This is not how a reconcillatory letter (including the one Premier Wynne sent to PM Harper) should be written. First, the letter should not drag up what was happening in the past, specially reminding the counterpart about your perception about how bad your counterpart has been treating you, especially most of the faults were caused by your side. Guess who have been saying bad things about the PM for not responding to letters... and let's not confront each other (guess who started the confrontation, and guess who said "he was smirking, etc...).

Same thing, with Minister Gravelle. Minister Rickford has been saying many many times that money for the RoF would be available if Ontario comes up with a detailed proposal for specific projects, not the generalities such as "we have committed $1B for the RoF and we want you to write us a cheque for the same amount".

Half of his letter could have been thrown out to improve the reception. There is NO substance for generalities such as our government, our plan, our this and that, without including enough details. I lost count of the "our"s in Minister Gravelle' letter. The letter simply does not contain any details as requested by Minister Rickford. In fact we, as citizen of Canada, residents of Ontario, and international investors would also like to see an attachment to that letter showing everybody Ontario's vision and specific plans for the RoF. The plan should refer to the report by Deloitte's report (where is it?) with various options (say 3 options, A, B, and C).

It should not take more a than 1 hour to write such a letter. Below is a suggested framework for such letter (btw, it would be wise to show Premier Wynne a draft for her comments before it is sent out to Rickford).

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"Dear Greg, etc...

As suggested by Premier Wynne and PM Harper, and as per our phone discussion of yesterday (put in date) attached please find Ontario's detailed plans for the ROF. This would form a good basis for our meeting which has been set for next week (date) in Ottawa (or Toronto). I plan to bring along 3 of my senior staff including the newly oppointed Deputy Minister, and as you have indicated you would e-mail me the name of 3 of your staff for the meeting.

The attachment shows a general game plan for the $1B committed by Ontario for the next 10 years, and several projects completed with details and cost estimates. We suggested 3 options for your review. The emphasis of the meeting would be should be on the ranking of the options. If you have any suggestions for modification please feel free to bring them to the table. To facilitate the discussion, you may want to e-mail us your initial comments and suggestions.

You will see in the plans that the spending of the committed $1B is skewed toward the first 2 years (even though the funding was earmarked for 10 years). In other words, we would suggest that the first $0.5B (I just made this up) would be spent during the first 2 years.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me or my Deputy Minister if I am not available.

I trust that these proposals would be well received by Government of Canada and would be considered suitable for matching funding.

A positive outcome of our meeting of next week would give a good signal to the investment communities that our governments are fully committed and would stand behind the development of the RoF.

Cheers, and Happy Holidays,

Michael...etc,

attachment: RoF proposals

cc. Premier Wynne"

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It took about 10 minutes to draft this outline...and it was painless, LOL!

goldhunter