The Incredible Liberal Jim Bradley

Ian Urquhart predicted in “Best bets for a McGuinty cabinet team”, (Toronto Star, Sept.28, 2003), that Liberal Jim Bradley would be named McGuinty’s Energy minister. “Bradley (St. Catharines) will have credibility as he explains why the coal-fired plants are still spewing out pollution while the government searches for alternatives.”

Well, Bradley did not become Energy Minister, and Bradley did not have credibility when it came to his Liberal government’s energy policies. The same plants that were “spewing” then, as Ian Urqhuart writes, are still spewing five years and two elections later – while Bradley's Liberal government “searches for alternatives.”

Jim Bradley has done nothing about the pollution from his Liberal government’s coal plants. The Lakeview plant in Mississauga was closed, but that process was begun under the previous Conservatives, and would have occurred regardless.

Urquhart wrote in another story (Toronto Star, Jun.10, 2002), that Bradley was a member of an all-party Legislature select committee on alternative fuel sources, which was formed in 2001 by the Conservative government. One of the committee's recommendations, released in 2002, clearly called for the phasing out of all coal-fired generating stations in the province by the year 2015.

But in 2003, McGuinty and his Liberals during their election campaign were peddling the promised target of 2007, 'come hell or high water', knowing that it was impossible to do so, in the absence of equivalent alternatives, without calamitous results.

Maybe Urquhart can revisit his platitudes about Bradley’s credibility (still waiting, Ian). Bradley’s Liberals have wasted (they say invested) millions on marginally-performing wind projects, and on gas plants – which still produce greenhouse emissions. The Liberals haven’t bothered to put cleaner emission filters on the existing coal plants, or, invest in reliable clean coal technology.

Bradley’s Liberal ideologues lied through their teeth that they would shut down all of the coal plants by 2007.

Incredibly, Jim Bradley has NOT explained why his Liberal government's coal plants are still spewing out pollution.