Justice, health care top of mind for premiers
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American Press
15 hours ago
- American Press
Louisiana spotlight: Nungesser keeping state top of mind for those ready to explore
Traveling has been significantly increasing since the decline during the COVID-19 pandemic — and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and his team are working hard to keep Louisiana top of mind for those ready to explore. Last year, Nungesser said his office used a U.S. Commerce Department grant to increase awareness of Louisiana as a travel destination in Mumbai and New Delhi, India; Madrid, Spain; and Milan, Italy. In a few months, the team will spend a week in Canada promoting the Bayou State and its French heritage. Canada 'is about 33 percent of our international market,' Nungesser told members of the Rotary Club of Lake Charles Wednesday afternoon. 'Those Canadians love them some Louisiana.' In Paris, the Louisiana Office of Tourism also wrapped taxi cabs serving as rolling billboards to inspire travel to the state and it sponsored the London Jazz Festival last year. Nungesser said Louisiana welcomed 43 million domestic and international visitors in 2023, the most recent data available. Those visitors spent a total of $18.1 billion, an increase of 5.4 percent over 2022. International visitation showed the most significant gain, he said, increasing 16.9 percent in 2023 with spending reaching $1.7 billion. Louisiana has also been on the national stage in recent months with an alligator-themed float that crawled the streets of Pasadena, Calif., for the 136th annual Rose Parade and again as host to the Super Bowl at the Superdome in New Orleans. 'Somebody asked me what do we do better than anyone else and I said Mardi Gras,' Nungesser said. 'So we found out what parades we could go to. We were in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for three years and now we're in the Rose Parade.' Though the floats are professionally designed, they are decorated by volunteers days before the parade. Every float is covered in flowers, leaves, seeds, bark and other natural materials to honor the Rose Parade's history. Nungesser said volunteers from Louisiana are flown to California and are shuttled between the warehouse where the float is being built to their accommodations. A New Orleans native who now resides in California brings her beignets-only food truck each day to feed the volunteers during their shifts and the best of Louisiana cuisine is served each night. 'It's a trip everybody should make,' he said. For more on volunteering, visit Nungesser said participation in the parade 'allows us to drive awareness about our state as a vacation destination to a broad number of attendees, as well as viewers watching from home,' Nungesser said. 'The return on investment for the Rose Parade has been incredible.' Nungesser said the Rose Parade media coverage — thanks to a plethora of morning show interviews aired across the nation as the float is being built — for the past four years reached an estimated 10.4 billion people and was worth $144.9 million. State Parks When Nungesser took office nearly a decade ago, seven state parks were under the threat of closure. 'I was told, 'You don't have the money to keep them open and they're in pretty bad shape,' ' he said. 'Thanks to our sheriffs and local volunteers we were able to do a lot of repair and get them presentable and today those seven parks are making a profit.' The Louisiana Office of State Parks operates 21 state parks, 14 historic sites and a preservation area that comprises 45,000 acres, 110 miles of roads and 1.2 million square feet of rental facilities that welcomed more than 1.75 million visitors last year. He said his new goal is creating resort conference centers within some of the state parks to attract visiting conferences. 'We have over 350 groups that meet every year all over Louisiana,' he said. 'They don't meet in New Orleans because the hotel does not cover their per diem, but they meet everywhere else. There's usually 300-500 people and it's a great opportunity for us and it would be a great for the local economies. One thing we won't do is we won't let anyone open a restaurant (within the conference centers) or anything that would compete with local businesses.' One state park thriving at the moment is Bogue Chitto — a top destination for travelers nationwide for its mountain biking trails, which are maintained by the North Shore Off-Road Bicycling Association. 'A thousand people a month from 10-15 states go to Washington Parish for this mountain bike trail,' he said. 'We also have horseback riding. We brought a gentleman's horses into the park and let him run the business out of the park and he's knocking it out of the park, no pun intended. These two private-public partnerships have put Washington Parish on the map. Before they had very little tourism. It has changed that town forever.' Prime Video just completed a documentary on the mountain bike trails and 25 percent of the proceeds will go into building additional trails. He said the park recently acquired an additional 600 acres to expand the mountain bike and horseback riding trails. Museums Nungesser's office oversees nine museums; the Secretary of State's office and some local cities operate the rest. He said he hopes to introduce a bill next year that would force all museums to be open on the weekends — every museum operated under the Secretary of State's Office are not — when people are off work and more likely to visit. His office has also bought the website and plans to video every museum in the state. 'We did a video about the ghost that's upstairs at the Beauregard Gothic Jail — I don't know if it's there but the lady has me convinced and I'm not going up to check — and we test marketed to people who like ghosts and at Halloween, 4,000 people showed up to find that ghost,' he said. 'If you have a ghost, we will promote it and they will come.' He said most are aware of the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Now promotions will tie in Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe, the Louisiana Military Museum in Abbeville and others to draw in like-minded visitors. He also wants to give all museums the freedom to hire the directors of their choice. Right now, that responsibility falls under the office that oversees the facility. Louisiana seafood Several key pieces of legislation passed during the 2024 Regular Legislative Session affected the seafood industry in the state. Act 47 mandates restaurants serving imported crawfish or shrimp must officially inform their customers on the menu; Act 148 requires restaurants and food service establishments to label on menus all imported seafood as such, not just shrimp and crawfish; and Act 756 transferred the Seafood Safety Task Force to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board to help in the regulation of imported seafood. 'We want people to ask before they eat. The goal is to prevent imported seafood — which is filled with a lot of antibiotics — to come into this country and to level the playing field for our Louisiana fishermen,' he said. 'If you eat Boudreaux's crawfish tails, they're going to be from Boudreaux's. They're not going to be from Thailand.' Keep Louisiana Beautiful Love the Boot Week is Louisiana's largest litter removal and beautification effort. During 2024, 19,441 people volunteered a total of 100,712 hours at over 760 events, removing a record 347 tons of litter in all 64 parishes. 'It has become a movement,' Nungesser said. Their efforts diverted 293 pounds of aluminum cans and 330 pounds of plastic bottles from the landfill allowing the items to be recycled. Next month, the office will be handing out buckets at marinas around the state, asking boaters and fishermen to scoop up any trash they may see on the waterways and shorelines. 'We're not going to take our foot off the gas until we have no more trash in Louisiana,' Nungesser said.
Hamilton Spectator
20 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Disruptive ‘scam' or legitimate protest? Here's why Pierre Poilievre's byelection ballot will have dozens of candidates
OTTAWA—One candidate is a 22-year-old university student living four hours north of Toronto. Another is a Montreal-area teacher and tour guide with a fondness for dinosaurs. A third lives in Nebraska, working in IT. And there are more than 175 people, just like them, on the ballot for a byelection in a sprawling riding sandwiched between Calgary and Edmonton. Battle River—Crowfoot is the Alberta riding vacated by Conservative MP Damien Kurek so his seatless leader, Pierre Poilievre, can run in a byelection and return to the House of Commons. It's also the sixth target for the Longest Ballot Committee, a protest group that swamps ballots with dozens of independent candidates to drum up attention about electoral reform. The idea is simple: when voters notice the colossal lists of contenders on their ballots, candidates and organizers use that opening to promote alternative electoral systems and their belief that politicians should not be in charge of shaping election rules that may benefit them. This week, the Conservative leader, whose former riding of Carleton was targeted during the last federal campaign, said he'd had enough. Poilievre penned a letter to Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon, calling the effort a 'blatant abuse' of Canada's democracy and elections integrity, and demanded the Liberals introduce reforms in the fall that would stifle 'the longest ballot scam.' In a statement to the Star, MacKinnon's office said the government shares Poilievre's concerns and was 'examining' the issue. But for those who believe the gargantuan ballots make an inexcusable mockery of Canada's electoral system, well, that's kind of the whole point. 'I get emails, I get Facebook messages saying, 'Why is a person from Ontario running in an Alberta riding?' And this is exactly why I do want to see a residency requirement. I don't think somebody from Ontario should be able to run in Alberta,' said Dillon Anderson, the 22-year-old university student from Callander, Ont. 'I'm hoping that this is the last time we'll do the longest ballot and that we get some changes, some actual meaningful changes, that don't restrict Canadians' rights to run, but gives us more of a local-focused approach,' said Anderson, who is one of several protest candidates who believe other rules, like residency requirements, ought to be changed. For Nicola Zoghbi, the Montreal teacher, the initiative is 'one of the most efficient ways' to point out flaws in Canada's electoral system, which he says include its use of the first-past-the-post system, where the candidate with the most votes wins — even if most voters actually voted for other contenders. What's unique about this byelection, said Zoghbi, whose campaign platform is almost entirely about dinosaurs , is how Poilievre is able to take advantage of some rules while trying to ban others. 'There's this loophole that Poilievre and other politicians are using, so regular people like me could use it, too,' he said of the residency requirement, which politicians have historically used to run in ridings far away from where they actually live. Jason Buzzell, the Nebraska IT expert, joined the movement in part because of his personal ties to the riding. Buzzell was raised in Battle River—Crowfoot, and started his family there before work took him across the border. He wonders if a proportional voting system would have seen Poilievre re-elected in Carleton last spring. 'If we had had electoral reform … we wouldn't even have to do this byelection,' Buzzell suggested. The question election experts are now wrestling with is whether the whole scheme is fair game, or whether the integrity of races is being compromised. There are indications that the latter has not occurred, said Dennis Pilon, a professor and chair of the politics department at York University. One is a lack of reports that electors have felt too confused by affected ballots to vote properly. Another is no indication that the number of spoiled ballots has unduly increased. A third is that voters ultimately still have the agency to choose the candidate who they want to represent them. But if the strategy isn't harming voters, could it harm candidates from established parties? 'Maybe it ends up denying one of the candidates the win. That's the whole point of the protest,' said Pilon. So far, all ridings targeted by the movement have been won by a Liberal, Conservative or Bloc Québécois candidate. But ' everything that's happening is legal, and it's allowed to be done,' said Laura Stephenson, a professor and chair of the department of political science at the University of Western Ontario. Poilievre has asked the government to consider three changes: to require that candidates have more than the current minimum of 100 voter signatures needed to get on the ballot; that those signatures be exclusive to each candidate; and that each candidate needs their own official agent (the person who manages campaign finances). The Longest Ballot Committee has the same official agent for each of its candidates, and goes to the same voters to obtain physical signatures for nomination packages. Stephenson said some of the proposals could, in theory, 'tighten things up while still maintaining the integrity of the democratic process.' 'The key is that this shouldn't be seen as a political step. If these kinds of rules were being brought forward by Elections Canada … it doesn't have any political tint to it,' she said of the timing of Poilievre's demands. The one issue on which everyone seems to agree is that the protest has sidelined independent candidates not tied to the movement who are running serious campaigns. Bonnie Critchley, an independent candidate in Battle River—Crowfoot, has been frustrated by the protest drawing voter attention away from her campaign. 'This is a little bit sad for them. I'm very sorry for that,' said Sébastien CoRhino, one of the Longest Ballot Committee's organizers. 'But at the same time, it is impossible with the current political system to have independent candidates win an election,' he said. Michael MacKenzie, the Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership at Vancouver Island University, says opposing the protest runs counter to Poilievre's stated focus on ensuring political elites have no say in the decisions of Canadians. But he questions whether the original purpose of the movement — to reopen a national discussion about electoral reform that the Liberals have abandoned — is being lost in all the noise. 'It's not generating a lot of focused discussion on the complexities of electoral reform,' MacKenzie said. 'Most discussions are about the disruptions and the difficulties and confusions associated with this initiative, and there's been very little discussion about the benefits or drawbacks of the electoral reform itself.'
Hamilton Spectator
21 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Ever wondered what financial experts read? Five books to guide you on your investment journey
When it comes to your financial future, knowledge is power. And yet, many Canadians feel out of touch when it comes to finding the right information needed to make informed decisions about their money, from financing a home to learning how to tackle debt. A 2024 poll from Edward Jones Canada found that 84 per cent of Canadians believe financial education in school would have helped them manage finances with less stress today. And 64 per cent of respondents who did not learn how to manage their money in their younger years are now looking to upgrade their knowledge. Tina Tehranchian, certified financial planner at Assante Capital Management, Jason Heath, managing director at Objective Financial Partners and Scott Plaskett, certified financial planner and CEO of Ironshield Financial Planning, share five of their favourite books that might just include the knowledge you need to kick-start your personal finance journey. Author, John C. Bogle Heath is partial to the classics. First published in 2007, 'The Little Book of Common Sense Investing' from Vanguard Group's founder takes a straightforward approach to explaining the investing world. The book draws on wisdom from financial titans like Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham and Paul Samuelson to describe the most straightforward and effective investment strategies for building wealth over the long term. 'It talks a lot about the merit of index funds, how difficult it is to beat the markets,' says Heath, and is good for anyone 'looking for a different take on investing.' Author, David Trahair Heath first picked up this book in the nineties, at the beginning of his career. 'It's about how to get through the noise of what the financial industry wants you to buy.' Heath says you likely won't find Smoke and Mirrors on a bestsellers list, but Trahair's book opened his eyes early in his career. 'Like most people, I expected that the financial industry was there to help consumers and look out for their best interests, but that's often not the case.' [part of this quote was incomplete] Author, David McWilliams In this book, Tehranchian says McWilliams masterfully blends economics, history and human psychology to tell the story of money, not as a cold financial instrument but as a human invention shaped by trust, belief and social norms. 'It challenges you to see money not just as a ledger of numbers, but as a cultural force that reflects who we are and how we live,' says Tehranchian. 'Understanding this deeper story equips readers to make more thoughtful, values-driven financial decisions.' Tehranchian also points out that the book is beginner-friendly, as McWilliams gives simple explanations about complex topics. One of Tehranchian's favourite quotes from 'Money: A Story of Humanity' is about how cryptocurrency's volatility renders it ideal for speculation: ' … Who would ever punt on a boring, stable asset? But this is the very same property that renders it dysfunctional as a means of payment and therefore as money.' Plaskett says if you're looking for a book that challenges ('Kills') most of the common financial advice ('Sacred Cows') like budgeting or deferring gratification, Gunderson's book should be next on your reading list. He points out that 'Killing Sacred Cows' helps the reader avoid the most common financial institutions' 'traps,' which primarily benefit the financial institutions more than the client. The core theme of the book, Plaskett adds, is that there is no 'one-size-fits-all' type of advice, and it helps people avoid getting caught in the web of 'one-size-fits-all' [add dashes] advice that is promoted and encouraged by the financial industry. 'This advice is mainly based on fear and scarcity rather than abundance and personal empowerment.' Plaskett explains that his second recommendation is a great followup to 'Killing Sacred Cows.' 'Because once you commit to building financial freedom by aligning your approach to money with your purpose, you end up challenging the masses and bumping up against obstacles.' 'The Obstacle Is The Way' draws on stoic philosophy to help you overcome challenges and achieve personal growth and success, explains Plaskett. 'It is a great book that places the power directly on the shoulders of the reader.' A notable quote from the book, Plaskett adds, is: 'You will come across obstacles in life — fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are, but how you see them, how you react to them, and whether you keep your composure.'
