Whether the county made a good deal on remediation costs of the Dufferin Oaks exterior finish might be a matter of debate, but it would seem to have been the best possible arrangement they could have made.

Between engineers and payment for possibly satisfactory use of the finish, the remedy is costing the county about $70,000 of the total repair cost of approximately $400,000. That's about $30,000 to investigate and about $40,000 for the earned usage.

But consider that the exterior insulating finish had been in place for half of its 10- year warranty period before any deterioration was noticed by anyone.

It would be hard to argue that the finish, or stucco if you prefer, had not been properly applied when it had withstood four or five harsh winters.

Maybe the insulating system is not appropriate for the local climate. Yet the manufacturer evidently says it is, and was willing to provide a 10-year warranty to back that up.

The county would have had two choices in its dealing with the suppliers: litigate or negotiate. It chose to negotiate and came up with what appears to be a reasonable solution — if not completely ideal in everyone's mind.

There is an old saying, "You can fight city hall, and sometimes you can win. But in so doing you might destroy yourself." Had county council chosen the option of court action on the Oaks exterior, it could have lost either the entire costs of remediation or, at possibly best, the costs of litigation.

I believe Mayor Allen Taylor and his committee, along with county staff, acted in accordance with the long-standing advice on avoiding distress: "Strive for your highest attainable aim, but don't put up resistance in vain." In other words, don't flog a dead horse.

* * *

On another topic, I was a bit surprised recently when the Toronto Star chose to attack the Canadian military for the care it is taking to make certain the wrong news does not come out of its operations in Afghanistan.

By "wrong" I am not referring to propaganda. I would not wish to be a front-line soldier in a war in which my unit's strategy and every tactic was being reported in detail by news outlets that the enemy would most certainly follow.

The Star chose not to point out that there is no access in Ontario to any information from any provincial ministry except whatever the media relations departments care to release.

The vital difference is that the military control of the news out of combat zones is directly related to saving lives. Lives are not at stake in the reporting of happenings at provincial ministries.

The public most certainly has a right to know whether the war in Afghanistan is being won or lost. It has a right to know the financial cost as well as the more critical cost of lives lost.

But it should not want to know anything about the tactics, strategies and specific troop movements.

On the other hand, the same public should have right — whether via the media or otherwise — to know precisely what is happening, where its money is being spent, and what is in the planning stages, among other things, at every level of government at all times.

It surprises and dismays me that a mainline medium should attack the military for what it views as a control of news in the face of 130 Canadian deaths in Afghanistan, forgetting that censorship was an absolute necessity in the Second World War, and neglecting the provincial Liberal control of every detail out of Queen's Park but, from time to time, attacking Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apparent muzzling of news out of Ottawa.

Sometimes, even in times of "slow" news, positive things that should be of public interest are largely disregarded.

Take, for example, last week's federal investment of $32 million in a program called Branding Canada, an effort to bolster Canadian agri-food exports that already stand at about $32-billion annually.

Major media were quick to report the identification of a single mad cow in Alberta a few years ago, and just as happy to misname the 2009 novel H1N1 flu as "swine flu," but rarely point out even now that it's a mixture of the swine, avian and human viruses.

The single BSE case in Alberta led to a panic that closed borders to Canadian beef and bankrupted an unreported number of farmers.

The swine flu misnomer has similarly wreaked havoc on hog producers, for no valid scientific reason.

All of this makes the promotion of the Canada brand of food products as safe and of the highest quality of more importance to the prosperity of the agri-food sector than the relatively small investment of $32-million would imply.

But I didn't learn about it from the major media, nor did I see a news release about it. I got the information from Farm Credit Canada's AgriSuccess Express newsletter.

If you wish to learn more about the Canada Brand program, just Google Canada Brand.