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www.insideHALTON.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Thursday, February 28, 2013 · 6 The Oakville Beaver The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Guest Column O 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5566 Classified Advertising: 905-632-4440 Circulation: 905-631-6095 Neil Oliver Vice-President and Group Publisher, Metroland West David harvey Regional General Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief, Halton Region Daniel Baird Advertising Director ANGELA BLACKBURN Managing Editor Riziero Vertolli Photography Director Sandy Pare Business Manager RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association MARK DILLS Director of Production Manuel garcia Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution KIM MOSSMAN Circulation Manager Website www.oakvillebeaver.com The OakvilleBeaver is a division of Too little, too late Ted Chudleigh, Halton MPP Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville ATHENA Award Photo by ray matier peek-a-boo in bronte: Bronte resident Ray Matier snapped this photo of a deer that regularly visits the woodlot near his home. Sometimes, the deer hop the fence and wander around the backyard. ntario's new Premier, Kathleen Wynne faces a number of challenges. First, how to tame Ontario's growing annual deficit spending, which threatens to bust out from being really bad to almost epic in proportion? Given huge tax increases by her predecessor Dalton McGuinty, the ability to increase taxes to reduce annual borrowing is gone, Ted Chudleigh so the Wynne government must cut programs. The question is which ones and how? Former banker Charles Sousa is the new minister of finance. Sousa has the advantage that it is likely not possible to put in a worse performance than the previous finance minister Dwight Duncan. However, he has to work with the mess Duncan left; no history of balanced budgets, burgeoning deficits, a near doubling of total debt, an inability to say no to the public service, and a history of solving problems with money. Wynne's second challenge is trying to extract the Ontario Liberals from the huge power plant scandal. After a now former Liberal cabinet minister told the Legislature that the decision to cancel the partially completed Mississauga power plant project in the middle of an election campaign was made by Liberal Party strategists, the table was set. Public money was spent to cancel the contracts. When money is spent in the interest of a political party rather than by government officials in the public interest, legal precedent suggests the party is responsible for those costs. Those costs have been estimated at perhaps more than $1 billion. The need to repay those costs would bankrupt the Ontario Liberal Party. Wynne, who was Liberal Party campaign co-chair, has to find a way past this predicament but also one that will satisfy demands of the Opposition to know the actual costs of failing to fulfill the contract in Mississauga and another power plant project cancelled a year earlier in Oakville. Wynne then has to restore the public trust even as more revelations of malfeasance surface in the ORNGE air ambulance scandal. It is evident Wynne, formerly head of the Toronto Public School Board, will try to mend fences with Ontario teachers. She has made Liz Sandals, former president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association, the new minister of education. As they picketed my constituency office in December, many teachers I spoke to said they understood the need to cap teacher compensation. What they were incensed with, was the approach used by the government to end all discussion. I'm not sure Wynne can bandage that wound. Parents appear to be most upset with the cancellation of extracurriculars. In the end, it appears that the new left-of-centre premier will attempt to woo the leftof-centre Ontario NDP to avoid an election. There are many requirements for Ms. Wynne's government to survive -- deft handling of several toxic files and the healing power of time -- and even that may not be enough. When it comes to domestic life, these dads aren't duds apless, helpless, hopeless. If you believe what you see on television, if you buy in to what advertisers are selling in their reality-bending ads, you probably think that dense, dopey, doofus dads are everywhere. As The New York Times recently noted: "The bumbling father is a stock character in product marketing. He makes breakfast for dinner and is incapable of handling, or sometimes even noticing, a soggy diaper." And if you watch sitcoms, the feckless, flaky father caricatures are even more pronounced. These sadsacks are one-dimensional, dough-heads. Or, in one case, D'oh-heads. It wasn't always this way. The sitcom dad has devolved over the past 20 years from the kind, caring, sensitive and smart Dr. Cliff Huxtable -- hey, if this father had a flaw it was that the Bill Cosbycharacter was too darn close to perfect -- to a crop of fathers who would be hard-pressed to make toast, even if you plunked the bread in the toaster for them. Seriously, these guys come across as overgrown, emasculated adolescents (prototype: Ray Romano's character on Everybody Loves Raymond, 1996-2005), foils to implausibly and annoyingly H precocious progeny, and wives whose characters are doubtlessly written to seem wise and mature, but who invariably come across as shrews -- manipulative, meddlesome, nagging know-it-alls (prototype: Patricia Heaton's killjoy character on Raymond). It's too bad. Because in these scenarios, Andy Juniper everyone -- mom, dad and the kids -- ends up looking bad; and because the stereotypes perpetuated by these portrayals are more idiotic, inane, outdated and offensive than the characters themselves. Not to mention the fact that they're altogether inaccurate. Oh yeah, there are reams of research revealing that nowadays men (gasp) know their way around a soggy diaper, a grocery store, and they tend to be altogether capable in the kitchen. Further, (gasp) they can clean a toilet as well as anybody. Recently, 200 of these domestic dudes -- Daddy Bloggers who, the Times noted, are "proud to be involved in domestic life and do not want to serve as the comic foil to the super-competent mother" -- gathered in Houston for The Dad 2.0 Summit. Part of the goal of the participants at this event was to try and steer marketers away from portraying fathers as buffoons. And (gasp) the marketers are finally beginning to listen. Granted, not solely out of altruism, but out of good business sense. After all, it's plain stupid to depict men as bumbling non-players in, for instance, the grocery store when more and more men are doing the grocery shopping for their families. That would be biting the hand that is feeding you. As one product-line manager said at the Summit: "Society is ready for a new narrative about dads." Sadly, it's a narrative those writing today's TV shows are slow to embrace. Modern dads are neither the father-knows-best supermen of old sitcoms, nor the father-knows-nothing dunderheads of current sitcoms. They're just guys doing as much as they can, as well as they can, on the home front. Suffice to say, these dads ain't duds. Andy Juniper can be contacted at ajjuniper@gmail.com, found on Facebook www.facebook.com, or followed at www. twitter.com/thesportjesters.