Jim Bradley's Smoggy-Bottom Grits

The St. Catharines Standard reported on Jun.8, 2002:

“Each summer, the Nanticoke power plant contributes to the heavy smog in Niagara that often prompts warnings from the public health department.
St. Catharines MPP and Liberal environment critic Jim Bradley has repeatedly called for Nanticoke to be converted to a cleaner, natural gas plant to help improve air quality.”
 You have to admire this Grit’s ingratiating ability to suck while blowing – if Bradley really believed what he was saying then, one would think that Bradley and Dalton “Clean-Air” McGuinty would (since their election in 2003) have already converted Nanticoke to gas, and installed state-of-the-art pollution controls, no? After all, Bradley “repeatedly” blustered this view – yet he has since done nothing about it since!

The Hamilton Spectator reported on Jun.13, 2000:

“Buffalo is blaming Nanticoke's coal-fired power plant for its bad air.

Government officials and environmentalists are demanding Ontario immediately reduce the pollution from the Nanticoke coal-fired power plant they say is fouling their air.

"Buffalo is getting hit with two major kinds of pollutants from this plant -- smog and acid rain -- and it is atrocious," William Stoner, a co-ordinator for the New York-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said yesterday as a large billboard reading, "Buffalo is choking on Ontario smog," was unveiled in the city's core.

Stoner said nitrogen oxide (a major component of smog and acid rain) is reaching the Buffalo area from the Nanticoke plant 100 kilometres away. The plant, owned and operated by Ontario Power Generation, is the largest coal-fired operation of its kind in North America. And Stoner said it isn't using the best available pollution- control system.

"It is also emitting three times more nitrogen oxide than the average New York State power plant," he said. "From the proverbial words of a small make-believe town called South Park, Colorado, we say, 'Blame Canada.'"
The Spectator further reported:

“Jim Bradley, a St. Catharines MPP and Liberal environment critic who was on hand for the unveiling of the billboard, said he has called on the provincial government before to either equip the Nanticoke plant with more up-to-date technology or convert it from coal to natural gas.

"This is a problem that knows no boundaries and Ontario can take direct action to address it now," said Bradley, who was the province's environment minister for five years during the mid- to late-1980s. "The backdrop here today," he added of the billboard, "is embarrassing to the Ontario government, and it should be.""

Why isn’t Bradley attending any billboard unveilings today, in 2008? Nothing's changed - his lying Liberals promised in 2003 to close ALL of Ontario’s coal-burning generators by 2007 – so, have all those problems which Bradley piously pointed out eight years ago now suddenly vanished?

Has Bradley heeded HIS OWN call “to either equip the Nanticoke plant with more up-to-date technology or convert it from coal to natural gas”?

The Liberals have done nothing at Nanticoke!

In opposition, Bradley used to cite figures of the thousands of Ontarians who were dying annually from the effects of smog. Now, he doesn’t mention them much anymore. Why is that – have the smog deaths magically vanished during the last five years?

Bradley used to lecture how "Nanticoke is a major plant and a major source" of smog, with "very inadequate pollution controls." (St. Catharines Standard, Jun.13, 2000)

Such mortality numbers should be a "wake-up call" for the then- provincial Conservative government to take "very aggressive action”, Bradley proclaimed while in opposition. (Niagara Falls Review, Jun.28, 2000

Bradley used to huff and puff that "This is a problem that knows no boundaries and Ontario can take direct action to address it now”!! So … what the hell has Bradley actually done? What “direct action” or "very aggressive action" has he taken since 2003? Have the “boundaries” magically changed?

Or is it that Bradley’s Liberal hyperbole itself knows no boundaries? Bradley is the one who should "wake-up" and be embarrassed by his own (in)actions!! We’re the ones who are choking on Bradley’s ineffective B.S.

As the Toronto Star reported (Feb.20, 2001):

“Liberal MPP Jim Bradley (St. Catharines) said the Harris government likes to talk about tackling air pollution yet refuses to force Ontario Power Generation to change over the coal-fired plant to cleaner natural gas.”

Ironic to read Bradley’s smug, hypocritical bafflegab today, isn’t it?
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