Tom McAnulty, a St. Catharines Ont. pharmacist, wrote in “I’m mad as hell” – Screw ups at the Ministry” (The Seniors Review, Niagara Edition, Feb.-Mar. 2008):
“I was taken off guard by the latest Ministry of health (MOH) missteps regarding what drugs were covered by the Ontario Drug Benefit Formulary (ODBF) plan – which helps pay for seniors’ medications – and which ones weren’t.
Normally, for routine antibiotics and the like, this has never been an issue, that is until, Monday Jan. 14. On that day the government of Ontario, in its infinite wisdom, delisted the majority of the commonly used antibiotics your doctors routinely use to treat a variety of everyday infections.
And how did this happen? Basically, it came down to stubbornness on the part of government officials charged with maintaining the health of the system that is supposed to serve your needs. As a result of this intransigence, pharmacists were forced to either 1) charge cash for prescriptions that should have been covered; 2) phone your doctor to ask for a covered alternative; or 3) send you back to the doctor to be reassessed and given another prescription for a covered product.”
Mr. McAnulty wrote that the Ontario Pharmacists’ Association “had warned the government back in October that this crisis would occur under the irrational rules they instated under the much-vaunted and criticized Transparent Drug System Patient Act (TDSPA).
In a nutshell, the generic companies that produce the bulk of these commonly prescribed antibiotics applied for some rather routine price increases. But really short-sighted thinking on the government’s part produced a technical legal bind that tied their own hands together: only one product in each category could be legally dispensed under the ODB plan, but unfortunately, could not be acquired due to limited supply and hugely overwhelming demand.
Meanwhile, your already-overworked doctor was being inundated with calls to switch prescriptions to a covered alternative, or, alternately, to see the patient again (in which he/she could not rebill the government due yet to another MOH regulation preventing same day/same reason/same person billing).
All of this served no purpose than to prove how incompetent the clowns in the MOH are at regulating your pharmacare program, while at the same time preventing doctors and pharmacist from delivering their highest quality healthcare, which they can and do deliver on any given day – and that you pay for through your taxes. All in all, a pretty poor performance.
Now, I don’t mind too much when the government treats me like dirt (through TDSPA), but when they start hurting my patients, I take it personally, as does, I might add, your doctor.
When the government minions screw up the rules so badly that no one can comply and the public suffers, it’s time to change the minions. Hard to believe that we reinstated these clowns in the last election.
So, what can you do to ensure that this never happens again? Complain to your local MPP – heck, show him your cash receipt from the pharmacy; write a letter to the Minister of Health George Smitherman, requesting the dismissal of the executive Officer in charge of the ODBF, Helen Stevenson, who caused this mess; and lastly, give your pharmacist a hug…it’s been a hard week.”
What is Liberal St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley's response to the issues raised in Mr. McAnulty’s above column?
Will Bradley call for an investigation into why this important health care issue was mis-handled by his Liberal government’s Ministry of Health, despite warnings from the Pharmacists’ Association? Will Bradley call for the resignation of his Liberal party's Health Minister, George Smitherman? Isn’t this Minister responsible for these screw-ups? Or does Bradley think that this, another instance in a lengthy string of Liberal health-care fiascos, was acceptable?
Friday, February 8, 2008
Toronto ER patients dying in Liberal-run 'hall of shame'
[click to enlarge]
When the discussion turned to a story about a child with a broken bone being told to wait, Liberal windbag Stephen LeDrew at one point said ‘if you’re delayed five hours just buck up’!
LeDrew belittled such stories as anecdotal, and as such, meaningless in determining the sorry state of our health care system. When one caller, Debbie, said our health care system is frightening, LeDrew chortled derisively "Frightening because it’s so good?" LeDrew said ‘you can go to the States’ for health care ‘It’s only an hour away’ , mentioning that’s where Coren should go for his lobotomy.
Astounding.
LeDrew’s ridiculous Liberal babble was embarrassing and offensive, considering the gravity of the problems in this Liberal-run health monopoly. Coren was held speechless by LeDrew’s callous, lunkheaded attitude. “I’m incredulous” he told LeDrew at one point. When Coren tried to make the reasonable reference to other systems that have better access to health care, LeDrew had no rational answers except to belittle Coren that his argument is just “philosophical” and “ideological”. I suppose LeDrew’s wasn’t? LeDrew said to Coren ‘you don’t like the idea of public health’…yet as a coy lawyer, didn’t define what he means by “public health”. ‘Public health’ has nothing to do with a government-run health monopoly.
Coren at one point also rightly admonished a lunkheaded caller who was parroting babble about Tommy Douglas, asking the caller if he’d actually ever read anything by Douglas!
LeDrew could not comprehend Coren’s view that there are sensible alternatives to both the U.S. and to our health systems.
It was a great radio show to have listened to, if one wanted to hear a full-blown pompous Liberal lamely try to defend Ontario’s health care system.
The same day, the Toronto Sun (Feb.7, 2008) carried a story by Don Peat, “Patients dying in ‘hall of shame’: EMS. Paramedics allege 3 died while waiting for bed this week at Etobicoke General.”
The Sun said bed shortages, due to the Liberals having had closed three hospitals, have left emergency room patients routinely waiting “up to 10 hours” with ambulance paramedics in the Etobicoke General Hospital’s back hallways. Glenn Fontaine, paramedic union Local 416 chairman, claimed that one of the three patients who died within a 24-hour period went into cardiac arrest after waiting for three hours in the waiting room with chest pains.
YET, Liberal Stephen LeDrew says if you don’t like Ontario’s Liberal-run health monopoly, “GO TO THE STATES”!!!!
“JUST BUCK UP”, said Liberal windbag LeDrew!!
These Liberals are FLICKING UNBELIEVABLE!
By the way, included above at the top of the page is an advertisement insert which appeared in the St. Catharines Standard, also on Feb.7, 2008, for private MRI’s available in Buffalo for $300. The absurdity is that this same kind of service would be illegal if it was located across the Niagara River in Liberal-run Ontario!
A Midland Free Press (Nov.16, 2005) story reported: "Smitherman also was asked [by the Opposition] to comment on a report that waiting lists for some hospital operations are growing and denounced it as fabricated by 'Mike Harris and the gang at the Fraser Institute.' "
Who will Smitherman conveniently denounce now, for the emergency room wait-times and deaths, occurring under his watch in 2008?
I was listening to the ‘two bald guys with strong opinions’ radio show on CFRB Toronto, Feb.7, 2008, with hosts Michael Coren and Stephen LeDrew; the topic was wait-times in emergency rooms.
When the discussion turned to a story about a child with a broken bone being told to wait, Liberal windbag Stephen LeDrew at one point said ‘if you’re delayed five hours just buck up’!
LeDrew belittled such stories as anecdotal, and as such, meaningless in determining the sorry state of our health care system. When one caller, Debbie, said our health care system is frightening, LeDrew chortled derisively "Frightening because it’s so good?" LeDrew said ‘you can go to the States’ for health care ‘It’s only an hour away’ , mentioning that’s where Coren should go for his lobotomy.
Astounding.
LeDrew’s ridiculous Liberal babble was embarrassing and offensive, considering the gravity of the problems in this Liberal-run health monopoly. Coren was held speechless by LeDrew’s callous, lunkheaded attitude. “I’m incredulous” he told LeDrew at one point. When Coren tried to make the reasonable reference to other systems that have better access to health care, LeDrew had no rational answers except to belittle Coren that his argument is just “philosophical” and “ideological”. I suppose LeDrew’s wasn’t? LeDrew said to Coren ‘you don’t like the idea of public health’…yet as a coy lawyer, didn’t define what he means by “public health”. ‘Public health’ has nothing to do with a government-run health monopoly.
Coren at one point also rightly admonished a lunkheaded caller who was parroting babble about Tommy Douglas, asking the caller if he’d actually ever read anything by Douglas!
LeDrew could not comprehend Coren’s view that there are sensible alternatives to both the U.S. and to our health systems.
It was a great radio show to have listened to, if one wanted to hear a full-blown pompous Liberal lamely try to defend Ontario’s health care system.
The same day, the Toronto Sun (Feb.7, 2008) carried a story by Don Peat, “Patients dying in ‘hall of shame’: EMS. Paramedics allege 3 died while waiting for bed this week at Etobicoke General.”
The Sun said bed shortages, due to the Liberals having had closed three hospitals, have left emergency room patients routinely waiting “up to 10 hours” with ambulance paramedics in the Etobicoke General Hospital’s back hallways. Glenn Fontaine, paramedic union Local 416 chairman, claimed that one of the three patients who died within a 24-hour period went into cardiac arrest after waiting for three hours in the waiting room with chest pains.
YET, Liberal Stephen LeDrew says if you don’t like Ontario’s Liberal-run health monopoly, “GO TO THE STATES”!!!!
“JUST BUCK UP”, said Liberal windbag LeDrew!!
These Liberals are FLICKING UNBELIEVABLE!
A St. Catharines Standard (Oct.19,2007) story, “Wait times longest for seniors: study” reported that across Canada, 10% of patients admitted to ER had to wait 15 hours or longer for a bed and that the average age of those waiting 24 hours or more was 67, and 52% of these patients were female.
Three days earlier on Oct. 16, 2007, the St. Catharines Standard ran another story, “Warning sounded on bed shortages” stating that “bed shortages in local hospitals are getting worse”, with an eyewitness account from Dr. Keith Greenway about a cancer patient right in Niagara who passed away while waiting in the hallway for a bed.
Yet, it was only on Sept.30, 2006 that the Standard ran a story, “More hospital beds not in the cards: premier”, where Dalton McGuinty “deflected answers about funding additional beds to alleviate wait times”!!!
The St. Catharines Standard (Sept.29, 2007), during the election campaign, ran a story, “Emergency in health care”, as well as another story featuring Suzanne Aucoin, “Groups call for improved cancer care”, as well as James Wallace's “Clock ticking on healthcare system”, all detailing a plethora of problems within our health system.
Yet during the Sept. 2007 election campaign, St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley said precious little about these healthcare issues that have been fermenting under his government’s reign, as he was busy fear mongering about an imaginary fragmentation of our school system!
In each of these preceding St. Catharines Standard stories, no mention was made of, and no reaction was reported from our local MPP, Jim Bradley. It's as if good ol’Jim Bradley, then-Minister for Seniors, and Tourism, conveniently didn't have much to do about any of these severe systemic healthcare problems which he and his party have helped create.
So when today David Suzuki says politicians should be jailed for the crime of being anti-Kyoto, why isn’t someone putting Liberals in jail for the deaths occurring on their watch; in their health monopoly’s overcrowded emergency rooms?
What choice did Liberal Health minister George Smitherman give these patients who perished at Etobicoke General? Where were these people supposed to go?
To the United States? It’s bad enough Ontarians have been forced by the Liberals to go for to the States for regular health care, because of waiting lists – now the Liberals suggest we should go there for unexpected emergency care, too??
Is Liberal LeDrew’s pathetic joke actually becoming official George Smitherman Liberal health policy?
So when today David Suzuki says politicians should be jailed for the crime of being anti-Kyoto, why isn’t someone putting Liberals in jail for the deaths occurring on their watch; in their health monopoly’s overcrowded emergency rooms?
What choice did Liberal Health minister George Smitherman give these patients who perished at Etobicoke General? Where were these people supposed to go?
To the United States? It’s bad enough Ontarians have been forced by the Liberals to go for to the States for regular health care, because of waiting lists – now the Liberals suggest we should go there for unexpected emergency care, too??
Is Liberal LeDrew’s pathetic joke actually becoming official George Smitherman Liberal health policy?
By the way, included above at the top of the page is an advertisement insert which appeared in the St. Catharines Standard, also on Feb.7, 2008, for private MRI’s available in Buffalo for $300. The absurdity is that this same kind of service would be illegal if it was located across the Niagara River in Liberal-run Ontario!
A Midland Free Press (Nov.16, 2005) story reported: "Smitherman also was asked [by the Opposition] to comment on a report that waiting lists for some hospital operations are growing and denounced it as fabricated by 'Mike Harris and the gang at the Fraser Institute.' "
Who will Smitherman conveniently denounce now, for the emergency room wait-times and deaths, occurring under his watch in 2008?
What excuse will Smitherman and Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals fabricate this time?
*
*
Suzuki 'solution' : start building jails for McGuinty's enviro-crimes?
"Jail politicians over climate change: Suzuki" read a National Post story (Feb.7, 2008) which detailed David Suzuki’s Jan.28, 2008 speech at the McGill Business Conference in Montreal.
“Toward the end of his speech, Dr. Suzuki said that “we can no longer tolerate what’s going on in Ottawa and Edmonton” and then encouraged attendees to hold politicians to a greater green standard.
"What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act," said Dr. Suzuki, a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
"It's an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years."
Hard to believe that ‘it’s all settled’ Suzuki was a member of any civil liberties group! No more discussions! The debate is over! We must implement the final solution! Jail the heretics!
I wonder how "so-called leader" Liberal MPP Jim Bradley of St. Catharines feels about Suzuki’s rant?
Suzuki and Bradley apparently have had their own little mutual admiration society going for years. But now, Bradley himself will fall prey to Suzuki’s greenshevikism. (Green bolshevism)
After all, Bradley and his McGuinty Liberals did absolutely nothing about their 2003 promises to shut down all of Ontario’s coal-fired generating plants by 2007. According to Suzuki , that should get jail time for every Ontario Liberal MPP elected in two Liberal majority governments since 2003!
Would wearing prison stripes suit Jim Bradley, for the supposed criminal act of “intergenerational” crimes against humanity? (Or, is it an “intergenerational” crime against the environment?) Who’s the victim here?
And, what exactly happened “twenty years” ago that Suzuki refers to? What was this ‘face of all knowledge’ Suzuki alludes to?
Jim Bradley has yet to reveal the basis of his own pro-Kyoto propaganda campaign in Ontario in 2003! Was it the phony Mann-made 'hockey-stick graph'??
Tom Spears wrote in “Suzuki, the science ruffling the feathers”, (Ottawa Citizen, Jan.22, 1990):
“Reporters who cover him often complain that Suzuki has little patience with people who know less about science than he thinks they should.
And a student found that out -- as many do -- by asking what Suzuki considered a stupid question at a forum at Carleton University two years ago.
Suzuki had just said that Canada should do more to scale down the arms race -- stop testing cruise missiles, for instance. The student asked whether Canada's action would work.
"Who can guarantee you that anything you do will matter?" Suzuki shouted. "But if you sit back -- There is so much cynicism. You're too young to be cynical, dammit. It's just not valid to say 'Do you think it will work?' Who gives a shit whether it will work? You gotta do it."
Suzuki has a habit of ruffling scientific feathers, too. He criticizes scientists for studying too much and acting too little.
The ill feelings, he says in his autobiography, cut both ways: "My growing involvement in television was resented by my fellow professors... I heard some of (the reasons): I was on an ego trip, my science wasn't good enough so I shifted areas, I was wasting my time. I felt the disapproval by my colleagues came mostly from their view that popularizing science through broadcasting was beneath the dignity of a university professor."
The issue came to a head in 1974 when the university temporarily revoked his sabbatical, arguing he should spend it doing "real" science, not the watered-down TV stuff.
Since then, he says, the academic community has warmed to his populist approach.
He admits being "arrogant" and "a hotshot," but says he's ready to change his views if he's proven wrong.
Suzuki has an admirer in Ontario Environment Minister Jim Bradley.
Suzuki has raised public consciousness of environmental problems "perhaps more than any individual in the public eye," Bradley said. "And he has suggested solutions."”
And one of Suzuki’s suggested “solutions” now includes putting promise-breaking admirers, such as Bradley, in jail!
How ironic, considering the good times Bradley and Suzuki have apparently shared in the past, with flattering reports like this one from the St. Catharines Standard, (Jun.8, 2002):
“From renowned environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki to former premier David Peterson to his own staff, Bradley has been called the best environment minister in the history of the province, even the country.” (cue OOOOH!)
Or, from the Cambridge Times (Aug.5, 2003):
“Bradley, an environment critic with fewer opportunities than a financial spokesman, nonetheless ranks among the most useful half- dozen MPPs. He was an environment minister popular with activists from 1985-90 and one, David Suzuki, recently called him the best environment minister in Canada's history.” (cue AAAAAH!)
So, for years, even prior to his 2003 election, Jim Bradley, was rated in the top six elite “useful” MPP’s. And since 2003, Bradley has been in the Liberal cabinet of two majority Liberal governments, who have essentially misrepresented their stated environmental goals.
Despite all that, Suzuki wants all these government leaders jailed. So, how "useful" was Jim Bradley, then, after all?
Will Jim Bradley, the apple of Suzuki’s reported adulation, now publicly part company with the wizened, wacky environmentalist, after having ridden on his approval and his coattails all this time, when it was to Bradley’s advantage to do so?
Or is it time to start building the enviro-jails?
“Toward the end of his speech, Dr. Suzuki said that “we can no longer tolerate what’s going on in Ottawa and Edmonton” and then encouraged attendees to hold politicians to a greater green standard.
"What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act," said Dr. Suzuki, a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
"It's an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years."
Hard to believe that ‘it’s all settled’ Suzuki was a member of any civil liberties group! No more discussions! The debate is over! We must implement the final solution! Jail the heretics!
I wonder how "so-called leader" Liberal MPP Jim Bradley of St. Catharines feels about Suzuki’s rant?
Suzuki and Bradley apparently have had their own little mutual admiration society going for years. But now, Bradley himself will fall prey to Suzuki’s greenshevikism. (Green bolshevism)
After all, Bradley and his McGuinty Liberals did absolutely nothing about their 2003 promises to shut down all of Ontario’s coal-fired generating plants by 2007. According to Suzuki , that should get jail time for every Ontario Liberal MPP elected in two Liberal majority governments since 2003!
Would wearing prison stripes suit Jim Bradley, for the supposed criminal act of “intergenerational” crimes against humanity? (Or, is it an “intergenerational” crime against the environment?) Who’s the victim here?
And, what exactly happened “twenty years” ago that Suzuki refers to? What was this ‘face of all knowledge’ Suzuki alludes to?
Jim Bradley has yet to reveal the basis of his own pro-Kyoto propaganda campaign in Ontario in 2003! Was it the phony Mann-made 'hockey-stick graph'??
Tom Spears wrote in “Suzuki, the science ruffling the feathers”, (Ottawa Citizen, Jan.22, 1990):
“Reporters who cover him often complain that Suzuki has little patience with people who know less about science than he thinks they should.
And a student found that out -- as many do -- by asking what Suzuki considered a stupid question at a forum at Carleton University two years ago.
Suzuki had just said that Canada should do more to scale down the arms race -- stop testing cruise missiles, for instance. The student asked whether Canada's action would work.
"Who can guarantee you that anything you do will matter?" Suzuki shouted. "But if you sit back -- There is so much cynicism. You're too young to be cynical, dammit. It's just not valid to say 'Do you think it will work?' Who gives a shit whether it will work? You gotta do it."
Suzuki has a habit of ruffling scientific feathers, too. He criticizes scientists for studying too much and acting too little.
The ill feelings, he says in his autobiography, cut both ways: "My growing involvement in television was resented by my fellow professors... I heard some of (the reasons): I was on an ego trip, my science wasn't good enough so I shifted areas, I was wasting my time. I felt the disapproval by my colleagues came mostly from their view that popularizing science through broadcasting was beneath the dignity of a university professor."
The issue came to a head in 1974 when the university temporarily revoked his sabbatical, arguing he should spend it doing "real" science, not the watered-down TV stuff.
Since then, he says, the academic community has warmed to his populist approach.
He admits being "arrogant" and "a hotshot," but says he's ready to change his views if he's proven wrong.
Suzuki has an admirer in Ontario Environment Minister Jim Bradley.
Suzuki has raised public consciousness of environmental problems "perhaps more than any individual in the public eye," Bradley said. "And he has suggested solutions."”
And one of Suzuki’s suggested “solutions” now includes putting promise-breaking admirers, such as Bradley, in jail!
How ironic, considering the good times Bradley and Suzuki have apparently shared in the past, with flattering reports like this one from the St. Catharines Standard, (Jun.8, 2002):
“From renowned environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki to former premier David Peterson to his own staff, Bradley has been called the best environment minister in the history of the province, even the country.” (cue OOOOH!)
Or, from the Cambridge Times (Aug.5, 2003):
“Bradley, an environment critic with fewer opportunities than a financial spokesman, nonetheless ranks among the most useful half- dozen MPPs. He was an environment minister popular with activists from 1985-90 and one, David Suzuki, recently called him the best environment minister in Canada's history.” (cue AAAAAH!)
So, for years, even prior to his 2003 election, Jim Bradley, was rated in the top six elite “useful” MPP’s. And since 2003, Bradley has been in the Liberal cabinet of two majority Liberal governments, who have essentially misrepresented their stated environmental goals.
Despite all that, Suzuki wants all these government leaders jailed. So, how "useful" was Jim Bradley, then, after all?
Will Jim Bradley, the apple of Suzuki’s reported adulation, now publicly part company with the wizened, wacky environmentalist, after having ridden on his approval and his coattails all this time, when it was to Bradley’s advantage to do so?
Or is it time to start building the enviro-jails?
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Shocking evidence of global warming in Canada! Liberals to be jailed!? Suzuki 'jumps the shark'!!
If David Suzuki could only fly around the country in his air-polluting jets just a little more, while spouting his eco-alarmist hot-air, then maybe his global-warming-warning will come through and clear the ice from this car's windshield.
A column by Terry O’Neil (“By any means necessary”, National Post, Feb.7, 2008) was headlined: “David Suzuki says he wants anti-Kyoto politicians thrown in jail. How did environmentalism become this totalitarian?”
O’Neil wrote that Suzuki “told a University of Toronto audience last month that the next federal election ought to be about the environment. No problem there. However, as reported by a student newspaper, he then opined that government leaders who aren't acting quickly enough to save the environment "should go to jail for what they're not doing right now … What our government is not doing is a criminal act."
His allegation of law-breaking was apparently no mere slip of the tongue. Speaking a few weeks later at McGill University, Suzuki again equated governments' alleged inaction on the environment with a criminal act; in fact, he is reported to have said students ought to find a legal way to throw politicians in jail for ignoring climate-change science.
The geneticist-turned-broadcaster had particularly harsh words for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Ed Stelmach of Alberta because of their alleged favouring of economic growth over environmental protection. "It is an intergenerational crime" -- there's that concept again -- "that, in the face of the work of scientists over the last 20 years, they keep dithering as they are," Suzuki declared.”
O’Neil continued:
“We should also not be surprised at the intolerance that permeates Suzuki's "lock 'em up" rhetoric. After all, despite the multicultural mantra that we "celebrate our differences," there's a disturbingly illiberal tendency these days (as shown in the recent "human-rights" prosecutions of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, for example) to censor those with whom one doesn't agree. It's only a very small step to try to throw such disagreeable persons into prison, too. Perhaps U.S. author Jonah Goldberg ought to be thinking of adding a chapter to his high-profile new book, Liberal Fascism, to explore this subject further.
Actually, Czech President Vaclav Klaus (who, coincidentally, is up for reelection tomorrow) has already done a lot of thinking in this area and has concluded that environmental zealotry poses as great a threat to human freedom as did communism. Klaus, whose book Our Planet is Blue not Green will soon be translated into English, believes that climate-change alarmists persuade governments to launch costly and unnecessary programs that have the ultimate effect of impoverishing people, thereby making them less free.
"When we look at it in a proper historical perspective, the issue is -- once again -- freedom and its enemies," Klaus wrote last year. "Those of us who feel very strongly about it can never accept the irrationality with which the current world has embraced climate change (or global warming) as a real danger to the future of mankind, as well as the irrationality of [anti-globalwarming] measures because they will fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity."
Suzuki is actually supporting a more direct attack on freedom than that which worries Klaus. Suzuki's plan would lead to a loss of freedom, not though punitive economic measures, but through the incarceration of politicians with whom he disagrees. I have a better idea: Let the court of public opinion decide this at the polls. And if Suzuki doesn't like the democratic outcome, he can always show his displeasure by giving us back his Order of Canada medal.”
*
Perhaps Suzuki’s been flyin’ around too much in the rarefied stratosphere not only of his jet-travels, but of his posturing dogma. According to Suzuki’s own green-shevik babble, it’s likely he too, should be locked up!
You breathe: you’re guilty.
The jack-booted eco-fascist green-shirts will be summoned to ‘escort’ you away for your crime against “intergenerational humanity”.
If all politicians should go to jail for their inaction on climate change, then Judge David Suzuki just signed the arrest warrants for Dalton McGuinty (and local MPP Jim Bradley) and every other Ontario Liberal MPP promise-breaker elected since 2003!
You can bet that Stephane Bumbledore Dion and the Liberal-dominated senate would be loathe to pass this swaggering Suzuki “crime bill”, if for no reason other than to save their own hides.
*
A column by Terry O’Neil (“By any means necessary”, National Post, Feb.7, 2008) was headlined: “David Suzuki says he wants anti-Kyoto politicians thrown in jail. How did environmentalism become this totalitarian?”
O’Neil wrote that Suzuki “told a University of Toronto audience last month that the next federal election ought to be about the environment. No problem there. However, as reported by a student newspaper, he then opined that government leaders who aren't acting quickly enough to save the environment "should go to jail for what they're not doing right now … What our government is not doing is a criminal act."
His allegation of law-breaking was apparently no mere slip of the tongue. Speaking a few weeks later at McGill University, Suzuki again equated governments' alleged inaction on the environment with a criminal act; in fact, he is reported to have said students ought to find a legal way to throw politicians in jail for ignoring climate-change science.
The geneticist-turned-broadcaster had particularly harsh words for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Ed Stelmach of Alberta because of their alleged favouring of economic growth over environmental protection. "It is an intergenerational crime" -- there's that concept again -- "that, in the face of the work of scientists over the last 20 years, they keep dithering as they are," Suzuki declared.”
O’Neil continued:
“We should also not be surprised at the intolerance that permeates Suzuki's "lock 'em up" rhetoric. After all, despite the multicultural mantra that we "celebrate our differences," there's a disturbingly illiberal tendency these days (as shown in the recent "human-rights" prosecutions of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, for example) to censor those with whom one doesn't agree. It's only a very small step to try to throw such disagreeable persons into prison, too. Perhaps U.S. author Jonah Goldberg ought to be thinking of adding a chapter to his high-profile new book, Liberal Fascism, to explore this subject further.
Actually, Czech President Vaclav Klaus (who, coincidentally, is up for reelection tomorrow) has already done a lot of thinking in this area and has concluded that environmental zealotry poses as great a threat to human freedom as did communism. Klaus, whose book Our Planet is Blue not Green will soon be translated into English, believes that climate-change alarmists persuade governments to launch costly and unnecessary programs that have the ultimate effect of impoverishing people, thereby making them less free.
"When we look at it in a proper historical perspective, the issue is -- once again -- freedom and its enemies," Klaus wrote last year. "Those of us who feel very strongly about it can never accept the irrationality with which the current world has embraced climate change (or global warming) as a real danger to the future of mankind, as well as the irrationality of [anti-globalwarming] measures because they will fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity."
Suzuki is actually supporting a more direct attack on freedom than that which worries Klaus. Suzuki's plan would lead to a loss of freedom, not though punitive economic measures, but through the incarceration of politicians with whom he disagrees. I have a better idea: Let the court of public opinion decide this at the polls. And if Suzuki doesn't like the democratic outcome, he can always show his displeasure by giving us back his Order of Canada medal.”
*
Perhaps Suzuki’s been flyin’ around too much in the rarefied stratosphere not only of his jet-travels, but of his posturing dogma. According to Suzuki’s own green-shevik babble, it’s likely he too, should be locked up!
You breathe: you’re guilty.
The jack-booted eco-fascist green-shirts will be summoned to ‘escort’ you away for your crime against “intergenerational humanity”.
If all politicians should go to jail for their inaction on climate change, then Judge David Suzuki just signed the arrest warrants for Dalton McGuinty (and local MPP Jim Bradley) and every other Ontario Liberal MPP promise-breaker elected since 2003!
You can bet that Stephane Bumbledore Dion and the Liberal-dominated senate would be loathe to pass this swaggering Suzuki “crime bill”, if for no reason other than to save their own hides.
*
Friday, February 1, 2008
Segregation: The new Liberal education solution
Here’s a comment on the so-called Afro-centric [Afri-centric?] schools which are being seriously proposed to be set up in Toronto, Ontario, posted by Anonymous on Halls of Macadamia website, Jan.28, 2008:
“If segregation in Toronto is such a great idea perhaps it should be more inclusive of the principle - blacks could have separate buses, drinking fountains, washrooms and restaurants. The Toronto District School Board should study the pre-civil rights era southern US, or for a more recent example they could copy Apartheid era South Africa, there's no need for them to re-invent the wheel. South Africa probably has leftover skin colour charts so our government school board will know who can and cannot be admitted, they could probably get a deal on those.”
Is this the Neanderthal regressive throwback to the past that is now going to occur in Liberal Ontario? Premier Dalton McGuinty says he’s “uncomfortable” with this idea – yet, what are his Liberals doing to stop it?
If racially-profiled education isn't “DIVISIVE” enough for McGuinty to act on, then what is?!
Christina Blizzard wrote in "The hypoGrits are back" (Toronto Sun, Feb.1, 2008) that McGuinty "shut down debate on faith-based school funding. Now [he] has the power to shut down this race-based school." McGuinty has "a moral obligation" to do so, because "segregation in schools was not just an issue but the defining issue" of the last election.
McGuinty recently said he won’t provide funding for the initiative; that the school board will have to carve it out of their own funds. Yet, their funds are nevertheless our PUBLIC funds –and the school board always gets bailed out by the province with subsidies at year’s end.
So when the school board comes-a-callin' at the end of this or next year with a deficit, how will McGuinty refuse them? On what basis will he say ‘oh, this much of your ongoing deficit was for your segregationist, race-based schools, so we’re not paying that part?'
It’s astounding that in the last Ontario election – just over three months ago! - the McGuinty Liberals made such a righteous (yet hypocritical) issue of faith-based educational funding (which would have brought various faith groups into an Ontario-approved curriculum). The Liberals made all kinds of nasty insinuations that the policy would be divisive, regressive, segregationist.
McGuinty waxed poetic with kumbaya-homilies about how all the children should sing and laugh and learn together in public schools.
Lorrie Goldstein (Toronto Sun, Sept. 19, 2007) asked: “So why is McGuinty, educated at a publicly funded, faith-based school, smearing Tory as a segregationist and fear-mongering by implying that whatever's going on in those privately-funded Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and other faith-based schools, it's probably not anything good? Why is this self-described champion of diversity, stooping to this?”
The Branford Expositor (Sept.11, 2007) wrote: “"It's a bad idea," McGuinty said. "We want our kids coming together in the same classroom sitting side-by-side from various faiths."”
What... except for black kids??! Isn't that also "a bad idea"?? And then what about having an Asian-based, or a Latino-centric, or a "white"-centric education system, as well. That's got to be the next step...that is , unless you want to discrimate against them! What an example of politically-correct government egalitarianism gone out of control! Mouthing platitudes of faux-equality, while pracising the exact opposite!
During an election campaign all-candidates meeting in St. Catharines (Sept.27, 2007), a member of the audience remarked to Liberal MPP incumbent Jim Bradley: “Over the years I have appreciated the fact that at the faith-based school that my children attend, you have made many laudatory comments about contributions such schools make. Now your leader says that people like us are a threat to social cohesion in Ontario, and segregationist. And I presume that would include other non-public schools like Ridley, for instance. So I would appreciate knowing whether you agree with your leader on that.”
Bradley agreed with his Liberal leader, all the while trying to appear that he didn’t agree. Who would have dreamed that three months after their faith-based hypocrisy that Bradley's Liberals would turn the other cheek when race was used to segregate Ontario’s education system - under the Liberal's watch. Does Jim Bradley agree with race-based education occurring during his Liberal government's tenure?
And let’s not forget that during the last election, just like with health care, Liberals strived to pretend there was nothing wrong within their educational system, either - a system they ran for four years. The Falconer Report’s findings didn’t magically appear in the last several weeks – all that was percolating in the educational system for years. The Liberals IGNORED it! The kids were failing in the Liberal Utopian school system, because the Liberal school system failed them. So the "new" answer; the "new" policy of "inclusiveness", under the Liberals, is educational apartheid!
And the Liberals have done nothing to stop this odious ‘progress to the past’.
So now, the Liberals acquiesce to a new divisive and regressive “solution’: plain ol’ re-packaged segregation.
As with the Liberal’s duplicity on healthcare, that this 'development’ is actually being implemented in McGuinty’s Ontario is FLICKING unbelieveable.
But hey: this must be the good kind of racial segregation: it’s Liberal!
“If segregation in Toronto is such a great idea perhaps it should be more inclusive of the principle - blacks could have separate buses, drinking fountains, washrooms and restaurants. The Toronto District School Board should study the pre-civil rights era southern US, or for a more recent example they could copy Apartheid era South Africa, there's no need for them to re-invent the wheel. South Africa probably has leftover skin colour charts so our government school board will know who can and cannot be admitted, they could probably get a deal on those.”
Is this the Neanderthal regressive throwback to the past that is now going to occur in Liberal Ontario? Premier Dalton McGuinty says he’s “uncomfortable” with this idea – yet, what are his Liberals doing to stop it?
If racially-profiled education isn't “DIVISIVE” enough for McGuinty to act on, then what is?!
Christina Blizzard wrote in "The hypoGrits are back" (Toronto Sun, Feb.1, 2008) that McGuinty "shut down debate on faith-based school funding. Now [he] has the power to shut down this race-based school." McGuinty has "a moral obligation" to do so, because "segregation in schools was not just an issue but the defining issue" of the last election.
McGuinty recently said he won’t provide funding for the initiative; that the school board will have to carve it out of their own funds. Yet, their funds are nevertheless our PUBLIC funds –and the school board always gets bailed out by the province with subsidies at year’s end.
So when the school board comes-a-callin' at the end of this or next year with a deficit, how will McGuinty refuse them? On what basis will he say ‘oh, this much of your ongoing deficit was for your segregationist, race-based schools, so we’re not paying that part?'
It’s astounding that in the last Ontario election – just over three months ago! - the McGuinty Liberals made such a righteous (yet hypocritical) issue of faith-based educational funding (which would have brought various faith groups into an Ontario-approved curriculum). The Liberals made all kinds of nasty insinuations that the policy would be divisive, regressive, segregationist.
McGuinty waxed poetic with kumbaya-homilies about how all the children should sing and laugh and learn together in public schools.
Lorrie Goldstein (Toronto Sun, Sept. 19, 2007) asked: “So why is McGuinty, educated at a publicly funded, faith-based school, smearing Tory as a segregationist and fear-mongering by implying that whatever's going on in those privately-funded Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and other faith-based schools, it's probably not anything good? Why is this self-described champion of diversity, stooping to this?”
The Branford Expositor (Sept.11, 2007) wrote: “"It's a bad idea," McGuinty said. "We want our kids coming together in the same classroom sitting side-by-side from various faiths."”
What... except for black kids??! Isn't that also "a bad idea"?? And then what about having an Asian-based, or a Latino-centric, or a "white"-centric education system, as well. That's got to be the next step...that is , unless you want to discrimate against them! What an example of politically-correct government egalitarianism gone out of control! Mouthing platitudes of faux-equality, while pracising the exact opposite!
During an election campaign all-candidates meeting in St. Catharines (Sept.27, 2007), a member of the audience remarked to Liberal MPP incumbent Jim Bradley: “Over the years I have appreciated the fact that at the faith-based school that my children attend, you have made many laudatory comments about contributions such schools make. Now your leader says that people like us are a threat to social cohesion in Ontario, and segregationist. And I presume that would include other non-public schools like Ridley, for instance. So I would appreciate knowing whether you agree with your leader on that.”
Bradley agreed with his Liberal leader, all the while trying to appear that he didn’t agree. Who would have dreamed that three months after their faith-based hypocrisy that Bradley's Liberals would turn the other cheek when race was used to segregate Ontario’s education system - under the Liberal's watch. Does Jim Bradley agree with race-based education occurring during his Liberal government's tenure?
And let’s not forget that during the last election, just like with health care, Liberals strived to pretend there was nothing wrong within their educational system, either - a system they ran for four years. The Falconer Report’s findings didn’t magically appear in the last several weeks – all that was percolating in the educational system for years. The Liberals IGNORED it! The kids were failing in the Liberal Utopian school system, because the Liberal school system failed them. So the "new" answer; the "new" policy of "inclusiveness", under the Liberals, is educational apartheid!
And the Liberals have done nothing to stop this odious ‘progress to the past’.
So now, the Liberals acquiesce to a new divisive and regressive “solution’: plain ol’ re-packaged segregation.
As with the Liberal’s duplicity on healthcare, that this 'development’ is actually being implemented in McGuinty’s Ontario is FLICKING unbelieveable.
But hey: this must be the good kind of racial segregation: it’s Liberal!
Bumbledore Dion puts foot in mouth again
Leader of the Canadian Liberal Party, Stephane “Bumbledore” Dion, shoved his foot in his mouth once again, this time making allegations that Dimitri Soudas, the Prime Minister's spokesman, was party to extortion in an Aug. 2006 real estate deal. The Globe and Mail (Jan.31, 2008) reported: “After question period on Thursday, Mr. Dion said: "Yesterday I used an inappropriate word: 'extortion' attempt. I apologize for that, and that was not the appropriate word.” But Mr. Dion added: "I will choose my words well this time: it appears like political interference."”
It’s bad enough Dion doesn’t say what he means, but we don’t know what he’s saying - or what he means to say at any given time - either. I guess we’ll have to wait for his Liberal interpreters to actually decipher his innuendo from his facts; his policies from his posturing; and regurgitate Their Leader’s Grand Utterances so we may all know what The Chosen One really intended to mean to say, at any given point in time.
It’s a repeat of his recent ‘NATO into Pakistan' blunder.
Dion’s a fumbling, mumbling Bumbledore, which is appropriate for a Liberal, I suppose, but he's not P.M. material.
It’s bad enough Dion doesn’t say what he means, but we don’t know what he’s saying - or what he means to say at any given time - either. I guess we’ll have to wait for his Liberal interpreters to actually decipher his innuendo from his facts; his policies from his posturing; and regurgitate Their Leader’s Grand Utterances so we may all know what The Chosen One really intended to mean to say, at any given point in time.
It’s a repeat of his recent ‘NATO into Pakistan' blunder.
Dion’s a fumbling, mumbling Bumbledore, which is appropriate for a Liberal, I suppose, but he's not P.M. material.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Liberal Jim Bradley looks like he's got something to hide
MPP Jim Bradley:
The St. Catharines Standard (Jan.30, 2008) wrote in “Ontario premier blasts Harper Tories on environment”: “Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says the federal government suffers from a “poverty of ambition” when it comes to fighting the global issue of climate change.”
Did you read the part where Federal Environment Minister John Baird said the Ontario premier should look at his own environmental record before criticizing Ottawa? Baird mentioned that your coal-fired electricity-generators have not been closed yet, and mentioned your Liberal’s stance not to accept California-style emission standards.
I think your Liberal government suffers from a ‘poverty of truth’, as well as an ‘abundance of hypocrisy’. I bring the following essay for your attention:
Here’s a nice lie told by Dalton McGuinty to Ontarians in May 2003: “By 2007, we’re going to have cleaner air in this province come hell or high water.” (Globe and Mail, Jun.10, 2006)
McGuinty railed that he would close all of Ontario’s coal-generated electricity plants by last year – well, it’s 2008 and that promise turned into a Liberal lie. McGuinty’s Liberals in 2003 even wanted to ban the export of non-emergency coal-fired electricity. (St. Catharines Standard, Jul.17, 2007)
This was partly due to their fear mongering - in opposition - regarding coal emission dangers: why produce more than you have to? was their thinking. Of course, limiting our production to bare minimums only made it easier to have to buy from U.S. coal fired producers.
The St. Catharines Standard (Jun.21, 2002) reported Liberal MPP Jim Bradley asked Energy and Environment Minister Chris Stockwell to stop selling coal-fired power to the U.S. on non-emergency days.
"If we shut them down, we would actually put people in a blackout situation in the province. None of us want that, [Stockwell] said" .
The Standard wrote: “The Liberal environment critic and St. Catharines MPP [Bradley] said Thursday that Stockwell is favouring energy interests over environmental ones. "As minster of energy, he has an obligation ... to provide as much power to the people of Ontario as cheaply as possible," Bradley said at Queen's Park. "As minister of the environment, his obligation is to ensure that we have clean, breathable air. In my view, the minister does not have an objective opportunity to reduce air pollutants in Ontario because one is a conflicting interest over the other."
How disingenuous when you look back from 2008 at how the Liberals lied about what they were going to achieve. Bradley’s Liberals haven’t closed all the coal fired plants, nor have they at least installed scrubbers on them for the interim. Maybe Jim Bradley can reveal how many people his Liberals made sick since 2003 with their environmental deceit? Liberal promises of supposed "clean air" were nothing more than vote-grabbing hot-air.
The Hamilton Spectator (Dec.11, 1998) wrote of Jim Bradley fan David Suzuki saying: "Air pollution is responsible for 6,000 premature deaths a year in Ontario alone." Of course, now that Jim Bradley is in power, not in opposition, and Jim Bradley's Liberals have closed no other plants except Lakeview (whose closing was set by the previous Conservatives), have Suzuki's death-figures changed? How many premature deaths in Ontario today are due solely to Liberal political posturing and misrepresentation?
The St. Catharines Standard (Jun.5, 2002) wrote: “Bradley had asked Stockwell about the amount of pollution produced by coal-fired power plants in Ontario.
By way of reply, Stockwell said Bradley was trying to push Ontario into a technological and economic dark age. "If we listen to the thinking of the critic for the environment, the only way he wants to (decrease pollution) is we close down all our infrastructure, close down all our plants, close down all our manufacturing, lay everybody off and put them on welfare," he said. "We would be like Guam." Guam, located in the south Pacific, was purchased by the U.S. in 1899 and, therefore, included in the report. "It was just so ludicrous an answer, such a Neanderthal answer," Bradley said in an interview Tuesday. "That was the kind of argument put up before environment control years and years ago in very backward jurisdictions where the polluters had the government in their back pocket."”
There goes ole "pipsqueak" Bradley again (as Ralph Klein fondly once referred to him), with his “Neanderthal” condemnation – when, as we well have since seen, his Liberals were nothing more than environmental posers, lying their way into power.
Has anyone today in 2008, "asked" Jim Bradley "about the amount of pollution produced" from his Liberal-controlled coal-fired power stacks?
Back on May 12, 1989 the Toronto Star wrote: "Judging by his inept performance in the Legislature this week, Environment Minister Jim Bradley looks a little like a man who has something to hide. He has enraged the opposition with his wordy, vague responses to allegations that fuel tainted with toxic waste was being smuggled into Canada from the United States."
Who can hide the fact today that Jim Bradley and his Liberals have done nothing about the Nanticoke coal fired plant?
Continued the St Catharines Standard (Jun.5, 2002): “Bradley's question had come on the heels of a new North American Free Trade Agreement report that said Ontario is the third worst polluting region in North America, behind only Texas and Ohio. He repeated his longstanding call that the government convert coal-fired power plants, such as the one in Nanticoke that contributes to Niagara's smog each summer, to natural gas to reduce air pollution.”
So why is Jim Bradley hiding from his B.S.bluster now? Why isn’t Bradley repeating his wordy rejoinders, his “longstanding” calls, to close and convert Nanticoke now? What is Bradley hiding today - the economic costs of shutting down coal without having viable alternatives in place – as Stockwell plainly said six years ago? How’s Bradley’s Ontario now…still behind Texas and Ohio? Or does Neanderthal Bradley want our economy to become like Guam’s?
Bradley once compared Conservative Energy Minister Jim Wilson to Phineas T. Bluster from Howdy Doody (St. Catharines Standard, Oct.24, 2001). How clever…yet now it is Bradley who strangely resembles Bluster, carrying a sack full of stinking Liberal doody. Jimbo has turned into a McGuinty marionette, full of contradictory jibber-jabber.
Bradley was in a Conservative-government-initiated committee reporting on alternate energy plans which recommended the phasing out of coal fired plants by 2015 (Hamilton Spectator, Jun.10, 2002). But then, during the 2003 election, the Liberals recklessly speeded up that timetable, in retrospect, solely because of their lust for political power.
Having failed to do what they promised in 2003, the Liberals “have now drafted a regulation to close all coal fired plants by New Year’s Eve 2014, which means any subsequent government will have to change the law if it wants to keep the plants open.” (St. Catharines Standard, Jul.26, 2007)
This was a cute pre-2007-election gambit for the Grits – this “law” means the Liberals can safely fiddle around for another almost four years, till the 2011 election, as they have done over the last four years, since 2003; leaving a subsequent government only three years to accomplish the task.
The Sarnia Observer (Jul.26, 2007) wrote: "A CIBC report is predicting electricity costs could rise up to 70 per cent when Ontario mothballs its four coal-fired plants but McGuinty said that pales in comparison to the cost of doing nothing about global warming."
But why should Jim Bradley (“a left leaning Liberal”, as Ian Urquhart described him, Toronto Star, Jun.10, 2002) care about costs? Jim has his wealthy pension unlocked, Jim has his nice salary-increase, Jim has his nice shiny black Malibu, that he was bragging about when he was shilling about ‘buying GM’ at the CAW all-candidates meeting during the election…Jim has it good. A 70% increase in hydro costs won’t bother Bradley much, will it?
The Hamilton Spectator (Jul.19, 2002) wrote "the cost of switching Nanticoke and the other fossil-fuelled plants to cleaner fuels such as natural gas is formidable. OPG estimates it would cost $3 billion to replace Nanticoke's coal generation with natural gas; to replace all of the fossil-fuelled plants would cost $6 billion. But the cost of smog and poor air quality is equally daunting. On top of an estimated 1,900 premature deaths a year, the Ontario Medical Association estimates that health care, lost work time, and related expenses run into billions of dollars annually."
The Sarnia Observer quoted McGuinty on July 26, 2007 still saying: "The single greatest contributor to greenhouse gases in the province of Ontario is coal-fired generation so we're going to do something about that."
So why didn't the Liberals do what they said they were going to do in government, given all the information that was appearing during the time they were in opposition. Surely, they had a plan, didn't they?
The Hamilton Spectator (Jul.10, 2005) wrote: "A 10-year outlook, prepared by experts at the IESO and released last week, warned that the province's plan to phase out coal generating plants by 2007 "represents the largest and most significant electricity system change ever undertaken in Ontario ... (and) involves significant risks and challenges ..." "
Shouldn't the McGuinty brain-trust already have taken this into consideration prior to making rash promises during their election campaign in 2003??
So, to prepare for the Oct.2007 election, the Liberals had to admit their lying promises were just that.
The Globe and Mail reported in “Ontario reneges on coal pledge” (Jun.10, 2006):
“The Ontario government retreated yesterday from a campaign promise and conceded what has been obvious to its critics for some time: it can't meet a self-imposed deadline to shut down the province's aging coal-burning electricity-generating plants.
Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said new information reveals that the province doesn't have enough electricity to keep the lights on if it stops burning coal by 2009.
"This is a setback, there's no doubt about it," he said in an interview yesterday.”
A “setback”!!? Really!!?
And just when did the Liberal geniuses come to that conclusion??!!
Un-flicking believeable! It’s like Duncan, Phineas T. Bradley, and their company, JUST FOUND THIS OUT in 2006!!!?
How can it be a setback, when the whole proposition was essentially an unattainable goal: in other words, a practical lie?
It’s like Jim Bradley simply and arrogantly didn’t care to understand what Chris Stockwell was plainly telling him, back in 2002!!
Randy Schelhas wrote in the Brantford Expositor (Jul.16, 2007):
“Many people will remember that 2014 was the earliest possible closing date articulated by the Progressive Conservatives during the 2003 election campaign.
At that time the Liberals claimed they would close all of Ontario's coal-fired electrical generation by 2007 in spite of widespread media reports in which energy professionals were agreeing with the PCs.
There are two possibilities. Either Dalton McGuinty and his Energy Minister Dwight Duncan are extremely stupid or they knowingly lied in order to win the 2003 election.”
Yet, astoundingly, Ontario re-elected them AGAIN in 2007: no matter how they cheat, spin, or lie.
*
Mr. Bradley, do you have any comments on the issues raised in this letter? Or, now that you've been elected, do you feel you can arrogantly sail through the next four years ignoring your constituents?
Also, again I ask, will you be calling for the Ombudsman to investigate the Niagara Health System's inordinately high mortality-rate, the third-highest in Canada?
Asking the Ministry of Health or the local LHIN to look into the NHS's 'organizational' structure is an inadequate response; that's like having the fox "investigate" the henhouse.
Mr. Bradley, you haven't given the people of St. Catharines an explanation for what is going on here in your Liberal health-care monopoly.
While your Liberals sit on billions of dollars of tax-surplus, the NHS has recently said they are underfunded. What are your Liberals doing about that?
Is "climate change" (whatever that means when Liberals say it) a higher priority for you than health-care?
Perhaps your Liberals also suffer from a 'poverty of priority'. Dalton McGuinty recently wrote a guest editorial-page column in the St. Catharines Standard (Jan. 19, 2008) where he didn't once even mention the word 'health-care'.
As always, I look forward to your (possible) response.
The St. Catharines Standard (Jan.30, 2008) wrote in “Ontario premier blasts Harper Tories on environment”: “Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says the federal government suffers from a “poverty of ambition” when it comes to fighting the global issue of climate change.”
Did you read the part where Federal Environment Minister John Baird said the Ontario premier should look at his own environmental record before criticizing Ottawa? Baird mentioned that your coal-fired electricity-generators have not been closed yet, and mentioned your Liberal’s stance not to accept California-style emission standards.
I think your Liberal government suffers from a ‘poverty of truth’, as well as an ‘abundance of hypocrisy’. I bring the following essay for your attention:
Here’s a nice lie told by Dalton McGuinty to Ontarians in May 2003: “By 2007, we’re going to have cleaner air in this province come hell or high water.” (Globe and Mail, Jun.10, 2006)
McGuinty railed that he would close all of Ontario’s coal-generated electricity plants by last year – well, it’s 2008 and that promise turned into a Liberal lie. McGuinty’s Liberals in 2003 even wanted to ban the export of non-emergency coal-fired electricity. (St. Catharines Standard, Jul.17, 2007)
This was partly due to their fear mongering - in opposition - regarding coal emission dangers: why produce more than you have to? was their thinking. Of course, limiting our production to bare minimums only made it easier to have to buy from U.S. coal fired producers.
The St. Catharines Standard (Jun.21, 2002) reported Liberal MPP Jim Bradley asked Energy and Environment Minister Chris Stockwell to stop selling coal-fired power to the U.S. on non-emergency days.
"If we shut them down, we would actually put people in a blackout situation in the province. None of us want that, [Stockwell] said" .
The Standard wrote: “The Liberal environment critic and St. Catharines MPP [Bradley] said Thursday that Stockwell is favouring energy interests over environmental ones. "As minster of energy, he has an obligation ... to provide as much power to the people of Ontario as cheaply as possible," Bradley said at Queen's Park. "As minister of the environment, his obligation is to ensure that we have clean, breathable air. In my view, the minister does not have an objective opportunity to reduce air pollutants in Ontario because one is a conflicting interest over the other."
How disingenuous when you look back from 2008 at how the Liberals lied about what they were going to achieve. Bradley’s Liberals haven’t closed all the coal fired plants, nor have they at least installed scrubbers on them for the interim. Maybe Jim Bradley can reveal how many people his Liberals made sick since 2003 with their environmental deceit? Liberal promises of supposed "clean air" were nothing more than vote-grabbing hot-air.
The Hamilton Spectator (Dec.11, 1998) wrote of Jim Bradley fan David Suzuki saying: "Air pollution is responsible for 6,000 premature deaths a year in Ontario alone." Of course, now that Jim Bradley is in power, not in opposition, and Jim Bradley's Liberals have closed no other plants except Lakeview (whose closing was set by the previous Conservatives), have Suzuki's death-figures changed? How many premature deaths in Ontario today are due solely to Liberal political posturing and misrepresentation?
The St. Catharines Standard (Jun.5, 2002) wrote: “Bradley had asked Stockwell about the amount of pollution produced by coal-fired power plants in Ontario.
By way of reply, Stockwell said Bradley was trying to push Ontario into a technological and economic dark age. "If we listen to the thinking of the critic for the environment, the only way he wants to (decrease pollution) is we close down all our infrastructure, close down all our plants, close down all our manufacturing, lay everybody off and put them on welfare," he said. "We would be like Guam." Guam, located in the south Pacific, was purchased by the U.S. in 1899 and, therefore, included in the report. "It was just so ludicrous an answer, such a Neanderthal answer," Bradley said in an interview Tuesday. "That was the kind of argument put up before environment control years and years ago in very backward jurisdictions where the polluters had the government in their back pocket."”
There goes ole "pipsqueak" Bradley again (as Ralph Klein fondly once referred to him), with his “Neanderthal” condemnation – when, as we well have since seen, his Liberals were nothing more than environmental posers, lying their way into power.
Has anyone today in 2008, "asked" Jim Bradley "about the amount of pollution produced" from his Liberal-controlled coal-fired power stacks?
Back on May 12, 1989 the Toronto Star wrote: "Judging by his inept performance in the Legislature this week, Environment Minister Jim Bradley looks a little like a man who has something to hide. He has enraged the opposition with his wordy, vague responses to allegations that fuel tainted with toxic waste was being smuggled into Canada from the United States."
Who can hide the fact today that Jim Bradley and his Liberals have done nothing about the Nanticoke coal fired plant?
Continued the St Catharines Standard (Jun.5, 2002): “Bradley's question had come on the heels of a new North American Free Trade Agreement report that said Ontario is the third worst polluting region in North America, behind only Texas and Ohio. He repeated his longstanding call that the government convert coal-fired power plants, such as the one in Nanticoke that contributes to Niagara's smog each summer, to natural gas to reduce air pollution.”
So why is Jim Bradley hiding from his B.S.bluster now? Why isn’t Bradley repeating his wordy rejoinders, his “longstanding” calls, to close and convert Nanticoke now? What is Bradley hiding today - the economic costs of shutting down coal without having viable alternatives in place – as Stockwell plainly said six years ago? How’s Bradley’s Ontario now…still behind Texas and Ohio? Or does Neanderthal Bradley want our economy to become like Guam’s?
Bradley once compared Conservative Energy Minister Jim Wilson to Phineas T. Bluster from Howdy Doody (St. Catharines Standard, Oct.24, 2001). How clever…yet now it is Bradley who strangely resembles Bluster, carrying a sack full of stinking Liberal doody. Jimbo has turned into a McGuinty marionette, full of contradictory jibber-jabber.
Bradley was in a Conservative-government-initiated committee reporting on alternate energy plans which recommended the phasing out of coal fired plants by 2015 (Hamilton Spectator, Jun.10, 2002). But then, during the 2003 election, the Liberals recklessly speeded up that timetable, in retrospect, solely because of their lust for political power.
Having failed to do what they promised in 2003, the Liberals “have now drafted a regulation to close all coal fired plants by New Year’s Eve 2014, which means any subsequent government will have to change the law if it wants to keep the plants open.” (St. Catharines Standard, Jul.26, 2007)
This was a cute pre-2007-election gambit for the Grits – this “law” means the Liberals can safely fiddle around for another almost four years, till the 2011 election, as they have done over the last four years, since 2003; leaving a subsequent government only three years to accomplish the task.
The Sarnia Observer (Jul.26, 2007) wrote: "A CIBC report is predicting electricity costs could rise up to 70 per cent when Ontario mothballs its four coal-fired plants but McGuinty said that pales in comparison to the cost of doing nothing about global warming."
But why should Jim Bradley (“a left leaning Liberal”, as Ian Urquhart described him, Toronto Star, Jun.10, 2002) care about costs? Jim has his wealthy pension unlocked, Jim has his nice salary-increase, Jim has his nice shiny black Malibu, that he was bragging about when he was shilling about ‘buying GM’ at the CAW all-candidates meeting during the election…Jim has it good. A 70% increase in hydro costs won’t bother Bradley much, will it?
The Hamilton Spectator (Jul.19, 2002) wrote "the cost of switching Nanticoke and the other fossil-fuelled plants to cleaner fuels such as natural gas is formidable. OPG estimates it would cost $3 billion to replace Nanticoke's coal generation with natural gas; to replace all of the fossil-fuelled plants would cost $6 billion. But the cost of smog and poor air quality is equally daunting. On top of an estimated 1,900 premature deaths a year, the Ontario Medical Association estimates that health care, lost work time, and related expenses run into billions of dollars annually."
The Sarnia Observer quoted McGuinty on July 26, 2007 still saying: "The single greatest contributor to greenhouse gases in the province of Ontario is coal-fired generation so we're going to do something about that."
So why didn't the Liberals do what they said they were going to do in government, given all the information that was appearing during the time they were in opposition. Surely, they had a plan, didn't they?
The Hamilton Spectator (Jul.10, 2005) wrote: "A 10-year outlook, prepared by experts at the IESO and released last week, warned that the province's plan to phase out coal generating plants by 2007 "represents the largest and most significant electricity system change ever undertaken in Ontario ... (and) involves significant risks and challenges ..." "
Shouldn't the McGuinty brain-trust already have taken this into consideration prior to making rash promises during their election campaign in 2003??
So, to prepare for the Oct.2007 election, the Liberals had to admit their lying promises were just that.
The Globe and Mail reported in “Ontario reneges on coal pledge” (Jun.10, 2006):
“The Ontario government retreated yesterday from a campaign promise and conceded what has been obvious to its critics for some time: it can't meet a self-imposed deadline to shut down the province's aging coal-burning electricity-generating plants.
Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said new information reveals that the province doesn't have enough electricity to keep the lights on if it stops burning coal by 2009.
"This is a setback, there's no doubt about it," he said in an interview yesterday.”
A “setback”!!? Really!!?
And just when did the Liberal geniuses come to that conclusion??!!
Un-flicking believeable! It’s like Duncan, Phineas T. Bradley, and their company, JUST FOUND THIS OUT in 2006!!!?
How can it be a setback, when the whole proposition was essentially an unattainable goal: in other words, a practical lie?
It’s like Jim Bradley simply and arrogantly didn’t care to understand what Chris Stockwell was plainly telling him, back in 2002!!
Randy Schelhas wrote in the Brantford Expositor (Jul.16, 2007):
“Many people will remember that 2014 was the earliest possible closing date articulated by the Progressive Conservatives during the 2003 election campaign.
At that time the Liberals claimed they would close all of Ontario's coal-fired electrical generation by 2007 in spite of widespread media reports in which energy professionals were agreeing with the PCs.
There are two possibilities. Either Dalton McGuinty and his Energy Minister Dwight Duncan are extremely stupid or they knowingly lied in order to win the 2003 election.”
Yet, astoundingly, Ontario re-elected them AGAIN in 2007: no matter how they cheat, spin, or lie.
*
Mr. Bradley, do you have any comments on the issues raised in this letter? Or, now that you've been elected, do you feel you can arrogantly sail through the next four years ignoring your constituents?
Also, again I ask, will you be calling for the Ombudsman to investigate the Niagara Health System's inordinately high mortality-rate, the third-highest in Canada?
Asking the Ministry of Health or the local LHIN to look into the NHS's 'organizational' structure is an inadequate response; that's like having the fox "investigate" the henhouse.
Mr. Bradley, you haven't given the people of St. Catharines an explanation for what is going on here in your Liberal health-care monopoly.
While your Liberals sit on billions of dollars of tax-surplus, the NHS has recently said they are underfunded. What are your Liberals doing about that?
Is "climate change" (whatever that means when Liberals say it) a higher priority for you than health-care?
Perhaps your Liberals also suffer from a 'poverty of priority'. Dalton McGuinty recently wrote a guest editorial-page column in the St. Catharines Standard (Jan. 19, 2008) where he didn't once even mention the word 'health-care'.
As always, I look forward to your (possible) response.
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