I am writing this note to express a concern of mine over the "Ideas Contest".

I did submit an idea and I did attend the event last night.

Certainly, in my opinion, the winners were deserving and I thought that the "honourable mentions" were also very worthy.

I was able to greet friends, meet new people and re-acquaint with others.

My concern is with Ms. Chapman's remarks after the awards were announced.

Please bear in mind that I have the highest regard for Ms. Chapman.

I have previously shopped in her former book store and I was very proud of her citizen action against the former Hamilton mayor's irregularities.

However, my concern is this: it is my understanding that Ms. Chapman told us that our ideas should have been based on returning life or value to the earth. If I have correctly understood her, then I am concerned that her judging was biased to her own belief and was not open to the streams of thought.

As the "nodes" demonstrated, there were many other "transition beliefs" including transportation, economics, etc. All of them offered different and exciting strategies to achieve DOIT's objectives.

If Ms. Chapman did, in fact, base her judging on just one stream of transition, those other streams or nodes did not receive fair consideration from the entire judging panel and, effectively, has eliminated that additional creativity from the process.

If so, that may have hurt the over-all effort of DOIT's message.

Certainly, in the very least, Ms. Chapman's narrowly defined criteria should have been announced at the beginning of the contest, not at the end.

Nevertheless, congratulations on a great and worthy program.

Yours truly,
Tony Bratschitsch

In response to the comment from Tony Bratschitsch, we all have our personal biases, for we are only human. The question is how much did Ms. Chapman's personal values influence her ability to judge the entries in a fair and open manner. That is the reason there are three judges on the panel.

In reality, the dice is already loaded when you invite an environmentalist to be on the panel. Think how much differently the outcome might have been had the judges been a land developer, a CEO of a tar-sands company or an executive from a big-box conglomerate.

- Kenrick Chin