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.