The St. Catharines Standard reported on Aug.30, 2008, that St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, has declared a C. difficile outbreak, announcing that they have 10 patients now very ill after having contracting the disease.
My MPP, Liberal Jim Bradley, still hasn’t answered any of the letters I sent him, which ask why his Liberal government has stonewalled Ontario’s ombudsman from investigating Ontario’s health-care system to determine the extent and causes of this on-going C. dif outbreak. McGuinty’s Liberals have downplayed and sloughed off this on-going outbreak as being under control. Had Bradley's government not been so ideological and obstructionist, and allowed the ombudsman to investigate, perhaps these latest cases could have been avoided.
[previous letters sent to, and ignored by, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley:
see: Stealth Minister Jim Bradley still hiding from health care scrutiny, July 30, 2008;
see: An Ombudsman 'C. diff' investigation would be kryptonite for McGuinty's Liberals, July 2, 2008;
see: Secretive Liberals hide from C. Diff accountability, July 4, 2008]
As more patients contract this illness while trapped in McGuinty’s Liberal health monopoly, Grits such as Jim Bradley ignore repeated requests from constituents for an immediate arm’s length investigation. The question needs to be asked: can these knowingly-ignorant Liberals be accused of negligence causing death? Have they truly done all that is possible to investigate the causes, and put in place demonstrable prevention protocols to show they are seriously trying to stop this? Is Liberal cabinet minister Jim Bradley going to pretend that somehow, he has no culpability or accountability here?!
We all remember how a smug Jim Bradley made political hay with his bluster about Walkerton – yet hundreds of patients have died from C. dif in Bradley’s government-run health monopoly, and this arrogant Liberal MPP continues to hide and refuses to answer questions.
Does this show responsibility? Or does it show shameful, willful political negligence?
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Jim Bradley's sack of potatoes
David Evans wrote in “Why I recanted”, (National Post, Aug.30, 2008):
“I devoted six years to carbon accounting when I built models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
Full CAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas; the old ice core data; no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon governments and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999, new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most intensely. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10 km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6 degrees Celsius in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context, our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.
Until now, the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50-billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Australian Labor government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.
The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.
- David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.”
*
In Liberal Jim Bradley and the "Mystery of the Secret Kyoto files, I wrote about the Liberal’s inconsistent and hysterically idiotic policy stance regarding climate-change.
I wrote then about Liberal federal environmental critic David McGuinty, who said that the costs to individual Canadians of implementing Kyoto were "impossible for me to know right now. I don't know the fiscals or the data." (National Post, Feb.8, 2007)
The same Liberals (who signed Kyoto in 1997, and ratified it in 2002) admitted in Feb. 2007 that they "don't know the fiscals or the data".
Were these Liberals incompetent then, or are they lying now?
In 2007, Dion’s Kyodiot Liberals couldn’t provide any specifics regarding the damage their Kyoto policies would cause Canada: now, in 2008, they STILL have no flicking clue about the real costs of their pilfered-name “Green Shift” Shaft!
They are now trying to soft-sell and re-package their nebulous Green Shaft (see: Dion shifts around his "Green Shift" ) to make it ‘more palatable’, right before a possible election – because, really, they have no clue what they’re doing, whether it's Sept. 2008, or Feb. 2007!
Jim Bradley, the St. Catharines, Ontario Liberal MPP, badgered the Ernie Eves Conservatives in Ontario in 2002 to ratify the Kyoto protocol. (see also: Jim Bradley, Kyoto's pipsqueak; see also:
Liberal Dalton McGuinty's environmental position of hypocrisy)
I wrote in the Mystery of the Secret Kyoto Files:
“Bradley dismissed Kyoto-skeptic experts as "rogue scientists", (Brock Press, Nov. 19, 2002) What are Bradley's scientific credentials? Is this guy fit to pontificate on the science of climate change? In 2002, as Bradley shrieked about his alleged Kyoto "secret" documents, what actual science was he basing his beliefs on at the time - the Mann "hockey-stick" graph, since discredited? Should we believe a "pipsqueak" politician like Bradley, as Ralph Klein once described him (St. Catharines Standard, Oct. 23, 2002); or, should we believe scientists around the world (lovingly known as 'deniers') who question the climate models, methodology and data interpretations used by fear-inducing, pro-Kyoto tax-grabbers?”
Jim Bradley has still not publicly answered on what scientific basis he was pushing Ontario into his collectivist Kyoto scheme in 2002. Was it the Mann graphs? The ice-core data? What??
On what basis did Bradley blithely dismiss the concerns of, as he smugly says, “rogue scientists”? Could it be that Jim Bradley was fear-mongering based on dogma supplied by rogue socialists?
Does Bradley think that all the scientists listed in The Bluster in Bali: Kyoto-crats posture while 'a new call to reason' is made are “rogue scientists” as well?
Does Jim Bradley (or his idol, Stephane Dion, for that matter) think that David Evans is also a “rogue scientist”?
Evans wrote: “since 1999, new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming.”
Yet in 2002 - using so-called ‘evidence’ which Bradley has still not publicly revealed, Bradley was blabbing about the exact opposite! Stephane Dion, and a lot of politicians, even right here in Niagara, are STILL blabbing the same old collectivist homilies.
Evans writes "There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None." But this is NOT what many leftist politicians want us to believe.
Al Gore was STILL blabbing this hysteria last week even at the podium of the U.S. Democratic National Convention!! Gore's discredited fear-mongering histrionics (see also: Al Gore's "convenient untruths" & his "ridiculous" Nobel prize; see also: Liberal Kyo-diots: beware of the GORZUKION (Gore, Suzuki, Dion) can be seen more clearly through Evans' writing:
"...that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50-billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory."
Yet Gore continues to spew his mighty rhetoric. As Evans writes about Gore's disingenuous use of linking assertions and thereby manufacturing "facts", Gore's ice-core data "was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context, our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion."
Well, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley in Ontario, Canada also enjoys the same hallowed status: No cynical press corp ever bothered to call Good Ole Jimmy 's Kyodiot assertions dishonest, or even bothered to question Bradley's assertions. (certainly no-one from the St.Catharines Standard, nor from Niagara This Week)
If Jim Bradley told us he gave birth to a sack of potatoes, sadly, many of us would believe it.
*
“I devoted six years to carbon accounting when I built models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
Full CAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas; the old ice core data; no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon governments and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999, new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most intensely. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10 km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6 degrees Celsius in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context, our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.
Until now, the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50-billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Australian Labor government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.
The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.
- David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.”
*
In Liberal Jim Bradley and the "Mystery of the Secret Kyoto files, I wrote about the Liberal’s inconsistent and hysterically idiotic policy stance regarding climate-change.
I wrote then about Liberal federal environmental critic David McGuinty, who said that the costs to individual Canadians of implementing Kyoto were "impossible for me to know right now. I don't know the fiscals or the data." (National Post, Feb.8, 2007)
The same Liberals (who signed Kyoto in 1997, and ratified it in 2002) admitted in Feb. 2007 that they "don't know the fiscals or the data".
Were these Liberals incompetent then, or are they lying now?
In 2007, Dion’s Kyodiot Liberals couldn’t provide any specifics regarding the damage their Kyoto policies would cause Canada: now, in 2008, they STILL have no flicking clue about the real costs of their pilfered-name “Green Shift” Shaft!
They are now trying to soft-sell and re-package their nebulous Green Shaft (see: Dion shifts around his "Green Shift" ) to make it ‘more palatable’, right before a possible election – because, really, they have no clue what they’re doing, whether it's Sept. 2008, or Feb. 2007!
Jim Bradley, the St. Catharines, Ontario Liberal MPP, badgered the Ernie Eves Conservatives in Ontario in 2002 to ratify the Kyoto protocol. (see also: Jim Bradley, Kyoto's pipsqueak; see also:
Liberal Dalton McGuinty's environmental position of hypocrisy)
I wrote in the Mystery of the Secret Kyoto Files:
“Bradley dismissed Kyoto-skeptic experts as "rogue scientists", (Brock Press, Nov. 19, 2002) What are Bradley's scientific credentials? Is this guy fit to pontificate on the science of climate change? In 2002, as Bradley shrieked about his alleged Kyoto "secret" documents, what actual science was he basing his beliefs on at the time - the Mann "hockey-stick" graph, since discredited? Should we believe a "pipsqueak" politician like Bradley, as Ralph Klein once described him (St. Catharines Standard, Oct. 23, 2002); or, should we believe scientists around the world (lovingly known as 'deniers') who question the climate models, methodology and data interpretations used by fear-inducing, pro-Kyoto tax-grabbers?”
Jim Bradley has still not publicly answered on what scientific basis he was pushing Ontario into his collectivist Kyoto scheme in 2002. Was it the Mann graphs? The ice-core data? What??
On what basis did Bradley blithely dismiss the concerns of, as he smugly says, “rogue scientists”? Could it be that Jim Bradley was fear-mongering based on dogma supplied by rogue socialists?
Does Bradley think that all the scientists listed in The Bluster in Bali: Kyoto-crats posture while 'a new call to reason' is made are “rogue scientists” as well?
Does Jim Bradley (or his idol, Stephane Dion, for that matter) think that David Evans is also a “rogue scientist”?
Evans wrote: “since 1999, new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming.”
Yet in 2002 - using so-called ‘evidence’ which Bradley has still not publicly revealed, Bradley was blabbing about the exact opposite! Stephane Dion, and a lot of politicians, even right here in Niagara, are STILL blabbing the same old collectivist homilies.
Evans writes "There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None." But this is NOT what many leftist politicians want us to believe.
Al Gore was STILL blabbing this hysteria last week even at the podium of the U.S. Democratic National Convention!! Gore's discredited fear-mongering histrionics (see also: Al Gore's "convenient untruths" & his "ridiculous" Nobel prize; see also: Liberal Kyo-diots: beware of the GORZUKION (Gore, Suzuki, Dion) can be seen more clearly through Evans' writing:
"...that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50-billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory."
Yet Gore continues to spew his mighty rhetoric. As Evans writes about Gore's disingenuous use of linking assertions and thereby manufacturing "facts", Gore's ice-core data "was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context, our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion."
Well, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley in Ontario, Canada also enjoys the same hallowed status: No cynical press corp ever bothered to call Good Ole Jimmy 's Kyodiot assertions dishonest, or even bothered to question Bradley's assertions. (certainly no-one from the St.Catharines Standard, nor from Niagara This Week)
If Jim Bradley told us he gave birth to a sack of potatoes, sadly, many of us would believe it.
*
Dion shifts around his "Green Shift"
Bumbledore: Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Bumbledore: It’s Stephane Dion.
Who’s there?
Bumbledore: It’s Stephane Dion.
Stephane Dion? Bumbledore?!! What are you doing here?
Bumbledore: “I will have deliverables. You will you open your door, I’m doing door to door. You ask me why I would vote Liberal”.
Pardon?
Bumbledore: “I will ask you: are you thinking to retrofit your house, to change your house, to buy a cottage, to buy a new car, to change your appliances or your furnace or your acclimatization? Very likely you will say yes to something. Then I say, 'perfect, I will give you a very good labelling. You will know which product will save you money over the years because it will be energy efficient and your electricity bill will go down. But this product is likely to be more costly at the beginning. So I will help you to offset the cost with a tax rebate. Vote for me.”
Bumbledore: And on health care, “I think is very important is what they have in the U.K. It is a kind of national health library, where on the internet you have self-care much more than today. This is key to me. And these things are not done because we are only focusing on one issue: private and public in the healthcare system. It’s a mistake that we are doing in Canada. I will not do this mistake.”
You want us to practise "self-care" on the internet?!?…What the flick are you talking about?…this is your Liberal’s solution to your own disastrous mistake of forcing a single-tier health care monopoly on Canadians?? Get the hell off my porch.
*
Sadly, the above comedic quotes of Stephane Dion are not , as they might sound, policy jokes made at the Just for Laughs festival – this is actually what Dion, when he was a Liberal leadership hopeful, said in a CBC interview with Evan Soloman. (See: http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/dion.html)
Hard to believe a CBCer like Solomon could even keep a straight face when dealing with Dion. Read this CBC interview in its entirety (if you have the stomach for it): there are so many Dionistic half-baked chestnuts, you can only shake your head at Bumbledore's aspirations being taken seriously by anyone at all.
[For example, there's another classic Dion quote about Canada's Afghanistan mission: "Well, if we are unable to help the people of Afghanistan, we need to come to the conclusion that we may help other people elsewhere in the world." Really? And then what, Stephane - you'll come to the same wimpy conclusion there too, won't you, and leave those people in the lurch as well. This is a fine Liberal legacy: the cut and run ploy. When the going gets tough, the Liberals get going!]
Now, we are hearing Dion is avoiding meeting with Prime Minister Harper to actually discuss the calling of an election – an election which Stephane Dion has been bluffing and blustering about himself since the day he was elected Liberal chief. Now Dion runs away, again, when he has another chance to put up or shut up.
Also, now Bumbledore Dion’s Liberals want to change the message of their pilfered-name "Green Shift" scam! Obviously, now, even some Liberals themselves realize the bullshit of their own half-baked scheme.
*
Why is Dion changing his tune? Is it because he can no longer pull off the charade that 'global warming is caused by man' - thereby rendering his carbon-emissions thesis the crock that it is?
Did Dion read David Evans' article "Why I recanted", (National Post, Aug.30, 2008), that
"There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None."
and
"So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50-billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory."
Do Liberals, federally and provincially, still believe in Al Gore's baseless anthropogenic-climate-change bullshit? Has St. Catharines, Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, who, based on unclear assumptions, badgered Ontario to ratify Kyoto, read Evans' article?
*
The St. Catharines Standard wrote (July 29, 2008):
“Only one week before they expect to be plunged into a federal election campaign, some Liberal MPs are still hoping to make "adjustments" to the centrepiece of their party's platform: the risky proposal to impose a carbon tax.
They want Liberal Leader Stephane Dion to massage the so-called green shift to make it more palatable to farmers, truckers, rural residents and others who stand to be hardest hit by a tax on fossil fuels and who have not yet been appeased by the promise of offsetting income tax cuts and tax benefits.
Having spent the summer consulting with Canadians about the green shift, Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said Dion and his MPs must now decide how to respond to some of the concerns that have been raised.
"We need to boil that down, we need to figure what changes have to be made to accommodate the concerns that are raised," Easter said in an interview.
"And there are concerns. We don't deny that."
The fact that some MPs are still hoping for last-minute
changes to make the green shift more marketable is just one sign the Liberal party may not be firing on all cylinders by the end of next week, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper is virtually certain to pull the plug on his government.
Some Liberal insiders complain that fighting among factions in Quebec has turned that province into "a disaster zone" -- as one well-connected Grit called it -- for the party.”
The story continued:
“When Dion launched the green shift last June, he said Liberals would spend the summer having a "dialogue" with Canadians about the complicated plan.
Since then, one insider said the leader has rejected any criticism of the plan, insisting "there will be no changes, not a comma."
However, Easter and other MPs clearly remain under the impression that the plan can and will be fine-tuned.
Robert Thibault, a Nova Scotia MP, said the purpose of the summer consultations was to determine "what are the adjustments that have to happen, not to assume we got it all 100 per cent, completely right."
While Dion has touted the green shift as a comprehensive, detailed plan to
combat climate change, Thibault said: "In my mind, it's a statement of principles, it's not a recipe."
Unlike Easter, who would like changes made before the election is called, Thibault said he thinks voters will accept that they won't get all the details until the plan is actually implemented.”
*
This is exactly what Jean Chretien did with his Kyoto scam in the 1990’s – he and his Liberals had no flicking idea what they were doing – and after twelve years, the non-results showed it.
Now, Bumbledore Dion is doing the same thing – his Green Shift Shaft is barely even half thought-out; after saying there will be “no changes”, now Dion is planning “last-minute” changes – changes which themselves will still be vague, not clear, not 100%; changes which show that Dion's Green Shift is just a pathetic grab bag of not-fully-thought-out policies.
What an idiotic Liberal non-plan this is - and this is their major election plank? Now Grits like Thibault try to spin it that this Green Shift – touted as Dion’s Master Plan To Save God’s Environment, no less, (see:Stephane Dion: self-proclaimed Saviour Of God's Environment) is only a ‘statement of principles’ !! Oh, come on.
Unbelievable.
Now Dion's crew want to make their Green Shaft 'more marketable'? Rebranding a bag of shit doesn't change the fact that, well, it's still a bag of shit, with a cute green label.
Do Liberals really expect Canadians are gullible enough to just simply believe Stephane Dion’s ever-shifting Green Shaft - without providing details NOW!!??
They want us to vote for their major policy plank - which is being shifted around right now – and then only get the details “once the plan is in place” after the election!!??
What the FLICK are these Liberals smoking?
Talk about this being not being a recipe – this certainly IS a recipe: a recipe for disaster if Canadians fall for Dion’s Liberal Green Shift Shaft bullshit.
Friday, August 29, 2008
We cannot ignore glaring failures in Liberal monopoly health-care
As someone who was reported in the Globe and Mail, Jan.5, 1991, as saying he hates doctors, (see: Can Jim Bradley explain why he "stood up and said 'I hate doctors'"? ), I wonder if Liberal MPP Jim Bradley will ever further elaborate on what he meant, and whether he still hates doctors today, and if so, which doctors does he hate?
I wonder what a single-payer health-scare monopolist like St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley thinks about the election of the Canadian Medical Association’s new president, Dr.Robert Ouellet, who said on CTV (Aug.24, 2008):
“Canada needs to look to European countries that have restored their health-care systems by including private clinics and changing funding formulas.
Dr. Robert Ouellet told CTV's Question Period on Sunday that Canada's health-care system is not sustainable and will need the help of the private sector to get back on track.
Ouellet, who owns five private MRI clinics in Montreal, said Canadians are too "dogmatic" about the debate over public versus private health care and need to be more open to the best solutions for a broken system.
"We have to think about the patient and not be dogmatic about it," said Ouellet, who became CMA president on Wednesday. "And that's the problem in Canada. We're very dogmatic about public and private, and you know this public and private system exists everywhere in the world except three countries: Canada, Cuba and North Korea."
Ouellet said the goal is not to privatize Canada's health-care system or to have a U.S.-style system. Instead, he suggests that private clinics could ease the patient load on an over-burdened public system.”
But this kind of action is exactly what Good Ole Jim is against!
Jim Bradley spent years fear-mongering and fomenting his anti-patient-choice, anti-American- health-care-style, slippery-slope chauvinism, even though his own Liberals rely on the U.S. system as back up for his monopoly’s failings.
Jim Bradley and former health minister Smitherman were nothing BUT dogmatic and partisan and ideological when it came to denying patient-payer-choice in Ontario health care.
And, the system which is “broken” – is none other than JIM BRADLEY’S Liberal health care monopoly!
Wrote the National Post (Aug.22, 2008):
"It's not the best solution in the world, of course. If it was possible to have a public system that was running well, nobody would be talking about private," Dr. Ouellet said.
"I want to solve that ugly problem that we have in health care and tell Canadians that it is possible to do something; that it's not a sin to have a small part of a complementary system."
The Post continued: “Those who advocate an exclusively public system are ignoring glaring challenges that posed by current system, Dr. Ouellet said.”
Sounds like Jim Bradley will hate THAT kind of talk, doesn’t it?
Jim Bradley’s been the one advocating an exclusively public system - for some thirty years now, hasn’t he?
Good Ole Jim doesn’t talk about the glaring challenges and the glaring authoritarianism of his Liberal’s Commitment To The Future of Medicare Act, or about the McCreith/Holmes constitutional health care challenge against Bradley’s Liberal government, now before the Supreme court, that sprang from it.
Good Ole Jim waltzed through the last election in Oct. 2007 pretending there was NOTHING wrong with our health care system – all this while the NHS hospital in his own riding was found, barely a month after Bradley’s re-election, to have the third highest patient mortality rate in Canada! (see: Liberals ignore call for health-monopoly investigation )
And Good Ole Jim didn’t even bother to immediately call for an independent investigation into that revelation!
Now, his health monopoly is proposing closing facilities and restructuring the health care delivery within Niagara, and Jim Bradley, once the great bombastic protector of health care, has vanished from the scene as his own system rubblizes itself! (see: Jim Bradley keenly rubblizes health-care in Niagara )
Consumers in Niagara have no choice but to be pawns held hostage by this NHS/LHINS public-monopoly puppet show now being orchestrated by the Liberal majority government.
Even so, a dogmatic Bradley will still most certainly disregard what Oullet said in the National Post (Aug.21, 2008):
"A mixed public and private practice can be a positive if it contributes to improved access to health care," he said.
"Does it make sense, in the face of a shortage of operating rooms, to ban surgeons who provide 90% of their services in a hospital from performing five to 10% of their surgeries in a private clinic?
"I am talking about improving it by allowing the private sector to intervene in a complementary way, where possible, in areas where the public sector is unable to provide services.
"Instead of trying to ban the private sector, we need to provide a framework, with conditions, that will enable it to intervene in an orderly fashion."
Why doesn’t Jim Bradley publicly explain why his Liberals are not already implementing these kinds of proposals? Why are his Liberals ideologically opposed to such reforms, instead favouring tired, broken statist monopoly health-care?
The Post continued: "Dr. Ouellet contended that "shutting the door on private health care is the same as shutting the door on our patients."
He said that although Canada's public health care system has made "significant" improvements in the past 10 years, it still fares poorly when compared with many other countries. He noted Canada ranks last out of seven major industrialized nations in the use of electronic patient files.
"The overall assessment of the Canadian health care system is alarming," he said. "We have one of the most costly and least efficient health systems of any industrialized nation."
Dr. Ouellet also talked of the need to "rid ourselves of the burden of waiting lists."
"Other countries have done it. England, for example, managed in five years to do away with waiting lists. In Denmark, if the wait is more than one month, the patient is referred to the private sector."
Rather than partner with the private sector, Jim Bradley and his Liberals decided to implement a Health Tax in 2004, to supposedly solve all the problems inherent with their monopoly system.
But as Kevin Gaudet of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation pointed out (National Post, Aug.11, 2008):
“To date, the health tax has taken a total of $12.2-billion out of the pockets of families, businesses and individuals in Ontario -- enough to build 12 new Rogers Centres. The tax revenue has already grown from $1.7-billion in 2004-05 to a whopping $2.8-billion projected for 2008-09 -- a 65% revenue increase in only five years.
Even though the government has buried the health tax review in the dead of summer and said the review won't make a whiff of difference, individuals and groups, including the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, showed up at committee to argue for the tax's elimination.
The fact that the Ontario health tax represents a key broken promise by the McGuinty government should be justification enough for it to be eliminated. However, there are other good reasons.
First, the health tax provides a money crutch for government, merely enabling its runaway spending, which has operated at twice the combined rate of inflation and population growth.
Second, Ontario GDP is close to zero growth and 1.4% below what was predicted. Unemployment is up sharply to 6.7%. With the Ontario economy close to a recession, broad-based tax relief for individuals, families and businesses would help spur spending, savings and a return to healthy growth in the economy.
Third, in its press release announcing the health tax, the Mc-Guinty government touted two other provinces as examples to follow: British Columbia and Alberta. If Ontario wishes to continue following the example of other provinces, it should indeed follow the latter's lead. Alberta axed its health tax in its last budget. This leaves Ontario and B. C. as the only two Canadian provinces with a health tax.
Fourth, the so-called Health Care Premium is intentionally misnamed in an effort to fool Ontarians into believing they are paying for health care. There is no doubt this tax would have been eliminated had it been named the "bureaucrat salary enhancement levy." Health care premiums pay for health care no more and no less than does the new electronics tax, the new paint tax, the business tax, the insurance tax, the gas tax or the hotel tax.
By calling the tax "a premium" the government is trying to equate it with an insurance premium, like the ones Ontarians pay for their car or home insurance. If this were accurate, the level of the premium would fluctuate up and down depending on how much one used health care. It does not. The tax is not dedicated to or used for health care. It is a spend-happy government's way of lining the public treasury.
Finally, health care spending in Ontario has grown at a fairly constant rate, both before and after the imposition of the tax, just as it did in Alberta. If the tax were really for health care then health care spending should have jumped. It did not. What did go up were projects like corporate welfare to American based multi-nationals and slush funds.
The one project the government should really get behind instead is tax relief. It can do this by getting rid of the health tax crutch that props up its out-of-control spending.”
“Out of control spending” – why, the Liberals just announced that they were doling out multi-millions of supposed “surplus” dollars to the cities – money ostensibly meant for the broad category of “infrastructure”, but which really has no strings attached (see: Liberals dole out 'no strings attached' cash, while hospitals remain underfunded ) - it can be used for anything.
As Gaudet writes: “If the tax were really for health care then health care spending should have jumped. It did not.” And not only that - now Bradley’s Liberals are simply giving away the surplus which was raised by charging Ontarians a false “health tax”.
The sickening Liberal Healthcare Duplicity just continues on.
I wonder what a single-payer health-scare monopolist like St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley thinks about the election of the Canadian Medical Association’s new president, Dr.Robert Ouellet, who said on CTV (Aug.24, 2008):
“Canada needs to look to European countries that have restored their health-care systems by including private clinics and changing funding formulas.
Dr. Robert Ouellet told CTV's Question Period on Sunday that Canada's health-care system is not sustainable and will need the help of the private sector to get back on track.
Ouellet, who owns five private MRI clinics in Montreal, said Canadians are too "dogmatic" about the debate over public versus private health care and need to be more open to the best solutions for a broken system.
"We have to think about the patient and not be dogmatic about it," said Ouellet, who became CMA president on Wednesday. "And that's the problem in Canada. We're very dogmatic about public and private, and you know this public and private system exists everywhere in the world except three countries: Canada, Cuba and North Korea."
Ouellet said the goal is not to privatize Canada's health-care system or to have a U.S.-style system. Instead, he suggests that private clinics could ease the patient load on an over-burdened public system.”
But this kind of action is exactly what Good Ole Jim is against!
Jim Bradley spent years fear-mongering and fomenting his anti-patient-choice, anti-American- health-care-style, slippery-slope chauvinism, even though his own Liberals rely on the U.S. system as back up for his monopoly’s failings.
Jim Bradley and former health minister Smitherman were nothing BUT dogmatic and partisan and ideological when it came to denying patient-payer-choice in Ontario health care.
And, the system which is “broken” – is none other than JIM BRADLEY’S Liberal health care monopoly!
Wrote the National Post (Aug.22, 2008):
"It's not the best solution in the world, of course. If it was possible to have a public system that was running well, nobody would be talking about private," Dr. Ouellet said.
"I want to solve that ugly problem that we have in health care and tell Canadians that it is possible to do something; that it's not a sin to have a small part of a complementary system."
The Post continued: “Those who advocate an exclusively public system are ignoring glaring challenges that posed by current system, Dr. Ouellet said.”
Sounds like Jim Bradley will hate THAT kind of talk, doesn’t it?
Jim Bradley’s been the one advocating an exclusively public system - for some thirty years now, hasn’t he?
Good Ole Jim doesn’t talk about the glaring challenges and the glaring authoritarianism of his Liberal’s Commitment To The Future of Medicare Act, or about the McCreith/Holmes constitutional health care challenge against Bradley’s Liberal government, now before the Supreme court, that sprang from it.
Good Ole Jim waltzed through the last election in Oct. 2007 pretending there was NOTHING wrong with our health care system – all this while the NHS hospital in his own riding was found, barely a month after Bradley’s re-election, to have the third highest patient mortality rate in Canada! (see: Liberals ignore call for health-monopoly investigation )
And Good Ole Jim didn’t even bother to immediately call for an independent investigation into that revelation!
Now, his health monopoly is proposing closing facilities and restructuring the health care delivery within Niagara, and Jim Bradley, once the great bombastic protector of health care, has vanished from the scene as his own system rubblizes itself! (see: Jim Bradley keenly rubblizes health-care in Niagara )
Consumers in Niagara have no choice but to be pawns held hostage by this NHS/LHINS public-monopoly puppet show now being orchestrated by the Liberal majority government.
Even so, a dogmatic Bradley will still most certainly disregard what Oullet said in the National Post (Aug.21, 2008):
"A mixed public and private practice can be a positive if it contributes to improved access to health care," he said.
"Does it make sense, in the face of a shortage of operating rooms, to ban surgeons who provide 90% of their services in a hospital from performing five to 10% of their surgeries in a private clinic?
"I am talking about improving it by allowing the private sector to intervene in a complementary way, where possible, in areas where the public sector is unable to provide services.
"Instead of trying to ban the private sector, we need to provide a framework, with conditions, that will enable it to intervene in an orderly fashion."
Why doesn’t Jim Bradley publicly explain why his Liberals are not already implementing these kinds of proposals? Why are his Liberals ideologically opposed to such reforms, instead favouring tired, broken statist monopoly health-care?
The Post continued: "Dr. Ouellet contended that "shutting the door on private health care is the same as shutting the door on our patients."
He said that although Canada's public health care system has made "significant" improvements in the past 10 years, it still fares poorly when compared with many other countries. He noted Canada ranks last out of seven major industrialized nations in the use of electronic patient files.
"The overall assessment of the Canadian health care system is alarming," he said. "We have one of the most costly and least efficient health systems of any industrialized nation."
Dr. Ouellet also talked of the need to "rid ourselves of the burden of waiting lists."
"Other countries have done it. England, for example, managed in five years to do away with waiting lists. In Denmark, if the wait is more than one month, the patient is referred to the private sector."
Rather than partner with the private sector, Jim Bradley and his Liberals decided to implement a Health Tax in 2004, to supposedly solve all the problems inherent with their monopoly system.
But as Kevin Gaudet of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation pointed out (National Post, Aug.11, 2008):
“To date, the health tax has taken a total of $12.2-billion out of the pockets of families, businesses and individuals in Ontario -- enough to build 12 new Rogers Centres. The tax revenue has already grown from $1.7-billion in 2004-05 to a whopping $2.8-billion projected for 2008-09 -- a 65% revenue increase in only five years.
Even though the government has buried the health tax review in the dead of summer and said the review won't make a whiff of difference, individuals and groups, including the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, showed up at committee to argue for the tax's elimination.
The fact that the Ontario health tax represents a key broken promise by the McGuinty government should be justification enough for it to be eliminated. However, there are other good reasons.
First, the health tax provides a money crutch for government, merely enabling its runaway spending, which has operated at twice the combined rate of inflation and population growth.
Second, Ontario GDP is close to zero growth and 1.4% below what was predicted. Unemployment is up sharply to 6.7%. With the Ontario economy close to a recession, broad-based tax relief for individuals, families and businesses would help spur spending, savings and a return to healthy growth in the economy.
Third, in its press release announcing the health tax, the Mc-Guinty government touted two other provinces as examples to follow: British Columbia and Alberta. If Ontario wishes to continue following the example of other provinces, it should indeed follow the latter's lead. Alberta axed its health tax in its last budget. This leaves Ontario and B. C. as the only two Canadian provinces with a health tax.
Fourth, the so-called Health Care Premium is intentionally misnamed in an effort to fool Ontarians into believing they are paying for health care. There is no doubt this tax would have been eliminated had it been named the "bureaucrat salary enhancement levy." Health care premiums pay for health care no more and no less than does the new electronics tax, the new paint tax, the business tax, the insurance tax, the gas tax or the hotel tax.
By calling the tax "a premium" the government is trying to equate it with an insurance premium, like the ones Ontarians pay for their car or home insurance. If this were accurate, the level of the premium would fluctuate up and down depending on how much one used health care. It does not. The tax is not dedicated to or used for health care. It is a spend-happy government's way of lining the public treasury.
Finally, health care spending in Ontario has grown at a fairly constant rate, both before and after the imposition of the tax, just as it did in Alberta. If the tax were really for health care then health care spending should have jumped. It did not. What did go up were projects like corporate welfare to American based multi-nationals and slush funds.
The one project the government should really get behind instead is tax relief. It can do this by getting rid of the health tax crutch that props up its out-of-control spending.”
“Out of control spending” – why, the Liberals just announced that they were doling out multi-millions of supposed “surplus” dollars to the cities – money ostensibly meant for the broad category of “infrastructure”, but which really has no strings attached (see: Liberals dole out 'no strings attached' cash, while hospitals remain underfunded ) - it can be used for anything.
As Gaudet writes: “If the tax were really for health care then health care spending should have jumped. It did not.” And not only that - now Bradley’s Liberals are simply giving away the surplus which was raised by charging Ontarians a false “health tax”.
The sickening Liberal Healthcare Duplicity just continues on.
What will Dr. Kitts do to St. Kitts?
The Ottawa Citizen wrote in “All doctors are not equal” (Aug.27, 2008):
“A smart man like Dr. Jack Kitts should know better than to think he can sell patients the fiction that all surgeons are basically the same.
As chief executive of The Ottawa Hospital, Dr. Kitts surely knows better than anyone that, as in any occupation, some physicians are more talented and competent than others. Dr. Kitts presumably knows which physicians at his hospital have had substance abuse problems; he knows which ones have terrible bedside manners; he knows which ones have been sued for malpractice. Dr. Kitts knows which surgeons he would never, ever allow to operate on a member of his own family.
And yet, if he and other health-care officials have their way, the rest of us will have to settle for whichever surgeon is assigned to us.
The proposed plan is known as the "single-queue system," and under this system surgery patients have no say on which surgeon gets their case. "You'll get into the line like you would at the bank where you take the next available teller, except it's the next available surgeon," Dr. Kitts explained.
The way it works now, patients have more control than that. For example, patients typically consult with their family doctors, who as health-care insiders can give patients the scoop on which surgeons to seek out and which to avoid. The surgeons with good reputations get booked up and the ones with lesser reputations don't.
Health-care officials are right to fear that this results in inefficiencies -- a disequilibrium in the system, so to speak. But removing consumer choice is not the way to fix it. Imagine what would happen if the government decided it's unfair that good car mechanics and good home renovators are busier than lousy ones, and so from now on the work will be evenly distributed. We'd have a lot of poorly repaired cars breaking down on the highway, and a lot of houses with leaks in the roof.
Of course the government would never interfere this way in the car repair or home renovation business. It's bizarre to think that consumers will have more power to determine who gets to re-shingle their roof than who gets to remove their brain tumour.
Dr. Kitts grudgingly admits that "there's a sense" by patients that some surgeons are better than others, and he says he'd like to change that perception. But he won't get very far if he's suggesting that patients are mistaken to believe such things.
It's well known that a doctor's individual skill level can make the difference between a good and bad outcome. Some gastroenterologists are more likely than others to miss a cancerous lesion when scoping your colon. Some obstetricians are more likely than others to accidentally cause miscarriage while performing amniocentesis. Some plastic surgeons do a better job reconstructing diseased breasts than others.
The medical research is very clear, for example, that a physician's skill in performing a procedure is related to the number of times he or she has done it, which is why experts always advise patients to ask about their doctor's experience. This is common sense, and something every informed patient ought to do.
If the only way officials such as Dr. Kitts can make Canadian health care work is by removing consumer choice and obliterating the merit principle, then heaven help anyone who has the misfortune of needing an operation.”
*
And this is the person now leading the charge to consolidate the Niagara Health System?
This is the future of St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley’s health-care monopoly: a “single queue system”, where there is even less patient choice?!
Get whatever doctor you’re lucky enough to get, and be thankful for it, at that??
Are we to line up for operations like we now do at the coffee shop and get whatever server happens to be next? Is that the future of the medicare monopoly health-system that Good Ole Jim Bradley so thunderously supported for thirty years?
Unbelievable. Flicking unbelievable.
The “dis-equilibrium’ we need to look at is rooted in the Liberal’s Commitment To the Future of Medicare Act. This is where the Liberal's ideological authoritarianism is displayed.
Jim Bradley and his Liberals have been enemies of the health care consumer for years, demonizing private insurance and two-tier, parallel health care options for patients.
'Making healthcare work by removing patient choice' has been Bradley's trade-mark for decades.
And look to see how well he's made it work.
Sickening.
“A smart man like Dr. Jack Kitts should know better than to think he can sell patients the fiction that all surgeons are basically the same.
As chief executive of The Ottawa Hospital, Dr. Kitts surely knows better than anyone that, as in any occupation, some physicians are more talented and competent than others. Dr. Kitts presumably knows which physicians at his hospital have had substance abuse problems; he knows which ones have terrible bedside manners; he knows which ones have been sued for malpractice. Dr. Kitts knows which surgeons he would never, ever allow to operate on a member of his own family.
And yet, if he and other health-care officials have their way, the rest of us will have to settle for whichever surgeon is assigned to us.
The proposed plan is known as the "single-queue system," and under this system surgery patients have no say on which surgeon gets their case. "You'll get into the line like you would at the bank where you take the next available teller, except it's the next available surgeon," Dr. Kitts explained.
The way it works now, patients have more control than that. For example, patients typically consult with their family doctors, who as health-care insiders can give patients the scoop on which surgeons to seek out and which to avoid. The surgeons with good reputations get booked up and the ones with lesser reputations don't.
Health-care officials are right to fear that this results in inefficiencies -- a disequilibrium in the system, so to speak. But removing consumer choice is not the way to fix it. Imagine what would happen if the government decided it's unfair that good car mechanics and good home renovators are busier than lousy ones, and so from now on the work will be evenly distributed. We'd have a lot of poorly repaired cars breaking down on the highway, and a lot of houses with leaks in the roof.
Of course the government would never interfere this way in the car repair or home renovation business. It's bizarre to think that consumers will have more power to determine who gets to re-shingle their roof than who gets to remove their brain tumour.
Dr. Kitts grudgingly admits that "there's a sense" by patients that some surgeons are better than others, and he says he'd like to change that perception. But he won't get very far if he's suggesting that patients are mistaken to believe such things.
It's well known that a doctor's individual skill level can make the difference between a good and bad outcome. Some gastroenterologists are more likely than others to miss a cancerous lesion when scoping your colon. Some obstetricians are more likely than others to accidentally cause miscarriage while performing amniocentesis. Some plastic surgeons do a better job reconstructing diseased breasts than others.
The medical research is very clear, for example, that a physician's skill in performing a procedure is related to the number of times he or she has done it, which is why experts always advise patients to ask about their doctor's experience. This is common sense, and something every informed patient ought to do.
If the only way officials such as Dr. Kitts can make Canadian health care work is by removing consumer choice and obliterating the merit principle, then heaven help anyone who has the misfortune of needing an operation.”
*
And this is the person now leading the charge to consolidate the Niagara Health System?
This is the future of St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley’s health-care monopoly: a “single queue system”, where there is even less patient choice?!
Get whatever doctor you’re lucky enough to get, and be thankful for it, at that??
Are we to line up for operations like we now do at the coffee shop and get whatever server happens to be next? Is that the future of the medicare monopoly health-system that Good Ole Jim Bradley so thunderously supported for thirty years?
Unbelievable. Flicking unbelievable.
The “dis-equilibrium’ we need to look at is rooted in the Liberal’s Commitment To the Future of Medicare Act. This is where the Liberal's ideological authoritarianism is displayed.
Jim Bradley and his Liberals have been enemies of the health care consumer for years, demonizing private insurance and two-tier, parallel health care options for patients.
'Making healthcare work by removing patient choice' has been Bradley's trade-mark for decades.
And look to see how well he's made it work.
Sickening.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Liberals dole out 'no strings attached' cash, while hospitals remain underfunded
Regarding the St. Catharines Standard article “City mulls how to spend windfall” (Aug. 28, 2008), how pathetic is it that nowhere in Matthew Van Dongen’s story does anyone think that the entire $6.3 million should be applied towards our hospital debt.
Why is it that no-one seems to remember priorities?
Mayor McMullan and his council are on some giddy, incredible spending spree at the moment, committing to building all kinds of things that don’t need doing right now. All they can envision is more debt and more taxes and more government involvement. McMullan should rein in his city's spending habits.
St. Catharines should give back the money we got, add another possibly $15 million that we could get by selling the four-pad, and we’d have our portion of the new hospital bill pretty much paid. McMullan is spreading himself too thin with all the new expenses that he’s happily contemplating.
By the way, when McMullan had his little opportunity to chat with Liberal Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, why didn’t our mayor pointedly ask Duncan where this so-called “windfall” really came from?
Why did McGuinty’s Liberals have this supposed surplus?
Is it because McGuinty has raked billions of dollars from a health tax which doesn’t specifically go to health-care, but goes into general revenue?
Is that why McGuinty can now generously dole out billions of dollars for “infrastructure” to happy cities, with (as McMullan pointed out) “no strings attached” as to its use?!
What kind of responsible provincial oversight is that?
Time and again we are seeing locally that the NHS has been underfunded, yet St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley and his Liberals deny it. In the same issue of the Standard (Aug. 28), in a letter to the editor, the NHS again makes reference to its “limited resources.” We see that Bradley’s Liberals have raked in billions with their health tax, and now are giving it away, not to hospitals, but to cities with ‘no strings attached’.
Unbelievable.
So why isn’t Jim Bradley’s government properly funding their health monopoly?
Do the right thing, Mr. McMullan: send Bradley’s overtaxed, misappropriated funds right back to him and tell him to put it against our share of the hospital debt. And watch your own spending as well.
Why is it that no-one seems to remember priorities?
Mayor McMullan and his council are on some giddy, incredible spending spree at the moment, committing to building all kinds of things that don’t need doing right now. All they can envision is more debt and more taxes and more government involvement. McMullan should rein in his city's spending habits.
St. Catharines should give back the money we got, add another possibly $15 million that we could get by selling the four-pad, and we’d have our portion of the new hospital bill pretty much paid. McMullan is spreading himself too thin with all the new expenses that he’s happily contemplating.
By the way, when McMullan had his little opportunity to chat with Liberal Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, why didn’t our mayor pointedly ask Duncan where this so-called “windfall” really came from?
Why did McGuinty’s Liberals have this supposed surplus?
Is it because McGuinty has raked billions of dollars from a health tax which doesn’t specifically go to health-care, but goes into general revenue?
Is that why McGuinty can now generously dole out billions of dollars for “infrastructure” to happy cities, with (as McMullan pointed out) “no strings attached” as to its use?!
What kind of responsible provincial oversight is that?
Time and again we are seeing locally that the NHS has been underfunded, yet St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley and his Liberals deny it. In the same issue of the Standard (Aug. 28), in a letter to the editor, the NHS again makes reference to its “limited resources.” We see that Bradley’s Liberals have raked in billions with their health tax, and now are giving it away, not to hospitals, but to cities with ‘no strings attached’.
Unbelievable.
So why isn’t Jim Bradley’s government properly funding their health monopoly?
Do the right thing, Mr. McMullan: send Bradley’s overtaxed, misappropriated funds right back to him and tell him to put it against our share of the hospital debt. And watch your own spending as well.
Jim Bradley: Cassandra or Colonel Sanders?
Peter Foster wrote in “Political contamination at Maple Leaf” (National Post, Aug.27, 2008) that Stephane Dion is now attempting to link the Maple Leaf listeriosis outbreak to the Walkerton outbreak; this is Dion’s attempt to smear the federal Conservatives, by linking them to the provincial Mike Harris Conservative government of the nineties.
Foster wrote “The linking of Walkerton to deregulation is totally inaccurate. Mr. Dion should be ashamed if he doesn’t know that. He should be even more ashamed if he does.”
This, of course, is the same kind of crap Good Ole Jim 'Blame Harris' Bradley, the Liberal MPP from St. Catharines, was himself spewing for years. Now, the fumbling Bumbledore Dion is blustering that same tired old “privatization evil/more Liberalism good” routine so well-travelled before by Bradley.
Now that McGuinty said he will be playing a role in the possible upcoming federal election, I guess whatever Dion is saying, he also speaks for Bradley’s Liberals.
John Barber wrote in the Globe and Mail, Aug.13, 2008:
“Nobody knew whom or what to blame eight years ago when seven people died and thousands of others fell ill from drinking contaminated tap water in Walkerton, Ont. But there were more than enough smoking guns available for use by opposition MPP Jim Bradley when he commented on the Harris government's then-current initiative to privatize even more public-safety regulations - the Technical Standards and Safety Act, which also proposed to make the inspection of propane-handling facilities, among many other things, an industry-only affair.
Complaining that the new law "puts Colonel Sanders in charge of the health and safety of the chickens," Mr. Bradley warned explicitly of another Walkerton as a result of the new act.
A public inquiry ultimately proved Mr. Bradley right about Walkerton. He is likely to be proved right again about the root causes of this month's massive propane explosion in Toronto. But it was his own party, governing complacently eight years later, that let it blow.”
Whether Jim Bradley, the Savant of Secord Dr., was correct about anything is debateable, especially with his political rhetoric about Walkerton.
(Bradley and Barber, of course, both know that Walkerton's well-water problems preceded the TSSA; the contamination had been going on for years - even since Jim Bradley was Peterson's Liberal environment minister!! Obviously, Bradley, nor the Bob Rae NDP government which replaced him, had any system in place - before the TSSA - to discover what the Koebel Bros. had been up to. And the 1986 propane blast in Toronto also preceded the TSSA - the Liberals -including Good Ole Jim Bradley - did nothing on that issue - TWICE)
As Barber now points out – exposing Jim Bradley’s Liberal hypocrisy and duplicity for what it is - Bradley and his Liberals themselves DID NOTHING about the ‘root causes’ that Bradley once blathered about.
Jim “Colonel Sanders” Bradley and his Liberal chickens paid lip service, but complacently did nothing!
The Liberals “let it blow”.
Barber continued that Toronto “is brimming with expertise but is powerless to use it - and not just because the Harris government privatized the regulation of propane-handling facilities. Just as important was the role played by two former provincial governments, both NDP and Liberal, in quashing early municipal attempts to zone such hazards out of residential neighbourhoods.
The early bylaws emerged following the 1986 explosion of a propane refuelling station in Weston. But the province joined the propane industry in an ultimately successful attempt to kill them off in the courts and at the Ontario Municipal Board. To placate propane-phobic municipalities in the meantime, former Consumer Minister Monte Kwinter struck an expert committee to devise a "model bylaw" for propane-handling facilities in Ontario.
If that committee ever met, there is no mention of it in the public record. Milt Farrow, a retired civil servant Mr. Kwinter nominated to the committee, said yesterday that he had no recollection of such a thing. No model bylaw restricting propane ever emerged.
Today, as local MPP for the riding where the blast took place, Mr. Kwinter is leading the chorus of those blaming the city for allowing a propane farm next to a residential neighbourhood. This is the same person who once led provincial attempts to quash municipal bylaws that would have disallowed many if not most of the propane installations that, thanks to provincial policy, have since sprung up all over the city.
The same person who forgot his promise to create a better bylaw the moment he uttered it. Not a Harrisite, just a Queen's Park veteran.
His colleague, Mr. Bradley, should take greater care the next time he plays Cassandra.”
Like Kwinter, Good Ole Jim Bradley, another "Queen’s Park veteran", was in power in 1986 with the despised Peterson Liberals. Like Kwinter, Good Ole Jimmy is now with the despised McGuinty government. Bradley was the environment minister - so can Bradley tell us where his Liberal's propane "model by-law" disappeared to? Now, Bradley and his ilk would like to pretend they had nothing to do with any forgotten promises, and foist blame on someone else – certainly not on themselves.
In regards to Walkerton, Good Ole Jim Bradley once blustered with smug noble rhetoric that those responsible need to be held accountable; of course, at the time, Bradley meant that the Harris government was responsible.
But strangely, Jim Bradley’s Liberal government is now somehow NOT responsible, nor accountable, for Toronto’s propane blast twenty-two years later – it’s Mike Harris’s fault, you see! And so, according to Dion’s Bumbledorian stretch of Liberal logic, not only is the listeriosis outbreak Harris’s fault, it’s also Harper’s! Where is the Liberal health minister, David Caplan in this; he's all but disappeared. As has McGuinty.
[I'm still waiting for Jim Bradley to answer questions regarding propane facilities in St. Catharines. See: Is the Skyway safe from below? ]
Oh, if only the Liberals could just own and control everything; if only the Liberals could simply expropriate and socialize Maple Leaf foods; that would solve all our problems - in every industry – wouldn’t it?
Jim Bradley and Stephane Dion could then bicker over who’d be the headcheese of the baloney line.
Foster wrote “The linking of Walkerton to deregulation is totally inaccurate. Mr. Dion should be ashamed if he doesn’t know that. He should be even more ashamed if he does.”
This, of course, is the same kind of crap Good Ole Jim 'Blame Harris' Bradley, the Liberal MPP from St. Catharines, was himself spewing for years. Now, the fumbling Bumbledore Dion is blustering that same tired old “privatization evil/more Liberalism good” routine so well-travelled before by Bradley.
Now that McGuinty said he will be playing a role in the possible upcoming federal election, I guess whatever Dion is saying, he also speaks for Bradley’s Liberals.
John Barber wrote in the Globe and Mail, Aug.13, 2008:
“Nobody knew whom or what to blame eight years ago when seven people died and thousands of others fell ill from drinking contaminated tap water in Walkerton, Ont. But there were more than enough smoking guns available for use by opposition MPP Jim Bradley when he commented on the Harris government's then-current initiative to privatize even more public-safety regulations - the Technical Standards and Safety Act, which also proposed to make the inspection of propane-handling facilities, among many other things, an industry-only affair.
Complaining that the new law "puts Colonel Sanders in charge of the health and safety of the chickens," Mr. Bradley warned explicitly of another Walkerton as a result of the new act.
A public inquiry ultimately proved Mr. Bradley right about Walkerton. He is likely to be proved right again about the root causes of this month's massive propane explosion in Toronto. But it was his own party, governing complacently eight years later, that let it blow.”
Whether Jim Bradley, the Savant of Secord Dr., was correct about anything is debateable, especially with his political rhetoric about Walkerton.
(Bradley and Barber, of course, both know that Walkerton's well-water problems preceded the TSSA; the contamination had been going on for years - even since Jim Bradley was Peterson's Liberal environment minister!! Obviously, Bradley, nor the Bob Rae NDP government which replaced him, had any system in place - before the TSSA - to discover what the Koebel Bros. had been up to. And the 1986 propane blast in Toronto also preceded the TSSA - the Liberals -including Good Ole Jim Bradley - did nothing on that issue - TWICE)
As Barber now points out – exposing Jim Bradley’s Liberal hypocrisy and duplicity for what it is - Bradley and his Liberals themselves DID NOTHING about the ‘root causes’ that Bradley once blathered about.
Jim “Colonel Sanders” Bradley and his Liberal chickens paid lip service, but complacently did nothing!
The Liberals “let it blow”.
Barber continued that Toronto “is brimming with expertise but is powerless to use it - and not just because the Harris government privatized the regulation of propane-handling facilities. Just as important was the role played by two former provincial governments, both NDP and Liberal, in quashing early municipal attempts to zone such hazards out of residential neighbourhoods.
The early bylaws emerged following the 1986 explosion of a propane refuelling station in Weston. But the province joined the propane industry in an ultimately successful attempt to kill them off in the courts and at the Ontario Municipal Board. To placate propane-phobic municipalities in the meantime, former Consumer Minister Monte Kwinter struck an expert committee to devise a "model bylaw" for propane-handling facilities in Ontario.
If that committee ever met, there is no mention of it in the public record. Milt Farrow, a retired civil servant Mr. Kwinter nominated to the committee, said yesterday that he had no recollection of such a thing. No model bylaw restricting propane ever emerged.
Today, as local MPP for the riding where the blast took place, Mr. Kwinter is leading the chorus of those blaming the city for allowing a propane farm next to a residential neighbourhood. This is the same person who once led provincial attempts to quash municipal bylaws that would have disallowed many if not most of the propane installations that, thanks to provincial policy, have since sprung up all over the city.
The same person who forgot his promise to create a better bylaw the moment he uttered it. Not a Harrisite, just a Queen's Park veteran.
His colleague, Mr. Bradley, should take greater care the next time he plays Cassandra.”
Like Kwinter, Good Ole Jim Bradley, another "Queen’s Park veteran", was in power in 1986 with the despised Peterson Liberals. Like Kwinter, Good Ole Jimmy is now with the despised McGuinty government. Bradley was the environment minister - so can Bradley tell us where his Liberal's propane "model by-law" disappeared to? Now, Bradley and his ilk would like to pretend they had nothing to do with any forgotten promises, and foist blame on someone else – certainly not on themselves.
In regards to Walkerton, Good Ole Jim Bradley once blustered with smug noble rhetoric that those responsible need to be held accountable; of course, at the time, Bradley meant that the Harris government was responsible.
But strangely, Jim Bradley’s Liberal government is now somehow NOT responsible, nor accountable, for Toronto’s propane blast twenty-two years later – it’s Mike Harris’s fault, you see! And so, according to Dion’s Bumbledorian stretch of Liberal logic, not only is the listeriosis outbreak Harris’s fault, it’s also Harper’s! Where is the Liberal health minister, David Caplan in this; he's all but disappeared. As has McGuinty.
[I'm still waiting for Jim Bradley to answer questions regarding propane facilities in St. Catharines. See: Is the Skyway safe from below? ]
Oh, if only the Liberals could just own and control everything; if only the Liberals could simply expropriate and socialize Maple Leaf foods; that would solve all our problems - in every industry – wouldn’t it?
Jim Bradley and Stephane Dion could then bicker over who’d be the headcheese of the baloney line.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Then and Now: Old Long Branch
Long Branch was once a sleepy village and summer destination centered on Lakeshore Blvd., between the villages of New Toronto and Port Credit, along the shore of Lake Ontario. Long Branch stretched from the Lakeshore Psychiatric facility lands in the east, to Etobicoke Creek, which is the now the border with Mississauga, in the west. Long Branch was named after the tremendous, once-plentiful old oak trees whose branches shaded the region and its cottages. A few of these old cottages still remain in the area.Long Branch had the Grand Trunk rail line running north of, and parallel to, Lake Shore Rd. [now "Blvd."], which is still today a heavily-used main line into Toronto. Long Branch also had streetcar service along Lake Shore Rd., from Toronto all the way to Etobicoke Creek, starting July, 1895, on track built by the Toronto and Mimico Electric Railway.
The National Post (Aug.23, 2008) had an article about author Derek Hayes' new book, Historical Atlas of Toronto, which contained this photo (below) of old Long Branch:
(above) A map of Long Branch, from the former City of Etobicoke, showing the same area as the older map. This map, dated June 9, 1967, was signed by A.G. Taylor, Chief Technical Engineer.Lovely Long Branch Ave. as seen on the old map is still known by the same name today, but "Lansdowne Avenue" is now the creatively-named 33rd St., and the idyllic "Lake View Avenue" is now an equally non-descript 35th. St. I guess Long Branch Avenue is the '34th St.' that, thankfully, never was! "Lake Shore Road" is now Lake Shore Blvd. W.
"Edgewood Rd." is now Marina Ave., "Elm Road" is now Dominion Rd., the "Arbour Reserve" is now Muskoka Ave., "Park Road" today is Park Blvd., and "Beach Rd." is now called Lake Promenade.
The old map shows interesting details like the "Church Reserve" square at the west end of the old Arbour Reserve, and the "Gymnasium Hall" at the east end. Was there ever was a church or a gym hall at these locations?
On the Gymnasium Hall square of land, at the east end of today's Muskoka Ave., there is now a group of low-rise 1950's era apt. buildings.
At the "Church Reserve" square of land on the west end, Muskoka Ave. today crosses 35th St (old Lake View Avenue) into the Church Reserve, and becomes a dead end. Today there are homes in that square. It looks like there was an extra lot added at the south-west corner of old Lake View Ave. and the Church Reserve (ie, directly north of Lot 1, Block R on old map) ; and also, an extra lot was added on the north-west corner of Lake View and Church Reserve. (ie, directly south of Lot 5, Block Q on old map). Also, lots 8 and 9 of Block Q, and lots 7 and 6 of Block R, were given additional depth. Even today these lots sport extra deep front lawns.
Also of interest are the two squares called the "Electric Place" shown at the north-east and north-west corners of Long Branch Ave. and old Elm Rd. (today's Dominion Rd.) I wonder what Electric Place was meant to be. Today, there is a small, 1960's era, six-plex-style building on each of these two corner squares.
Then, on the south-west and south-east corner of Long Branch Ave. and the old Park Rd. on the old map, there are two squares called "Fountain Square". The lot on the south-west corner now has a small 1950's or earlier era low-rise apt. building.
The square on the south-east corner of Long Branch Ave. and today's Park Blvd. (measuring, like the other squares, approx. 100 by a 100 feet), can be still seen today as a nice tree-filled parkette. There is no fountain today (if there ever was one) but right in the centre of this land now stands a fine, large stone memorial Cenotaph.
The area south-east of the Cenotaph is shown in the old map as perhaps a kind of park, with a pier into Lake Ontario, a tree-lined circle road called Long Branch Drive, and also shows two grand buildings. (I wonder if they were ever built.) This was a heavily-treed area even into the 1950's, and there had once been a popular dance-hall-hotel located there. There is no trace today of Long Branch Drive; that entire area contains five mid-rise apt. buildings, and the 'new' Lake Promenade now winds its way east along the waters edge.
Also interesting are the squares of land laid out within the blocks of lots, as seen with blocks L,M,N,G and H on the old map. They were served with access from the main road by two small laneways leading into the interior blocks from different roads. This was where you could drive your carriage into the rear of your property, and have a little place for the horses to stretch their legs out back too!
The interior squares of blocks L, G, M, and H, and their access laneways have all but disappeared, as they were sold over the years to adjoining property owners, which extended the depth of their backyards. Even on the new map, you can still see the dotted lines which show where the interior squares and their access laneways had once been. It was within these interior squares that some of the oldest remaining trees could be found.
However, the access laneway of Block N, as seen on both maps, does still exist today; the old lane has now become a narrow street called Chapel Rd. But in this case, the interior square of Block N has also been sold off; the difference being that the front yards of these lots were extended towards the lane, allowing new houses to be built, using Chapel Rd. as a city road frontage.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Is the Skyway safe from below?
John Schudlo wrote in “Skyway safe, officials assure” (Niagara This Week, Aug.8, 2007) about Rene Moreau, who often drives over the St. Catharines Skyway, saying: “I’m always worried about it when I go over that bridge because of the work that they always seem to be doing on it and the age of it…That skyway is scary, man.”
Then-Tourism Minister Jim Bradley, the Liberal MPP for St. Catharines was quoted in the story saying that people don’t need to be alarmed, and that the construction work is routine. Bradley “said people should have faith in their bridges because the provincial government – which looks after the 43-year old skyway, is very committed to inspecting them.”
“There is a pretty rigorous process involved with bridges” said Bradley “It’s sophisticated stuff.”
But does this rigorous inspection Bradley talked about include assessing what’s under and near the bridge?
In light of the propane blast several weeks ago in Toronto, will Jim Bradley, now Ontario’s Transportation Minister, publicly issue assurances that there is absolutely no danger having propane trucks parked near the bridge piers, or having a large four-tank propane station about 300 metres away? Officials in Toronto were saying that a safe zone should be about 1.6 kilometres away.
How safe is the Skyway should the worst happen? What contingencies has Bradley’s ministry prepared?
In the above Niagara This Week article, Transportation Ministry spokesperson, Jamie Rilett, said about the pier maintenance: “I think people should have confidence that we are doing our due diligence…We do take it very seriously. If anything does concern us, we do err on the side of caution.”
So, then, is having propane stored so close to a bridge a concern to Jim Bradley?
Then-Tourism Minister Jim Bradley, the Liberal MPP for St. Catharines was quoted in the story saying that people don’t need to be alarmed, and that the construction work is routine. Bradley “said people should have faith in their bridges because the provincial government – which looks after the 43-year old skyway, is very committed to inspecting them.”
“There is a pretty rigorous process involved with bridges” said Bradley “It’s sophisticated stuff.”
But does this rigorous inspection Bradley talked about include assessing what’s under and near the bridge?
In light of the propane blast several weeks ago in Toronto, will Jim Bradley, now Ontario’s Transportation Minister, publicly issue assurances that there is absolutely no danger having propane trucks parked near the bridge piers, or having a large four-tank propane station about 300 metres away? Officials in Toronto were saying that a safe zone should be about 1.6 kilometres away.
How safe is the Skyway should the worst happen? What contingencies has Bradley’s ministry prepared?
In the above Niagara This Week article, Transportation Ministry spokesperson, Jamie Rilett, said about the pier maintenance: “I think people should have confidence that we are doing our due diligence…We do take it very seriously. If anything does concern us, we do err on the side of caution.”
So, then, is having propane stored so close to a bridge a concern to Jim Bradley?
(click on photos to enlarge) (above) Looking north under the Skyway, a row of truck-mounted propane tanks are parked near the bridge pier, and more permanent tanks can be seen farther back.
(above) This newer 4-tank storage facility is about 300 metres north of the QEW Skyway bridge, which can be seen in the background to the right.
(above) Looking north under the Skyway, about six propane-tanker trucks can be seen parked very close to one of the bridge piers currently under restoration. (below) Same location, looking south, showing proximity of parked tankers near Skyway.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Stephane Dion: self-proclaimed Saviour Of God's Environment
Bumbledore Dion was on The Michael Coren show on CTS (Aug.21, 2008), where he claimed that the Conservative minority government was spreading "fear" - this from the green-shafter who fearmongers everywhere he goes (by jet and limo) that the earth is about to collapse if we don't vote Liberal! Twice during the show Dion threw out the line that only he can somehow become the saviour of, as he put it, "God's Environment"!!
What a satire of liberalism this clown is!
This Liberal joker bleated about "human rights", yet said nothing about Russia's invasion of Georgia.
Also, in an hour of interview, Stephane Dion said nothing about health care - no mention whatsoever.
What a satire of liberalism this clown is!
This Liberal joker bleated about "human rights", yet said nothing about Russia's invasion of Georgia.
Also, in an hour of interview, Stephane Dion said nothing about health care - no mention whatsoever.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Lady M visits Port Dalhousie
(click on photos to enlarge)
The ocean yacht Lady M, of Belize City, visited Port Dalhousie, seen here on Aug.19, 2008. Photos by R. Bobak
(above: Looking north, in the distance in Lake Ontario, a laker can be seen heading towards the Welland canal)
The ocean yacht Lady M, of Belize City, visited Port Dalhousie, seen here on Aug.19, 2008. Photos by R. Bobak(above: Looking north, in the distance in Lake Ontario, a laker can be seen heading towards the Welland canal)
It's not often a ship like this pulls into our port. A constant stream of admirers flocked to get a close-up view of the gleaming 164 foot long vessel and to inquire about its passengers. The yacht, docked on the Michigan side of the waterway, had to use trees for its moorings!
Friday, August 15, 2008
Don't send us more patients, says hospital in Liberal health-care monopoly
The Sarnia Observer wrote this editorial, “Hospital funding needs checkup”, (Aug.14, 2008):
“It's not every day that we agree with Mike Bradley. But the Sarnia mayor was right on the mark when he said a critical bed alert issued by London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) last week was a "huge step backwards."
LHSC sent surrounding hospitals -- including Bluewater Health -- a letter urging them not to send critically ill patients there unless they are near death.
LHSC notified area hospitals they were closed to all regional referrals with the exception of regional trauma, renal and stroke care. Cancer and cardiac patients would also be accepted and prioritized on an urgency basis.
Bradley wisely sounded the alarm, expressing concern the lives of patients are being put at risk.
Of course LHSC is not to blame for this. It cannot accept patients if it doesn't have any room for them.
The real problem is that the Ontario government is not spending enough on health care.
Bradley is right when he says the lack of adequate funding for provincial hospitals is putting people's health at risk at a time when they are paying higher taxes specifically aimed at improving care.
As he noted, "The whole point of the London Health Sciences Centre being a tertiary centre is to deal with the seriously ill patients who cannot receive the assistance they need as well by smaller hospitals who are not set up to deal with them."
The time is coming soon when Queen's Park is going to have to make some hard decisions about what it can and can't afford to pay for. It's going to have to eliminate entire ministries (such as the Ministry of Culture) and start funnelling more money into health care. Otherwise, there isn't going to be enough to take care of aging baby boomers.”
*
We know what Mike Bradley is saying in Sarnia.
But what’s MPP Jim Bradley saying in St. Catharines?
“The real problem is that the Ontario government is not spending enough on health care,” writes the Observer.
Say what?? McGuinty - after raking in some $12 billion with his Health Tax since 2004, IS NOT SPENDING ENOUGH?!
But St. Catharines Liberal Minister Jim Bradley has said that healthcare funding is not a problem in Niagara! Former health minister Smitherman even hinted that the Niagara Health System was spending money in a ‘free for all’! Liberals denied there was any link between their funding model and their government-run health-monopoly’s problems. They ran their last election pretending that health care in Ontario was fine!
Now we see London’s hospital is warning other smaller local hospitals “NOT TO SEND CRITICALLY ILL PATIENTS TO THEM unless they are near death”!! Unbelievable.
What are these Liberals doing, for God’s sake?
Where else are these patients to go, then ??!
Can – or will – Jim Bradley's government answer that question?
Is this what is in store here in Niagara (see: Possible beginnings of a health-care mutiny in Niagara? ) once Jimmy’s monopoly consolidates its facilities? (‘We’re sorry – the only choice hospital in St. Catharines is now full. Please try again later. Vote Liberal! Have a nice day.’)
We know that the Sarnia/Windsor area regularly exports Ontario patients to the U.S. for treatment, (see: Allow U.S. hospitals to open Canadian branches) as is also happening in Niagara. Sarnia's Bradley notes that (as in Niagara), their smaller local hospitals are not set up to deal with tertiary care needs.
Yet Jim Bradley’s Liberals have run all of Ontario’s hospitals for five years - so who’s responsible for this? As I asked in a previous post (see: Pressing hard, or hardly pressing, for more Niagara long-term care beds), what’s Jim Bradley done about new beds in Niagara?
“The time is coming soon when Queen's Park is going to have to make some hard decisions about what it can and can't afford to pay for,” the Observer wrote.
What’s health-care monopolist Jim Bradley, or his Liberal government, got to say about that?
How much longer until the Liberal's single-payer health-care-monopoly house-of-cards collapses?
“It's not every day that we agree with Mike Bradley. But the Sarnia mayor was right on the mark when he said a critical bed alert issued by London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) last week was a "huge step backwards."
LHSC sent surrounding hospitals -- including Bluewater Health -- a letter urging them not to send critically ill patients there unless they are near death.
LHSC notified area hospitals they were closed to all regional referrals with the exception of regional trauma, renal and stroke care. Cancer and cardiac patients would also be accepted and prioritized on an urgency basis.
Bradley wisely sounded the alarm, expressing concern the lives of patients are being put at risk.
Of course LHSC is not to blame for this. It cannot accept patients if it doesn't have any room for them.
The real problem is that the Ontario government is not spending enough on health care.
Bradley is right when he says the lack of adequate funding for provincial hospitals is putting people's health at risk at a time when they are paying higher taxes specifically aimed at improving care.
As he noted, "The whole point of the London Health Sciences Centre being a tertiary centre is to deal with the seriously ill patients who cannot receive the assistance they need as well by smaller hospitals who are not set up to deal with them."
The time is coming soon when Queen's Park is going to have to make some hard decisions about what it can and can't afford to pay for. It's going to have to eliminate entire ministries (such as the Ministry of Culture) and start funnelling more money into health care. Otherwise, there isn't going to be enough to take care of aging baby boomers.”
*
We know what Mike Bradley is saying in Sarnia.
But what’s MPP Jim Bradley saying in St. Catharines?
“The real problem is that the Ontario government is not spending enough on health care,” writes the Observer.
Say what?? McGuinty - after raking in some $12 billion with his Health Tax since 2004, IS NOT SPENDING ENOUGH?!
But St. Catharines Liberal Minister Jim Bradley has said that healthcare funding is not a problem in Niagara! Former health minister Smitherman even hinted that the Niagara Health System was spending money in a ‘free for all’! Liberals denied there was any link between their funding model and their government-run health-monopoly’s problems. They ran their last election pretending that health care in Ontario was fine!
Now we see London’s hospital is warning other smaller local hospitals “NOT TO SEND CRITICALLY ILL PATIENTS TO THEM unless they are near death”!! Unbelievable.
What are these Liberals doing, for God’s sake?
Where else are these patients to go, then ??!
Can – or will – Jim Bradley's government answer that question?
Is this what is in store here in Niagara (see: Possible beginnings of a health-care mutiny in Niagara? ) once Jimmy’s monopoly consolidates its facilities? (‘We’re sorry – the only choice hospital in St. Catharines is now full. Please try again later. Vote Liberal! Have a nice day.’)
We know that the Sarnia/Windsor area regularly exports Ontario patients to the U.S. for treatment, (see: Allow U.S. hospitals to open Canadian branches) as is also happening in Niagara. Sarnia's Bradley notes that (as in Niagara), their smaller local hospitals are not set up to deal with tertiary care needs.
Yet Jim Bradley’s Liberals have run all of Ontario’s hospitals for five years - so who’s responsible for this? As I asked in a previous post (see: Pressing hard, or hardly pressing, for more Niagara long-term care beds), what’s Jim Bradley done about new beds in Niagara?
“The time is coming soon when Queen's Park is going to have to make some hard decisions about what it can and can't afford to pay for,” the Observer wrote.
What’s health-care monopolist Jim Bradley, or his Liberal government, got to say about that?
How much longer until the Liberal's single-payer health-care-monopoly house-of-cards collapses?
Monday, August 11, 2008
Skyway scaffolds
(click photos to enlarge)
A north-bound ship, having just passed the raised Homer Bridge, glides under the Skyway past a crew of scaffold installers. Photos taken by R. Bobak, Aug.11, 2008.
Workers were continuing to erect scaffolding under the QEW Skyway bridge at the Welland Canal in St. Catharines today, Aug.11, 2008. They were lined up standing above each other for hours, passing sections of tubing up to the top in order to construct the scaffold around the bridge piers. The bridge's concrete columns are to be repaired and resurfaced.
A north-bound ship, having just passed the raised Homer Bridge, glides under the Skyway past a crew of scaffold installers. Photos taken by R. Bobak, Aug.11, 2008.
Workers were continuing to erect scaffolding under the QEW Skyway bridge at the Welland Canal in St. Catharines today, Aug.11, 2008. They were lined up standing above each other for hours, passing sections of tubing up to the top in order to construct the scaffold around the bridge piers. The bridge's concrete columns are to be repaired and resurfaced.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Possible beginnings of a health-care mutiny in Niagara?
Derek Swartz wrote in “Alternatives to NHS plan eyed by Port Colborne, Wainfleet” (St. Catharines Standard, Aug.1, 2008):
“If Niagara Health System wants to cut back emergency room services in Port Colborne, it is time for the city to consider setting up a different hospital corporation, the mayor says.
Vance Badawey said the city is serious about helping form a new hospital corporation to operate the hospital, and it is looking for allies.
The newly formed Port Colborne- Wainfleet Health Care Services task force met Tuesday evening to start formulating a response to the NHS hospital improvement plan.
Wainfleet Mayor Barb Henderson sits on the committee, which has contacted Fort Erie, whose hospital is also facing the scaling down of its emergency department.
Part of that response will be to make the case that around-the-clock emergency services must remain in the hospital, even if thatmeans the hospital is no longer part of the NHS.
Badawey believes the Port Colborne General Hospital could break away.
"Some people might think it's unrealistic, but it is realistic in light of their own recommendations," he said.
The NHS plan states many of Port Colborne's health-care needs can be handled by establishing community health centres, walk-in clinics, improved transportation and educating city residents.
None of those services are administered by the NHS, the mayor points out.
"We understand change occurs from the Ministry (of Health) on down. We understand things can be done better, but we'll be damned if it's at the expense of Port Colborne and Wainfleet.... At the end of the day if (the NHS) can't do it, we'll do it ourselves," Badawey said Thursday.
Henderson joined the committee because of the potential impact on Wainfleet residents.
"I am pleased to be a part of a task force whose intent is to defend the level of health care that our residents are justifiably entitled to. We expect the same level of care and service as the residents of north Niagara," Henderson stated in a news release.
There is not much evidence in the report, though, that the NHS consulted with physicians in Port Colborne, Badawey said.
Port Colborne General's emergency department sees more than 25,000 visitors a year, and in the summer --with cottagers in Sherkston and in Wainfleet -- it serves a population that rivals Welland's, Badawey said.
The NHS plan will go to the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network later this summer. Port Colborne's committee will develop a counterproposal for the LHIN to consider, Badawey said.
The committee's next steps include hiring an experienced consultant to help draft a response to the NHS report and exploring a co-ordinated response with Fort Erie.”
*
What an interesting reaction by these Niagara mayors to Dalton McGuinty’s authoritarian health care monopoly, which is proposing cutting services almost everywhere in Niagara but St. Catharines, ostensibly to ' save money'.
What a sad legacy Liberal MPP Jim Bradley’s years of blustery adherence to single-tier medicare has brought; such divisiveness and callousness that cities in Niagara are considering opting out of the Niagara Health System!! Yep, let’s not forget this Liberal health care duplicity is all happening under Jim Bradley’s own government.
We’ve seen that Jim Bradley’s assurances a year ago to Port Colborne were worth less than a pile of crap. ( see: Meaningless assurances from Jim Bradley)
Jim Bradley, a senior minister with McGuinty’s government was looked upon by certain believers as some kind of guarantee that Niagarans had an ‘in’ with the Queen’s Park Liberal inner-circle; that somehow appealing to Bradley would yield results.
But, like on so many issues, Stealth Minister Bradley has vanished on this controversial health care issue right in his own backyard.
It’s as if Good Ole Jimmy had, and has, nothing to do with any of this!!
No quotes at all in any of the papers pressing Jim Bradley to explain his government monopoly’s actions. Where did Jimmy disappear to?
Badawey’s comments are extremely interesting – it is as close to mutiny that any politician in Niagara has dared go to challenge the authoritarianism that is imposed by adhering to a single-payer, government-run health-care monopoly.
Badawey (a Liberal) was lulled and duped by his Liberal colleagues George Smitherman and Bradley before; hopefully this firebrand mayor will now put McGuinty and new health-czar Caplan on the defensive.
"At the end of the day if (the NHS) can't do it, we'll do it ourselves", said Badawey: very brave words. Liberal Badawey has obviously recognized the harsh impositions and limitations of trusting that only the Ontario Liberal government will always offer you its teat. Can a constitutional challenge not be lurking in the background here?
And why not openly challenge the Ministry of Health to sue Southern Niagara communities for considering alternatives, like possibly pursuing a medicare-free zone in the region?
I touched upon this kind of rebellion back in Nov. 2007, (see: Time for Ontario towns to declare themselves a medicare-free zone.)
The drawback of simply moving from the purview of one currently failing LHIN, to another LHIN within the same system, only postpones and ignores that it is the spectre of monopoly-medicine, doled out by government, which is the underlying problem.
The challenge for Badawey and the other mayors and councillors is to demonstrate the utter disregard that McGuinty’s Liberals have shown the southern Niagara tier, and also to demonstrate that when they talk about “alternatives”, that they seriously mean real ALTERNATIVES – not simply repositioning the same old problematic monopoly in a different way.
We should be seeking a healthy private-parallel health system – not a Liberal health-care monopoly/dictatorship.
Badawey is in an incredible position to renounce his Liberal’s asinine monopoly for the failure and charade that it is. (...update: by 2013 we have unfortunately seen that Badawey's idea of some kind of "break-away" was a bust; it was just plain ole diversionary Liberal Bullsh!t. Badawey was all bluster and no bite. Badawey's attachment to McGuinty-style Liberalism superseded him making any real changes to monopoly health care in Niagara. Being a stalwart Liberal, Badawey, in the end, did nothing but blow hot air and toe McGuinty's statist anti-patient-choice single-payer line. Showing his disgusting allegiance to the Liberals, not only had Vance Badawey run for McGuinty's Ontario Liberals in 2003, Badawey also announced in Jan. 2015 that he would be seeking to run for Justin Turdeau's federal Liberals, as well.)
Really, at the heart of all this, is that this is simply another aspect of what brought about and led to the famous Chaoulli decision in Quebec, the implications of which were simply ignored by McGuinty’s Ontario Liberals.
This is simply another aspect of what the McCreith/ Holmes constitutional health care challenge now in the courts against McGuinty’s health monopoly is all about.
Now, Jim Bradley’s bait-and-switch tactic (see: Liberal Healthcare Duplicity) has found another victim by targeting southern Niagara.
*
Don’t roll over, Niagara.
Don’t let Liberals such as Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor (...and, Vance Badawey) or their bureaucratic sycophants, deceive you any longer.
Sanctimonious Grits were the first to whine and fear-monger about health-care when in opposition; now when their own monopolist policies fail in their own ridings, these flicking pathetic Liberals are nowhere to be found.
*
“If Niagara Health System wants to cut back emergency room services in Port Colborne, it is time for the city to consider setting up a different hospital corporation, the mayor says.
Vance Badawey said the city is serious about helping form a new hospital corporation to operate the hospital, and it is looking for allies.
The newly formed Port Colborne- Wainfleet Health Care Services task force met Tuesday evening to start formulating a response to the NHS hospital improvement plan.
Wainfleet Mayor Barb Henderson sits on the committee, which has contacted Fort Erie, whose hospital is also facing the scaling down of its emergency department.
Part of that response will be to make the case that around-the-clock emergency services must remain in the hospital, even if thatmeans the hospital is no longer part of the NHS.
Badawey believes the Port Colborne General Hospital could break away.
"Some people might think it's unrealistic, but it is realistic in light of their own recommendations," he said.
The NHS plan states many of Port Colborne's health-care needs can be handled by establishing community health centres, walk-in clinics, improved transportation and educating city residents.
None of those services are administered by the NHS, the mayor points out.
"We understand change occurs from the Ministry (of Health) on down. We understand things can be done better, but we'll be damned if it's at the expense of Port Colborne and Wainfleet.... At the end of the day if (the NHS) can't do it, we'll do it ourselves," Badawey said Thursday.
Henderson joined the committee because of the potential impact on Wainfleet residents.
"I am pleased to be a part of a task force whose intent is to defend the level of health care that our residents are justifiably entitled to. We expect the same level of care and service as the residents of north Niagara," Henderson stated in a news release.
There is not much evidence in the report, though, that the NHS consulted with physicians in Port Colborne, Badawey said.
Port Colborne General's emergency department sees more than 25,000 visitors a year, and in the summer --with cottagers in Sherkston and in Wainfleet -- it serves a population that rivals Welland's, Badawey said.
The NHS plan will go to the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network later this summer. Port Colborne's committee will develop a counterproposal for the LHIN to consider, Badawey said.
The committee's next steps include hiring an experienced consultant to help draft a response to the NHS report and exploring a co-ordinated response with Fort Erie.”
*
What an interesting reaction by these Niagara mayors to Dalton McGuinty’s authoritarian health care monopoly, which is proposing cutting services almost everywhere in Niagara but St. Catharines, ostensibly to ' save money'.
What a sad legacy Liberal MPP Jim Bradley’s years of blustery adherence to single-tier medicare has brought; such divisiveness and callousness that cities in Niagara are considering opting out of the Niagara Health System!! Yep, let’s not forget this Liberal health care duplicity is all happening under Jim Bradley’s own government.
We’ve seen that Jim Bradley’s assurances a year ago to Port Colborne were worth less than a pile of crap. ( see: Meaningless assurances from Jim Bradley)
Jim Bradley, a senior minister with McGuinty’s government was looked upon by certain believers as some kind of guarantee that Niagarans had an ‘in’ with the Queen’s Park Liberal inner-circle; that somehow appealing to Bradley would yield results.
But, like on so many issues, Stealth Minister Bradley has vanished on this controversial health care issue right in his own backyard.
It’s as if Good Ole Jimmy had, and has, nothing to do with any of this!!
No quotes at all in any of the papers pressing Jim Bradley to explain his government monopoly’s actions. Where did Jimmy disappear to?
Badawey’s comments are extremely interesting – it is as close to mutiny that any politician in Niagara has dared go to challenge the authoritarianism that is imposed by adhering to a single-payer, government-run health-care monopoly.
Badawey (a Liberal) was lulled and duped by his Liberal colleagues George Smitherman and Bradley before; hopefully this firebrand mayor will now put McGuinty and new health-czar Caplan on the defensive.
"At the end of the day if (the NHS) can't do it, we'll do it ourselves", said Badawey: very brave words. Liberal Badawey has obviously recognized the harsh impositions and limitations of trusting that only the Ontario Liberal government will always offer you its teat. Can a constitutional challenge not be lurking in the background here?
And why not openly challenge the Ministry of Health to sue Southern Niagara communities for considering alternatives, like possibly pursuing a medicare-free zone in the region?
I touched upon this kind of rebellion back in Nov. 2007, (see: Time for Ontario towns to declare themselves a medicare-free zone.)
The drawback of simply moving from the purview of one currently failing LHIN, to another LHIN within the same system, only postpones and ignores that it is the spectre of monopoly-medicine, doled out by government, which is the underlying problem.
The challenge for Badawey and the other mayors and councillors is to demonstrate the utter disregard that McGuinty’s Liberals have shown the southern Niagara tier, and also to demonstrate that when they talk about “alternatives”, that they seriously mean real ALTERNATIVES – not simply repositioning the same old problematic monopoly in a different way.
We should be seeking a healthy private-parallel health system – not a Liberal health-care monopoly/dictatorship.
Badawey is in an incredible position to renounce his Liberal’s asinine monopoly for the failure and charade that it is. (...update: by 2013 we have unfortunately seen that Badawey's idea of some kind of "break-away" was a bust; it was just plain ole diversionary Liberal Bullsh!t. Badawey was all bluster and no bite. Badawey's attachment to McGuinty-style Liberalism superseded him making any real changes to monopoly health care in Niagara. Being a stalwart Liberal, Badawey, in the end, did nothing but blow hot air and toe McGuinty's statist anti-patient-choice single-payer line. Showing his disgusting allegiance to the Liberals, not only had Vance Badawey run for McGuinty's Ontario Liberals in 2003, Badawey also announced in Jan. 2015 that he would be seeking to run for Justin Turdeau's federal Liberals, as well.)
Really, at the heart of all this, is that this is simply another aspect of what brought about and led to the famous Chaoulli decision in Quebec, the implications of which were simply ignored by McGuinty’s Ontario Liberals.
This is simply another aspect of what the McCreith/ Holmes constitutional health care challenge now in the courts against McGuinty’s health monopoly is all about.
Now, Jim Bradley’s bait-and-switch tactic (see: Liberal Healthcare Duplicity) has found another victim by targeting southern Niagara.
*
Don’t roll over, Niagara.
Don’t let Liberals such as Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor (...and, Vance Badawey) or their bureaucratic sycophants, deceive you any longer.
Sanctimonious Grits were the first to whine and fear-monger about health-care when in opposition; now when their own monopolist policies fail in their own ridings, these flicking pathetic Liberals are nowhere to be found.
*
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