In Let's impeach the premier (Hamilton Spectator, Oct.6, 2012) Stephen Skyvington wrote
"Like Brian Mulroney before him, Dalton McGuinty seems determined to take his party down with him
"Like Brian Mulroney before him, Dalton McGuinty seems determined to take his party down with him
Dalton McGuinty is lucky he’s the Premier of Ontario and not the President of the United States. If he were the President, we’d all be calling for his head and Congress would be preparing Articles of Impeachment.
But as we all know, McGuinty isn’t president, and we don’t have any articles of impeachment or a Congress to prepare them. And after receiving a strong endorsement from his own party at their convention in late September, McGuinty is giving every indication he intends to lead the Liberals into the next election.
All of which boggles the mind, quite frankly. Not since former prime minister Brian Mulroney has there been a politician so vilified as Dalton McGuinty. Type the words “Liberal scandals” into any search engine and you’ll be bombarded by the premier’s legacy. It’s actually quite sobering to go through the list. It would almost be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic.
We’ve had the eHealth scandal. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming scandal. The Samsung deal scandal. The Eco Tax scandal. The Ornge scandal. I could go on and on — one website lists 30 different scandals before running out of gas.
Then we have the granddaddy of them all — the Power Plant scandal. Or as I like to call it, the Seat Saver scandal. For those who haven’t been paying attention, the Liberals announced they were stopping construction on two power plants in order to save some Liberal seats in danger of being wrestled away by the PC or New Democratic parties last year. The seats were saved, although McGuinty’s Liberals were held to a minority government, after having won two consecutive majorities in 2003 and 2007. The cost for this disgraceful, politically motivated decision is $230 million and counting.
Surprisingly, McGuinty has chosen to throw his very capable Energy Minister (and former attorney general) Chris Bentley under the bus. Not only is Bentley taking the heat for this one, he could actually go to jail if found in contempt of the legislature. To his credit, the premier did eventually try to defend his minister, albeit lukewarmly, saying: “These attacks, these threats, this heavy-handed, unprecedented process — using the full force of the legislation against one MPP — these are decidedly not in keeping with the standards and traditions we seek to uphold.”
One question Liberal supporters and backbenchers must be asking is: “How did it come to this?” How indeed. My opinion, as a longtime political operative and former political staffer, is that the Liberals (like all parties who win back-to-back majorities) were the victims of their own success. To use a sports analogy, they started reading (and believing) their own press clippings. Shortly after their second term began, a rot began to settle in. Once that happens, deception and corruption can’t be far behind.
Or to use another sports analogy ... if Dalton McGuinty was the coach of the Leafs, Raptors, Argos or Blue Jays, the fans would be singing in unison by now: “Goodbye, Dalton. Goodbye, Dalton. Goodbye, Dalton. We’re glad to see you go!”
The premier did have the opportunity to make a graceful exit during the Liberal convention last month. But he chose instead to stick around.
Am I surprised? Not one bit.
I’ve never written about this before, but in 1996 then-MPP Dalton McGuinty asked me to drop by his office. I was working for the Ontario Medical Association at the time and Dalton was reaching out to potential supporters. He told me that he was thinking about running for leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario and wanted to know what I thought about that. Nobody gave him a chance. Everybody underestimated him. It was hard to take him seriously. I can’t remember my exact response, but I’m sure I told him to go for it. After all, what difference would it make? It wasn’t like he was going to win.
Now, 16 years later, I don’t expect to be receiving a call from Premier McGuinty asking my advice. But if I did get such a call, I’d tell him it was time. To go. Now."
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First off, what utter disingenuous pap from Skyvington, attempting to smear Mulroney by equating him to that scumbag Liberal Dalton McGuinty! Oh, come on, man!! Nice try, but your bias is evident in your first line!
If anything, Skyvington should be looking at a more apt comparison: Liberal Jean Chretien's disgusting scandal-plagued years - that's the proper McGuinty comparator, not Mulroney! Skyvington also could have used the socialist stench of Bob Rae's years as Dipper premier, as a scandal-plagued comparator to McGuinty - but, Skyvington chose not to focus on that socialist-paradise-fiasco either!! hahah
But as far as scandals go, McGuinty's Liberals take the cake for expensive policy disaster after flicking expensive fiasco-laden ideological policy disaster, as mentioned by Skyvington.
I do find it odd, if Skyvington was in some way associated with the OMA in the past, that he today has managed to overlook what I think is Dalton McGuinty's most horrendous crime: the McGuinty Liberal government's direct complicity [as sole managers and funders of Ontario's single-payer health-care monopoly] not to submit their health-care monopoly to a public inquiry, when hundreds of Ontarians were dying in C.difficile outbreaks throughout Ontario in 2008.
McGuinty's Liberals, under George Smitherman, hid from a public inquiry in 2008, while giving Ontarians promises (falsehoods, we would later learn) that the Liberals 'knew all there was to know about C. diff'; that there was no need to 'waste money' on any damn inquiry; that Ontarians didn't need to worry; that Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal gang of serial liars had 'everything under control'...
'Under control' - until 2011, when dozens more patients died in Niagara in another C.difficile outbreak... [under circumstances which should have been previously anticipated and prepared for] ...had McGuity's Liberals not covered-up their health-monopoly from public scrutiny back in 2008.
Dalton McGuinty blatantly lied in 2008 when he publicly stated that Ontario's "hospitals now know how to protect against the spread of C. difficile" .
If McGuinty's state-monopoly-run hospitals were prepared, then, where was this 'protection' in 2011, for Niagara's C. diff patient-victims??!
No-one (...especially from the Jim Bradley-Friendly St.Catharines Standard..!) ever bothered asking McGuinty to explain his false and negligent 2008 reasurrance - even when more patients began dying in Niagara in 2011!!
The St.Catharines Standard couldn't even be bothered to pursue their buddy Jim Bradley for an interview during Niagara's Liberal Summer of C.diff Death.
Instead of covering Jim Bradley, the Standard's disgusting wrong-righters covered-up for Jim Bradley.
With great skill, they managed to make it look like Ole Liberal Jimmy had nothin' to do with all these deaths... nuthin' at all...
[If McGuinty and his Liberals had been somehow 'impeached' - or better yet, jailed - on this issue, then we wouldn't have had the costly Power Plant fiaso. We could have had more funds for healthcare, instead of having Dalton still here, wasting millions to save the asses of his Liberal gangmembers.]
Maybe Skyvington or some other Spectator reporter can re-examine the direct connection between what McGuinty's secretive Liberals did in 2008, and how that arrogant decision subsequently - and detrimentally - impacted the C. difficile outbreak and patient deaths in Niagara, only 3 years later, in 2011.
After all, Hamilton Spectator reporters Naomi Powell and Joan Walters had already begun this investigation back on July 4, 2008 (...perhaps Skyvington can read it, and ponder this story's sad, long, deadly arc (which is still unresolved today, in 2012) while the Liberal perpetrators walk around scot-free, still in power...) A lot more has been revealed about McGuinty's operating procedures since 2008 - so, where is the follow up on this story?
You can bet that no Niagara press, such as the St.Catharines Standard, will bother looking into that! If they can't somehow blame harris, or Diefenbaker (or Mulroney - eh, Skyvington?!) then, they're not interested. The point is not to make Liberals look bad.
The local Niagara Liberal MPP, the disgusting Dishonourable Jim Bradley, literally disappeared from public view in 2011 while scores of C. diff patients were dying in Bradley's own Liberal-monopoly-underfunded hospitals.
All these other Liberal scandals were about wasted money and Liberal lies - bad enough, yes, to boot McGuinty out of power - but... McGuinty's secrecy, and outright callous brute-force state-monopolist thuggish response in regards to the C.diff outbreak already underway in 2008, ended up costing other Ontario patients their lives in 2011.
McGuinty going now, or not going now, should not absolve him, or his Liberal majority government's health-monopoly-pushing ministers, of their direct role in the deaths of those Niagara patients.
McGuinty and his Liberals, such as Niagara MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor, pushed a single-payer monopolist health-care utopia when they were campaigning; then, when elected, they were negligent in not submitting their monopoly to a public inquiry after hundreds of C.diff outbreak patients had already died - under the Liberal's own watch.
Ontario's Liberals played politics with their health-care monopoly, and they decided instead to hide their monopoly from scrutiny, even when they knew the risk that subsequent patients would die. This was a perverted Liberal ideological decision, where Liberal politics were prioritized above patients - patients who were forced into and stuck within a no-choice, state-run health-care monopoly.
In other words - this was a brutal and deadly example of Liberal healthcare duplicity.
*
But as we all know, McGuinty isn’t president, and we don’t have any articles of impeachment or a Congress to prepare them. And after receiving a strong endorsement from his own party at their convention in late September, McGuinty is giving every indication he intends to lead the Liberals into the next election.
All of which boggles the mind, quite frankly. Not since former prime minister Brian Mulroney has there been a politician so vilified as Dalton McGuinty. Type the words “Liberal scandals” into any search engine and you’ll be bombarded by the premier’s legacy. It’s actually quite sobering to go through the list. It would almost be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic.
We’ve had the eHealth scandal. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming scandal. The Samsung deal scandal. The Eco Tax scandal. The Ornge scandal. I could go on and on — one website lists 30 different scandals before running out of gas.
Then we have the granddaddy of them all — the Power Plant scandal. Or as I like to call it, the Seat Saver scandal. For those who haven’t been paying attention, the Liberals announced they were stopping construction on two power plants in order to save some Liberal seats in danger of being wrestled away by the PC or New Democratic parties last year. The seats were saved, although McGuinty’s Liberals were held to a minority government, after having won two consecutive majorities in 2003 and 2007. The cost for this disgraceful, politically motivated decision is $230 million and counting.
Surprisingly, McGuinty has chosen to throw his very capable Energy Minister (and former attorney general) Chris Bentley under the bus. Not only is Bentley taking the heat for this one, he could actually go to jail if found in contempt of the legislature. To his credit, the premier did eventually try to defend his minister, albeit lukewarmly, saying: “These attacks, these threats, this heavy-handed, unprecedented process — using the full force of the legislation against one MPP — these are decidedly not in keeping with the standards and traditions we seek to uphold.”
One question Liberal supporters and backbenchers must be asking is: “How did it come to this?” How indeed. My opinion, as a longtime political operative and former political staffer, is that the Liberals (like all parties who win back-to-back majorities) were the victims of their own success. To use a sports analogy, they started reading (and believing) their own press clippings. Shortly after their second term began, a rot began to settle in. Once that happens, deception and corruption can’t be far behind.
Or to use another sports analogy ... if Dalton McGuinty was the coach of the Leafs, Raptors, Argos or Blue Jays, the fans would be singing in unison by now: “Goodbye, Dalton. Goodbye, Dalton. Goodbye, Dalton. We’re glad to see you go!”
The premier did have the opportunity to make a graceful exit during the Liberal convention last month. But he chose instead to stick around.
Am I surprised? Not one bit.
I’ve never written about this before, but in 1996 then-MPP Dalton McGuinty asked me to drop by his office. I was working for the Ontario Medical Association at the time and Dalton was reaching out to potential supporters. He told me that he was thinking about running for leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario and wanted to know what I thought about that. Nobody gave him a chance. Everybody underestimated him. It was hard to take him seriously. I can’t remember my exact response, but I’m sure I told him to go for it. After all, what difference would it make? It wasn’t like he was going to win.
Now, 16 years later, I don’t expect to be receiving a call from Premier McGuinty asking my advice. But if I did get such a call, I’d tell him it was time. To go. Now."
*
First off, what utter disingenuous pap from Skyvington, attempting to smear Mulroney by equating him to that scumbag Liberal Dalton McGuinty! Oh, come on, man!! Nice try, but your bias is evident in your first line!
If anything, Skyvington should be looking at a more apt comparison: Liberal Jean Chretien's disgusting scandal-plagued years - that's the proper McGuinty comparator, not Mulroney! Skyvington also could have used the socialist stench of Bob Rae's years as Dipper premier, as a scandal-plagued comparator to McGuinty - but, Skyvington chose not to focus on that socialist-paradise-fiasco either!! hahah
But as far as scandals go, McGuinty's Liberals take the cake for expensive policy disaster after flicking expensive fiasco-laden ideological policy disaster, as mentioned by Skyvington.
I do find it odd, if Skyvington was in some way associated with the OMA in the past, that he today has managed to overlook what I think is Dalton McGuinty's most horrendous crime: the McGuinty Liberal government's direct complicity [as sole managers and funders of Ontario's single-payer health-care monopoly] not to submit their health-care monopoly to a public inquiry, when hundreds of Ontarians were dying in C.difficile outbreaks throughout Ontario in 2008.
McGuinty's Liberals, under George Smitherman, hid from a public inquiry in 2008, while giving Ontarians promises (falsehoods, we would later learn) that the Liberals 'knew all there was to know about C. diff'; that there was no need to 'waste money' on any damn inquiry; that Ontarians didn't need to worry; that Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal gang of serial liars had 'everything under control'...
'Under control' - until 2011, when dozens more patients died in Niagara in another C.difficile outbreak... [under circumstances which should have been previously anticipated and prepared for] ...had McGuity's Liberals not covered-up their health-monopoly from public scrutiny back in 2008.
Dalton McGuinty blatantly lied in 2008 when he publicly stated that Ontario's "hospitals now know how to protect against the spread of C. difficile" .
If McGuinty's state-monopoly-run hospitals were prepared, then, where was this 'protection' in 2011, for Niagara's C. diff patient-victims??!
No-one (...especially from the Jim Bradley-Friendly St.Catharines Standard..!) ever bothered asking McGuinty to explain his false and negligent 2008 reasurrance - even when more patients began dying in Niagara in 2011!!
The St.Catharines Standard couldn't even be bothered to pursue their buddy Jim Bradley for an interview during Niagara's Liberal Summer of C.diff Death.
Instead of covering Jim Bradley, the Standard's disgusting wrong-righters covered-up for Jim Bradley.
With great skill, they managed to make it look like Ole Liberal Jimmy had nothin' to do with all these deaths... nuthin' at all...
[If McGuinty and his Liberals had been somehow 'impeached' - or better yet, jailed - on this issue, then we wouldn't have had the costly Power Plant fiaso. We could have had more funds for healthcare, instead of having Dalton still here, wasting millions to save the asses of his Liberal gangmembers.]
Maybe Skyvington or some other Spectator reporter can re-examine the direct connection between what McGuinty's secretive Liberals did in 2008, and how that arrogant decision subsequently - and detrimentally - impacted the C. difficile outbreak and patient deaths in Niagara, only 3 years later, in 2011.
After all, Hamilton Spectator reporters Naomi Powell and Joan Walters had already begun this investigation back on July 4, 2008 (...perhaps Skyvington can read it, and ponder this story's sad, long, deadly arc (which is still unresolved today, in 2012) while the Liberal perpetrators walk around scot-free, still in power...) A lot more has been revealed about McGuinty's operating procedures since 2008 - so, where is the follow up on this story?
You can bet that no Niagara press, such as the St.Catharines Standard, will bother looking into that! If they can't somehow blame harris, or Diefenbaker (or Mulroney - eh, Skyvington?!) then, they're not interested. The point is not to make Liberals look bad.
The local Niagara Liberal MPP, the disgusting Dishonourable Jim Bradley, literally disappeared from public view in 2011 while scores of C. diff patients were dying in Bradley's own Liberal-monopoly-underfunded hospitals.
All these other Liberal scandals were about wasted money and Liberal lies - bad enough, yes, to boot McGuinty out of power - but... McGuinty's secrecy, and outright callous brute-force state-monopolist thuggish response in regards to the C.diff outbreak already underway in 2008, ended up costing other Ontario patients their lives in 2011.
McGuinty going now, or not going now, should not absolve him, or his Liberal majority government's health-monopoly-pushing ministers, of their direct role in the deaths of those Niagara patients.
McGuinty and his Liberals, such as Niagara MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor, pushed a single-payer monopolist health-care utopia when they were campaigning; then, when elected, they were negligent in not submitting their monopoly to a public inquiry after hundreds of C.diff outbreak patients had already died - under the Liberal's own watch.
Ontario's Liberals played politics with their health-care monopoly, and they decided instead to hide their monopoly from scrutiny, even when they knew the risk that subsequent patients would die. This was a perverted Liberal ideological decision, where Liberal politics were prioritized above patients - patients who were forced into and stuck within a no-choice, state-run health-care monopoly.
In other words - this was a brutal and deadly example of Liberal healthcare duplicity.
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1 comment:
The National Post carried a good editorial in their Oct.16, 2012 edition, about Dalton McGuinty's resignation, which McGuinty had announced late in the day on Oct.15The Post's editorial nicely summarized McGuinty's years of lies and obfuscation, concluding that the worst thing that Dalton did was abandon the people of Caledonia.
It was no doubt a disgrace - an utter disgusting disgrace, what the cowardly McGuinty did (a practising "Liberal", practicing in a supposedly-"just society") to the people of Caledonia, to Ontarians, and to the notion of rule of law.
But, I don't think that was on the same level of deceipt, callousness and negligence, as how McGuinty's lies in 2008 about the C.diff crisis 'being under control' (when it clearly wasn't) directly precipitated the C.diff outbreak in Niagara in 2011, which killed at least three dozen patients.
What McGuinty did in Caledonia was bereft of leadership, and morally vacuuous; but what McGuinty did in propagating his C.diff lies...
(...to save his health-monopoly at the time from a public inquiry in 2008 - a parallel with the similar scenario in Oct. 2012: run, hide, and buy time when the flashlight is about to be shone on McGuinty's despotic, secretive activities!)
...was criminal, resulting in death.
McGuinty had an obligation - as the unapologetic head-cheerleader of a despotic political ideology which forced a single-payer state-run health monopoly upon Ontarians - to ensure that his state-run monopoly was publicly scutinized, especially when hundreds of Ontarians had ALREADY died in C.difficile outbreaks throughout the province.
McGuinty personally perpetrated the lie that his Liberal-run health monopoly did NOT need any public scrutiny or inquiry into the C.diff deaths, claiming (falsely) that everything was under control, that the Liberals and their monopolist health organization knew all there was to know about C. difficile, so no troublesome inquiries were needed.
This was what Dalton McGuinty, Ontario's Premier Liberal liar, tols us in 2008.
This was way worse than what McGuinty did in Caledonia - this lead to deaths in Niagara.
If the Post had remembered McGuinty's C.difficile lies, then the Post would have been able to add a new and profound perspective to the significance of what happened in Caledonia: it was in Caledonia that McGuinty learned that he could act as a despot; where he learned that there were no serious repercussions to his (non)actions/decisions; that he would not be held to account for the repercussions of his "policies".
Caledonia crystallized in McGuinty's mind the reality that he and his Liberals could dismiss, lie to, and steam-roller over the people of Ontario, time and time again, fiasco after fiasco.
Caledonia emboldened disgusting Dalton's political pathology, later helping this serial liar to non-chalantly create secret G20 laws, or condemn future patients to death, in order to protect his morally-bankrupt health-monopoly from scrutiny.
McGuinty should have been stopped and held to account at Caledonia.
Ontarians let McGuinty get away with it, for far too long.
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