McGuinty's Liberal Environment Minister Jim Bradley fails to defend Kyoto Protocol

Further to my previous post...

... why hasn't McGuinty's Liberal Environment Minister, Jim 'Kyodiot' Bradley, publicly appeared defending his Liberal government's shoddy so-called commitments to their beloved Kyoto Protocol??

Where is Ontario's Environment Minister Bradley?!

Gosh: back in 2002, Jim Bradley had us all practically believing that he himself gave birth to Kyoto; well... that...  and that the planet would be destroyed if we didn't heed Bradley's GreenFear edicts.

Why has McGuinty's Environment Minister Jim Bradley now abandoned and forsaken the Environment?

Where are you Jim? The Kyoto Protocol - the fruit of your Liberal loins - is calling for your help!

Where have you disappeared, Jim Bradley, when the 'Planet is in Peril' (as the St.Catharines Standard often propagandized)? Are you waiting for further instructions from David Suzuki, perhaps?

We now have the federal NDP taking over Bradley's job as wackjob greensocialism pushers, as can be seen in Kristy Kirkup's Nov.29, 2011 St.Catharines Standard article, below, which - of course - DOES NOT MENTION JIM BRADLEY!!!!!!

Un-FLICKING BELIEVABLE!! [...Jim who? ...Bradley...?? ...who's that??] Hahahahahahahahahaah

The St.Catharines Standard hasn't bothered to mention Jim Bradley yet, in any story regarding anything about Durban or Kyoto... and Bradley (...oh, did I mention that he's Ontario's Environment Minister?!) is the MPP in their own city!!!!

In her article, Kirkup somehow manages to mention everyone BUT  Jim Bradley - who, after all, had been Ontario's head Kyoto pusher in 2002!!!

So, you'd think someone would interview Ole Jimmy 'bout that!! Oh... yeah... and, by the way... did I mention that Bradley is THE ENVIRONMENT MINISTER OF CANADA'S LARGEST PROVINCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yet, no one bothers to mention the guy!

The funniest lines of  flabbergastingly pompous outrage reported by Kirkup were from the NDP, who are now actually stealing the Crown Of Smug Climate Outrage from Liberals such as Jim Bradley:

"Kyoto's time has come and gone, according to Canada's environment minister.
Peter Kent said the international Kyoto treaty on climate change is "the past" at an Ottawa press conference Monday, but he wouldn't officially confirm to reporters Canada is pulling out of the agreement.
The minister said he plans to work with other countries at a climate summit in Durban, South Africa, to reach a new treaty that would include all major polluters. The summit kicked off Monday, but Kent is set to join the talks next week. Representatives from 190 countries are participating in the conference.
"We're going to Durban to work in common cause with the other parties to the convention to advance a new climate change agreement, binding eventually, which will engage all emitters in both the developed and the developing countries," Kent said.
In 1997, Canada pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 2012 to 6% below 1990 levels. At a climate change summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Canada agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 17% by 2020.
Canada, Japan and Russia have already confirmed they will not take on "new commitments" under the Kyoto Protocol. The treaty is the only legally binding agreement that requires reductions on greenhouse gas emissions.
The NDP says "Canadians are flabbergasted to find out the Conservatives want to break our solemn commitment on the Kyoto protocol," and claims the government is abandoning its "legal and moral obligations."
The Opposition's environment critic admits Kyoto targets are not currently respected but says they are symbolically important.
"The fact that we will be the only country who has signed on and then walked away from it, it's a symbol of cynicism and a symbol of disrespect," said NDP environment critic Megan Leslie.
Leslie said the NDP plans to send a representative to the talks in Durban."

The Dippers are now using the same kind of pious stand-up climate-comedy lines which climate-clown Stephane Dion and his imploding Liberals had once been delivering.

Now the socialists are braying smugly about 'Canadians being flabbergasted', and about abandonment, and about solemn promises, and about climate morality - this is the same kind of climatalarmist GreenFear-garbage which could have just as easily spewed from Liberal Jim Bradley's mouth! It's boilerplate GreenFear bull. It's funny stuff, in its own pathetic way, really.

So why has Liberal MPP Jim Bradley abdicated his obligation to fight for the Glory That Is Kyoto?

Why is McGuinty's Environment Minister shirking his responsibilities, and not defending his Great Green love, that Great Work That Is Kyoto?

Why is it the Dippers - and not Jim Bradley - who will be polluting their way flying to Durban, to Save Mother Earth From Climate Perdition?

When will Ontario's Liberal Environment Minister Jim Bradley publicly respond to the Kyoto Protocol issues raised in articles such as:

- Terence Corcoran's "Door already shut on Kyoto"
 or
- Peter Foster's "The left's climate moralism"
 or
- Tasha Kheiriddin's "Just say no to Kyoto" ??

C'mon, there, Ontario Environment Minister Jim Bradley: stop hiding and reveal yourself for the Liberal Kyoto-hypocrite that you have always been.
*

Liberal Environment Minister Jim Bradley's years of Kyoto-pushing waste

Further to my previous post...
...Michael Den Tandt wrote in "Of course, Canada ditched ramshackle, bloated Kyoto commitments", (Montreal Gazette, Nov.29, 2011):

"We didn't get it done," wailed Michael Ignatieff about Canada's lacklustre, ineffectual attempts to meet this country's Kyoto Protocol carbon emission targets, back when the Liberal government of Jean Chretien was serious about pretending it took climate change seriously.

Ignatieff was, of course, spot on: Ottawa's Kyoto commitments died on the operating table in the waning years of Chretien's third term, as the first of three Canadian prime ministers came to realize that implementing Kyoto faithfully would doom the oilpatch and Canada's economic future with it. None of Chretien's Kyoto plans had teeth.

Which raises the question: How can the Liberals continue to holler about Kyoto today, as though they were the treaty's greatest champions? After promising to adopt it, it was they themselves who kicked it to the curb.

In 2002-03, far more than now, a clear disavowal of Kyoto would have been politically disastrous in centrist Ontario and left-leaning Quebec. Who in his or her right mind could be seen to be against saving the planet?

So prime ministers Chretien and Paul Martin in turn adopted the same clever, disingenuous policy: Pay careful lip service to the religion of global warming (because to do otherwise incites the theological fury of the true believers) but move sure-footedly to ensure that neither Canadian industry nor consumers pay a measurable price, for which you'd be blamed later at the polls. It worked not too badly, until sponsorship came along.

In 2006, Stephen Harper inherited Chretien's strategy and refined it. The Harper government in all but name withdrew from Kyoto on Day One. Conservatives have continued to gamely insist they believe enthusiastically in the battle against climate change — because that's what the strategy requires. Unlike the Liberals, though, they never bothered to even try to persuade us they would slash Canada's GHG emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012, as Kyoto requires.

Here's what both Liberals and Tories would say about climate change, if they were being honest.

The Kyoto Protocol has not mattered globally since 2001, when President George W. Bush unilaterally withdrew for the United States. Even before then, this ramshackle, bloated attempt at global engineering was dead on arrival because of the non-participation of China, India and Brazil, among other huge and fast-growing economies.

Why did Kyoto sacrifice never really take off in Canada? It's not complicated: We have a conflict of interest. According to Statistics Canada, households directly or indirectly contribute about half the country's emissions. We do that by driving cars and heating homes, and by consuming products or services created with the use of fossil fuels.

As both home insulation and cars become more energy efficient, you'd think, emissions must fall. And they do. But economic growth acts as a counter. Between 1990 and 2004, for example, the intensity of Canadian household greenhouse gas emissions decreased by more than 20 per cent. But a 25-per-cent increase in household spending over the same period offset any GHG reductions.

In other words: where there are jobs there are emissions, in equal measure. The only surefire way of slashing emissions across an entire economy is to have a deep and lasting economic collapse, as happened to the former Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Former Liberal leader Stephane Dion's Green Shift, which he rode into a wall in 2008, was a sincere but politically naive attempt to de-carbonize the Canadian economy by applying monetary levers to the habits of ordinary Canadians. It was offered as a given that said transformation was a necessary and good thing. Dion's plan went supernova because he asked that Canadians accept a lower standard of living — in the form of higher real prices for energy — in exchange for his vision.

But now even that old discussion is being superseded. The skeptical science, for years confined to the scruffy margins by the International Panel on Climate Change and its supporters, took a huge leap forward earlier this year with the discovery by no less than the CERN laboratories, based in Switzerland — arguably the most prestigious scientific group in the world — that fluctuations in the sun's magnetic field have a very large, perhaps dominant effect on the earth's climate.

If further study bears this out, then policymakers will soon be left with the rather stunning conclusion that all of it — Kyoto, Copenhagen, Durban — has mainly been a waste. Even as that work begins, the CERN findings are steadily trickling through the blogosphere, quietly altering the political discussion everywhere — including in Canada, beyond Ottawa."
*
Finally, Den Tandt mentions Chretien's Liberal climate duplicity. About time.

It's funny, eh, how the St.Catharines Standard, just before Durban,  happens to... umm...  suddenly lose all contact [!] with their local Liberal MPP, Jim 'Save-The-Planet' Bradley, who back in 2002 was one of Dalton McGuinty's chief  Kyoto agitators in Ontario! (...and the Standard, of course, was one of Bradley's chief  Liberal-policy trumpeters, doing their best to keep the Save-The-Planet Greenshevism alive).

Funny how there are no interviews today in the Standard with Bradley's like-minded federal colleague, former local Liberal MP Walt Lastewka, about the failure-from-day-one of his Liberal's climate charade.

Funny how there are NO interviews in the St.Catharines Standard with Good Ole Jimmy about his years of deceptive GreenFear-pushing Climate Doomsday Statism!

Funny that in the last... what... twenty years, at least... the Standard has never really bothered to examine their own local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's GreenFear motivations and policies - even after dedicating a laughable token 'GreenTeam' at the height of the Al Gore-a-Palooza craze and Stephane Bumbledore Dion's shifty green Carnival of Climate Crapola.

Funny how the BradleyBootlickers in Niagara's press now can't find Bradley for his response to the slow, sad realization that his Liberal policies were an utter "waste".

Funny, how the St.Catharines Standard never carried a story examining Jim Bradley's man-made AGW global-warming "evidence", and his years of GreenFear agitation, even in context of the steady ClimateGate revelations! It's as if Ole Jimmy had never been involved in spreading GreenFear, ever!

Funny how the local press can't find responses from local Greenie-pushers like St.Catharines mayor Brian McFullofit, as well as many of Niagara Region's GreenFear political practitioner-opportunists, who fell for and merrily propagated Al Gore's and Dion's and Bradley's GreenFear baseless bullsh!t.

What a waste, indeed.
*

Kyoto: kaput! [...again...]

The National Post (Nov.29, 2011) wrote in "Say it: Kyoto is dead":
"Shed no tears for the Kyoto Protocol: It was doomed to failure from the get-go. Scores of countries signed the 1997 global-warming treaty, but its carbon-emission limitations were binding only on the very richest of them. The world's two largest emitters - China and the United States - refused to accept any limits. Even most of the nations of Europe, whose leaders spoke of Kyoto's provisions as holy writ, never made the hard economic sacrifices necessary to meet their commitments. To get under their limits, they relied on accounting gimmicks, such as artificially low emission benchmarks dating from the coal-belching Cold War period.
Environmentalists imagine that Kyoto was a sort of bonding moment for the world's nations. In fact, it was an exercise in multilateral cynicism, with each group of nations tying to extract advantage through green posturing. The developing countries, including China, were happy that the treaty would handcuff the industrialized world's economic expansion until they caught up. The Europeans wanted it set up in such a way that they could boast
about their environmental bona fides without doing anything. And the Russians wanted everyone else to be bound by CO 2 limits because they had plenty of unused emission credits they wanted to sell for billions to guilt-ridden Western governments. No one was willing to make the massive, economy crippling measures that would be required to actually reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, such as replacing cheap carbon-based fuel en masse with more expensive renewable fuels.
Even if all the world's nations had somehow found some magical method for meeting their emission limits, the most the environmental treaty could have accomplished would have been to delay the total 21stcentury warming projected by scientists by a decade or less. The Earth would have warmed as much under Kyoto, just at a slightly slower rate.
All of which to say: We aren't distressed by rumours that Canada will soon withdraw from the protocol. Indeed, we hope those rumours are true. Since no Canadian government - either Liberal or Conservative - ever made any serious effort to cut emissions in compliance with our treaty obligations, there will be no effect in terms of actual energy policy in this country. And as noted above, even if there were, it wouldn't make much of a difference. The only effect of abandoning Kyoto would be that we would be striking a blow for intellectual honesty over cynical green flag-waving.
We would not be alone in effectively rejecting Kyoto. The Americans never ratified the treaty: Democrats and Republicans both refused in nearly equal numbers to hobble their economy with unrealistic emission reduction targets. The Australians followed suit in 2002, announcing that there was no way they would ratify, because doing so would hurt the economy. The Japanese voted to "accept" (but not ratify) Kyoto's reduction targets, then passed a law announcing those targets would not be legally binding either on companies or consumers.
Kyoto runs out next year. And the upcoming Durban summit has little hope of achieving a worldwide eco-treaty to succeed it. World leaders have lost all their 1997-era illusions about their ability to escape coal and oil, and about the motivations of the other members of the community of nations. Plus, a weak global economy (far weaker than it was in 1997) has destroyed any appetite for painful green initiatives among middle-class voters in countries such as Canada and the United States.
The hubristic idea that Canada has some critical role to play in saving the Kyoto process, which has been promoted in the Canadian media in recent days, is silly and naïve - a pathetic vestige of the 1990s-era soft-power fantasy that we could change the world through moral suasion. Kyoto will die whatever Canada does. No one in Washington or Beijing truly cares much whether we stay or go, whatever this or that press release may claim.
Many columnists in this newspaper have expressed skepticism regarding the scientific consensus that global warming is real, that it is caused in large part by the emission of green house gases by human economic activity, and that this presents a major problem that the world will have to deal with in coming generations. But even if one accepts the science behind Kyoto, the last 14 years demonstrate that top-down emission-reductions are not the answer. To the extent Prime Minister Stephen Harper has the courage to say this publicly, and formally withdraw from Kyoto, he should get credit for admitting a hard truth that other world leaders know, but will not admit."
*

Let's remember that Liberal Jean Chretien was Canada's chief federal kyodiot; and let's remember that Good Ole Greenshevist Liberal MPP Jim Bradley was happily spreading his GreenFear on the provincial level throughout Ontario - even though Bradley had never publicly revealed which specific "global-warming evidence" compelled him to believe that socialism will 'cure' AGW!
After several decades of GreenFear agitation, Liberal Jim Bradley is still keeping his "global warming" evidence secret!!
So, let's hear Dalton McGuinty's deceptive Liberal Environment Minister Jim Bradley now bitterly complain about Kyoto's obituary (...and no, that's not about Stephane Bumbledore Dion's dog...)
*

Isn't Ontario's Liberal Environment Minister Bradley flying to Durban, to Save The Planet?

Further to my previous post...

...why haven't reporters such as Bolichowski - or any of the St.Catharines Standard's Metcalfian gaggle of self-appointed 'wrong-righters' - asked their local Liberal MPP Jim Bradley [...when they had the chance to...] whether or not Bradley will be flying to Durban this week for the annual UN GreenFear IPCC climate orgy? After all, Jim Bradley is  McGuinty's Environment Minister!

Have we forgotten about the times, back in 2009, when:
- Bradley's Liberal leader, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, was spinning his Liberal climate-fear lies;
-when McGuinty was attacking Canada's federal gov't;
-when McGuinty was sending Liberal climate-fear agents such as eco-tax-fiasco goof  John Gerretsen abroad to foment climate fear Kyodiotism, with the partisan intent to cause dissention and international embarrassment to Canada;
-when McGuinty was saying things like...

“I think it was a missed opportunity for us as a people, as a species, frankly” and “I think we failed to find a way to come together, and in a sincere and determined fashion come to grips with a global threat: climate change.”

... with a straight face?!!

We should remember the predictable and obligatory climate change / global warming GreenFear that was eagerly spread around Niagara by greenie propagandists at the St.Catharines Standard and Niagara This Week, often conveniently timed prior to the exotic GreenFear orgies which the UN or Rajendra Pachauri's (...note: fast forward to the Pachuari disaster...) climate cabalistas were hosting. Ahhhh... those good ole days... when Jim Bradley's Liberals, strutting not just around Ontario, but on the world stage, were able to get away with trumpeting their half-cocked climate non-truths, conveniently without question, with the fawning press gladly eating it up!

Gosh: now, in Nov.2011, we have Ontario's chief global warming propagandist - Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley - installed as Ontario's redux Environment Minister, so, why hasn't any Standard reporter bothered to ask Ole Jimmy about whether Ole Jimmy's gonna grace Durban's climate stage, and be lauded and feted with all the pomp and circumstantial-evidence which the forces of  Global GreenFear can muster?!?

Isn't "climate change" (whatever that means - or ever meant - to Bradley's and McGuinty's unique Liberal sub-species) still a "global threat", as they had previously claimed??!!

If so, then WHY ISN'T LIBERAL PREMIER DALTON McGUINTY HIMSELF flying to Durban to fight for Jim Bradley's oh-so-beloved Kyoto Protocol??

Why aren't Ontario's climate-change GreenFear-peddling Liberals McGuinty or Bradley jetting off to Durban to 'Save The Planet', as surely David Suzuki must have wanted them to do?!

Why isn't the St.Catharines Standard now issuing the clarion call, demanding that Jim Bradley immediately attend the COP17 Climate Charade Fest, in order to 'Save The Planet'?

Where is the outrage from the Standard, at how Jim Bradley's and Dalton McGuinty's Liberals have Forsaken Mother Earth?

Where's all that promised 'wrong-righting' from Wendy Metcalfe's St.Catharines Standard?! [...or did she actually mean to say 'Jim Bradley Liberal-butt-protecting'...?]

Doesn't Jim Bradley care about The Planet anymore?!? Aren't Jim Bradley and Dalton McGuiity betraying humanity?!

It's amazing how the same media which trumpeted and bullhorned the doomsday climate deceptions peddled by the likes of Jim Bradley, still can't find the time to question and scrutinize Jim Bradley's discredited GreenFear deceptions - or examine their own hypocritical complicity in willingly spreading the GreenFear.

Ooooops... well... let's just forget about all those climate change / global warming GreenFear articles we've written over the years, championing without question the green bolshevism from the likes of Jim Bradley, Al Gore, and the IPCC!!!
*

Jim 'Liberal Douchebag' Bradley

There was a nice, smug quote from Liberal scumbag MPP Jim Bradley in the Nov.26, 2011 St.Catharines Standard, where Douchebag Jim tells us that the new HST tax which his Liberals chose to impose on home-heating-fuel consumers "would cost the Treasury some $350 million".

Isn't that funny, how kyodiot Bradley now spins this?!

It's NOT "costing the Treasury", Jim, you lying Liberal scumbag: it's costing us, the people who use fuel to heat our homes!! We are paying 350 million dollars MORE for fuel - because of YOUR Suzukiite greenshevik energy rip-offs!!

Did reporter Jeff Bolichowski bother to look back, oh... say... over the last four years, to see whether MPP Jim Douchebag Bradley had ever once told Ontarians the real burden which Bradley's Liberal tax-rapists would place on us with their endless new tax-gouging schemes?

Bradley never once mentioned that he and his Liberal red bolsheviks would be gouging Ontarians to the tune of $350 million on heating! Bradley's lying Liberals were telling us that their Liberal taxes were going to be 'revenue neutral' - remember that McGuinty Liberal lie?!

Of, course, since Bradley's Liberals have to now pay back their union 'family' buddies for their 'coalition smear support' before the election, Jimmy's not bothering to find ways to save costs within his Liberal bloat: Jimmy's happy just taxing and spending!!

{Of couse, reporter Bolichowski didn't bother to ask Jimmy 'bout any o' that!! hahaha  Ahh, yes... the St.Catharines Standard: 'righting all those Metcalfian wrongs'... except that whenever it's about Jim Bradley, there NEVER ARE any wrongs!!! hahahah}

And to top it off,  Disgusting Douchebag Jim then goes ahead and  links his Liberal tax gouge to health care!

Yep: healthcare-monopoly-enforcer Jim Bradley is now using veiled threats about health-care to justify keeping his tax-gouging energy policies in place!

As Bolichowski writes, removing the energy tax ""...means there's less revenue to go around" Bradley said, singling out health care as an area that could suffer".

So there you are:
Liberal scumbag healthcare-monopolist Jim Bradley is now threatening us with his healthcare fearmongering, if we don't play along with his Liberal tax-rape game.

Apparently, the HST is also a Bradley Health Tax in disguise.

Jim Bradley: definitely Niagara's Disgusting Douchebag.
*

It's a 'proven fact': the TD Bank wants more Green

There was a nice bit of global warming GreenFear-mongering revealed in the National Post's Nov.17, 2011 story "Insurers link hikes to climate", where the TD Bank's chief insurance underwriter Henry Blumenthal claimed that "Not only do we {TD Bank} believe {in global warming}, it's a proven fact". The Post report didn't specify whether Blumenthal provided any specific studies to verify his Corporate GreenFear - the whole point of which is to justify, somehow, the raising of insurance rates; using GreenFear to make more profitable greenbacks.

Will Ontario's Liberal Consumer Minister be investigating the claims of this TD Bank official, to determine that this isn't just another corporate green-washing scheme designed to rip off TD Bank's customers?

Will Ontario's Liberal Environment minister (and David Suzuki's enviro-errand boy) Jim Bradley bother to publicly challenge and to demand seeing Blumenthal's scientific basis for TD's green-smokescreen "proven-fact" tactics - seeing as Liberal Jim Bradley himself  hasn't provided any scientific basis for his Liberal global-warming/climate-change activism - and Bradley's been peddling the same greenshevism for several decades?!

Blumenthal's corporate green claims must be music to Jim Bradley's ears. (Let's not forget that back in 2008, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, acting as Ontario's Transportation Minister, no less, actually blamed climate change for causing rust !!)

If Liberal Environment Minister Jim Bradley, on behalf of all Ontarians, doesn't publicly question and challenge Blumenthal's fearsome climate claims, then Jim Bradley cannot be trusted to stand up to BIG GREEN.

Let's remember, it was only in 2002 when Jim Bradley was insisting that the costs of meeting Bradley's cultish Liberal-advocated-kyoto-protocol activism would NOT be significant!

Then - before-ClimateGate  - we had (in the Oct.9, 2009 Globe and Mail) Don Drummond (another TD Bank chief) commission a study which told us that Ottawa would likely have to impose some 72 billion dollars worth of emissions taxes in order to satisfy the demands of Jim Bradley and BIG GREEN.

Lawrence Solomon wrote a good response to this green climate-insurance sabre-rattling in "The insurance industry has been behind the global-warming fraud since the 1970's" (National Post, Nov.19, 2011)

Why isn't anyone examining which kind of political climate "fraud" Liberal MPP Jim Bradley has been peddling for years?

The Bradley Fan Clubs at the St.Catharines Standard and Niagara This Week sure aren't.
*
...oh, by the way... TD Bank CEO Ed Clark announced on Dec.1, 2011 that the TD Bank's 2011 4th quarter profit was up 58% to $1.59 Billion!!

Isn't that nice, eh, Henry?!
*

Remembering Filip Konowal, Ukrainian Canadian WW I veteran, and recipient of the Victoria Cross

above: A memorial to Canadian war hero Filip Konowal is located in Dauphin, Manitoba.
Konowal was a corporal serving with the 47th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
(Click on photos to enlarge)
********************************************

This story by Mitch Potter, Europe Bureau, (Toronto Star, Oct.13, 2007):


"Ukrainian village honours Filip Konowal, recipient of Canada's Victoria Cross

"Victoria Cross winner in WWI, Filip Konowal, never learned Ukrainian wife, child survived Lenin's and Stalin's purges


KUDKIV, Ukraine – An impoverished village in deep rural Ukraine seems a strange place to go looking for Canada's greatest soldier. But Filip Konowal is here. A legend, a monument, a memory in granite and steel, casting shadows more tragic than previously known.

Chances are you have never heard of Konowal. Then again, who among us can name a single soldier from the Great War of 1914-1918. Canada is good at building monuments to its military past. We are not so good at reading them.

Born in 1888, Konowal left Ukraine at age 26 searching for work just as the world was about to turn upside down, presumably with every intention of returning to his wife and young daughter here. He made his way via Vladivostok to Vancouver, arriving in Canada at precisely the moment the government began rounding up and imprisoning Ukrainian Canadians as "enemy aliens." The war could easily have conquered him as well. Instead, he enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Konowal's exploits over the next three years and 357 days included combat at the 1916 Battle of the Somme and the offensive at Vimy Ridge the following spring.

But it was in August 1917, during a 48-hour stand off known as the battle for Hill 70 in Lens, France, that Konowal astonished all, rushing forward and single-handedly taking out German machine-gun emplacements that were ravaging the Canadian lines. His sleepless frenzy ended when he fell to injury that left his face disfigured for life. Two months later, Konowal found himself in London, standing before King George V, who pinned on this peripatetic Ukrainian the rarely awarded Victoria Cross: "Your exploit is one of the most daring and heroic in the history of my army. For this, accept my thanks."

Ukraine was no longer in reach by war's end, and here in Kudkiv, it is easy to see why. Across the town square, opposite the statue to Konowal, amounted bust of Vladimir Ilich Lenin can still be found. Now, Lenin's nose has been chiselled away, perhaps to spite his face. Kudkiv Mayor Konstantin Dukunets says the Lenin statue will soon be gone. "There are a handful of Communist supporters left. I invited them to pay to repair Lenin's statue. But they declined, so we are tearing it down," says Dukunets, 46. "Ukraine lost 80 years to dictatorship and we are still crawling out of this legacy. But we will leave some of the memory of what happened. We need to remember so we do not make the same mistakes again."

Dukunets' predecessor would not have been able to speak to a foreign journalist. He would have reported us to the secret police. But on this night, in a village with no hotel, the mayor opens his home, offering spare beds, old-world home cooking and, inevitably, vodka. At dusk he takes us on a walkabout and everywhere we see babushkas –ubiquitous Ukrainian grandmothers – busy in their black-dirt gardens, pulling in the last of the harvest. The Internet has yet to arrive in Kudkiv. In fact, it was only this month that the last of the area villages were hooked up to the national gas line, a feat that means no more chopping wood to stay warm in winter. Half the village has running water; the other half relies on a community well.

We bump into a smiling pensioner, Olexandre Guslyakov, 67, who proudly displays the "Guslyakov One" – a working tractor, replete with hydraulic steering, that he has cobbled together from parts salvaged from six rusting trucks, tractors and cars. It took three years of ingenuity to get the thing running. Asked if he will make another, Guslyakov shrugs: "Maybe, if necessary. This is how Ukraine survives."

As we move deeper along a footpath into the waterless side of Kudkiv, Dukunets leads us to a single-storey dwelling that was Konowal's ancestral home. We have no expectations here, as it is widely understood among Canadian-Ukrainians that Konowal's wife and child perished in the Stalin reign of terror.

The loss of his original family was a wound that Konowal eventually overcame: he remarried in Canada and became a janitor on Parliament Hill. He was sanguine about his employment status in later life, once telling the Ottawa Citizen: "I mopped up overseas with a rifle and here I must mop up with a mop."

But as Konowal's door swings open in Kudkiv, a shock awaits. Here before us stands Ganna Vasylyivna Motsna, 71, granddaughter of Filip Konowal. Konowal died in 1959, never living long enough to know his original family survived Stalin's purges. His wife Anna, lived well into the 1940s. Daughter Maria, whom he last saw at age 3, lived until 1986, to age 75. Ganna, now a grandmother herself, bursts into tears as we revisit the story of the grandfather she knows only by legend. "It was a difficult time in history," she says. "Filip had to go away to earn money. Just like today, the young people go away to earn."

Ganna says the Konowal genes served the family well through the Soviet years. "We were survivors. Even my mother. She was very brave, not afraid of anything. Through all those years, we knew nothing of my grandfather. There was no information on people abroad. "Not until the Soviet collapse did we learn anything. And now here I am crying for a man I never met. I don't know why. I am just touched that people come from so far away to pay respects."

The next morning, as we take our leave of Kudkiv, fresh flowers can be seen on the monument to Konowal. Across the square, Lenin is still missing his nose."
*
Дякую.
Thank you.

*

... and here we thought the hospital ER's in Fort Erie and Port Colborne were closed!

Nice to see the St.Catharines Standard can't even bring itself to accurately report who appointed the NHS's hospital Supervisor, Kevin Smith.
The Standard's Grant Lafleche in his Nov.10, 2011 front page story wrote of "the NHS's Queen's Park-appointed supervisor Kevin Smith" - as if  Liberal health minister Deb Matthews HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH APPOINTING KEVIN SMITH!!
Yah: "Queen's Park" appointed the guy!!!! ...Blame those two maple trees over there - and that one, that sneaky chestnut: they did it!...
Oh, and, get this: we are now being admonished for thinking that the hospital emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne were "closed", when they were simply "repurposed"!! Did you get that nice piece of spin ?!?
We are now told that it was "misinformation" and dastardly "political rhetoric" which led us astray, to foolishly mis-perceive that Liberal-forced "restructuring" closed two Niagara ER's; we are supposed to now believe that they WEREN'T closed, depending on what "closed" means, that is...
WTF?!?
Look who's spouting the rhetoric!
So now, an Urgent Care Centre = Emergency Room/ Emergency Department to the bait-and-switch Liberal monopolists?
Lafleche, naturally, couldn't be bothered to report that this "restructuring" was called the HIP - and that the HIP was forced upon the NHS by, and approved for implementation by, McGuinty's Liberals, through George Smitherman and his LHIN. To whose "political advantage" is it for the Standard to deliberately omit that?!!
Yep: Fort Erie's ER was NOT "closed" - and apparently, then, Port Colborne's ER is still "open" as well - they never were "closed" (we dummies just mistakenly thought so..!); they've been open since the Liberals closed them, doncha know!!
The 'reputation of the NHS is damaged' - yet, amazingly, the reputation of the Liberals who FLICKED it up, is beyond reproach.
So there ya go: there's no need to interview Niagara's Liberal hacks Jim Bradley or Kim Craitor about any of Terry Flynn's report... and dutifully, that's exactly what the Standard did.
*
...and that's exactly what the St.Catharines Standard did again the next day, on Nov.11, 2011: carried another story regarding Terry Flynn's NHS report, a story which miraculously did not contain a single mention of, or reaction from, Liberal hacks Kim Craitor, Jim Bradley, or Deb Matthews!
Now, that's some kind o' wrong-rightin' by Wendy Metcalfe's Liberal Shoeshine Club!
*

Liberal Jim Bradley's green linebackers

Christina Blizzard wrote in "Blizzard takes on David Suzuki"  (Toronto Sun, Sept.21, 2011):

"Tell us, David Suzuki.

Are you an environmental guru?

Or simply a political hack — kissing the right butts at the right time?

Because if it’s the latter, it brings into question the integrity of your charitable foundation.

A video showing Suzuki and Premier Dalton McGuinty strolling through a Vancouver park was removed from the Liberal website recently, following complaints from a group opposed to wind turbines. Under Canada Revenue Agency rules, registered charities are not permitted to dabble in partisan politics.

In the video, Suzuki praises McGuinty for his green initiatives.

Clearly, Suzuki hasn’t talked to the residents of rural Ontario I’ve spoken to, who are outraged at the turbine monstrosities springing up there. They say they’re a blight on the landscape.

Near the small town of Zurich, on Lake Huron, for example, there are plans to build 260 turbines, some of which are 49-storeys high, with blades the size of a Boeing 747 wing span.

Each turbine consumes 1.6 hectares of prime farmland — that’s about 405 hectares of land that could be used to grow crops.

How green is that, Dr. S?

A spokesperson for Suzuki’s charitable foundation told Toronto Sun reporter Terry Davidson that Suzuki had, “stepped down” from the board of the charitable foundation some time in the summer.

James Boothroyd also insisted that the foundation didn’t break any rules.

A Toronto Star article, July 21, quoted Suzuki not only endorsing McGuinty, but slamming PC leader Tim Hudak. Here’s the Star quote:

“‘I’m offering an endorsement of what Mr. McGuinty has done, absolutely. This is a great plan. Any party would be foolish to talk about abandoning it,’ he (Suzuki) said, noting the David Suzuki Foundation works closely with the government on promoting energy conservation.”

It quotes Suzuki saying it would be, “absolute insanity,” for Hudak to scrap renewable energy projects such as wind and solar.

Suzuki has also appeared in Ontario ads promoting conservation.

Remember the ad where he sanctimoniously tells us to change our lightbulbs to energy efficient ones? In another, he sticks his head through a basketball-sized hole in a wall to lecture homeowners in their living room on how they should wrap themselves in blankets and caulk windows when there’s a draft.

I asked a Liberal spokesman how much the Great Green God was paid for those ads, and was directed to a Suzuki blog in which he said people are so sick of air pollution and climate change: “I volunteered for an energy-conservation ad campaign for Powerwise, a partnership between local Ontario electrical utilities and the Government of Ontario. We’ve completed two television commercials and some print and outdoor advertising, all of which folks in Ontario can expect to see plenty of this summer,” said the posting.

I don’t know if that means he did it for free, or he volunteered his expertise and was reimbursed.

I asked for clarification. I’m still waiting. I’ll get back to you.

Whatever the response, Suzuki has shown a remarkable propensity for meddling in partisan politics. And as long as the David Suzuki Foundation calls itself just that, it calls into question their charitable status.

Most Canadians are just sick of the soaring electricity rates the Liberals are foisting on us.

And we’ve had it up to here with creepy ads where a pompous ass lectures us on how to live our lives.

Go caulk yourself, Dr. Suzuki.

We’re doing our best."

*
David Suzuki (apparently a big Liberal Jim Bradley fan, according to Doug Draper and Peter Conradi) has been spewing his greenshevism regularly as of late in the St.Catharines Standard, which, at the end of Suzuki's scary sermons, gives a link back to Suzuki's greenfear organization. There was another Suzuki pile-o'crap on Sept.14, 2011, and more since then.
*

The Cost of Saving Sousa

Further to this CBC story from Nov.9, 2011... 

...let's go back to just two weeks before the Oct. 2011 Ontario election (when McGuinty was spewing his now-trademarked usual pre-election lies); were there any stories in the the Sept.28, 2011  St.Catharines Standard regarding local Liberal Jim Bradley's comments regarding his Liberal government's sudden cancellation of the Mississauga power plant in Liberal Charles Sousa's riding? hahaha! Was the Standard's Metcalfian doctrine of wrong-righting applied here; or was it the same old  Jim Bradley ass-kissing-doctrine as usual?

We've got disastrous Liberal by-the-seat-of-their-pants energy policy, based on underlying Liberal GreenFear climate lies, yet the Metcalfian wrong-righters haven't (conveniently!!!!!) um... been able to ask their Liberal buddy Jim Bradley anything about the millions wasted on his Liberals' latest energy fiasco?!! [All together now: "What's Good Ole Jimmy gots ta do wid it; wid any o' it??"]hahahahah. Yep: can't get Ole Jimmer involved, what with the climate lies and Suzuki ass-kissin' and last-minute politically-convenient plant-cancellation in a bid to to save some local Mississauga grit's ass - this has nuttin' ta do wid' GoldenBoyJimmy!!!

Hey Jimmy: tell us that Liberal story which Liar McGuinty blabbered on about during the televised election-debate - you know, about how those condominiums just suddenly got built - in like, two weeks (!!!) - so, that's why the Liberals cancelled the power plant!! Unbelievable!! Don't ask Jimmy 'bout how much health-care the lawsuits stemming from this latest Liberal fiasco could have provided!! (...and the St.Catharines Standard won't ask!!!!! ... there: done!!)

It's so sadly funny, it's FLICKING pathetic.

This Liberal piece of crap McGuinty was lying to Ontarians, right there in full view, at the televised debate -  and the sob actually believes his own lying stories!! Is this Liberal snake incompetent or a psycho?

And a lot of JimmyBoyFanClub sycophants just look the other way.
*

Who's really 'responsible' for the actions of the NHS?

Further to  this post  and  this post  and  this post  about the Doreen Wallace incident at GNGH in Niagara Falls, Ontario...

.... there was a related story by Brett Clarkson of The Niagara Falls Review (Nov.8, 2011) headlined 'Quality of caring missed the mark'...
[...by the way: note carefully how the phrase "health care monopoly" doesn't appear anywhere in Brett Clarkson's narrative; and neither is there any examination of, or even mention about, the role of the Liberals who have controlled the Niagara Health System for eight years, and under whose ideological tutelage this incident occurred... it's as if  Ontario's Liberals have nothing to do with any of this (!)...]:

"The Niagara Health System's internal review of a woman who was told to await an ambulance after she fell inside Greater Niagara General Hospital has found that the hospital's "quality of caring missed the mark."

"That's an understatement," said Gaylene Archibald, the daughter of Doreen Wallace, 82.
Wallace fell in the doorway of GNGH on Oct. 8 after washing her hands at a sanitizer station, breaking her leg.
Wallace agreed with the miss-the-mark description.
At the hospital to visit her then-ailing husband, who died shortly after, the Walmart greeter lay on the floor after her fall, injured and bleeding, for what her family has said was 28 minutes.
Although several staffers helped her out, the family said that other nurses from the hospital's emergency department wouldn't assist Wallace, saying that there was nothing they could do and that they would call for an ambulance.
The incident sparked an outcry that led to national and international media coverage that questioned the rationale of hospital staff telling a patient who was injured inside the hospital to await an ambulance.
The controversy prompted NHS provincial supervisor Kevin Smith to call for a review of what happened.
On Monday, he issued a statement saying the review had been done. He said that "confusion" on the part of the nurses around what to do in that kind of situation caused the incident.
"I think that there was frankly confusion in their mind as to what was the appropriate thing to do," Smith said.
Smith said that going forward, the hospital needs to address "three core elements" to overcome the lack of clarity among staff.

He also said frontline workers have told him they feel there are not enough resources at the hospital to confront the sheer volume of people needing care.

"One, the hospital needs to be really clear about what our standards and expectations and to that end, make sure that people at various sites are clear on what we do when we have a patient in distress," Smith said. "And secondly, I think the hospital is looking very seriously looking at some of the feedback we have from staff who clearly are feeling overwhelmed with the volume and complexity of cases."
The third area of focus, Smith said, needs to accountability and clarity when it comes to implementing policies.
Although the Wallace case was not technically the same as two prior situations over the summer involving Coun. Joyce Morocco and Ridgeway woman Jennifer James, who were both denied care outside the hospital when hospital staff told family members to call 911, Smith acknowledged the optics were similar.
Smith said he takes responsibility for the incident.
"I'm the supervisor of the hospital so certainly I take responsibility for everything to that end," Smith said. "I think what's more important is I think that people involved in the care process are taking responsibility and discussing how do we make sure this doesn't happen, how do we get those issues out on the table."
While Smith's statement said the staffers — a security guard, ICU nurse, and orthopedic surgeon — who responded to help Wallace "acted in exemplary fashion," the overall incident represented "poor judgment by some members of our team" as well as "management's failure to ensure the clarity of our processes and procedures."
Archibald said she had spoken to NHS interim CEO Sue Matthews last week and was told that steps were being taken to ensure a similar incident never happens again.
"If they've done what they said they have, it's a step in the right direction, definitely," Archibald said.
Archibald said she was told two nurses were disciplined and all staff have been instructed about what to do if someone inside the hospital needs care.
Smith said he wouldn't be able to comment on disciplinary matters.
Wallace wasn't ready to give the assessment a ringing endorsement, but she was willing to hope for the best.
"If they do implement it, yes, but it was supposed to have been in place after Joyce Morocco, but look what happened," Wallace said. "So, I don't know. A lot of the conversations with them, they're just clearing their butt. They don't say too much. I don't know, if it works, yes, it would be fine.
Smith's statement:
November 7, 2011
Our organization has completed its review of the incident at Greater Niagara General Hospital.
On Saturday, October 8, Ms. Doreen Wallace fell at Greater Niagara General Hospital Site. The family understandably expressed concerns about the way in which the organization responded to Ms. Wallace's distress.
Our review confirmed that several individuals acted in an exemplary fashion including the security guard and housekeeper as first responders, the ICU nurse who came to the patient's assistance before, and an Orthopedic Surgeon, who assessed and transported the patient to the Emergency Department.
Unfortunately we failed to transfer the patient to the Emergency Department from the lobby until 20 minutes had elapsed. Despite the best of intentions our effort was uncoordinated, resulting in Ms. Wallace receiving less than appropriate initial assessment and institution of treatment. Our quality of caring missed the mark.
In our follow up we have been in regular contact with the family, and are incorporating their suggestions and considering their observations as we improve our approach and processes.
This incident does represent poor judgment by some members of our team, as well as management's failure to ensure the clarity of our processes and procedures for assisting individuals in distress and communication of our standard of care.
I would be remiss if I did not also recognize the significant morale and demoralization reported by some staff, who clearly expressed feeling consistently overwhelmed. This must be a longer term issue we must address, including a review of ER staffing models. You will hear more from me with respect to the process and timeline to do so in the very near future.
Human resource policies have been followed with respect to individual performance in this case. Immediate actions have been taken to re-educate staff and clarify our processes.
NHS's policy for response to any visitor in distress will be to ensure a rapid response and transport to the most appropriate clinical setting, calling a code as appropriate. A small working group has been struck to review all NHS codes to ensure we are aligned with peer hospitals to be completed by November 18, 2011.
Each of us will be called to apply sound judgment to determine the safest, fastest, most effective and compassionate way to support persons in distress. Those needing assistance outside NHS sites will be addressed on a case by case basis, recognizing the risks for patients and staff. We have also worked closely with our EMS colleagues to ensure aligned practices and improved communication with respect to 911 calls.
Sincerely,
Dr. Kevin Smith
NHS Supervisor"
*
Unless Wallace sues, there will be no accountability here, for anything.

Smith has completed his internal review; well... big whoop. How about this incident being investigated by someone from the outside?!

The health care monopoly relies on everyone buying into the great untouchable Liberal monopolist medicare myth, and not rocking the boat.

The golden rule is that no one is really to blame - for anything; we're supposed to believe 'that's just how the system is', and move on... that, apparently, is Kevin Smith's 'Canadian Way'.

Liberal-enforced ideological single-payer health-care monopolism, and the cozy, lazy, protective can't-blame-me entitlements it brings and encourages, are never questioned, by anyone in the Liberal-friendly Niagara press.

Liberal monopolists such as Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, and Deb Matthews are held harmless from liability, although they fully control the hospital system; the Liberals rely on incidents such as Wallace's to be downplayed and swept under the rug as one-off anecdotes, as simple misunderstandings, as mere inconvenient little oversights, in Tommy Douglas's Great Radiant Medicare Future.

Supervisor Smith says 'he takes responsibility' for the Wallace incident, but, what does that really mean? Is he actually accountable? What consequences does Smith suffer for his so-called "responsibility"?!! Or is all this just simply a placebo of monopolist rhetoric?

In all this "confusion", it's certainly confusing, isn't it, how the Liberal political monopolist establishment is never held "responsible", for anything!

Aren't Liberal monopolists Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, and their Liberal-appointed LHIN's "responsible" for anything here?! Isn't Deb Matthews "responsible" - after all, she's only Ontario's Liberal Health Minister! What does any of this have anything to do with her, eh??!

Why isn't  the Liberal-besotted Niagara press asking?!
How much longer will Niagara press barons Williscraft's and Metcalfe's papers continue to cover the Liberal's butts?
*

Jim Bradley's Bollywood Blowout Bash

Remember when Liberal MPP Jim Bradley was lecturing us that  government spending has its limits, when it came to his government's paying for the increased ambulance costs in Niagara, due to Bradley's and Kim Craitor's own Liberal HIP being forced onto the NHS?

Yep, Good Ole Jim Bradley was playing coy and aloof about that, sternly telling us how Ontario (under a disastrous two-term Liberal majority government, btw..!) was in a $25 billion deficit!!

You do remember that, eh?! You do remember how smug that Liberal scumbag Bradley had been?!

So: when will readers of the St.Catharines Standard see any interviews with, or scrutiny of, Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about this precious bit of vote-buying?

When will Wendy Metcalfe's wrong-righters and journo-comedy-duos ask Liberal Jim Bradley how his Liberals managed to pull some 12 million dollars out of their butts for their Bollywood Bash Blowout?!

Will anyone from the St.Catharines Standard's (or Niagara This Week's) Bradley Asskisser Club ever ask Jim Bradley to explain this monumental waste of tax dollars - especially since Ole Jimmy had been lecturing Niagarans earlier about how f*cking broke McGuinty-run Ontario was (...and still is)?
*

...and where's that St.Catharines Standard interview with Jim Bradley??

Spare us... now the St.Catharines Standard has trotted out a new journo-comedy act duo of Lafleche and Fraser to... oh, I dunno... looks like to fill the Standard's front page with pointless crap, the point of which is to take our focus away from the miserable failings of McGuinty's Liberal government, and away from its local hacks Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor! ... and here we thought the greenjoker team of Mayer and VanDongen were useless.
Hey: maybe Lafleche can dress up in a superwoman costume, get himself a sword - no, make that a baseball bat... ah, heck, even a plain two-by-four will suffice Grant - and go "visit" Jim Bradley at home for a surprise... um... "interview" early some morning!!
Gosh golly - wouldn't that be soooo funnneee?!
Maybe Fraser can get the CBC to film it, while Warren Kinsella - the Sun Media "Bolshevik-in-chief" - narrates!
So cool! Oh yeah: Metcalfe's wrongs would be sooo righted!!
Btw, didn't y'all love Kinsella's column in the Nov.7, 2011 St.Catharines Standard, where Kinsella stated he thinks that all Liberals - including himself, strangely enough - are "knuckle-dragging red-necked mouth-breathers"?! That was very insightful, coming from Warren... except for the mouth-breathing part, where Kinsella gives himself way too much credit.
Oh, and did you see that there was another splendid editorial cartoon by QMI's Dewar in the Nov.7, 2011 St.Catharines Standard, showing McGuinty, the King of Ontario, dressed in his Liberal red ermine-trimmed robes, with a cackling Dwight Duncan waddling beside him - patting each other on the back, oblivious to the job losses which their policies have wrought upon Ontario - ignoring a person off to the side holding a sign saying "I need a job"? What pamphleteering  a great, competely non-partisan, political statement by Dewar!!!
Gosh... so many wrongs being righted here by Metcalfe's Standard... so many..!
*

Liberal Environment Minister Jim Bradley secretive about Mississauga gas-fired power plant

Further to this post  and  this post...

Isn't it amazing how the St.Catharines Standard's Metcalfian wrong-righters have conveniently hahaha been 'unable to find' their local Liberal buddy, MPP Jim Bradley (McGuinty's newest Environment Minister) for an interview regarding the energy messes which the Liberals cocked up with those gas-fired energy generators in Oakville and Mississauga?

It's funny how the St. Catharines Standard just can't find the time to bother asking Good Ole Liberal Jimmy about it!!

At least the Nov.5, 2011 Waterloo Record had a good editorial on this issue; too bad the embarrassing Bradleyphiles at the St.Catharines Standard haven't... umm... bothered asking their hero Jimmy about any of this... 

"LIBERALS BUNGLE NEW POWER PLANT

Whether the Ontario Liberals keep building a new power plant in Mississauga or honour their promise to kill it, they have exposed themselves as inept managers of a major public project.
Either way, they will have botched an important part of their energy policy — an area in which they are supposedly experts. And if the Greenfield South gas-fired power plant is axed, they will waste a shocking amount of money — how much they refuse to say — in a year Ontario faces a $16 billion deficit. The people of this province are owed better.
Ontarians deserve a reliable supply of electricity delivered at an economical price. What they are getting, instead, is a new power plant that continued to be built this week on the very day that Premier Dalton McGuinty recommitted himself to moving it.
What an infuriating contradiction between deeds and words. Is this yet another shattered Liberal promise — which would justifiably infuriate people in Mississauga? Or does it mean no new electricity for Ontarians with a bill of millions and millions of dollars — which would justifiably infuriate just about everyone? How crazy is this?
The alarm bells have been ringing on this one for the past six weeks ever since the government made the sudden, surprising and suspiciously quiet announcement that construction on the Greenfield South gas-fired power plant would stop, with another plant built somewhere else.
The time and place of this revelation were disturbing. It was just 12 days before the Oct. 6 provincial election and it came from four Liberal candidates in the Mississauga area, the community in which the Greenfield plant was being built and was opposed by many voters. The most prominent of these local Liberals was Mississauga South MPP Charles Sousa, a cabinet minister who was in a dead heat with Conservative challenger Geoff Janoscik.
It’s impossible to say whether the cancellation of the Greenfield plant was the reason Sousa and the three other local Liberals were re-elected. Even so, the optics are terrible and leave the Liberals open to understandable allegations that they indulged in the crudest kind of electioneering and cancelled an unpopular project to win seats. This was, after all, a decision made by the politicians, not energy ministry bureaucrats.
It’s not good enough for the premier to say construction will stop, another plant will be built and no more. If work is to end, when will it stop? And why did top Liberal politicians only conclude that the plant was a bad idea on the eve of an election? Why was this plant approved in the first place? And didn’t the Liberals commit an egregious error in giving it the go-ahead? Tell us, please.
There are other nagging questions the Liberals cannot dodge. If the Greenfield plant is axed, where will its replacement be located and when will it be ready? How will the province, in the short term at least, meet the energy needs that the Greenfield plant would have satisfied? And how would all this affect the schedule for closing Ontario’s coal-fired generating stations — noxious polluters the Liberals promised to shut down years ago?
Finally, what will this cost? Eastern Power began building the Greenfield plant in March. The walls are going up. A massive generator was delivered by truck last week. Every minute of every working day, the bill for this project is soaring, a bill taxpayers will have to cover. The opposition Conservatives claim this plant could be worth up to $400 million and a good part of it is completed. What will Eastern Power expect in compensation? And what will the public have to show for what seems an unavoidable squandering of public money — other than another Liberal government?"
*
No one from the St.Catharines Standard's JimmyBoy Fanclub will ever dare to ask their Boy Jim any questions about that!!
*

NHS Supervisor Kevin Smith fails to acknowledge Liberal role in creation of the HIP

The Niagara Health System's Liberal-appointed Supervisor Kevin Smith is really starting to sound annoyingly like a government apologist hack.

In his Nov.5, 2011 St.Catharines Standard letter to the editor, Smith disingenuously refers to the HIP as the "Niagara Health System's Hospital Improvement Plan", yet, Smith's politically-correct statement is far from the truth.

The NHS did not come up with this HIP all on its own, Kev.

The HIP belongs to the Liberal government, Kev - y'know: the same McGuintyite monopolists who hired ya. The Liberals created the HIP, Kev.

The Liberals demanded the HIP, and they approved the HIP, Kev.

Three successive Liberal health ministers, in fact, were quite happy with the HIP, and did nothing to stop it, Kev.

The HIP - which you, Kev, coyly emphasize was 'the NHS's' - was forced upon the NHS by McGuinty's disastrous Liberal health minister George Smitherman.

The NHS was forced to create the HIP, we were told, so that Smitherman's Liberals could save money, Kev.

The Smitherman-created LHIN had the final word on approving or cancelling the HIP, Kev, when it was still only a proposal; the Smitherman-created LHIN then went on to approve the HIP, Kev... yes, the Liberal-created LHIN approved the same HIP which they had forced the NHS to come up with!

Kevin Smith now says he 'regrets he has been less than clear' regarding his seeming-reluctance to revisit the HIP (a reluctance which seemed quite clear earlier: that he wasn't interested in revisiting the HIP!!)

Kevin Smith should stop with his weaselly let's-not-look-into-the -past  BS and his "Canadian Way" rhetoric.

Smith must plainly acknowledge that the Niagara HIP was the work of his employers, the McGuinty Liberals.

The HIP was created by the Liberal party of Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley.

The 'NHS's HIP' was initiated by and approved by Kim Craitor's and Jim Bradley's Liberal government.

The 'NHS's HIP' is the Liberal's HIP, Kev. Why don't the Kevin Smiths and the Kim Craitors and the Jim Diodatis get that?! (!!!)

Kevin Smith must publicly demonstrate that he fully understands that the HIP was a Liberal-government-initiated political undertaking, not a NHS-originated medical undertaking.

If Kevin Smith cannot or will not acknowledge this fact, then everything he is doing here in Niagara will be suspect.

Kevin Smith is that close to now himself becoming a part of the monopolist health-care problem.
*