every municipality runs its own 'election' and the winners are appointed by the UN. All municpalities are privatized corporations operating a for-profit scheme, complete with a second set of books that prove they are hording hundreds of billions of dollars while increasing taxes.
Here's hoping you start reading our research for the evidence you can look at with your own eyes:
You can’t force courts to follow the rules through power or pressure. You force them procedurally. Courts respond to filings, evidence, jurisdiction, procedural fairness, and the record. They do not respond to moral arguments or attempts at domination.
The only effective way to force compliance is to create a record they cannot ignore by use proper motions, affidavits, citations, and objections to trap them inside their own rules.
Frame the issues around mandatory procedures, not discretionary ones. Remove judicial discretion. Focus on jurisdiction, notice, service, statutory requirements.
Use the hierarchy. If a judge breaks the rules, you escalate reconsideration, review, and appeal. Courts don’t fear being wrong. They fear being reversed. The real leverage is building a record that makes reversal likely.
The act of putting a grievance into writing and filing it with the court clerk is the foundational, lawful way, to compel a system to account for itself. When you write it down and file it, it stops being an opinion, a complaint, or a moral objection. It becomes a matter of record, a procedural trigger, and a document the court must respond to. Courts can ignore emotions. They cannot ignore filings.
Why ink on paper matters. A filed grievance in the form of a petition, notice of claim, application, affidavit, or motion does three things.
It creates jurisdictional pressure. Once something is filed, the court is seized of the matter. That means the court has legal obligations it cannot shrug off.
It forces the clerk to enter it into the registry. Clerks don’t judge the merits. They process documents. Once processed, the document becomes part of the official record.
It forces the judge to either follow the rules or create reversible error. This is real leverage.
A judge can, deny, dismiss, and disagree. But they cannot, erase the filing, pretend it doesn’t exist, or avoid the procedural consequences. If they mishandle it, you now have grounds for appeal, judicial review, reconsideration, or a writ of mandamus which is a court order compelling a public official, tribunal, or lower court to perform a clear, non discretionary legal duty that they are refusing or failing to perform.
This is how you force a court, not through domination, but through procedure. The grievance itself must be structured, not emotional. A court ready grievance usually contains facts of what happened, available evidence and documents, timelines and exhibits, the harm caused, and rules breached such as statutes, regulations, duty, contract, natural justice, the remedy sought. Then you move the court to issue an order in your favour. This is the architecture that makes a grievance actionable. You don’t force courts with power. You force them with paper, process, and precision.
The core tension of every constitutional system is that courts are supposed to follow the rules, but you cannot force them through raw power without destroying the very legitimacy you’re trying to protect. Here’s the uncomfortable but strategically useful truth. You cannot force courts. You corner them with procedure. Courts don’t respond to moral pressure, outrage, or declarations of natural law. They respond to record, jurisdiction, evidence, and procedural posture because those are the only things that can be reviewed, appealed, and overturned. If you try to force a court in the ordinary sense, you lose. If you force them procedurally, you win.
What “forcing the courts to follow the rules” means in practice.
You create a record they cannot ignore. Courts can ignore arguments. They cannot ignore a properly filed motion, a properly served affidavit, a properly cited statute, a properly preserved objection, a properly requested remedy. If they ignore these, you have grounds for judicial review, appeal, reconsideration, and mandamus. This is the only kind of “force” that works. You trap them inside their own procedural obligations. Courts are bound by their enabling statutes, their rules of civil procedure, their own prior decisions, and the record before them. You structure your filings so that the judge must either follow the rule or create a reversible error. Now you have effectively forced compliance. Not through domination, through architecture. You remove discretion by narrowing the issue. Judges have enormous discretion on credibility, remedies, timelines, and costs. But they have no discretion on jurisdiction, service, notice, statutory requirements, procedural fairness, and evidentiary thresholds. If you frame the issue in a way that eliminates discretion, the judge has no room to “not follow the rules.” You escalate only through lawful channels. This is the hierarchy of the real enforcement mechanism. Tribunal to Supreme Court. Supreme Court to Court of Appeal. Administrative decision to judicial review. Procedural unfairness to reconsideration. Constitutional breach to Charter application. You don’t force the judge. You force the system to correct the judge. Courts don’t fear being wrong. They fear being reversed. Reversal damages reputation, credibility, workload, and future discretion. The real leverage is creating a record that makes reversal likely. That’s the only “force” that works in a rule of law system.
That impulse of “you have to force people to do what is right” usually comes from a place of frustration. When you watch people harm others, ignore obligations, or act in bad faith, it feels like the only way to protect yourself is to compel the harmful actor to do something.
The moment “right” requires force, it stops being right and becomes domination. Coercion produces “compliance”, not “morality”. It creates the appearance of order while rotting legitimacy from the inside.
Points that matter in real governance and real disputes.
Force creates resistance, not alignment. History, psychology, and law all converge on the same observation. That is, when people are forced to behave, they don’t internalize the principle, they simply avoid punishment. That is why coerced signatures, coerced agreements, and coerced compliance are voidable in law. There is no meeting of the minds.
The only stable systems are those where people choose to follow the rule because it aligns with their own interest or conscience. Here’s why. Contracts require consent. Governance requires legitimacy. Remedies require evidence. And authority requires justification. A system that relies on force is always one scandal away from collapse.
Doing what is right is not a universal concept unless it’s grounded in shared principles. Natural law, do no harm, and respect for the gifts of nature is coherent. But the moment someone else claims their version of right must be enforced on you, you immediately see the danger. If you wouldn’t accept someone else forcing their morality on you, you can’t endorse forcing yours on them.
What works. Not force, but structure. Clear boundaries. Transparent processes. Predictable consequences. Voluntary agreements. Accountability for harm. Remedies that restore, not punish. This is why courts rely on evidence, not moral claims.
Why contracts rely on consent, not pressure. Why governance relies on legitimacy, not domination. This instinct is correct, and harm must be prevented. The methods used must be lawful, voluntary, and grounded in shared principles, not force.
When courts cannot be relied upon to constrain the executive, the question of what alternative remedies exist becomes urgent. The Grand Remonstrance and the Civil War were, in significant measure, the answer.
A perfected tort‑claim strategy starts with mastering the elements you must prove, then building a litigation posture that pressures the defendant while preserving your credibility and evidentiary strength. The most reliable approach integrates duty, breach, causation, and damages into a coherent evidentiary narrative, then aligns procedure, discovery, and settlement leverage around that narrative.
Factual sufficiency of a claim refers to whether the evidence offered in support of a claim is adequate in quantity and quality to justify accepting that claim as true, likely, or proven depending on the standard being applied.
It is always relative to a burden of proof and a decision‑maker (a court, a regulator, a council, a donor, a policymaker, or a public audience). The same claim may be factually sufficient in one context and insufficient in another.
The breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing applies to municipal conduct, property assessment, and commercial dealings in Canada through the Supreme Court’s modern good‑faith doctrine. The key idea is that public bodies and private parties cannot exercise contractual or discretionary powers in a way that is dishonest, arbitrary, or that defeats the other party’s legitimate expectations, even if they follow the literal text of the law or contract.
Voters need to give this serious consideration at the next election. Does the candidate understand their job is to direct the bureaucrats? It's not to take direction from them.
Fanastic article. As a person who lives in Cavan-Monaghan which is the poster boy county of waste ,corruption, and dead wood leadership I concur. The leader of this wasteful county makes 180,000/ year. There is a population of less than 10,000 residents.
What has kept the country from total insolvancy has been the realestate boom which will be in hibernation for at least the next 4 or 5 years.
For a comparison of garbage collection I have a property in Toronto. On garbage day they not only pick up the garbage bin which holds 4 to 5 large bags of garbadge but will take appliances, furniture ,pretty well anything.plus blue box
In Cavan monagan they pick up 1 bag of garbage that is in a clear bag to make sure we have sorted through it. Taxes paid 9,000 /year.
52 weeks =173.00/bag plus blue box.
Thank you Maggie Braun for keeping up the fight.
Jeff, I hear you. It isn't much better in Selwyn Township. There are too many 'employees' in these municipalities. And too many top dogs collecting big salaries for doing not much.
Great article!!
Excellent article Maggie. He nails the issues and the massive bureaucracy that eats up energy, funds and stifles positive change
Excellent article!
I see this same game being played out in Sudbury. Amalgamation many years ago set the decline in motion. Ask a question of your Mayor and councillors, and it is met with an air of hostility, dismissal, silence, or nonsense. How dare we ask questions! Council Chambers everywhere.
I look forward to part 2.
Few have not experienced the socialist-communist regime operating at the 'local' level starting in 1985 when the UN took over governance of Canada.
Even fewer know how we got to where we are today ... and it's not about 'electing' the wrong people. In fact, every municipality runs its own 'election' and the winners are appointed by the UN. All municpalities are privatized corporations operating a for-profit scheme, complete with a second set of books that prove they are hording hundreds of billions of dollars while increasing taxes.
Here's hoping you start reading our research for the evidence you can look at with your own eyes:
Series 1: UN INVASION OF CANADA
PART 1: https://peopleunited1.substack.com/p/series-1-part-1-un-invasion-of-canada
PART 2: https://peopleunited1.substack.com/p/series-1-part-2-un-invasion-of-canada
PART 3: https://peopleunited1.substack.com/p/series-1-part-3-un-invasion-of-canada
PART 4: https://peopleunited1.substack.com/p/series-1-part-4-un-invasion-of-canada United Nations Act, 1985 governs Canada
The solution to all crises is in knowing the enemy.
Thank you for putting in words exactly what is happening and why.
I live in what is now called City of Kawartha Lakes, but should still be Victoria County.
This glorification of administration began when we were unlawfully amalgamated over 20 years ago. The decline has been steady ever since .
Summary
You can’t force courts to follow the rules through power or pressure. You force them procedurally. Courts respond to filings, evidence, jurisdiction, procedural fairness, and the record. They do not respond to moral arguments or attempts at domination.
The only effective way to force compliance is to create a record they cannot ignore by use proper motions, affidavits, citations, and objections to trap them inside their own rules.
Frame the issues around mandatory procedures, not discretionary ones. Remove judicial discretion. Focus on jurisdiction, notice, service, statutory requirements.
Use the hierarchy. If a judge breaks the rules, you escalate reconsideration, review, and appeal. Courts don’t fear being wrong. They fear being reversed. The real leverage is building a record that makes reversal likely.
The act of putting a grievance into writing and filing it with the court clerk is the foundational, lawful way, to compel a system to account for itself. When you write it down and file it, it stops being an opinion, a complaint, or a moral objection. It becomes a matter of record, a procedural trigger, and a document the court must respond to. Courts can ignore emotions. They cannot ignore filings.
Why ink on paper matters. A filed grievance in the form of a petition, notice of claim, application, affidavit, or motion does three things.
It creates jurisdictional pressure. Once something is filed, the court is seized of the matter. That means the court has legal obligations it cannot shrug off.
It forces the clerk to enter it into the registry. Clerks don’t judge the merits. They process documents. Once processed, the document becomes part of the official record.
It forces the judge to either follow the rules or create reversible error. This is real leverage.
A judge can, deny, dismiss, and disagree. But they cannot, erase the filing, pretend it doesn’t exist, or avoid the procedural consequences. If they mishandle it, you now have grounds for appeal, judicial review, reconsideration, or a writ of mandamus which is a court order compelling a public official, tribunal, or lower court to perform a clear, non discretionary legal duty that they are refusing or failing to perform.
This is how you force a court, not through domination, but through procedure. The grievance itself must be structured, not emotional. A court ready grievance usually contains facts of what happened, available evidence and documents, timelines and exhibits, the harm caused, and rules breached such as statutes, regulations, duty, contract, natural justice, the remedy sought. Then you move the court to issue an order in your favour. This is the architecture that makes a grievance actionable. You don’t force courts with power. You force them with paper, process, and precision.
The core tension of every constitutional system is that courts are supposed to follow the rules, but you cannot force them through raw power without destroying the very legitimacy you’re trying to protect. Here’s the uncomfortable but strategically useful truth. You cannot force courts. You corner them with procedure. Courts don’t respond to moral pressure, outrage, or declarations of natural law. They respond to record, jurisdiction, evidence, and procedural posture because those are the only things that can be reviewed, appealed, and overturned. If you try to force a court in the ordinary sense, you lose. If you force them procedurally, you win.
What “forcing the courts to follow the rules” means in practice.
You create a record they cannot ignore. Courts can ignore arguments. They cannot ignore a properly filed motion, a properly served affidavit, a properly cited statute, a properly preserved objection, a properly requested remedy. If they ignore these, you have grounds for judicial review, appeal, reconsideration, and mandamus. This is the only kind of “force” that works. You trap them inside their own procedural obligations. Courts are bound by their enabling statutes, their rules of civil procedure, their own prior decisions, and the record before them. You structure your filings so that the judge must either follow the rule or create a reversible error. Now you have effectively forced compliance. Not through domination, through architecture. You remove discretion by narrowing the issue. Judges have enormous discretion on credibility, remedies, timelines, and costs. But they have no discretion on jurisdiction, service, notice, statutory requirements, procedural fairness, and evidentiary thresholds. If you frame the issue in a way that eliminates discretion, the judge has no room to “not follow the rules.” You escalate only through lawful channels. This is the hierarchy of the real enforcement mechanism. Tribunal to Supreme Court. Supreme Court to Court of Appeal. Administrative decision to judicial review. Procedural unfairness to reconsideration. Constitutional breach to Charter application. You don’t force the judge. You force the system to correct the judge. Courts don’t fear being wrong. They fear being reversed. Reversal damages reputation, credibility, workload, and future discretion. The real leverage is creating a record that makes reversal likely. That’s the only “force” that works in a rule of law system.
That impulse of “you have to force people to do what is right” usually comes from a place of frustration. When you watch people harm others, ignore obligations, or act in bad faith, it feels like the only way to protect yourself is to compel the harmful actor to do something.
The moment “right” requires force, it stops being right and becomes domination. Coercion produces “compliance”, not “morality”. It creates the appearance of order while rotting legitimacy from the inside.
Points that matter in real governance and real disputes.
Force creates resistance, not alignment. History, psychology, and law all converge on the same observation. That is, when people are forced to behave, they don’t internalize the principle, they simply avoid punishment. That is why coerced signatures, coerced agreements, and coerced compliance are voidable in law. There is no meeting of the minds.
The only stable systems are those where people choose to follow the rule because it aligns with their own interest or conscience. Here’s why. Contracts require consent. Governance requires legitimacy. Remedies require evidence. And authority requires justification. A system that relies on force is always one scandal away from collapse.
Doing what is right is not a universal concept unless it’s grounded in shared principles. Natural law, do no harm, and respect for the gifts of nature is coherent. But the moment someone else claims their version of right must be enforced on you, you immediately see the danger. If you wouldn’t accept someone else forcing their morality on you, you can’t endorse forcing yours on them.
What works. Not force, but structure. Clear boundaries. Transparent processes. Predictable consequences. Voluntary agreements. Accountability for harm. Remedies that restore, not punish. This is why courts rely on evidence, not moral claims.
Why contracts rely on consent, not pressure. Why governance relies on legitimacy, not domination. This instinct is correct, and harm must be prevented. The methods used must be lawful, voluntary, and grounded in shared principles, not force.
When courts cannot be relied upon to constrain the executive, the question of what alternative remedies exist becomes urgent. The Grand Remonstrance and the Civil War were, in significant measure, the answer.
A perfected tort‑claim strategy starts with mastering the elements you must prove, then building a litigation posture that pressures the defendant while preserving your credibility and evidentiary strength. The most reliable approach integrates duty, breach, causation, and damages into a coherent evidentiary narrative, then aligns procedure, discovery, and settlement leverage around that narrative.
Factual sufficiency of a claim refers to whether the evidence offered in support of a claim is adequate in quantity and quality to justify accepting that claim as true, likely, or proven depending on the standard being applied.
It is always relative to a burden of proof and a decision‑maker (a court, a regulator, a council, a donor, a policymaker, or a public audience). The same claim may be factually sufficient in one context and insufficient in another.
The breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing applies to municipal conduct, property assessment, and commercial dealings in Canada through the Supreme Court’s modern good‑faith doctrine. The key idea is that public bodies and private parties cannot exercise contractual or discretionary powers in a way that is dishonest, arbitrary, or that defeats the other party’s legitimate expectations, even if they follow the literal text of the law or contract.