Here are some sites offering health care options to Ontarians stuck in Dalton McGuinty's no-patient-choice, single-payer, OHIP-dominated, Liberal health-care monopoly:
Kaleida Health's Canadian website: http://www.kaleidahealth.org/canada/
Timely Medical Alternatives: http://www.timelymedical.ca/about-us.html
Cleveland Clinic Canada: http://my.clevelandclinic.org/canada/default.aspx
Illness Protection offering Canadians health care insurance for U.S. treatment: http://www.illnessprotection.com/individuals/us-healthcare-solutions.php
*
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Ombudsman report on ER-closing decision-process due in several weeks
The St.Catharines Standard reported on Jan.28, 2010, that Ontario's ombudsman Andre Marin has completed his investigation into the Liberal-created Niagara LHIN's public consultation process, which led to the closure of two ER's in Niagara; this report will be released sometime in the next several weeks.
This will be very interesting.
This will be very interesting.
Why was a McGuinty Liberal MPP demonstrating in front of another Liberal MPP's office?!
Here's a portion of a letter I sent to Liberal MPP Kim Craitor back in Apr.2009. Craitor - as of Jan.28, 2010 - still has not bothered to answer any of these following concerns!
"It was reported in an Apr.20, 2009 St. Catharines Standard article written by Karena Walter that you were in attendance at some kind of a rally outside of MPP Jim Bradley's office in St Catharines. There was a picture of a person holding a "stop privatization" placard.
No explanation was given in this article about the odd situation, as to why you, as a Liberal MPP, were there, demonstrating in front of a neighbouring Liberal MPP's office.
Can you explain to me why you were there and what the point was of you being at this demonstration? Were you attending as an MPP, or as a private citizen?
If you were there as an MPP, what was the message that you were trying to convey? What specific "privatization" was being targeted? Were you lending your support for something, or were you demonstrating against something?
Do you believe that Bradley has any more sway than health minister David Caplan, when it comes to screwing south Niagarans with your party's bait-and-switch Liberal Healthcare Duplicity (see here) ?
Do you have any response to Bradley's claim that 'there's been a 43% increase in the NHS's funding since 2003'?
Do you think the NHS is underfunded? Or, is this claimed-43% increase still not enough? How much, then, would be enough?
Do you support the new one-and-half-billion-dollar hospital planned for St. Catharines; or, are you in support of a new hospital, only in a different location?
Do you have any response to Bradley's statement that the Liberal "government has been trying to meet the needs as well as it can"? Do you trust this statement of Bradley's to be true? What do you think Bradley means when he says "as well as it can"? He's saying this as a government hardliner, who is committed to a failing single-payer, state-run monopoly health-care template.
What is your reaction to Bradley's comment in the article that "it's understandable there are people who will always be out there wanting to ensure that what they believe is adequate funding is provided"? Do you think, as I do, that with this comment, Good Ole Jim just gave you the smug middle-finger fuddle-duddle?
Are you challenging Jim Bradley's claims; are you claiming that your Liberals, despite being in an $18 billion deficit, in fact are NOT adequately funding the NHS? Do you agree with the NHS, which has often said in the past that it needs more money to carry out its services?
Do you not think it sadly laughable that the health-care of Ontarians is dictated by unaccountable health care monopolists such as McGuinty, Bradley, and Caplan, who decide to mete out tax-dollars in their monopoly 'as best they can'? You're apparently their fellow Liberal, Mr. Craitor - Is that good enough for you ?
Why should citizen health-care be subject to some vague political MINIMUM STANDARD OF 'adequacy' ?!?
In a state-run monopoly, not only is that NOT GOOD ENOUGH, that should be CRIMINAL."
*
Well, we've seen what McGuinty's incompetent Liberal monopolists have done to Niagara's health system since Craitor ignored my questions.
And now, Craitor might be in the running for mayor of Niagara Falls?! (Toronto Star, Jan.27, 2010, here)
Frightening.
*
"It was reported in an Apr.20, 2009 St. Catharines Standard article written by Karena Walter that you were in attendance at some kind of a rally outside of MPP Jim Bradley's office in St Catharines. There was a picture of a person holding a "stop privatization" placard.
No explanation was given in this article about the odd situation, as to why you, as a Liberal MPP, were there, demonstrating in front of a neighbouring Liberal MPP's office.
Can you explain to me why you were there and what the point was of you being at this demonstration? Were you attending as an MPP, or as a private citizen?
If you were there as an MPP, what was the message that you were trying to convey? What specific "privatization" was being targeted? Were you lending your support for something, or were you demonstrating against something?
Do you believe that Bradley has any more sway than health minister David Caplan, when it comes to screwing south Niagarans with your party's bait-and-switch Liberal Healthcare Duplicity (see here) ?
Do you have any response to Bradley's claim that 'there's been a 43% increase in the NHS's funding since 2003'?
Do you think the NHS is underfunded? Or, is this claimed-43% increase still not enough? How much, then, would be enough?
Do you support the new one-and-half-billion-dollar hospital planned for St. Catharines; or, are you in support of a new hospital, only in a different location?
Do you have any response to Bradley's statement that the Liberal "government has been trying to meet the needs as well as it can"? Do you trust this statement of Bradley's to be true? What do you think Bradley means when he says "as well as it can"? He's saying this as a government hardliner, who is committed to a failing single-payer, state-run monopoly health-care template.
What is your reaction to Bradley's comment in the article that "it's understandable there are people who will always be out there wanting to ensure that what they believe is adequate funding is provided"? Do you think, as I do, that with this comment, Good Ole Jim just gave you the smug middle-finger fuddle-duddle?
Are you challenging Jim Bradley's claims; are you claiming that your Liberals, despite being in an $18 billion deficit, in fact are NOT adequately funding the NHS? Do you agree with the NHS, which has often said in the past that it needs more money to carry out its services?
Do you not think it sadly laughable that the health-care of Ontarians is dictated by unaccountable health care monopolists such as McGuinty, Bradley, and Caplan, who decide to mete out tax-dollars in their monopoly 'as best they can'? You're apparently their fellow Liberal, Mr. Craitor - Is that good enough for you ?
Why should citizen health-care be subject to some vague political MINIMUM STANDARD OF 'adequacy' ?!?
In a state-run monopoly, not only is that NOT GOOD ENOUGH, that should be CRIMINAL."
*
Well, we've seen what McGuinty's incompetent Liberal monopolists have done to Niagara's health system since Craitor ignored my questions.
And now, Craitor might be in the running for mayor of Niagara Falls?! (Toronto Star, Jan.27, 2010, here)
Frightening.
*
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Craitor peddles his own Liberal Healthcare Duplicity
Maria Babbage wrote in "Hospital budgets won't be frozen in the spring, says McGuinty" (CP, Jan.27, 2010, here):
"Ontario hospitals won't be facing a budget freeze in the spring budget, but they won't see a big cash injection either, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday.
"I can say one thing with absolute certainty: there will be more money for hospitals this year, but it won't grow at the same rate that it has in recent years," he said after touring a school in Mississauga, just west of Toronto.
"We've got to take the economy into account."
Hospitals have been bracing for a possible budget freeze after they were asked in the fall to submit draft plans using three different scenarios - no increase in funding, a one per cent increase and a two per cent increase.
The best they can hope for is a two per cent boost in base funding, which critics say won't be enough to lift Ontario's cash-strapped hospitals out of the red ink.
"(McGuinty) is running scared because he realizes that people want to see decently funded hospitals with good services," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
"So whether it's zero, one or two, I think the reality is that the government has to acknowledge that hospitals are necessary in our communities and they're services that people want to see funded and want to see funded properly so that they can get the care for themselves and their loved ones."
Even a two per cent increase will be a "challenge" for Ontario hospitals, which are already among the most efficient in the country, because inflation will be closer to three per cent, said Tom Closson, president of the Ontario Hospital Association.
"Even at two per cent funding, hospitals would have to find one per cent operational efficiency, plus they'dhave to address the deficits that they already have," he said.
"Going lower than two per cent will have an impact on service, there's no doubt in my mind."
Even though Ontario hospitals are forbidden from running deficits by law, more than a third - 61 in total - were in the red last spring, amounting to a $154-million shortfall. Many received waivers because they've agreed to eliminate their deficits.
But critics say balancing the books is putting lives at risk because hospitals are forced to close beds, shut emergency rooms and cut staff to save money.
Many have pointed to the death of an 18-year-old girl in the Niagara area as a tragedy that could have been avoided if two emergency rooms in her community had remained open.
Injured in a car crash, Reilly Anzovino, died Dec. 27 just as the ambulance carrying her reached the hospital in Welland, Ont., about 20 kilometres from the accident scene. The emergency room in Fort Erie, some five kilometres closer, was closed last year as part of a controversial hospital restructuring plan.
Anzovino's family have been joined by local politicians, labour groups and health-care advocates in calling for a coroner's inquest into whether the closure of emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne played any role in her death.
McGuinty and Health Minister Deb Matthews say they still support the decision to close the emergency rooms and turn them into urgent care centres.
Liberal backbencher Kim Craitor, whose Niagara Falls riding includes Fort Erie, said he isn't at odds with his party even though he's critical of the ER closures.
"It's not about politics," he said. "It's a silly thing for a politician to say, but it's not. It's about making sure people get the best health care."
Ontario's ombudsman, who was asked to investigate complaints that local health authorities didn't consult properly with the public before approving the restructuring plan for the Niagara hospitals, is expected to release his findings within the next few weeks."
*
What an unbelievable joke, an utter insult, to see Liberal MPP Kim Craitor use this line: "It's not about politics".
Kim Craitor is simply parroting Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's same line (see here) where I wrote:
"Why isn’t local St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley explaining why his Liberals are underfunding their health monopoly – right in Niagara? Is anyone even asking him? A vaporous Bradley has nothing to say about anything … why, Jimmy’s busy banning cellphone use in cars while merely phoning-in his own duties as St. Catharines MPP!
(A story in the Oct.30, 2008 St. Catharines Standard, "Rifts remain over NHS plan", read: "St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, who previously declined to comment on the NHS plan until Kitts delivered his report, said he did not want to comment Wednesday. "I still have to read the full report, and then the LHIN has to make a decision on it," he said. "As much as possible, I think politics should be kept out of this."
Bradley now wants 'to keep politics out of health-care'??!
Is he for FLICKING real?
This from the flicking Liberal partisan who for years earned his living constantly posturing and blustering about health-care, spewing his monopolist rhetoric and his Liberal health-care duplicity far and wide? The gall of this smarmy hypocrite to now pretend and plead that somehow "politics should be kept out of this"... when "this" is ALL ABOUT politics: failing, duplicitous Liberal politics which Bradley conveniently now wants us overlook.
Hypocrite, thy name is Jim Bradley."
Not just Bradley and Craitor have shown themselves to be hypocrites - all of McGuinty's Liberals are complicit in their healthcare duplicity.
In the above Oct.30, 2008 Standard story, reporter Grant Lafleche also noted: "Bradley's Liberal counterpart, Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor, who has opposed the NHS restructuring plan, also had no comment. He said he wanted to talk to Kitts before making a statement."
So, did Craitor get his meeting with Kitts; and, what then? Did Liberal Craitor go on to stop his own McGuinty Liberal Government's health care cuts?
Incidentally: DOES ANYONE RECALL JIM BRADLEY ACTUALLY COMMENTING ON THE KITTS REPORT?!
WHAT DID BRADLEY EVER ACTUALLY SAY ABOUT IT?
I don't recall any reports of Jim Bradley's actual, detailed reaction and comments to the Oct.2008 Kitts report (or to the preceding report which no-one now talks about, the forgotten Nov.2007 CIHI report which revealed the high patient death-rate in the NHS's St. Catharines hospital, nicely hushed up by the Liberals; which somehow morphed into an "organizational review", which led to the Kitts NHS HIP, which led to the ER closures, which led to the Anzovino coroner's investigation).
So, did Bradley read the report after his Oct.30, 2008 St.Catharines Standard interview with Lafleche, and did he ever make any public comment? (I wrote of this here in Jan.2009!!)
Of course, Yoel Abells also wrote about politics being kept out of the emergency room, see here, but, certainly not in the way Craitor now wants to spin it!
'It's not about politics!!' Oh, come on, Kim.
Wow: now Kim Craitor suddenly (like Bradley before him) wants us to think that he had nothing to do with his government's Liberal Healthcare Duplicity.
In a pathetic, almost schizophrenic fashion, Craitor has skewed around his own failing Liberal health care monopolism as somehow being SOMEONE ELSE'S failing monopolism, NOT HIS OWN!! Why is this guy even a Liberal, then?
Again, re-read the first link above, and consider how Craitor desperately continues to both defend, and the same time, to distance himself from McGuinty's Liberal health care disaster in Ontario.
As I said in the earlier linked post, don't let Liberals such as Craitor kid anyone:
it is ALL ABOUT POLITICS;
IT IS ABOUT THEIR POLITICS;
IT IS ABOUT THEIR FAILED HEALTH-CARE MONOPOLISM;
IT IS ABOUT THEIR DUPLICITOUS LIBERAL IDEOLOGY.
*
"Ontario hospitals won't be facing a budget freeze in the spring budget, but they won't see a big cash injection either, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday.
"I can say one thing with absolute certainty: there will be more money for hospitals this year, but it won't grow at the same rate that it has in recent years," he said after touring a school in Mississauga, just west of Toronto.
"We've got to take the economy into account."
Hospitals have been bracing for a possible budget freeze after they were asked in the fall to submit draft plans using three different scenarios - no increase in funding, a one per cent increase and a two per cent increase.
The best they can hope for is a two per cent boost in base funding, which critics say won't be enough to lift Ontario's cash-strapped hospitals out of the red ink.
"(McGuinty) is running scared because he realizes that people want to see decently funded hospitals with good services," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
"So whether it's zero, one or two, I think the reality is that the government has to acknowledge that hospitals are necessary in our communities and they're services that people want to see funded and want to see funded properly so that they can get the care for themselves and their loved ones."
Even a two per cent increase will be a "challenge" for Ontario hospitals, which are already among the most efficient in the country, because inflation will be closer to three per cent, said Tom Closson, president of the Ontario Hospital Association.
"Even at two per cent funding, hospitals would have to find one per cent operational efficiency, plus they'dhave to address the deficits that they already have," he said.
"Going lower than two per cent will have an impact on service, there's no doubt in my mind."
Even though Ontario hospitals are forbidden from running deficits by law, more than a third - 61 in total - were in the red last spring, amounting to a $154-million shortfall. Many received waivers because they've agreed to eliminate their deficits.
But critics say balancing the books is putting lives at risk because hospitals are forced to close beds, shut emergency rooms and cut staff to save money.
Many have pointed to the death of an 18-year-old girl in the Niagara area as a tragedy that could have been avoided if two emergency rooms in her community had remained open.
Injured in a car crash, Reilly Anzovino, died Dec. 27 just as the ambulance carrying her reached the hospital in Welland, Ont., about 20 kilometres from the accident scene. The emergency room in Fort Erie, some five kilometres closer, was closed last year as part of a controversial hospital restructuring plan.
Anzovino's family have been joined by local politicians, labour groups and health-care advocates in calling for a coroner's inquest into whether the closure of emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne played any role in her death.
McGuinty and Health Minister Deb Matthews say they still support the decision to close the emergency rooms and turn them into urgent care centres.
Liberal backbencher Kim Craitor, whose Niagara Falls riding includes Fort Erie, said he isn't at odds with his party even though he's critical of the ER closures.
"It's not about politics," he said. "It's a silly thing for a politician to say, but it's not. It's about making sure people get the best health care."
Ontario's ombudsman, who was asked to investigate complaints that local health authorities didn't consult properly with the public before approving the restructuring plan for the Niagara hospitals, is expected to release his findings within the next few weeks."
*
What an unbelievable joke, an utter insult, to see Liberal MPP Kim Craitor use this line: "It's not about politics".
Kim Craitor is simply parroting Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's same line (see here) where I wrote:
"Why isn’t local St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley explaining why his Liberals are underfunding their health monopoly – right in Niagara? Is anyone even asking him? A vaporous Bradley has nothing to say about anything … why, Jimmy’s busy banning cellphone use in cars while merely phoning-in his own duties as St. Catharines MPP!
(A story in the Oct.30, 2008 St. Catharines Standard, "Rifts remain over NHS plan", read: "St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, who previously declined to comment on the NHS plan until Kitts delivered his report, said he did not want to comment Wednesday. "I still have to read the full report, and then the LHIN has to make a decision on it," he said. "As much as possible, I think politics should be kept out of this."
Bradley now wants 'to keep politics out of health-care'??!
Is he for FLICKING real?
This from the flicking Liberal partisan who for years earned his living constantly posturing and blustering about health-care, spewing his monopolist rhetoric and his Liberal health-care duplicity far and wide? The gall of this smarmy hypocrite to now pretend and plead that somehow "politics should be kept out of this"... when "this" is ALL ABOUT politics: failing, duplicitous Liberal politics which Bradley conveniently now wants us overlook.
Hypocrite, thy name is Jim Bradley."
Not just Bradley and Craitor have shown themselves to be hypocrites - all of McGuinty's Liberals are complicit in their healthcare duplicity.
In the above Oct.30, 2008 Standard story, reporter Grant Lafleche also noted: "Bradley's Liberal counterpart, Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor, who has opposed the NHS restructuring plan, also had no comment. He said he wanted to talk to Kitts before making a statement."
So, did Craitor get his meeting with Kitts; and, what then? Did Liberal Craitor go on to stop his own McGuinty Liberal Government's health care cuts?
Incidentally: DOES ANYONE RECALL JIM BRADLEY ACTUALLY COMMENTING ON THE KITTS REPORT?!
WHAT DID BRADLEY EVER ACTUALLY SAY ABOUT IT?
I don't recall any reports of Jim Bradley's actual, detailed reaction and comments to the Oct.2008 Kitts report (or to the preceding report which no-one now talks about, the forgotten Nov.2007 CIHI report which revealed the high patient death-rate in the NHS's St. Catharines hospital, nicely hushed up by the Liberals; which somehow morphed into an "organizational review", which led to the Kitts NHS HIP, which led to the ER closures, which led to the Anzovino coroner's investigation).
So, did Bradley read the report after his Oct.30, 2008 St.Catharines Standard interview with Lafleche, and did he ever make any public comment? (I wrote of this here in Jan.2009!!)
Of course, Yoel Abells also wrote about politics being kept out of the emergency room, see here, but, certainly not in the way Craitor now wants to spin it!
'It's not about politics!!' Oh, come on, Kim.
Wow: now Kim Craitor suddenly (like Bradley before him) wants us to think that he had nothing to do with his government's Liberal Healthcare Duplicity.
In a pathetic, almost schizophrenic fashion, Craitor has skewed around his own failing Liberal health care monopolism as somehow being SOMEONE ELSE'S failing monopolism, NOT HIS OWN!! Why is this guy even a Liberal, then?
Again, re-read the first link above, and consider how Craitor desperately continues to both defend, and the same time, to distance himself from McGuinty's Liberal health care disaster in Ontario.
As I said in the earlier linked post, don't let Liberals such as Craitor kid anyone:
it is ALL ABOUT POLITICS;
IT IS ABOUT THEIR POLITICS;
IT IS ABOUT THEIR FAILED HEALTH-CARE MONOPOLISM;
IT IS ABOUT THEIR DUPLICITOUS LIBERAL IDEOLOGY.
*
McGuinty Liberals admit "we can't deliver the best possible care within every Ontario community"
McGUINTY BLAMES HIS OWN LIBERAL-CREATED LHIN's, NOT HIS OWN IDEOLOGY, FOR E.R. CLOSURES
Karen Howlett wrote in "Ontario Premier shifts blame for emergency-room closings;
Opposition calls for review of health agencies that made decision", (Globe and Mail, Jan.27, 2010, here):
"Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is distancing his government from the controversial closing of emergency departments in two hospitals, saying it was a provincially appointed health agency that made the decision.
The Premier was commenting for the first time on stories in The Globe and Mail about a Fort Erie teenager who was fatally injured in a car accident on Boxing Day. Reilly Anzovino's family has called for a coroner's inquest to determine whether the 18-year-old college student might still be alive if the emergency department at the local hospital had still been open.
"We rely on the best advice that we get from people on the ground, from the people who work in our Local Health Integration Networks," Mr. McGuinty told reporters yesterday. "The changes that were made there were all with a view to ensuring that we provide the best possible care."
But opposition members accuse the Premier of trying to hide behind the very bureaucracy created by his government and are calling for a review of all 14 Local Health Integration Networks, or LHINs, that control hospitals across Ontario.
Douglas Memorial Hospital in Fort Erie permanently closed its emergency department last September, forcing the ambulance to take nearly twice as long to transport Ms. Anzovino to the next nearest hospital in Welland. She died shortly before the ambulance arrived at the hospital.
Mr. McGuinty said he would welcome a coroner's inquest. But he said the "guiding imperative" that is driving many hospitals across Ontario to restructure is the stark reality that the government cannot afford the best health care in every single community.
The LHIN responsible for the Niagara Health System and its seven hospitals approved a restructuring plan that included converting the emergency departments in Fort Erie and Port Colborne into 24-hour urgent care centres. Niagara Health, which is awash in red ink, is trying to find $28-million in cost savings.
Christine Elliott, health critic for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, said Mr. McGuinty is quick to take credit when the news is good while blaming the LHINs for every "seemingly" bad decision.
"I think the Premier is trying to have his cake and eat it, too," she said.
Both she and New Democrat health critic France Gélinas called for a review of the LHINs created four years ago as part of a plan to hand over control of hospitals to local appointees.
The LHINs have enormous responsibilities for deciding how to spend scarce health-care dollars, but their boards of directors appointed by the province do not have the expertise or the tools to properly discharge these duties, Ms. Gélinas said.
"They are putting quality care at risk and also people's lives at risk with their decisions," she said. "
Did you read the opening line in the above story? Read it again!! McGuinty's now pretending HE DIDN'T KNOW know about the ER's which his own government closed in Niagara!
It's all the LHIN's fault!!!!
Do you laugh, or cry, at McGuinty's utterly shameless Liberal health care duplicity?
Doesn't McGuinty know - or did he conveniently forget - that David Caplan refused to get involved in the Niagara LHIN's decision to implement the NHS's Kitts HIP plan?
Didn't Niagara Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley or Kim Craitor ever mention this to McGuinty?!
Has the Liberal government of Ontario suddenly developed a case of mass political amnesia?
***************************
McGUINTY THINKS IT'S NORMAL THAT LIBERAL-MANDATED HOSPITAL BUREAUCRACY TAKES PRIORITY OVER PATIENT NEEDS
The Toronto Star, Jan.26, 2010, had a CP story, "McGuinty defends closure of Fort Erie hospital emergency room", here:
"Premier Dalton McGuinty is defending the decision to close the emergency room in Fort Erie, saying the province can't afford to provide every service in every community.
McGuinty says he doesn't want to pre-judge the outcome of an expected coroner's inquest into the death of Reilly Anzovino following a Boxing Day car accident.
The 18-year-old died as the ambulance carrying her was travelling more than 40 kilometres to Welland because the emergency department in Fort Erie had been closed.
The Ontario Health Coalition says the teen's death raises questions about whether closing the emergency room in Fort Erie led to an avoidable fatality.
McGuinty says it was the local health integration network that advised the government to close the Fort Erie emergency room.
He says hospital funding has increased 43 per cent since the Liberals came to power in 2003, but the government must decide which services it can afford to provide in which communities.
The premier also says there's nothing unusual in hospitals deciding to postpone elective surgeries until after their fiscal year end to avoid running deficits, which are illegal under Ontario law."There's 'nothing unusual' in postponing elective surgeries (because they're not really important, eh?), in order to satisfy some Liberal politician's accounting edict?!
ARE YOU FLICKING KIDDING, DALTON??
YOU CREATED THESE ILLEGAL DEFICITS!!
YOU RUN THE HEALTH MONOPOLY!!
It is this kind of ignorant, smug, wrong-headed comment that is indicative of McGuinty's failing Liberal health care ideology.
Think about it: McGuinty, unbelievably, sees it as quite normal that elective surgeries are on a lower priority than politically-mandated accounting details!
McGuinty sees NOTHING UNUSUAL in putting a real patient's need below that of the state's accounting decrees! That McGuinty sees this as just a plain ole' truth, just a regular ole' way of doin' things, is WHY THESE LIBERALS ARE INCOMPETENT.
And, though the Star claims McGuinty doesn't want to "pre-judge the outcome" of the coroner's inquest, that's exactly what McGuinty has already done, as seen in the St.Catharines Standard story by Jonathan Jenkins, further below: whatever the coroner may recommend, McGuinty's already saying he won't change his mind!!
***************************************
INVOKING THE VICTIMS OF McGUINTY'S HEALTH MONOPOLISM
Adam Radwanski wrote in "A life lost, a potential poster girl against hospital restructuring found". (Globe and Mail. Jan.25, 2010, here)
"If a coroner launches a full inquest into the holiday-season death of Reilly Anzovino, it will be about more than whether one life could have been saved.
As reported in Saturday's Globe, the manner in which the 18-year-old died - in an ambulance en route to a hospital some distance away, because the emergency rooms in the hospital closest to the scene of her car accident recently stopped providing 24-hour emergency service - has caused considerable unrest in the Niagara area where she lived. And at stake might be one of the more controversial ways Ontario is supposed to be making its health-care system sustainable, not just in that region but provincewide.
Ask most of the people charged with devising health-care policy - from provincial officials to senior consultants to representatives of the Ontario Hospital Association - about how to get costs under control and the conversation will likely turn to "integration."
The word takes on different meanings, and in some cases it just refers to better co-ordination between health-care centres and between different medical professionals. But in many instances, it means attempting to improve efficiency by limiting the overlap in services offered by hospitals in close proximity to one another.
The idea is that it's both less expensive for taxpayers and better for patients to entrust certain services to one hospital that's well-equipped to deliver them, rather than several hospitals that deliver them less well.
The impediment to this sort of reform, even for governments that fervently believe in its merits, is that it's a public-relations nightmare. Nobody wants to hear that the nearest hospital is being downgraded or closed, and many local interests - doctors, hospital boards and especially politicians - will warn that the government's heartlessness will lead to lost lives.
In Ms. Anzovino, merger opponents may have the perfect poster girl the next time they want to put a face to those fears.
Her death sounds exactly like the sort of horror story we're always warned about. Ms. Anzovino, young and by all accounts extremely likeable, makes an incredibly sympathetic victim. And from the government's perspective, it could hardly have happened in a worse place.
The Niagara region is heralded by some insiders as a model for integration. For its willingness to make some tough decisions - decisions such as shifting services from the modest hospital in Ms. Anzovino's hometown of Fort Erie and another one down the road in Port Colborne to the more modern facility in nearby Welland - it's described by Ontario Hospital Association president Tom Closson as being "at the leading edge of change."
It also happens to be at the leading edge of protest. By the account of one former provincial health official, Niagara is "one of - if not the most - political health-care environments in the province."
Integration advocates attribute that to a particularly entrenched group of doctors. Others might contend it's because the province, and local health officials, have been more aggressive than elsewhere in trampling over local objections to reforms. In any event, it's an area where it's possible to get cross-partisan criticism of contentious health reforms, because even populist Liberal MPP Kim Craitor is prepared to wade in.
There is probably nowhere in the province where there would be more people ready to say "I told you so" if there proves any evidence that closing emergency rooms caused a teenager's death.
Of course, it may be that the coroner - if he moves forward with an inquest - will find no such thing. Perhaps the few minutes extra that it took to get to Welland made no difference. Or maybe, as defenders of the cutbacks suggest, the ERs in Port Colborne and Fort Erie would never have been equipped to save her, even if they'd been running as before.
But if the mergers bear even a hint of responsibility, it won't just matter in Niagara. The next time the government tries to merge services in some other corner of Ontario, any enterprising local politician will be invoking Ms. Anzovino's name in every second sentence.
The government already steps carefully on most attempts at merging services; there's a reason why many of the Local Health Integration Networks set up by the Liberals are too toothless to integrate much of anything. By the time this saga has played out, it may be time to move on to a different model of cost containment."
'A different model of cost containment'? Without any competitive choice given to the consumer, in a closed, McGuinty-run health monopoly?! How about citizens having the freedom of not having to deal with the incompetence of the Liberal-controlled LHIN's at all? The government can 'contain costs' - if that, and not actual healthcare, is their goal - by allowing citizens to buy their own non-McGuinty-controlled insurance.
And why should we be invoking just Anzovino's name, unfortunately, she is but the latest in a long string of victims of Liberal healthcare duplicity (see here). How about invoking the already-forgotten Suzanne Aucoin? How about Don Davis, or Helen Harris, or Shona Holmes (who luckily survived McGuinty's health care horror, only to be abused by the defenders of medicare)?
The Liberals dismissed them all as anomalies!
*****************************************
McGUINTY'S ASYMETRICAL HEALTH MONOPOLY
And lastly...
Jonathan Jenkins wrote "McGuinty would welcome inquest into teen's death "(St.Catharines Standard, Jan.27, 2010, here).
Oddly, the same story by the same reporter was also in the Toronto Sun - with a different (here) headline: the Sun's story headline was: "Did hospital closures lead to teen's death?"
Hmm.
Interesting local spin - eh?! - on the choice of headline wording from the Liberal-fawning St.Catharines Standard; because the story ISN'T about McGuinty being all agreeable and welcoming and nice and open - it's about whether McGuinty's ideology led to an Ontario girl's death.
The Standard's headline scribes obviously couldn't, what, bring themselves to portray McGuinty's Liberalism in a bad light?! That won't look good on local healthcare monopolist Good Ole Jimmy Bradley! Can't have that.
But, interestingly, besides spelling Kim Craitor's name incorrectly as Craiter, the Sun's story omitted (but the Standard's included) what I believe to be the most crucial indicator of Dalton McGuinty's admitted Liberal healthcare duplicity - this line:
"The minister of health has said we can't deliver the best possible care within every Ontario community," the premier said."
This damning quote from McGuinty says a hell of a lot about McGuinty's smarmy, failing, ideological health monopolism. It should be remembered by all who once believed in any Ontario Liberal's snake-oil health care promises.
Read it again.
It'll make you sick: McGuinty admits his Liberal government runs an asymetrical health care system: universally unequal. Promise one thing; deliver something else; bait and switch: call it what ever you want - but, unwittingly, McGuinty's admitted it.
This isn't the first time that a Liberal has acknowledged the limitations of their single-payer ideology - George Smitherman essentially said the same thing in a St.Catharines Standard story, Aug.11. 2005 (also here, pg.1); after admitting 'we can't do it all', Smitherman nevertheless continued the charade that they can (!), and merrily continued to force his despotic health monopolism!
McGuinty - the charlatan - now admits his ideological government can't deliver his single-payer-health-monopoly's promises equally, everywhere, to all!
But look closely: McGuinty coyly says that the health minister said that - you see this slimy method of operation!? Which health minister said this - the current one, Deb Matthews? When did she say that? Did anyone ask?!
I looked back, and McGuinty was possibly (?) referring to Deb Matthews' comments in Karen Howlett's Jan.23, 2010 Globe and Mail story "Teen's death ignites debate over emergency room closures", (here) where Howlett wrote:
"Hospitals do not all offer the same services, Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews said in an interview. “It's important that the public understands that if you want to take advantage of the best health care, we can't provide that in every single community.” "
and
"Ms. Matthews, however, maintained that closing the emergency departments was about providing better quality health care, not saving money. She said Douglas Memorial is not equipped to handle serious emergencies and often had to divert patients to other hospitals in the Niagara region or, in some cases, across the border to Buffalo.
“I am absolutely convinced that the people in Niagara have better quality health care now than they did before,” Ms. Matthews said."
A Liberal actually acknowledged that their Ontario government sends patients to the States, to Buffalo?! Someone, call Michael Moore and Mike Dukakis!
Matthews here also admits her Liberals haven't properly equipped Douglas Memorial, either; yet McGuinty's single-payer-Liberal-despotism contributed, if not forced, the south Niagara hospitals to deteriorate - counting on the fact that the Americans would be there to pick up the slack. What hypocrisy from Dalton's smug Liberal America bashers.
Has Matthews or any other McGuintyite admitted as much since 2003?
Now Deb Matthews tells us she can't provide the best health care in every community?!
Now Deb Matthews, unbelievably, wants to revise history to make us think that closing the hospital ER's in Niagara - a result of the Smitherman-Liberal-instigated, Jack Kitts-reviewed, and Liberal-LHIN-approved HIP plan - WAS NOT about saving money!
But that's EXACTLY what it was about!! It was all about McGuinty's Liberals cutting budgets and finding 'savings'!! It was ALL ABOUT cutting the NHS's healthcare spending!
This has George Smitherman's stink ALL OVER IT.
What Liberal liars!!
Even Dr. Kitts (who wrote the HIP review report) said in Oct.2008 that the NHS was already, undeniably, underfunded - (see here) , where I wrote:
"So now, Kitts tells us what had already been obvious, and what the McGuinty Liberals have always denied, and attempted to cover up: that the NHS is underfunded.
“The shortage of cash has resulted in the deferral of plant and equipment expenditures,” Kitts stated about the NHS in his written report to the LHIN. “While some capital investments can be deferred, they likely cannot be eliminated, and inappropriate business and clinical decisions may be made in the meantime.” The Liberals have been UNDERfunding the NHS for years – the question now is, has the “shortage of cash” for capital investments - or for operating budgets – ALREADY caused “inappropriate” business or clinical decisions affecting patient health? How will we ever know? Are we just supposed to believe that the systemic problems in the NHS will magically disappear when the new hospital is built - or will the same problems just transfer over there?"
"INAPPROPRIATE DECISIONS MAY BE MADE", Dr. Kitts had forewarned: now let's see McGuinty's Liberals backtrack, defending themselves that they didn't know anything about the predictable blowback to their monopolistic health ideology!!
The Liberals admit "we can't deliver" to all Ontarians, contrary to McGuinty's smarmy election propaganda: you ever remember McGuinty or Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley promising that ?!!
The incompetent Liberals admit they can't deliver - yet these Liberal despots also PREVENT YOU from being able to buy YOUR OWN health care services.
McGuinty says his Liberals can't deliver on their health care promises/lies/deceptions everywhere in Ontario - YET THAT DIDN'T STOP HIM FROM TAXING the crap out of us - no matter where we lived.
And this is the ultimate point:
McGUINTY - fully aware that his Liberals can't - as Smitherman already admitted five years ago - 'do it all' , nevertheless knowingly continued to perpetuate his no-other-choice monopolistic Liberal healthcare duplicity, consequences be damned.
This is an outrage.
Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals should be held criminally liable for deaths that occur due to their unaccountable political monopolist ideology: if you want to champion a universal health care system for political gain, peddling the political fabrication that it's a Liberal utopia where all care is equally available to everyone everywhere, and if you want to force a single-payer, state-run monopoly to do that, banning citizens from insuring themselves, then you simply can't say "oh, I wasn't aware of the consequences of my ideologically monopolist decisions."
McGuinty, the lying Liberal leader, knew, or should have known: in either case, he'd be negligent, and guilty.
Jenkins' story, from the Jan.27, 2010 St.Catharines Standard:
"An inquest into whether emergency room closures in Niagara contributed to teenager Reilly Anzovino's death would be welcome, but that doesn't mean he would reverse those decisions if the inquest recommended it, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Tuesday.
"First of all, my thoughts are with the family of the young girl that lost her life," McGuinty said.
"I understand there might be a coroner's inquest connected to this. If there were, we would welcome that and we would welcome any recommendations that came from that," he said.
Anzovino, 18, died Dec. 27 after a car she was a passenger in crashed near Nigh Road and Highway 3 near the Fort Erie-Port Colborne boundary.
Friends and family of the Fort Erie teen asked if the Local Health Integration Network's decision t close the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospital emergency rooms may have left her too far from medical help.
The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN closed the two emergency rooms to save money.
Anzovino died en route to the Welland hospital, a trip that took just under 20 minutes.
"I'm not going to speculate on the outcome of any potential inquest," McGuinty said.
"But I can say we are always motivated by a desire to ensure we're delivering the best possible care to our families and as close as possible to home," he said.
"The minister of health has said we can't deliver the best possible care within every Ontario community," the premier said.
"We have to localize some of that expertise, that excellence in different parts of the province."
McGuinty's own backbench MPP from Niagara Falls, Kim Craitor, called for the coroner's inquest to be held, along with Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and Welland NDP MPP Peter Kormos.
The Ontario Federation of Labour joined that call Tuesday.
"It's not enough to wring our hands over this tragedy," OFL president Sid Ryan said in a statement. "We have to take concrete action to prevent this kind of thing from happening again."
Read the opening line again:
"An inquest into whether emergency room closures in Niagara contributed to teenager Reilly Anzovino's death would be welcome, but that doesn't mean he would reverse those decisions if the inquest recommended it, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Tuesday."
This smug Liberal is already saying 'yeah, inquest... whatever... I don't care what they say, I ain't changing my mind.' Unreal. Truly unbelievable. McGuinty calculated that he could write off the south half of Niagara, make cuts which he then pretended he didn't, and that no-one'd give a shit.
This serial Liberal liar can't continue to claim he didn't know about any of this and deny his own political complicity.
What McGuinty needs is jail time.
*
Karen Howlett wrote in "Ontario Premier shifts blame for emergency-room closings;
Opposition calls for review of health agencies that made decision", (Globe and Mail, Jan.27, 2010, here):
"Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is distancing his government from the controversial closing of emergency departments in two hospitals, saying it was a provincially appointed health agency that made the decision.
The Premier was commenting for the first time on stories in The Globe and Mail about a Fort Erie teenager who was fatally injured in a car accident on Boxing Day. Reilly Anzovino's family has called for a coroner's inquest to determine whether the 18-year-old college student might still be alive if the emergency department at the local hospital had still been open.
"We rely on the best advice that we get from people on the ground, from the people who work in our Local Health Integration Networks," Mr. McGuinty told reporters yesterday. "The changes that were made there were all with a view to ensuring that we provide the best possible care."
But opposition members accuse the Premier of trying to hide behind the very bureaucracy created by his government and are calling for a review of all 14 Local Health Integration Networks, or LHINs, that control hospitals across Ontario.
Douglas Memorial Hospital in Fort Erie permanently closed its emergency department last September, forcing the ambulance to take nearly twice as long to transport Ms. Anzovino to the next nearest hospital in Welland. She died shortly before the ambulance arrived at the hospital.
Mr. McGuinty said he would welcome a coroner's inquest. But he said the "guiding imperative" that is driving many hospitals across Ontario to restructure is the stark reality that the government cannot afford the best health care in every single community.
The LHIN responsible for the Niagara Health System and its seven hospitals approved a restructuring plan that included converting the emergency departments in Fort Erie and Port Colborne into 24-hour urgent care centres. Niagara Health, which is awash in red ink, is trying to find $28-million in cost savings.
Christine Elliott, health critic for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, said Mr. McGuinty is quick to take credit when the news is good while blaming the LHINs for every "seemingly" bad decision.
"I think the Premier is trying to have his cake and eat it, too," she said.
Both she and New Democrat health critic France Gélinas called for a review of the LHINs created four years ago as part of a plan to hand over control of hospitals to local appointees.
The LHINs have enormous responsibilities for deciding how to spend scarce health-care dollars, but their boards of directors appointed by the province do not have the expertise or the tools to properly discharge these duties, Ms. Gélinas said.
"They are putting quality care at risk and also people's lives at risk with their decisions," she said. "
Did you read the opening line in the above story? Read it again!! McGuinty's now pretending HE DIDN'T KNOW know about the ER's which his own government closed in Niagara!
It's all the LHIN's fault!!!!
Do you laugh, or cry, at McGuinty's utterly shameless Liberal health care duplicity?
Doesn't McGuinty know - or did he conveniently forget - that David Caplan refused to get involved in the Niagara LHIN's decision to implement the NHS's Kitts HIP plan?
Didn't Niagara Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley or Kim Craitor ever mention this to McGuinty?!
Has the Liberal government of Ontario suddenly developed a case of mass political amnesia?
***************************
McGUINTY THINKS IT'S NORMAL THAT LIBERAL-MANDATED HOSPITAL BUREAUCRACY TAKES PRIORITY OVER PATIENT NEEDS
The Toronto Star, Jan.26, 2010, had a CP story, "McGuinty defends closure of Fort Erie hospital emergency room", here:
"Premier Dalton McGuinty is defending the decision to close the emergency room in Fort Erie, saying the province can't afford to provide every service in every community.
McGuinty says he doesn't want to pre-judge the outcome of an expected coroner's inquest into the death of Reilly Anzovino following a Boxing Day car accident.
The 18-year-old died as the ambulance carrying her was travelling more than 40 kilometres to Welland because the emergency department in Fort Erie had been closed.
The Ontario Health Coalition says the teen's death raises questions about whether closing the emergency room in Fort Erie led to an avoidable fatality.
McGuinty says it was the local health integration network that advised the government to close the Fort Erie emergency room.
He says hospital funding has increased 43 per cent since the Liberals came to power in 2003, but the government must decide which services it can afford to provide in which communities.
The premier also says there's nothing unusual in hospitals deciding to postpone elective surgeries until after their fiscal year end to avoid running deficits, which are illegal under Ontario law."There's 'nothing unusual' in postponing elective surgeries (because they're not really important, eh?), in order to satisfy some Liberal politician's accounting edict?!
ARE YOU FLICKING KIDDING, DALTON??
YOU CREATED THESE ILLEGAL DEFICITS!!
YOU RUN THE HEALTH MONOPOLY!!
It is this kind of ignorant, smug, wrong-headed comment that is indicative of McGuinty's failing Liberal health care ideology.
Think about it: McGuinty, unbelievably, sees it as quite normal that elective surgeries are on a lower priority than politically-mandated accounting details!
McGuinty sees NOTHING UNUSUAL in putting a real patient's need below that of the state's accounting decrees! That McGuinty sees this as just a plain ole' truth, just a regular ole' way of doin' things, is WHY THESE LIBERALS ARE INCOMPETENT.
And, though the Star claims McGuinty doesn't want to "pre-judge the outcome" of the coroner's inquest, that's exactly what McGuinty has already done, as seen in the St.Catharines Standard story by Jonathan Jenkins, further below: whatever the coroner may recommend, McGuinty's already saying he won't change his mind!!
***************************************
INVOKING THE VICTIMS OF McGUINTY'S HEALTH MONOPOLISM
Adam Radwanski wrote in "A life lost, a potential poster girl against hospital restructuring found". (Globe and Mail. Jan.25, 2010, here)
"If a coroner launches a full inquest into the holiday-season death of Reilly Anzovino, it will be about more than whether one life could have been saved.
As reported in Saturday's Globe, the manner in which the 18-year-old died - in an ambulance en route to a hospital some distance away, because the emergency rooms in the hospital closest to the scene of her car accident recently stopped providing 24-hour emergency service - has caused considerable unrest in the Niagara area where she lived. And at stake might be one of the more controversial ways Ontario is supposed to be making its health-care system sustainable, not just in that region but provincewide.
Ask most of the people charged with devising health-care policy - from provincial officials to senior consultants to representatives of the Ontario Hospital Association - about how to get costs under control and the conversation will likely turn to "integration."
The word takes on different meanings, and in some cases it just refers to better co-ordination between health-care centres and between different medical professionals. But in many instances, it means attempting to improve efficiency by limiting the overlap in services offered by hospitals in close proximity to one another.
The idea is that it's both less expensive for taxpayers and better for patients to entrust certain services to one hospital that's well-equipped to deliver them, rather than several hospitals that deliver them less well.
The impediment to this sort of reform, even for governments that fervently believe in its merits, is that it's a public-relations nightmare. Nobody wants to hear that the nearest hospital is being downgraded or closed, and many local interests - doctors, hospital boards and especially politicians - will warn that the government's heartlessness will lead to lost lives.
In Ms. Anzovino, merger opponents may have the perfect poster girl the next time they want to put a face to those fears.
Her death sounds exactly like the sort of horror story we're always warned about. Ms. Anzovino, young and by all accounts extremely likeable, makes an incredibly sympathetic victim. And from the government's perspective, it could hardly have happened in a worse place.
The Niagara region is heralded by some insiders as a model for integration. For its willingness to make some tough decisions - decisions such as shifting services from the modest hospital in Ms. Anzovino's hometown of Fort Erie and another one down the road in Port Colborne to the more modern facility in nearby Welland - it's described by Ontario Hospital Association president Tom Closson as being "at the leading edge of change."
It also happens to be at the leading edge of protest. By the account of one former provincial health official, Niagara is "one of - if not the most - political health-care environments in the province."
Integration advocates attribute that to a particularly entrenched group of doctors. Others might contend it's because the province, and local health officials, have been more aggressive than elsewhere in trampling over local objections to reforms. In any event, it's an area where it's possible to get cross-partisan criticism of contentious health reforms, because even populist Liberal MPP Kim Craitor is prepared to wade in.
There is probably nowhere in the province where there would be more people ready to say "I told you so" if there proves any evidence that closing emergency rooms caused a teenager's death.
Of course, it may be that the coroner - if he moves forward with an inquest - will find no such thing. Perhaps the few minutes extra that it took to get to Welland made no difference. Or maybe, as defenders of the cutbacks suggest, the ERs in Port Colborne and Fort Erie would never have been equipped to save her, even if they'd been running as before.
But if the mergers bear even a hint of responsibility, it won't just matter in Niagara. The next time the government tries to merge services in some other corner of Ontario, any enterprising local politician will be invoking Ms. Anzovino's name in every second sentence.
The government already steps carefully on most attempts at merging services; there's a reason why many of the Local Health Integration Networks set up by the Liberals are too toothless to integrate much of anything. By the time this saga has played out, it may be time to move on to a different model of cost containment."
'A different model of cost containment'? Without any competitive choice given to the consumer, in a closed, McGuinty-run health monopoly?! How about citizens having the freedom of not having to deal with the incompetence of the Liberal-controlled LHIN's at all? The government can 'contain costs' - if that, and not actual healthcare, is their goal - by allowing citizens to buy their own non-McGuinty-controlled insurance.
And why should we be invoking just Anzovino's name, unfortunately, she is but the latest in a long string of victims of Liberal healthcare duplicity (see here). How about invoking the already-forgotten Suzanne Aucoin? How about Don Davis, or Helen Harris, or Shona Holmes (who luckily survived McGuinty's health care horror, only to be abused by the defenders of medicare)?
The Liberals dismissed them all as anomalies!
*****************************************
McGUINTY'S ASYMETRICAL HEALTH MONOPOLY
And lastly...
Jonathan Jenkins wrote "McGuinty would welcome inquest into teen's death "(St.Catharines Standard, Jan.27, 2010, here).
Oddly, the same story by the same reporter was also in the Toronto Sun - with a different (here) headline: the Sun's story headline was: "Did hospital closures lead to teen's death?"
Hmm.
Interesting local spin - eh?! - on the choice of headline wording from the Liberal-fawning St.Catharines Standard; because the story ISN'T about McGuinty being all agreeable and welcoming and nice and open - it's about whether McGuinty's ideology led to an Ontario girl's death.
The Standard's headline scribes obviously couldn't, what, bring themselves to portray McGuinty's Liberalism in a bad light?! That won't look good on local healthcare monopolist Good Ole Jimmy Bradley! Can't have that.
But, interestingly, besides spelling Kim Craitor's name incorrectly as Craiter, the Sun's story omitted (but the Standard's included) what I believe to be the most crucial indicator of Dalton McGuinty's admitted Liberal healthcare duplicity - this line:
"The minister of health has said we can't deliver the best possible care within every Ontario community," the premier said."
This damning quote from McGuinty says a hell of a lot about McGuinty's smarmy, failing, ideological health monopolism. It should be remembered by all who once believed in any Ontario Liberal's snake-oil health care promises.
Read it again.
It'll make you sick: McGuinty admits his Liberal government runs an asymetrical health care system: universally unequal. Promise one thing; deliver something else; bait and switch: call it what ever you want - but, unwittingly, McGuinty's admitted it.
This isn't the first time that a Liberal has acknowledged the limitations of their single-payer ideology - George Smitherman essentially said the same thing in a St.Catharines Standard story, Aug.11. 2005 (also here, pg.1); after admitting 'we can't do it all', Smitherman nevertheless continued the charade that they can (!), and merrily continued to force his despotic health monopolism!
McGuinty - the charlatan - now admits his ideological government can't deliver his single-payer-health-monopoly's promises equally, everywhere, to all!
But look closely: McGuinty coyly says that the health minister said that - you see this slimy method of operation!? Which health minister said this - the current one, Deb Matthews? When did she say that? Did anyone ask?!
I looked back, and McGuinty was possibly (?) referring to Deb Matthews' comments in Karen Howlett's Jan.23, 2010 Globe and Mail story "Teen's death ignites debate over emergency room closures", (here) where Howlett wrote:
"Hospitals do not all offer the same services, Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews said in an interview. “It's important that the public understands that if you want to take advantage of the best health care, we can't provide that in every single community.” "
and
"Ms. Matthews, however, maintained that closing the emergency departments was about providing better quality health care, not saving money. She said Douglas Memorial is not equipped to handle serious emergencies and often had to divert patients to other hospitals in the Niagara region or, in some cases, across the border to Buffalo.
“I am absolutely convinced that the people in Niagara have better quality health care now than they did before,” Ms. Matthews said."
A Liberal actually acknowledged that their Ontario government sends patients to the States, to Buffalo?! Someone, call Michael Moore and Mike Dukakis!
Matthews here also admits her Liberals haven't properly equipped Douglas Memorial, either; yet McGuinty's single-payer-Liberal-despotism contributed, if not forced, the south Niagara hospitals to deteriorate - counting on the fact that the Americans would be there to pick up the slack. What hypocrisy from Dalton's smug Liberal America bashers.
Has Matthews or any other McGuintyite admitted as much since 2003?
Now Deb Matthews tells us she can't provide the best health care in every community?!
Now Deb Matthews, unbelievably, wants to revise history to make us think that closing the hospital ER's in Niagara - a result of the Smitherman-Liberal-instigated, Jack Kitts-reviewed, and Liberal-LHIN-approved HIP plan - WAS NOT about saving money!
But that's EXACTLY what it was about!! It was all about McGuinty's Liberals cutting budgets and finding 'savings'!! It was ALL ABOUT cutting the NHS's healthcare spending!
This has George Smitherman's stink ALL OVER IT.
What Liberal liars!!
Even Dr. Kitts (who wrote the HIP review report) said in Oct.2008 that the NHS was already, undeniably, underfunded - (see here) , where I wrote:
"So now, Kitts tells us what had already been obvious, and what the McGuinty Liberals have always denied, and attempted to cover up: that the NHS is underfunded.
“The shortage of cash has resulted in the deferral of plant and equipment expenditures,” Kitts stated about the NHS in his written report to the LHIN. “While some capital investments can be deferred, they likely cannot be eliminated, and inappropriate business and clinical decisions may be made in the meantime.” The Liberals have been UNDERfunding the NHS for years – the question now is, has the “shortage of cash” for capital investments - or for operating budgets – ALREADY caused “inappropriate” business or clinical decisions affecting patient health? How will we ever know? Are we just supposed to believe that the systemic problems in the NHS will magically disappear when the new hospital is built - or will the same problems just transfer over there?"
"INAPPROPRIATE DECISIONS MAY BE MADE", Dr. Kitts had forewarned: now let's see McGuinty's Liberals backtrack, defending themselves that they didn't know anything about the predictable blowback to their monopolistic health ideology!!
The Liberals admit "we can't deliver" to all Ontarians, contrary to McGuinty's smarmy election propaganda: you ever remember McGuinty or Kim Craitor or Jim Bradley promising that ?!!
The incompetent Liberals admit they can't deliver - yet these Liberal despots also PREVENT YOU from being able to buy YOUR OWN health care services.
McGuinty says his Liberals can't deliver on their health care promises/lies/deceptions everywhere in Ontario - YET THAT DIDN'T STOP HIM FROM TAXING the crap out of us - no matter where we lived.
And this is the ultimate point:
McGUINTY - fully aware that his Liberals can't - as Smitherman already admitted five years ago - 'do it all' , nevertheless knowingly continued to perpetuate his no-other-choice monopolistic Liberal healthcare duplicity, consequences be damned.
This is an outrage.
Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals should be held criminally liable for deaths that occur due to their unaccountable political monopolist ideology: if you want to champion a universal health care system for political gain, peddling the political fabrication that it's a Liberal utopia where all care is equally available to everyone everywhere, and if you want to force a single-payer, state-run monopoly to do that, banning citizens from insuring themselves, then you simply can't say "oh, I wasn't aware of the consequences of my ideologically monopolist decisions."
McGuinty, the lying Liberal leader, knew, or should have known: in either case, he'd be negligent, and guilty.
Jenkins' story, from the Jan.27, 2010 St.Catharines Standard:
"An inquest into whether emergency room closures in Niagara contributed to teenager Reilly Anzovino's death would be welcome, but that doesn't mean he would reverse those decisions if the inquest recommended it, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Tuesday.
"First of all, my thoughts are with the family of the young girl that lost her life," McGuinty said.
"I understand there might be a coroner's inquest connected to this. If there were, we would welcome that and we would welcome any recommendations that came from that," he said.
Anzovino, 18, died Dec. 27 after a car she was a passenger in crashed near Nigh Road and Highway 3 near the Fort Erie-Port Colborne boundary.
Friends and family of the Fort Erie teen asked if the Local Health Integration Network's decision t close the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospital emergency rooms may have left her too far from medical help.
The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN closed the two emergency rooms to save money.
Anzovino died en route to the Welland hospital, a trip that took just under 20 minutes.
"I'm not going to speculate on the outcome of any potential inquest," McGuinty said.
"But I can say we are always motivated by a desire to ensure we're delivering the best possible care to our families and as close as possible to home," he said.
"The minister of health has said we can't deliver the best possible care within every Ontario community," the premier said.
"We have to localize some of that expertise, that excellence in different parts of the province."
McGuinty's own backbench MPP from Niagara Falls, Kim Craitor, called for the coroner's inquest to be held, along with Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and Welland NDP MPP Peter Kormos.
The Ontario Federation of Labour joined that call Tuesday.
"It's not enough to wring our hands over this tragedy," OFL president Sid Ryan said in a statement. "We have to take concrete action to prevent this kind of thing from happening again."
Read the opening line again:
"An inquest into whether emergency room closures in Niagara contributed to teenager Reilly Anzovino's death would be welcome, but that doesn't mean he would reverse those decisions if the inquest recommended it, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Tuesday."
This smug Liberal is already saying 'yeah, inquest... whatever... I don't care what they say, I ain't changing my mind.' Unreal. Truly unbelievable. McGuinty calculated that he could write off the south half of Niagara, make cuts which he then pretended he didn't, and that no-one'd give a shit.
This serial Liberal liar can't continue to claim he didn't know about any of this and deny his own political complicity.
What McGuinty needs is jail time.
*
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Ontario Ombudsman to investigate Liberal's LHIN in Niagara
Susan Howlett wrote in "Province's Ombudsman launches probe into ER closings", (Globe and Mail, Jan.26, 2010, here):
"A provincially appointed health agency that gave the green light to permanently closing the emergency departments in two Ontario hospitals is under investigation by the Ombudsman's office.
Ontario Ombudsman André Marin is probing complaints that the agency did not consult enough with local residents before approving a controversial restructuring plan for the Niagara region hospitals, including closing the two emergency departments.
Mr. Marin will release his finding in the next few weeks, a spokeswoman said. He launched his probe into the agency, known in government parlance as the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), after receiving 37 complaints.
His report will be all the more timely, given the calls for a coroner's inquest into whether Reilly Anzovino, a Fort Erie teen fatally injured in a car accident on Boxing Day, might still be alive if the emergency department at the local hospital had been open.
This is the first time the Ombudsman has investigated one of the province's 14 LHINs, created four years ago as part of the McGuinty government's plan to hand over control of hospitals and nursing homes to local appointees.
Each LHIN is governed by a nine-member board of directors appointed by the province. The idea is that the LHIN, rather than government, decides how to spend scarce healthcare
dollars, based on input from local residents, plus an evaluation of the impact on the community.
The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN is accused of ignoring these principles. One former board member said he resigned in protest in September, 2008, following the LHIN's decision to close the only emergency department in the west end of Hamilton to adults, making it available only to children.
In his letter of resignation, obtained by The Globe and Mail, Stephen Birch, a professor of health economics at Hamilton's McMaster University, says he is "shocked" that the board approved the plan for the Hamilton hospital, even though the briefing note provided to directors clearly stated that "there are no published studies that evaluate possible harm caused by bypassing the closest hospital."
Pat Mandy, chief executive officer of the LHIN, said she has no plans to change how it operates until she sees the Ombudsman's report.
"Since the inception of the LHIN, we've continued to do significant community engagement, so we'll be interested to see his perspective," she said.
But even before Ms. Anzovino's death, the LHIN's decisions had sparked controversy. Paul Dobrovolskis said he and four other emergency room doctors in the hospital in Niagara Falls resigned last September over the region's "systematic dismantling" of emergency rooms.
The Niagara Health System, which operates seven hospitals, closed the emergency departments in Fort Erie and Port Colborne last year as part of a plan, approved by the LHIN, to find $28-million in cost savings.
The Ontario Health Coalition yesterday joined Ms. Anzovino's family in calling for an inquest to determine whether the 18-year-old's life was cut short because it took an ambulance nearly twice as long to transport her to the next nearest hospital in Welland.
"This raises the issue of the human costs of hospital budget cuts across Ontario," said coalition head Natalie Mehra.
Sue Salzer, head of a community group called the Yellow Shirt Brigade, brought the problems to the attention of an all-party government committee yesterday in Niagara Falls, where public hearings began on the provincial budget.
"All the problems here in Niagara started in late 2008, when a hospital improvement plan was designed by staff of the Niagara Health System, and subsequently rubber stamped by the LHIN board," she said in her prepared remarks."
*
This is not the first time the Ombudsman's Office has examined the McGuinty/Bradley/Craitor health monopoly here in Niagara: Andre Marin is familiar with how McGuinty's health monopoly has dealt with Niagarans; he had already issued a scathing report on the McGuinty Liberals' mistreatment of St.Catharines resident Suzanne Aucoin, who was forced to seek cancer treatment in the United States.
For details on how despotic Liberals such as premier Dalton McGuinty and that incompetent clown of a health minister, George Smitherman (who's now, frighteningly, running for mayor of Toronto) acted in Aucoin's case, read "Liberal Healthcare Duplicity, An Ontario Overview, 2003-2007" here, see pages: 8, 9, 45, 56, 62, 69-75.
Furthermore, "All the problems here in Niagara" DID NOT "start in 2008"; this is nonsense: McGuinty's healthcare duplicity can be traced right back to:
- Greg Sorbara's first budget in 2004, where he declared he was going to reduce health care spending (here);
- to Smitherman's authoritarian Commitment to the Fututre of Medicare act;
- to Smitherman's imposition of the Liberal-appointed, government-funded LHIN firewall/bureaucracy
- to McGuinty's unprecedented new multi-billion dollar health tax ... all authoritarian, statist, big-government measures which deny Ontario patients one significant thing: the right to by-pass the government and buy our own non-government-controlled health-care.
This is NOT a Niagara-only health care problem, (see here); this is an ideological, province-wide political pandemic, caused by Liberal political duplicity - this is a systemic ideological infection.
The ombudsman should be looking at the McGuinty Liberal government's monopolist health-care incompetence throughout the entire province; but, seeing as the ombudsman's resources are limited, at least the ombudsman's investigation of Niagara's Liberal-controlled LHIN could become a template for all the LHIN's, (see here).
The deaths of Anzovino, Don Davis (here), Helen Harris (here), and countless other Ontarians, must at some point - and soon - be examined in not only a medical, but a political, light.
Why - to this day, in 2010 - has no Liberal called for an investigation into the Nov.2007 CIHI revelation that the St.Catharines hospital in the Niagara Health System had the third-highest death rate in Canada?! (see here)
It should be plainly obvious that the NHS's Nov.2007 high-death-rate revelation (still un-investigated) DIRECTLY LED to the July-Oct. 2008 Hospital Improvement Plan (HIP) by Dr. Kitts (see here; here) - which is now the subject of the ombudsman's investigation!!
By Dec.2007, the McGuinty/Smitherman Liberals were denying that there was any link between the NHS death-rate and the Liberal's health care funding model (see spokeswoman Laurel Ostfield here); and that's the LAST ANYONE HAS HEARD ABOUT IT; yet, as we have seen, the very essence of the HIP plan was plainly all about SAVING MONEY!!
Also, in Nov.2008, just after the Kitts report was accepted, calls to appoint a provincial supervisor for the NHS were ignored by the McGuinty/Caplan Liberals (see here): that significant action alone is worth examining: was that an act of negligence by McGuinty's Liberals, leading to the events which the Ombudsman is now investigating in 2010? Why did McGuinty's despotic, typically arrogant Liberals IGNORE this call by the health-care-cut-affected local Niagara municipalities?
Even in Dec.2008, the Liberal health spokesman Steve Irwin was saying, amazingly, "We can't continue to have health-care spending rise at the rate it has in the past" (here): this was unbelievably amazing because it was being said WHILE THE McGUINTY MONOPOLISTS CONTINUED TO DENY ONTARIANS ANY OTHER CHOICE!!
Really - does Andre Marin have the jurisdiction to deal with matters of constitutional infringement?! Because that's ultimately what this is all about: incompetent, despotic Liberal monopolists controlling by unreasonable and unaccountable fiat the health-care of some thirteen million Ontarians.
*
[By the way, have you seen the McGuinty government's TV ads running in mid-Jan.2010, touting how 'healthcare is nearby' when you need it?!
Really: was that what happened in Anzovino's case?!
Or was that ad just another Big-Brother-health-care-propaganda effort by the McGuinty/Matthews Liberals? What do McGuinty's Liberals specifically mean when they claim care is "nearby"; and specifically how 'near' is "nearby" in Port Colborne, or in Fort Erie; and, what exactly are McGuinty/Matthews definitions of "need", and of "when", and of "nearby"??!
Is the U.S. "nearby" when it comes to McGuinty's definition of health care? And, mentioning the States, remember how Liberals Jim Bradley and Smitherman agitated to ban the American firm LifeLine (here, pg.45; here; here) to offer cardiac screening clinics in Ontario? Now, we're hearing how Ontarians are all fat and suffering cardiac problems. Maybe the ombudsman can also examine the Liberals' complicity in compounding today's problem by having banned - for purely ideological reasons - this provider. How many Ontarians died because of that Liberal move?]
"A provincially appointed health agency that gave the green light to permanently closing the emergency departments in two Ontario hospitals is under investigation by the Ombudsman's office.
Ontario Ombudsman André Marin is probing complaints that the agency did not consult enough with local residents before approving a controversial restructuring plan for the Niagara region hospitals, including closing the two emergency departments.
Mr. Marin will release his finding in the next few weeks, a spokeswoman said. He launched his probe into the agency, known in government parlance as the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), after receiving 37 complaints.
His report will be all the more timely, given the calls for a coroner's inquest into whether Reilly Anzovino, a Fort Erie teen fatally injured in a car accident on Boxing Day, might still be alive if the emergency department at the local hospital had been open.
This is the first time the Ombudsman has investigated one of the province's 14 LHINs, created four years ago as part of the McGuinty government's plan to hand over control of hospitals and nursing homes to local appointees.
Each LHIN is governed by a nine-member board of directors appointed by the province. The idea is that the LHIN, rather than government, decides how to spend scarce healthcare
dollars, based on input from local residents, plus an evaluation of the impact on the community.
The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN is accused of ignoring these principles. One former board member said he resigned in protest in September, 2008, following the LHIN's decision to close the only emergency department in the west end of Hamilton to adults, making it available only to children.
In his letter of resignation, obtained by The Globe and Mail, Stephen Birch, a professor of health economics at Hamilton's McMaster University, says he is "shocked" that the board approved the plan for the Hamilton hospital, even though the briefing note provided to directors clearly stated that "there are no published studies that evaluate possible harm caused by bypassing the closest hospital."
Pat Mandy, chief executive officer of the LHIN, said she has no plans to change how it operates until she sees the Ombudsman's report.
"Since the inception of the LHIN, we've continued to do significant community engagement, so we'll be interested to see his perspective," she said.
But even before Ms. Anzovino's death, the LHIN's decisions had sparked controversy. Paul Dobrovolskis said he and four other emergency room doctors in the hospital in Niagara Falls resigned last September over the region's "systematic dismantling" of emergency rooms.
The Niagara Health System, which operates seven hospitals, closed the emergency departments in Fort Erie and Port Colborne last year as part of a plan, approved by the LHIN, to find $28-million in cost savings.
The Ontario Health Coalition yesterday joined Ms. Anzovino's family in calling for an inquest to determine whether the 18-year-old's life was cut short because it took an ambulance nearly twice as long to transport her to the next nearest hospital in Welland.
"This raises the issue of the human costs of hospital budget cuts across Ontario," said coalition head Natalie Mehra.
Sue Salzer, head of a community group called the Yellow Shirt Brigade, brought the problems to the attention of an all-party government committee yesterday in Niagara Falls, where public hearings began on the provincial budget.
"All the problems here in Niagara started in late 2008, when a hospital improvement plan was designed by staff of the Niagara Health System, and subsequently rubber stamped by the LHIN board," she said in her prepared remarks."
*
This is not the first time the Ombudsman's Office has examined the McGuinty/Bradley/Craitor health monopoly here in Niagara: Andre Marin is familiar with how McGuinty's health monopoly has dealt with Niagarans; he had already issued a scathing report on the McGuinty Liberals' mistreatment of St.Catharines resident Suzanne Aucoin, who was forced to seek cancer treatment in the United States.
For details on how despotic Liberals such as premier Dalton McGuinty and that incompetent clown of a health minister, George Smitherman (who's now, frighteningly, running for mayor of Toronto) acted in Aucoin's case, read "Liberal Healthcare Duplicity, An Ontario Overview, 2003-2007" here, see pages: 8, 9, 45, 56, 62, 69-75.
Furthermore, "All the problems here in Niagara" DID NOT "start in 2008"; this is nonsense: McGuinty's healthcare duplicity can be traced right back to:
- Greg Sorbara's first budget in 2004, where he declared he was going to reduce health care spending (here);
- to Smitherman's authoritarian Commitment to the Fututre of Medicare act;
- to Smitherman's imposition of the Liberal-appointed, government-funded LHIN firewall/bureaucracy
- to McGuinty's unprecedented new multi-billion dollar health tax ... all authoritarian, statist, big-government measures which deny Ontario patients one significant thing: the right to by-pass the government and buy our own non-government-controlled health-care.
This is NOT a Niagara-only health care problem, (see here); this is an ideological, province-wide political pandemic, caused by Liberal political duplicity - this is a systemic ideological infection.
The ombudsman should be looking at the McGuinty Liberal government's monopolist health-care incompetence throughout the entire province; but, seeing as the ombudsman's resources are limited, at least the ombudsman's investigation of Niagara's Liberal-controlled LHIN could become a template for all the LHIN's, (see here).
The deaths of Anzovino, Don Davis (here), Helen Harris (here), and countless other Ontarians, must at some point - and soon - be examined in not only a medical, but a political, light.
Why - to this day, in 2010 - has no Liberal called for an investigation into the Nov.2007 CIHI revelation that the St.Catharines hospital in the Niagara Health System had the third-highest death rate in Canada?! (see here)
It should be plainly obvious that the NHS's Nov.2007 high-death-rate revelation (still un-investigated) DIRECTLY LED to the July-Oct. 2008 Hospital Improvement Plan (HIP) by Dr. Kitts (see here; here) - which is now the subject of the ombudsman's investigation!!
By Dec.2007, the McGuinty/Smitherman Liberals were denying that there was any link between the NHS death-rate and the Liberal's health care funding model (see spokeswoman Laurel Ostfield here); and that's the LAST ANYONE HAS HEARD ABOUT IT; yet, as we have seen, the very essence of the HIP plan was plainly all about SAVING MONEY!!
Also, in Nov.2008, just after the Kitts report was accepted, calls to appoint a provincial supervisor for the NHS were ignored by the McGuinty/Caplan Liberals (see here): that significant action alone is worth examining: was that an act of negligence by McGuinty's Liberals, leading to the events which the Ombudsman is now investigating in 2010? Why did McGuinty's despotic, typically arrogant Liberals IGNORE this call by the health-care-cut-affected local Niagara municipalities?
Even in Dec.2008, the Liberal health spokesman Steve Irwin was saying, amazingly, "We can't continue to have health-care spending rise at the rate it has in the past" (here): this was unbelievably amazing because it was being said WHILE THE McGUINTY MONOPOLISTS CONTINUED TO DENY ONTARIANS ANY OTHER CHOICE!!
Really - does Andre Marin have the jurisdiction to deal with matters of constitutional infringement?! Because that's ultimately what this is all about: incompetent, despotic Liberal monopolists controlling by unreasonable and unaccountable fiat the health-care of some thirteen million Ontarians.
*
[By the way, have you seen the McGuinty government's TV ads running in mid-Jan.2010, touting how 'healthcare is nearby' when you need it?!
Really: was that what happened in Anzovino's case?!
Or was that ad just another Big-Brother-health-care-propaganda effort by the McGuinty/Matthews Liberals? What do McGuinty's Liberals specifically mean when they claim care is "nearby"; and specifically how 'near' is "nearby" in Port Colborne, or in Fort Erie; and, what exactly are McGuinty/Matthews definitions of "need", and of "when", and of "nearby"??!
Is the U.S. "nearby" when it comes to McGuinty's definition of health care? And, mentioning the States, remember how Liberals Jim Bradley and Smitherman agitated to ban the American firm LifeLine (here, pg.45; here; here) to offer cardiac screening clinics in Ontario? Now, we're hearing how Ontarians are all fat and suffering cardiac problems. Maybe the ombudsman can also examine the Liberals' complicity in compounding today's problem by having banned - for purely ideological reasons - this provider. How many Ontarians died because of that Liberal move?]
Thursday, January 21, 2010
What's melting faster: the Himalayan glaciers or Al Gore's Suzukiist credibility?
Further to ClimateGate, and the 'Himalayan Melting Glacier' hoax, we now have Richard Foot's column "Temperature data skewed: researchers", (National Post, Jan.21, 2010, here), another indictment on the sad trail of hoaxes, deceptions and outright lies of the climate-change/global-warming con artists.
Are these the first warnings about skewed "science" being used as the political basis to fearmonger for climate socialism?!
Of course not; the story arch of the new 'three C, P one' Commie Climate Change Plan (CCCP) has been developing well before Al Whore, er, "won" his joke "awards"; but, locally in Niagara, the press has been loathe to publish much of anything of what the skeptics had to say regarding the climatalarmism TM spread by the Gore/Suzuki/IPCC GreenFearTM commune.
Back on Nov.27, 2009, Phil Green wrote "Skewed science" (National Post, here) which also dealt with the same issues as above, of skewed and questionable temperature data used by the CRU and IPCC.
Did you hear about any of this in the local press?
For years, which fearmongering, skewed, politicized views were predominantly favoured in the St.Catharines Standard, and Niagara This Week?!
Why?
Are these the first warnings about skewed "science" being used as the political basis to fearmonger for climate socialism?!
Of course not; the story arch of the new 'three C, P one' Commie Climate Change Plan (CCCP) has been developing well before Al Whore, er, "won" his joke "awards"; but, locally in Niagara, the press has been loathe to publish much of anything of what the skeptics had to say regarding the climatalarmism TM spread by the Gore/Suzuki/IPCC GreenFearTM commune.
Back on Nov.27, 2009, Phil Green wrote "Skewed science" (National Post, here) which also dealt with the same issues as above, of skewed and questionable temperature data used by the CRU and IPCC.
Did you hear about any of this in the local press?
For years, which fearmongering, skewed, politicized views were predominantly favoured in the St.Catharines Standard, and Niagara This Week?!
Why?
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Melting credibility
Now that the climatalarmism TM of the 'melting Himalayan glaciers' has been revealed to be a fear-mongering hoax (see Peter Foster's column "IPCC meltdown", National Post, Jan.20, 2010 here) it's a good time to fondly recall some of the local eco-treacle, like Jane Hanlon's "Ecofest is a great introduction to spring" (St.Catharines Standard, Mar.27, 2008):
"What is an Eco Fest? Why it's an environmental festival, of course!
Rather than focusing on the floating Pacific plastic stew the size of Texas or the melting of the Himalayan glaciers (the drinking water for billions of people) or even the atmospheric brown clouds caused by soot, Niagara residents are this weekend focusing on what we CAN do.
The task of tackling climate change is daunting. Every facet of our current lifestyle requires an overhaul. Our land use practices have encouraged single-storey strip malls.
Major services and schools are being located on the outskirts of cities for regional savings but municipal strain. We continue to bury our waterways. We've developed a penchant for plastic-encased, individually-portioned, portable drinking water and tune into decorating shows that encourage matching glassware or replacing entire kitchens for the latest trend.
The reckless resource consumption of urban sprawl prevents adequate food security policies, increases transit costs and threatens the very air we breathe..."
Stop!! Yes, we're scared!! We have been well-fear-mongered! We are guilty of eco-sins!! We have evil reckless penchants, which are most likely cured with a good dose of socialism! We see this now! Good Gaia, what to do, what to do?
The Himalayas are melting! The Floods are nigh!
Al Gore, or Suzuki, or a polar bear, or... well... someone... told us this, and, well, they wouldn't lie, to, ah, SAVE THE PLANET, would they?
Doom awaits!
Repent, you evil, soot-covered, kitchen re-modelling, strip-mall-hooked, son of ... ... ...whaa... the Himalayan glaciers aren't melting? ah... so what?!
They could have been!!
And they might still be... so, there.
And that's good enough for anyone!
Who cares if the IPCC data and process has been corrupt from the start?
Rest assured that locally, our St.Catharines Standard Green Teamsters will surely be all over this issue, just as they brought us incredible local behind-the-scenes analysis of Climategate.
*
"What is an Eco Fest? Why it's an environmental festival, of course!
Rather than focusing on the floating Pacific plastic stew the size of Texas or the melting of the Himalayan glaciers (the drinking water for billions of people) or even the atmospheric brown clouds caused by soot, Niagara residents are this weekend focusing on what we CAN do.
The task of tackling climate change is daunting. Every facet of our current lifestyle requires an overhaul. Our land use practices have encouraged single-storey strip malls.
Major services and schools are being located on the outskirts of cities for regional savings but municipal strain. We continue to bury our waterways. We've developed a penchant for plastic-encased, individually-portioned, portable drinking water and tune into decorating shows that encourage matching glassware or replacing entire kitchens for the latest trend.
The reckless resource consumption of urban sprawl prevents adequate food security policies, increases transit costs and threatens the very air we breathe..."
Stop!! Yes, we're scared!! We have been well-fear-mongered! We are guilty of eco-sins!! We have evil reckless penchants, which are most likely cured with a good dose of socialism! We see this now! Good Gaia, what to do, what to do?
The Himalayas are melting! The Floods are nigh!
Al Gore, or Suzuki, or a polar bear, or... well... someone... told us this, and, well, they wouldn't lie, to, ah, SAVE THE PLANET, would they?
Doom awaits!
Repent, you evil, soot-covered, kitchen re-modelling, strip-mall-hooked, son of ... ... ...whaa... the Himalayan glaciers aren't melting? ah... so what?!
They could have been!!
And they might still be... so, there.
And that's good enough for anyone!
Who cares if the IPCC data and process has been corrupt from the start?
Rest assured that locally, our St.Catharines Standard Green Teamsters will surely be all over this issue, just as they brought us incredible local behind-the-scenes analysis of Climategate.
*
Iggy takes a dump in Niagara
We have been blessed!
The malodorous Michael Ignatieff himself has now graciously spewed his propaganda in Niagara on Jan.20, 2010, dumping another smelly load of GritShit TM propaganda in this Liberal Poop-O-Gram:
Another Liberal-lackie joke was the Jan.20, 2010 St.Catharines Standard editorial-page cartoon, drawn by the now-tiresome Dewar, showing Harper shuffling his cabinet, by moving a cabinet. har-de-har-har.
Even... um... funnier... was that Harper was drawn (tiresomely, again) dressed in ermine robes, wearing a strange, what? buffalo hat with horns and toilet paper.
Funnee stuff, eh?
Lookit dat der 'arper, he dun been shufflin' nothin' ... hyuck, hyuck...
Oddly, I seemed to have missed the Dewar funnee showing Dalton McGuinty shuffling his cabinet.
Did the St.Catharines Standard editors miss that, as well? McGuinty had a cabinet shuffle...?
What - no funnees showing a real despot in Ontario, an unaccountable Dalton McGuinty with toilet paper sticking out of his elitist ass?
Hah hah ha... oh you St.Catharines Sub Standard: well done. Or is it the St.Catharines Double-Standard?
No cartoons showed McGuinty spinning like a top, spewing lies like a Gatling-gun.
No cartoons of secretive MPP Jim Bradley in his luxurious robes, with toilet paper sticking to him!
Nope, Bradley and Smitherman and McGuinty and the rest of the Grit crew of congenital liars seem to be immune from lampooning; after all, they are serious Liberals, not to be trifled with. They are not cartoons, they are well meaning Liberals - Liberals - do you hear? Liberals do not wear ermine robes and horned buffalo hats, do you hear? How dare anyone ask why the St.Catharines Standard doesn't print cartoons about Brian McMullan, or McGuinty, or Bradley!
Speaking of cartoons, Lisa Van Dusen's laughable column (also Jan.20, 2010, in the St.Catharines Standard) was a cartoon itself - in words. The Obama mystique is now over, Lisa. Stop the red-herring bullshit about race. Back around Feb.2007, Obama didn't want to even talk about his colour; now, he's telling Letterman he was 'black' before the election. Hmm. A white mother, apparently, is irrelevant. Brown's senate win in Massachusetts is most certainly a repudiation of Obama's policies; and has nothing to do with colour - it's all about the socialism inherent in the DNC. Obama's no Condi or Powell, or even a Clinton.
The malodorous Michael Ignatieff himself has now graciously spewed his propaganda in Niagara on Jan.20, 2010, dumping another smelly load of GritShit TM propaganda in this Liberal Poop-O-Gram:
Another Liberal-lackie joke was the Jan.20, 2010 St.Catharines Standard editorial-page cartoon, drawn by the now-tiresome Dewar, showing Harper shuffling his cabinet, by moving a cabinet. har-de-har-har.
Even... um... funnier... was that Harper was drawn (tiresomely, again) dressed in ermine robes, wearing a strange, what? buffalo hat with horns and toilet paper.
Funnee stuff, eh?
Lookit dat der 'arper, he dun been shufflin' nothin' ... hyuck, hyuck...
Oddly, I seemed to have missed the Dewar funnee showing Dalton McGuinty shuffling his cabinet.
Did the St.Catharines Standard editors miss that, as well? McGuinty had a cabinet shuffle...?
What - no funnees showing a real despot in Ontario, an unaccountable Dalton McGuinty with toilet paper sticking out of his elitist ass?
Hah hah ha... oh you St.Catharines Sub Standard: well done. Or is it the St.Catharines Double-Standard?
No cartoons showed McGuinty spinning like a top, spewing lies like a Gatling-gun.
No cartoons of secretive MPP Jim Bradley in his luxurious robes, with toilet paper sticking to him!
Nope, Bradley and Smitherman and McGuinty and the rest of the Grit crew of congenital liars seem to be immune from lampooning; after all, they are serious Liberals, not to be trifled with. They are not cartoons, they are well meaning Liberals - Liberals - do you hear? Liberals do not wear ermine robes and horned buffalo hats, do you hear? How dare anyone ask why the St.Catharines Standard doesn't print cartoons about Brian McMullan, or McGuinty, or Bradley!
Speaking of cartoons, Lisa Van Dusen's laughable column (also Jan.20, 2010, in the St.Catharines Standard) was a cartoon itself - in words. The Obama mystique is now over, Lisa. Stop the red-herring bullshit about race. Back around Feb.2007, Obama didn't want to even talk about his colour; now, he's telling Letterman he was 'black' before the election. Hmm. A white mother, apparently, is irrelevant. Brown's senate win in Massachusetts is most certainly a repudiation of Obama's policies; and has nothing to do with colour - it's all about the socialism inherent in the DNC. Obama's no Condi or Powell, or even a Clinton.
Craitor covers up another McGuinty lie
Further to Ontario's Lying Liberals' deceptions about banning sole-source provincial gov't. contracts, we now hear that Liar McGuinty is going to renew the Casino Niagara lease without an open, competitive Request for Proposal tender process. (Niagara This Week, Jan.20, 2010, here)
Right now you're asking yourself: 'But... didn't DamnHim McLiar promise, just back in the autumn of 2009, that he was going to run an open and transparent government, with no more under the table single-sourced deals?'
Well - what Dalton says and what Dalton does are two different things. This is the duplicitous mode of operation which is the over-riding characteristic in all that McGuinty's government does: propagating FLICKING squirmy illusions. It's the inherent duplicity of being a LYING McGUINTYITE.
You thought that McGuinty was going to ban gov't. sole -sourcing?!!
That's what McGuinty wants you to believe.
But... ahh... maybe an 'RFP' isn't a 'contract', and a secret 'lease extension' doesn't need an open RFP... soo... we'll just let this one slide, eh?!
If that's not disgusting enough, then look at dipstick Niagara Falls MPP Liberal Kim Craitor's doltish response. Craitor and HIS LIBERAL HEALTHCARE CUTTING LIARS are the ones playing politics with everything they touch - FLICKING-up health care, the economy, energy... you name it, these statist ideologues have FLICKED it up.
Honestly, why the f*ck doesn't Kimmy just quit and join the socialists? He isn't cabinet quality material, as Dolton McSpendy has made abundantly clear ["here's a present for you Jimmy Bradley, you're now the Grand Duke of All the Cities in Our Great Have-Not Realm; for you Kimmy, here's nothin']; why continue to be associated with and defend McGuinty's incompetent policies?
By his own idiotic, and not-quite-to-the-point, lame remarks, Craitor himself is playing politics with the issue: the issue being that Craitor's Liberals pretended that they were going to ban sole-source contracts; when that stated goal appears to be a lie - in Craitor's own riding - Craitor avoids dealing with the issue, which is about HIS OWN LIBERAL GOVERNMENT'S LIES!!
Is that "too rich" for you to get through your thick skull, Kimmy, you FLICKING dolt?
The issue isn't about threats to tourism or stability as you phonily claim: it's about YOUR LIBERAL GOVERNMENT'S LIES!
Does this point need to be repeated, again and again and again and again?
Do you GET that?
Right now you're asking yourself: 'But... didn't DamnHim McLiar promise, just back in the autumn of 2009, that he was going to run an open and transparent government, with no more under the table single-sourced deals?'
Well - what Dalton says and what Dalton does are two different things. This is the duplicitous mode of operation which is the over-riding characteristic in all that McGuinty's government does: propagating FLICKING squirmy illusions. It's the inherent duplicity of being a LYING McGUINTYITE.
You thought that McGuinty was going to ban gov't. sole -sourcing?!!
That's what McGuinty wants you to believe.
But... ahh... maybe an 'RFP' isn't a 'contract', and a secret 'lease extension' doesn't need an open RFP... soo... we'll just let this one slide, eh?!
If that's not disgusting enough, then look at dipstick Niagara Falls MPP Liberal Kim Craitor's doltish response. Craitor and HIS LIBERAL HEALTHCARE CUTTING LIARS are the ones playing politics with everything they touch - FLICKING-up health care, the economy, energy... you name it, these statist ideologues have FLICKED it up.
Honestly, why the f*ck doesn't Kimmy just quit and join the socialists? He isn't cabinet quality material, as Dolton McSpendy has made abundantly clear ["here's a present for you Jimmy Bradley, you're now the Grand Duke of All the Cities in Our Great Have-Not Realm; for you Kimmy, here's nothin']; why continue to be associated with and defend McGuinty's incompetent policies?
By his own idiotic, and not-quite-to-the-point, lame remarks, Craitor himself is playing politics with the issue: the issue being that Craitor's Liberals pretended that they were going to ban sole-source contracts; when that stated goal appears to be a lie - in Craitor's own riding - Craitor avoids dealing with the issue, which is about HIS OWN LIBERAL GOVERNMENT'S LIES!!
Is that "too rich" for you to get through your thick skull, Kimmy, you FLICKING dolt?
The issue isn't about threats to tourism or stability as you phonily claim: it's about YOUR LIBERAL GOVERNMENT'S LIES!
Does this point need to be repeated, again and again and again and again?
Do you GET that?
Lyin' McGuinty abandons own sole-source-contract ban
Looks like Ontario's Premier Liar Liberal, Dalton McGuinty, is breaking the promise he made (just several months ago, after the Smitherman/Caplan eHealth scam) to ban sole source government contracts: remember that? The dust-up over the non-competitive Maid of the Mist contract in Niagara Falls was a fall-out of that little show. Yet now McGuinty says he wants to sole-source a dubious wind-energy deal with Samsung, worth some $7 BILLION, WITHOUT ANY OTHER BIDS - see "Green energy deal will be bad for taxpayers: critics", CTV, Jan.20, 2010, here. This is how Liberal Copenf*king Greenshevism is shoved onto the taxpayers.
Hitler upset that Democrats lose in Massachusetts
Absolutely hilarious You Tube video (was here, now gone?) as Hitler finds out Scott Brown won the Massachusetts senate race. By the time a visibly upset and shaken Hitler bitterly complains "to think I actually donated to Obama's campaign", you'll be laughing your ass off. Classic, timely satire.
'Hope and Change' finally comes to Massachusetts
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article, "The message of Massachusetts" (here), published Jan.19, 2010, written on the day of the senate election, but prior to the results being known. The article did a great job focusing on Democrat's hard-left liberal committee chairmen who are "all creatures of the Great Society and what was called the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. They have spent their lives in government and know almost nothing about the private sector or how to grow an economy. They view the Reagan era as an historical aberration, and they have stayed in Washington for decades precisely in wait of this moment to realize 40-years of pent-up policy ambition. They believe this is their 1965, or 1933."
Congrats to Scott Brown in Massachusetts - the Democrats and leftists will naturally downplay his win; but this is a herald of the drubbing the Democrats will surely and deservedly receive this November.
Congrats to Scott Brown in Massachusetts - the Democrats and leftists will naturally downplay his win; but this is a herald of the drubbing the Democrats will surely and deservedly receive this November.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Ken Dryden takes a dump in Niagara
Looks like Dalton McGuinty and George Smitherman have been caught peddling their Liberal lies again:
Yeah: despite the lies from McGuinty's Liberal scumbags, smart meters result in electricity bills RISING. Yeah: do your laundry at 4 am - then go to work to pay your bills: oh, JUST FLICK OFF, you Liberal scumbags.
Yeah: despite the lies from McGuinty's Liberal scumbags, smart meters result in electricity bills RISING. Yeah: do your laundry at 4 am - then go to work to pay your bills: oh, JUST FLICK OFF, you Liberal scumbags.And now we have Michael Ignatieff's Liberals continuing to send more GritShitTM propaganda to Niagara; on Jan.19, 2010; this Liberal POOP-O-GRAM was sent by a stinking Ken Dryden, who appears to want to resurrect Bumbledore Dion's Green Shift.
Dryden's still touting the Dalton McGuinty/George Smitherman so-called 'smart' meters fiasco, which already has consumers paying more for less, saving us nothing yet causing unnecessary inconvenience: just what Liberals want. 
Funny, there's no smug outrage in the liberal press when Iggy's Liberals continue their propaganda dumps around the country! (see here; here)
Funny, there's no smug outrage in the liberal press when Iggy's Liberals continue their propaganda dumps around the country! (see here; here)No wonder Albertans are tired (here) of the smug bleatings of political scum such as McGuinty, Gerretsen, Bradley, Miller, and Charest biting their hand, yet still demanding that Alberta help pay the bills for their incompetent policies. McGuinty's Lying Liberals have severely mismanaged Ontario's energy sector, as well as the economy, as well as health care - in fact, anything these McGuintyite scumbags have touched has been ruined, turning Ontario into a have-not welfare case of Confederation. Guess 'progressives' such as David Miller aren't embarrassed about that.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Suppressing the politics and science of ClimateGate
While Lawrence Solomon was writing "Better off with Bing"...
(see National Post, Jan.17, 2010, here - a sequel to Solomon's earlier column "Wikipedia's climate doctor" (National Post, Dec.19, 2009, here [a commentary on Solomon's article, Wikipedia's "Wikibullies", can be seen at Watts Up With That here]; and a sequel to Solomon's Dec.24, 2009 National Post column "Climategate at Wikipedia", here)
... we can thank Gaia that in Niagara, the St. Catharines Standard's Green Teamsters have treated us to in-depth coverage of how people rinse plastic bags to, apparently, save a "planet in peril" !! Now there's some good reportin', eh?!
The GreenFear-based meme, that the planet was "in peril", appeared at least twice this month alone in the St.Catharines Standard, in the Jan.11, 2010 story "The goal: 10 garbage bags, one year" and here!!
We were all (apparently) already "in peril", even back on Oct.28, 2007, as David Suzuki fear-mongered during his GreenFear TM ScareNiagara TM tour...
(see "Survival in peril without action: Suzuki" - another sadly pathetic Don Fraser story!)
...that "efforts to reduce carbon emissions have been scuttled by political leaders with other priorities and oil companies insisting global warming was “junk science,” said Suzuki, adding that inaction has set us back alarmingly."
[...and, no: the St.Catharines Standard's "reporter" Don Fraser did not provide any challenge or perspective to Suzuki's above climate fear spreading!! Climate change was... umm... 'all settled'... after all, doncha know!! Whaddaya expect from the Standard??!!]
Too bad Suzuki's alarmist crap is now tempered by the, um... unsettling... ClimateGate revelations of late 2009!
Suzuki's rhetoric sounded just like Ontario Liberal Kyodiot MPP Jim Bradley's paranoid, ignorant bullshit ["Kyoto Protocol will succeed", Brock Press, (St.Catharines, Ontario) Nov.19, 2002, by Susan Kirwin, link was here, later removed] where Bradley infamously used the term "rogue scientists" to discredit dissenters who questioned Bradley's global warming orthodoxy; Bradley also disparagingly, and without evidence, ominously linked them as being funded by the oil industry!
Naturally, Jim Bradley deftly NEVER REVEALED in 2002 which scientists were supposedly being paid off by the oil companies!
And, since Jim Bradley NEVER REVEALED which "scientists" he was basing his Liberal Kyodiot political science upon - the discredited Mann-made hockey stick perhaps?! - Bradley conveniently also NEVER REVEALED who was funding Bradley's mysteriously un-named "scientists"!
In 2010, Ontarians are still waiting for a secretive Bradley to answer those questions!!
Too bad the Brock Press story at the time didn't report anyone bothering to ask Bradley for the specific sources of his Liberal political climatalarmism TM. [aka GREENFEAR TM]
Did reporter Susan Kerwin actually bother asking Bradley to specifically name who he was talking about?
Why didn't Kerwin ask:
'Mr. Bradley, can you elaborate for us specifically which "rogue scientists" you say are being paid off by the oil companies?
Could you, as a sitting Liberal Ontario MPP, elaborate which scientists you say are "rogue", and, which ones are not?
Which scientists, and which specific studies did you rely upon to decide that AGW was a threat, a peril, to mankind, and subsequently, that Kyoto was any kind of cure?'
Then, as today, it seems that when a scumbag Liberal politician says anything, it passes through the media as the pure, unchallengeable, unassailable, undisputable gospel of Gaia.
Just trust Bradley, just trust McGuinty; just believe in Smitherman; don't ask them bothersome questions: just trust them - these Liberals can't possibly be liars.
Was Bradley ignorantly spouting paranoid politicized science in 2002? Or was Jim Bradley purposefully spouting only selective portions of "science" that were tenuous enough to fit his own Liberal political ideologies?
Is science politicized? Should it be? Should certain "science" be politically correct, while other science dismissed as heresy?
Peter Foster touched on these issues in "James Hansen and mob rule" (National Post, Dec.17, 2009, here), as did Ronald L. Doering in "Don't be fooled. Science is always politicized" (National Post, Jan.15, 2010, here)
*
(see National Post, Jan.17, 2010, here - a sequel to Solomon's earlier column "Wikipedia's climate doctor" (National Post, Dec.19, 2009, here [a commentary on Solomon's article, Wikipedia's "Wikibullies", can be seen at Watts Up With That here]; and a sequel to Solomon's Dec.24, 2009 National Post column "Climategate at Wikipedia", here)
... we can thank Gaia that in Niagara, the St. Catharines Standard's Green Teamsters have treated us to in-depth coverage of how people rinse plastic bags to, apparently, save a "planet in peril" !! Now there's some good reportin', eh?!
The GreenFear-based meme, that the planet was "in peril", appeared at least twice this month alone in the St.Catharines Standard, in the Jan.11, 2010 story "The goal: 10 garbage bags, one year" and here!!
We were all (apparently) already "in peril", even back on Oct.28, 2007, as David Suzuki fear-mongered during his GreenFear TM ScareNiagara TM tour...
(see "Survival in peril without action: Suzuki" - another sadly pathetic Don Fraser story!)
...that "efforts to reduce carbon emissions have been scuttled by political leaders with other priorities and oil companies insisting global warming was “junk science,” said Suzuki, adding that inaction has set us back alarmingly."
[...and, no: the St.Catharines Standard's "reporter" Don Fraser did not provide any challenge or perspective to Suzuki's above climate fear spreading!! Climate change was... umm... 'all settled'... after all, doncha know!! Whaddaya expect from the Standard??!!]
Too bad Suzuki's alarmist crap is now tempered by the, um... unsettling... ClimateGate revelations of late 2009!
Suzuki's rhetoric sounded just like Ontario Liberal Kyodiot MPP Jim Bradley's paranoid, ignorant bullshit ["Kyoto Protocol will succeed", Brock Press, (St.Catharines, Ontario) Nov.19, 2002, by Susan Kirwin, link was here, later removed] where Bradley infamously used the term "rogue scientists" to discredit dissenters who questioned Bradley's global warming orthodoxy; Bradley also disparagingly, and without evidence, ominously linked them as being funded by the oil industry!
Naturally, Jim Bradley deftly NEVER REVEALED in 2002 which scientists were supposedly being paid off by the oil companies!
And, since Jim Bradley NEVER REVEALED which "scientists" he was basing his Liberal Kyodiot political science upon - the discredited Mann-made hockey stick perhaps?! - Bradley conveniently also NEVER REVEALED who was funding Bradley's mysteriously un-named "scientists"!
In 2010, Ontarians are still waiting for a secretive Bradley to answer those questions!!
Too bad the Brock Press story at the time didn't report anyone bothering to ask Bradley for the specific sources of his Liberal political climatalarmism TM. [aka GREENFEAR TM]
Did reporter Susan Kerwin actually bother asking Bradley to specifically name who he was talking about?
Why didn't Kerwin ask:
'Mr. Bradley, can you elaborate for us specifically which "rogue scientists" you say are being paid off by the oil companies?
Could you, as a sitting Liberal Ontario MPP, elaborate which scientists you say are "rogue", and, which ones are not?
Which scientists, and which specific studies did you rely upon to decide that AGW was a threat, a peril, to mankind, and subsequently, that Kyoto was any kind of cure?'
Then, as today, it seems that when a scumbag Liberal politician says anything, it passes through the media as the pure, unchallengeable, unassailable, undisputable gospel of Gaia.
Just trust Bradley, just trust McGuinty; just believe in Smitherman; don't ask them bothersome questions: just trust them - these Liberals can't possibly be liars.
Was Bradley ignorantly spouting paranoid politicized science in 2002? Or was Jim Bradley purposefully spouting only selective portions of "science" that were tenuous enough to fit his own Liberal political ideologies?
Is science politicized? Should it be? Should certain "science" be politically correct, while other science dismissed as heresy?
Peter Foster touched on these issues in "James Hansen and mob rule" (National Post, Dec.17, 2009, here), as did Ronald L. Doering in "Don't be fooled. Science is always politicized" (National Post, Jan.15, 2010, here)
*
Niagara Falls Ice Bridge, 2010
below: Jan.9, 2010 - looking at the Niagara River, with the Rainbow Bridge in the distance. At the bottom right, on the rock just above the water line, are seen the remains of two footings on the U.S. side which once supported the Honeymoon (aka the 'Fallsview', or, the 'Upper Steel Arch') Bridge. A massive ice jam on Jan.27, 1938 knocked this bridge into the gorge. In this view, the river is still clear of ice; but, just three days later . . .
click on photos to enlarge!
above: Jan.12, 2010 - the river (still running underneath) is now iced-over right across, as the two above photos show; the Ice Bridge formed that quickly. How much bigger it gets will depend on the temperature.
above: (photo c.late 1890's - this is the the same view as the previous above photos, when the Honeymoon Bridge was still standing, the same footings are seen in the upper-right distance. We are looking here at the south side of the bridge (the side which faced towards the American and Horseshoe Falls)The U.S.A. is on the distant bank.
The footings, seen at the upper right, are quite close to the water - and this was before the river's water levels were reduced through the new hydro diversion projects which were still to come in the 1900's.
Note at the far left, as the Great Gorge Route streetcar heads into Canada from the States, as well as the horses pulling carriages. The Honeymoon Bridge was built in 1897-98, and owned by the streetcar-system operator, the IRC.
It's interesting to note that even in 1899 - only a year after the Honeymoon Bridge was built - its abutments had already been threatened by an ice jam that was 80 feet high, which had to be blasted away to protect the bridge. The bridge survived, and its abutments were strengthened the following summer; thus protecting the bridge for almost four more decades until that fateful Jan. of 1938.
Look closely at the photo above, and note that the abutments, as seen on the U.S. side, are standing on individual piers; in the next four shots below, the same abutments are now seen embedded in a mass of rock/concrete/stone - this was most likely the reinforcement work which was done after the 1899 ice threat; and, this would also help date the "circa 1890's" photo above more accurately to be from either 1897 or 1898 (ie, before the pier remediation).
above: Jan.22, 2010 - closer look at the old Honeymoon Bridge footings (seen at the centre-right) in relation to the much higher footings of its replacement, the Rainbow Bridge, around 500 feet away to the left.
The Adams tailrace discharge tunnel, built in 1892, still spills water into the lower Niagara. But this discharge is not plain river water any more, as had been the case when the Edward Dean Adams generating stations were still working, on the American side of the Niagara River, above the Falls, at Port Day. The Adams and the Schoellkopf generating stations were both closed in 1961.
In the mid 1970's, the deco-styled Ashland Ave. sewage treatment plant (see photos a bit further below) was demolished, and a relay station was built on its site, to pump the sewage which had formerly been treated there, up to Port Day for treatment (to where the original Adams Number 1 and 2 power stations had once stood).
A new sewage treatment facility was built at the old Adams 1 and 2 site. The existing Adams brick discharge tunnel from 1892 (...which originally carried away the river water, after it had passed through the Adams' turbines at Port Day...) was then repurposed, and used to drain the treated waste-water back down to the river - - so now you know what that water is, which constantly pours out of the Adams tunnel! When the waste water pours out of the Adams tunnel, it often has a steely-greyish/bluish tinge to it, whereas the Niagara River water (usually, but not always) has an emerald/blue-hued colour to it.
above: Jan.22, 2010 - closer view of the Honeymoon Bridge footings on the American side; note their relation to the already-forming ice on the river below. To the left, some water still flows from what was originally the discharge tunnel of the old Adams hydro stations.
above: Jan.22, 2010 - closer view of the left (northern) bridge abutment on the U.S. side; the Adams tunnel is at the left. Note the original cut-stone pier, which had once stood on its own, is now only partially visible under the steel footing; the mass now surrounding it to the right is the concrete reinforcement work done after the 1899 ice scare.
above: Jan.22, 2010 - a closer view of the right (southern) abutment of the doomed Honeymoon Bridge on the U.S. side; note the jagged steel plates visible on the abutment, which now sits shifted to the left, as it had been pushed by the ice. Except for the top stone plate (partially still seen at the bottom), the rest of the cut stone pier on the south side is not visible, now embedded in the remedial reinforcement mass.
above: Mar.1, 2010 - looking under the old Honeymoon Bridge's U.S.-side footings as the thick winter ice melts; the artificially-lowered water-level of the Niagara River reveals rocks which are hidden under water during the summer. The water-level of the lower Niagara River drops due to river-water being diverted from upstream (above the Falls) for hydro-generating purposes; this diversion is increased during winter. Note blue arrow at the bottom left, above the ducks [click photos to enlarge]: that is a chunk of a steel girder remaining from the collapsed Honeymoon Bridge, still laying in the water, and which is occasionally exposed when the water level drops.
above: this view looks along the south-side of the Honeymoon Bridge, towards Canada, from the U.S. side.
The date of this particular photo is not known, but: it is interesting to note that the Oakes Garden (work on which began in late 1935, officially opening on Sept.18, 1937) is clearly visible at the centre-left; and, that the Clifton Gate Memorial Arch (which "officially" opened Jun.18, 1938 (but was substantially completed earlier than that date - see more here) is also visible [it's the white tower almost directly in the centre of the photo, immediately to the left of the bridge entrance].
This is interesting because the Honeymoon Bridge collapsed into the Niagara River on Jan.27, 1938!
Given these known dates, and seeing that the trees in the above shot are still in full-leaf, then I would say this photo could not have been taken in 1938 (...because in Jan.1938, the trees could not have been in full leaf!).
The latest date that this photo could have been taken (...with the Honeymoon Bridge intact, with the Clifton Arch already substantially complete, and with the trees still in full leaf, all in the same photo...) would have been in the autumn, around Oct.-Nov, of 1937.
If that is the case, and if this photos is from the autumn of 1937, then it is also interesting to see the extent to which Oakes Gardens and the Clifton Gate Memorial Arch had already taken shape, still in 1937.
Seeing as construction of the Oakes Garden started in late 1935, it is remotely possible that this photo is from 1936, but I do not believe that the Clifton Arch had been started yet in 1936, so that points to the above photo having been taken probably in the summer, or in the fall, of 1937)
So, there was a brief time when visitors, arriving into Canada from the Honeymoon Bridge, did see the Memorial Arch (although it was still 'under-construction and not yet 'officially opened') standing to their left, on River Rd,. as they exited the bridge!
btw, it looks like there's a small boat in the river along the Canadian side at the bottom left!
above: probably Jan.27, 1938 or very shortly thereafter: a small crowd gathers on River Rd. at what had been the Honeymoon Bridge entrance, looking down at the now-collapsed bridge, which is seen laying on the ice sheet below. The 'still-not-officially-opened-at-the-time' Clifton Gate Memorial Arch is clearly seen standing at the bottom right, appearing to be pretty much completed, although it would still be several months later, on Jun.18, 1938, before its "official" opening. At the bottom left is the rear of the Terminal Tower.
On Apr.12, 1938, at 8:20 a.m., as the ice softened, a large part of the bridge, laying on the American side, comprising about half of the steel-arch, sank where it had fallen; shortly thereafter, another part closer to the U.S. side sank. These bridge pieces joined the sunken remains of the First Suspension Bridge, which had been located on this very same spot, and which had also collapsed into the river due to a windstorm in 1889.
The bridge portion laying on the ice at the Canadian side, astoundingly, did not sink on the same day as the American portion; it remained where it had fallen, still on top of the ice, until the following day; then, rather than sinking on the spot as the ice continued to slowly break up, at about 3:25 p.m. on Apr.13, 1938, the bridge began floating downriver, still on top of the now-moving ice floe!
above: here's the exact same view, Oct.29, 2010 - the imposing old water treatment building is long gone, and the site, now known as the Gorge Pumping Station, is actually still active: it no longer treats sewage on the spot (as the old deco-styled facility did), but pumps it back up to Port Day, to a newer facility above the Horseshoe Falls, built on the site of the old Adams power plant (as was detailed earlier in this post). Note that the stepped foundations of the old deco building can be still seen rising up the slope.
The old sunken Honeymoon Bridge still remains here, at the bottom of the Niagara River.
Photo by R.Bobak
above: Feb.23, 2009 - to give you an idea of the kind of ice floe which could have easily supported the remnant of the old Honeymoon Bridge in 1938, here is a photo of just the same, typical kind of chunk of river ice floating downstream (towards the camera).
Note (at the left mid-upper left, along the U.S. side) there is a long trail outlined by snow, which can be seen running across the face of the gorge slope: this is the rail right-of-way of the former Great Gorge streetcar route.
This circular-route started with eastbound streetcars crossing the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge (from Canada to the U.S.), then running south (upriver along the American side) on scenic tracks low by the river, slowly rising in elevation as they approached the top of the gorge at Niagara Falls, N.Y. From there they would cross westbound over the Honeymoon Bridge, returning back into Canada, then head northwards along the Canadian high slope all the way back down to the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, where the loop would begin again.
In this photo, the track right of way is clearly seen ascending. The tracks eventually passed over the top of the Ashland Ave. Sewage Treatment Plant site, and reached the top of the gorge at a point just slightly south of the treatment plant, near Spruce Ave..
Years of rock falls have since obliterated much of the old track right of way.
*
above: a view of the Ontario Power Company's ice-jammed generator floor, taken in Feb.1938, during the same massive ice build-up that had brought down the Honeymoon Bridge in Jan. 1938.
At left is the incline railway on the American side, which led down to the "Shadow of the Rock" tourist concession. Though noted that this photo is "circa 1890", the concession which was here in the early 1890's had a rounded-roof base-building, which was destroyed by a double whammy of ice and fire in 1892; the building in the below photo seems to look more like the hip-roofed chalet-style replacement building, which was torn down after a Jul.6, 1907 accident where a cable on the incline broke, killing one person. With little other clues, this photo could be from between 1894 to 1907.
above: the same view, Jan.9, 2010: an observation tower (built in 1961, later renovated) stands at the left; the rock-cut of the old incline is still clearly visible. The tower provides access to the Maid of the Mist U.S. dock, a bit of which is seen at the left, just above the winter-water-line of the river. The area behind the tower is called Prospect Point, at the right are the American Falls.
Mr. Seed's amazing shot captured the chunk of falling rock in mid-air; and actually shows the water - which seconds ago had been running along the river bed - still pouring off the now-unattached cliff edge!
click on photos to enlarge!
above: Jan.12, 2010 - the river (still running underneath) is now iced-over right across, as the two above photos show; the Ice Bridge formed that quickly. How much bigger it gets will depend on the temperature.
above: (photo c.late 1890's - this is the the same view as the previous above photos, when the Honeymoon Bridge was still standing, the same footings are seen in the upper-right distance. We are looking here at the south side of the bridge (the side which faced towards the American and Horseshoe Falls)The U.S.A. is on the distant bank. The footings, seen at the upper right, are quite close to the water - and this was before the river's water levels were reduced through the new hydro diversion projects which were still to come in the 1900's.
Note at the far left, as the Great Gorge Route streetcar heads into Canada from the States, as well as the horses pulling carriages. The Honeymoon Bridge was built in 1897-98, and owned by the streetcar-system operator, the IRC.
It's interesting to note that even in 1899 - only a year after the Honeymoon Bridge was built - its abutments had already been threatened by an ice jam that was 80 feet high, which had to be blasted away to protect the bridge. The bridge survived, and its abutments were strengthened the following summer; thus protecting the bridge for almost four more decades until that fateful Jan. of 1938.
Look closely at the photo above, and note that the abutments, as seen on the U.S. side, are standing on individual piers; in the next four shots below, the same abutments are now seen embedded in a mass of rock/concrete/stone - this was most likely the reinforcement work which was done after the 1899 ice threat; and, this would also help date the "circa 1890's" photo above more accurately to be from either 1897 or 1898 (ie, before the pier remediation).
above: Jan.22, 2010 - closer look at the old Honeymoon Bridge footings (seen at the centre-right) in relation to the much higher footings of its replacement, the Rainbow Bridge, around 500 feet away to the left. The Adams tailrace discharge tunnel, built in 1892, still spills water into the lower Niagara. But this discharge is not plain river water any more, as had been the case when the Edward Dean Adams generating stations were still working, on the American side of the Niagara River, above the Falls, at Port Day. The Adams and the Schoellkopf generating stations were both closed in 1961.
In the mid 1970's, the deco-styled Ashland Ave. sewage treatment plant (see photos a bit further below) was demolished, and a relay station was built on its site, to pump the sewage which had formerly been treated there, up to Port Day for treatment (to where the original Adams Number 1 and 2 power stations had once stood).
A new sewage treatment facility was built at the old Adams 1 and 2 site. The existing Adams brick discharge tunnel from 1892 (...which originally carried away the river water, after it had passed through the Adams' turbines at Port Day...) was then repurposed, and used to drain the treated waste-water back down to the river - - so now you know what that water is, which constantly pours out of the Adams tunnel! When the waste water pours out of the Adams tunnel, it often has a steely-greyish/bluish tinge to it, whereas the Niagara River water (usually, but not always) has an emerald/blue-hued colour to it.
above: Jan.22, 2010 - closer view of the Honeymoon Bridge footings on the American side; note their relation to the already-forming ice on the river below. To the left, some water still flows from what was originally the discharge tunnel of the old Adams hydro stations. 
above: Jan.22, 2010 - closer view of the left (northern) bridge abutment on the U.S. side; the Adams tunnel is at the left. Note the original cut-stone pier, which had once stood on its own, is now only partially visible under the steel footing; the mass now surrounding it to the right is the concrete reinforcement work done after the 1899 ice scare.
above: Jan.22, 2010 - a closer view of the right (southern) abutment of the doomed Honeymoon Bridge on the U.S. side; note the jagged steel plates visible on the abutment, which now sits shifted to the left, as it had been pushed by the ice. Except for the top stone plate (partially still seen at the bottom), the rest of the cut stone pier on the south side is not visible, now embedded in the remedial reinforcement mass. 
above: Mar.1, 2010 - looking under the old Honeymoon Bridge's U.S.-side footings as the thick winter ice melts; the artificially-lowered water-level of the Niagara River reveals rocks which are hidden under water during the summer. The water-level of the lower Niagara River drops due to river-water being diverted from upstream (above the Falls) for hydro-generating purposes; this diversion is increased during winter. Note blue arrow at the bottom left, above the ducks [click photos to enlarge]: that is a chunk of a steel girder remaining from the collapsed Honeymoon Bridge, still laying in the water, and which is occasionally exposed when the water level drops. 
above: this view looks along the south-side of the Honeymoon Bridge, towards Canada, from the U.S. side. The date of this particular photo is not known, but: it is interesting to note that the Oakes Garden (work on which began in late 1935, officially opening on Sept.18, 1937) is clearly visible at the centre-left; and, that the Clifton Gate Memorial Arch (which "officially" opened Jun.18, 1938 (but was substantially completed earlier than that date - see more here) is also visible [it's the white tower almost directly in the centre of the photo, immediately to the left of the bridge entrance].
This is interesting because the Honeymoon Bridge collapsed into the Niagara River on Jan.27, 1938!
Given these known dates, and seeing that the trees in the above shot are still in full-leaf, then I would say this photo could not have been taken in 1938 (...because in Jan.1938, the trees could not have been in full leaf!).
The latest date that this photo could have been taken (...with the Honeymoon Bridge intact, with the Clifton Arch already substantially complete, and with the trees still in full leaf, all in the same photo...) would have been in the autumn, around Oct.-Nov, of 1937.
If that is the case, and if this photos is from the autumn of 1937, then it is also interesting to see the extent to which Oakes Gardens and the Clifton Gate Memorial Arch had already taken shape, still in 1937.
Seeing as construction of the Oakes Garden started in late 1935, it is remotely possible that this photo is from 1936, but I do not believe that the Clifton Arch had been started yet in 1936, so that points to the above photo having been taken probably in the summer, or in the fall, of 1937)
So, there was a brief time when visitors, arriving into Canada from the Honeymoon Bridge, did see the Memorial Arch (although it was still 'under-construction and not yet 'officially opened') standing to their left, on River Rd,. as they exited the bridge!
btw, it looks like there's a small boat in the river along the Canadian side at the bottom left!
*
below: Jan.27, 1938 at 4:20 p.m., amazing photo of the Honeymoon Bridge as it collapses into the Niagara River ice sheet. This photo was taken by Frank O. Seed, the only photographer to have captured the actual moment that the bridge fell.
below: Jan.27, 1938 at 4:20 p.m., amazing photo of the Honeymoon Bridge as it collapses into the Niagara River ice sheet. This photo was taken by Frank O. Seed, the only photographer to have captured the actual moment that the bridge fell.
above: probably Jan.27, 1938 or very shortly thereafter: a small crowd gathers on River Rd. at what had been the Honeymoon Bridge entrance, looking down at the now-collapsed bridge, which is seen laying on the ice sheet below. The 'still-not-officially-opened-at-the-time' Clifton Gate Memorial Arch is clearly seen standing at the bottom right, appearing to be pretty much completed, although it would still be several months later, on Jun.18, 1938, before its "official" opening. At the bottom left is the rear of the Terminal Tower. 
above: a closer view of the collapsed Honeymoon Bridge laying on the massive 1938 Ice Bridge which brought it down. Note the streetcar-wire posts still standing on the deck.
Despite salvage efforts, the fallen bridge sat on the ice until spring, when the ice sheet began to soften up.
On Apr.12, 1938, at 8:20 a.m., as the ice softened, a large part of the bridge, laying on the American side, comprising about half of the steel-arch, sank where it had fallen; shortly thereafter, another part closer to the U.S. side sank. These bridge pieces joined the sunken remains of the First Suspension Bridge, which had been located on this very same spot, and which had also collapsed into the river due to a windstorm in 1889.
The bridge portion laying on the ice at the Canadian side, astoundingly, did not sink on the same day as the American portion; it remained where it had fallen, still on top of the ice, until the following day; then, rather than sinking on the spot as the ice continued to slowly break up, at about 3:25 p.m. on Apr.13, 1938, the bridge began floating downriver, still on top of the now-moving ice floe!
The bridge was carried downriver on the moving ice until it sank (on Apr.13, 1938, at 4:05 p.m.) in a deep part of the river north of the Schoellkopf power station - see here as the bridge floats by the U.S. power station!
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below: Apr.13, 1938 at about 4:05 pm - this is one of the last photos taken of the Honeymoon Bridge, seen in the middle of the Niagara River just before it sank. This location is directly in front the Deco-styled Ashland Ave. Sewage Treatment Plant (seen at the right, on the American side, which opened in 1938 and was demolished in 1974.). In less than an hour, the ice floe had carried the remnants of the Honeymoon Bridge almost a mile downriver, from where it had collapsed nearly three months earlier. This photo looking out across the river was taken from River Rd. at Otter St,. on the Canadian side.
above: here's the exact same view, Oct.29, 2010 - the imposing old water treatment building is long gone, and the site, now known as the Gorge Pumping Station, is actually still active: it no longer treats sewage on the spot (as the old deco-styled facility did), but pumps it back up to Port Day, to a newer facility above the Horseshoe Falls, built on the site of the old Adams power plant (as was detailed earlier in this post). Note that the stepped foundations of the old deco building can be still seen rising up the slope.The old sunken Honeymoon Bridge still remains here, at the bottom of the Niagara River.
Photo by R.Bobak
Note (at the left mid-upper left, along the U.S. side) there is a long trail outlined by snow, which can be seen running across the face of the gorge slope: this is the rail right-of-way of the former Great Gorge streetcar route.
This circular-route started with eastbound streetcars crossing the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge (from Canada to the U.S.), then running south (upriver along the American side) on scenic tracks low by the river, slowly rising in elevation as they approached the top of the gorge at Niagara Falls, N.Y. From there they would cross westbound over the Honeymoon Bridge, returning back into Canada, then head northwards along the Canadian high slope all the way back down to the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, where the loop would begin again.
In this photo, the track right of way is clearly seen ascending. The tracks eventually passed over the top of the Ashland Ave. Sewage Treatment Plant site, and reached the top of the gorge at a point just slightly south of the treatment plant, near Spruce Ave..
Years of rock falls have since obliterated much of the old track right of way.
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below: Apr.11, 1909, the Ontario Power Company generating station is seen jammed with ice between generating units 2 and 3. Massive river ice in 1909 and in 1938 caused severe damage to this generating station, located down in the gorge on the Canadian side, just above river-level. 
above: a view of the Ontario Power Company's ice-jammed generator floor, taken in Feb.1938, during the same massive ice build-up that had brought down the Honeymoon Bridge in Jan. 1938.
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below: ca.1890 - looking across the ice bridge at the American Falls as "refreshment" (including liquor!) stands/saloons lined the ice surface, while visitors leisurely wandered around without a worry! (See more on the Niagara River Ice Bridge here)
At left is the incline railway on the American side, which led down to the "Shadow of the Rock" tourist concession. Though noted that this photo is "circa 1890", the concession which was here in the early 1890's had a rounded-roof base-building, which was destroyed by a double whammy of ice and fire in 1892; the building in the below photo seems to look more like the hip-roofed chalet-style replacement building, which was torn down after a Jul.6, 1907 accident where a cable on the incline broke, killing one person. With little other clues, this photo could be from between 1894 to 1907.
above: the same view, Jan.9, 2010: an observation tower (built in 1961, later renovated) stands at the left; the rock-cut of the old incline is still clearly visible. The tower provides access to the Maid of the Mist U.S. dock, a bit of which is seen at the left, just above the winter-water-line of the river. The area behind the tower is called Prospect Point, at the right are the American Falls.
above: Jan.9, 2010 - a closer view of the old incline cut.
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below: another astounding photo by Frank O. Seed - the same photographer who sixteen years earlier was the only person to get that shot (seen earlier above) of the Jan.27, 1938 Honeymoon bridge collapse.
This photo, taken by Mr. Seed on Jul.28, 1954, at 4:50 p.m., shows the actual moment that an 185,000 ton chunk of Prospect Point sheared off the edge of the American Falls. Mr. Seed's amazing shot captured the chunk of falling rock in mid-air; and actually shows the water - which seconds ago had been running along the river bed - still pouring off the now-unattached cliff edge!
The older above photos from the Niagara Falls, Ont. Library Archive; the recent photos by R. Bobak.
I hope you enjoyed reading about these aspects of Niagara's past!
See more on the 2009 Niagara River Ice Bridge here.
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