Looks like Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, and their Liberals are going to cut healthcare again.
Yeah: you've read it correctly: Jimmy'N'Kimmy's Liberals are once again (as Smitherman had previously done) poised to delist previously covered health care - this is the same recycled, deceptive old Michael Decter/ Bob Rae-style canard of 'we're saving health care by cutting health care".
Let's remember those clowns in Niagara who happily voted for this monopolist Liberal scumbag Bradley; hope they're satisfied with Bradley's Liberal incompetence.
I'm sure that Niagara's Liberal-friendly press barons 'Wendy Williscraft and Mike Metcalfe' are already carefully planning pre-emptive ways to not interview their local Liberal Jim Bradley about any of this, and to not bother examining how a deceptive Bradley for years had ominously fear-mongered about 'harris' - yet, Bradley ended up doing the exact things which he (...along with Niagara's helpful Bradley-booster press...) had sanctimoniously fear-mongered that 'harris' would do!
The St.Catharines Standard, certainly, will be spinning their stories any which way they can [...''lookit, lookit: Drummond made them do it! McGuinty and Matthews had no choice!!"] in order not to examine the last thirty years of Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's failing deceptive allegiance to Tommy Douglas.
*
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Jim Bradley's fairy-tale is actually a Liberal nightmare
A Sudbury Star commentator wrote in "McGuinty's fairy-tale comes to an end":
"Dalton McGuinty got elected by promising Ontario that it could afford to spend lots more than Mike Harris. People believed him but it is becoming increasingly clear that he spun a fairy tale.
Ontario' debt is higher that all the provinces with McGuinty having doubled it since his election.
According to the Toronto Star on January 19 ("Dalton McGuinty and ministers brace for cuts"), "Premier Dalton McGuinty and his ministers are steeling themselves for a grim new era of cutbacks."
Why?
Because they overspent.
Ontario would not need cutbacks if spending had been kept under control. But McGuinty allowed spending to spiral in a frenzy of waste, pay-offs to his friends and a record provincial debt.
Now McGuinty says "one of the ways that we can turn this challenge into an opportunity is to understand that there are, in fact, ways that we can spend the dollars more efficiently.”
Duh. He discovers this now?
Suddenly it's important to spend taxpayer dollars "more efficiently."
Note to Dalton: it is always important to spend taxpayer dollars efficiently. McGuinty's own words are a clear admission that he has been wasting our money all along.
It is becoming clearer than ever that Dalton McGuinty has provided us with one of the worst governments in our history.
He promised Ontario could afford more but now he plans to give us less. He now wants to give us the exact opposite of what he promised during last Fall's election campaign.
This failed government needs to go. The only question now is whether the NDP will vote in the Legislature to prop it up."
*
This is also St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's fairy tale coming to an ignoble, hypocritical, disastrous, painful end.
Bradley and his two-faced Liberal liars were the ones who floated to power by smearing 'harris'.
Here, right in Niagara, Liberal MPP's Bradley and Kim Craitor also 'got elected by promising Ontario that it could afford to spend lots more than Mike Harris'.
People believed Jimmy'N'Kimmy, but now we see what a long-con-scam their slimy Liberal fairy tale had been, all along... more like a Liberal nightmare...
*
"Dalton McGuinty got elected by promising Ontario that it could afford to spend lots more than Mike Harris. People believed him but it is becoming increasingly clear that he spun a fairy tale.
Ontario' debt is higher that all the provinces with McGuinty having doubled it since his election.
According to the Toronto Star on January 19 ("Dalton McGuinty and ministers brace for cuts"), "Premier Dalton McGuinty and his ministers are steeling themselves for a grim new era of cutbacks."
Why?
Because they overspent.
Ontario would not need cutbacks if spending had been kept under control. But McGuinty allowed spending to spiral in a frenzy of waste, pay-offs to his friends and a record provincial debt.
Now McGuinty says "one of the ways that we can turn this challenge into an opportunity is to understand that there are, in fact, ways that we can spend the dollars more efficiently.”
Duh. He discovers this now?
Suddenly it's important to spend taxpayer dollars "more efficiently."
Note to Dalton: it is always important to spend taxpayer dollars efficiently. McGuinty's own words are a clear admission that he has been wasting our money all along.
It is becoming clearer than ever that Dalton McGuinty has provided us with one of the worst governments in our history.
He promised Ontario could afford more but now he plans to give us less. He now wants to give us the exact opposite of what he promised during last Fall's election campaign.
This failed government needs to go. The only question now is whether the NDP will vote in the Legislature to prop it up."
*
This is also St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's fairy tale coming to an ignoble, hypocritical, disastrous, painful end.
Bradley and his two-faced Liberal liars were the ones who floated to power by smearing 'harris'.
Here, right in Niagara, Liberal MPP's Bradley and Kim Craitor also 'got elected by promising Ontario that it could afford to spend lots more than Mike Harris'.
People believed Jimmy'N'Kimmy, but now we see what a long-con-scam their slimy Liberal fairy tale had been, all along... more like a Liberal nightmare...
*
Liberals take a piss on Ontario taxpayers
There was a grrreeat editorial cartoon in Wendy Metcalfe's wrong-righting, Kinsella-defying St.Catharines Standard on Jan.21, 2012. This Dolighan cartoon - a real classic, it's on page A6: you oughta see it - showed Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, wearing his comfy red ermine-trimmed robe, with "MPP" monogrammed on the back, standing at a urinal, taking a piss on Ontario's tax payers.
It was a real good choice for a cartoon by Wendy's right-wrongers!
They even showed a roll of toilet paper hanging out of Jimmy's ass, listing all the $$ billions $$ which Bradley's Liberals have wasted in Ontario, from their ORNGE fiasco, to their Samsungian GreenFear enviro-bolshevism, to their eHealth incompetence, to their OLG scammery... on and on it went.
The cartoon even showed Liberal MPP Jim Bradley laughing with derision as he's pissing on Ontario's taxpayers, while, you see, he and McGuinty are pissing away our tax dollars!
What an incisive and timely cartoon, from Wendy's proud gang at the Standard!
We are sure, now that we have this grrrreeat cartoon of Jim Bradley giving taxpayers his Liberal golden shower, that Wendy's wrong-righters will soon be following up with indepth stories about the size of Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's own "Gold Member Pension"!!
Why, we're sure that Wendy Metcalfe is already working on letting readers know how Liberal MPP Jim Bradley got his unlocked golden pension, when other Ontarians were locked out, and how many salary increases Liberal Jimmy got, when others didn't.
For sure, that's what the Standard is busily working on... right....? hahaha
*
It was a real good choice for a cartoon by Wendy's right-wrongers!
They even showed a roll of toilet paper hanging out of Jimmy's ass, listing all the $$ billions $$ which Bradley's Liberals have wasted in Ontario, from their ORNGE fiasco, to their Samsungian GreenFear enviro-bolshevism, to their eHealth incompetence, to their OLG scammery... on and on it went.
The cartoon even showed Liberal MPP Jim Bradley laughing with derision as he's pissing on Ontario's taxpayers, while, you see, he and McGuinty are pissing away our tax dollars!
What an incisive and timely cartoon, from Wendy's proud gang at the Standard!
We are sure, now that we have this grrrreeat cartoon of Jim Bradley giving taxpayers his Liberal golden shower, that Wendy's wrong-righters will soon be following up with indepth stories about the size of Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's own "Gold Member Pension"!!
Why, we're sure that Wendy Metcalfe is already working on letting readers know how Liberal MPP Jim Bradley got his unlocked golden pension, when other Ontarians were locked out, and how many salary increases Liberal Jimmy got, when others didn't.
For sure, that's what the Standard is busily working on... right....? hahaha
*
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Smitherman's Overpowering Stench of Liberal Incompetence
Adam Radwanski wrote in "DIFFERENT STANDARDS: Deb Matthews unlikely to be given a pink slip over Ornge controversy", (Globe and Mail, Jan.20, 2012):
Little more than two years ago, Dalton McGuinty set an ostensibly high standard for ministerial accountability.
It didn’t matter that David Caplan
Based on that precedent, the woman who replaced Mr. Caplan should be feeling pretty nervous about now. The controversy at Ornge, the province’s air-ambulance service, bears a striking similarity to eHealth in the way it has unfolded – an ambitious system reform implemented in some haste under Mr. Smitherman that has blown up in a successor’s face. In some ways it might actually be worse, since the current controversy goes beyond business practices to life-and-death questions about the quality of emergency services.
But the early signs are that, while she’s in for an unpleasant few weeks or months, Health Minister Deb Matthews
Mr. Caplan, although well-liked by many of his colleagues, was considered dispensable by the Premier. Despite his senior posting, he was never quite in the top rung of cabinet, and he wasn’t central to the government’s plans. Although he had files that he tried to move forward – notably, and admirably, mental health – he was something of a placeholder.
Ms. Matthews is a different story. In fact, with the exception of Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, she’s the one front-bencher Mr. McGuinty can’t afford to lose.
Ms. Matthews has been tasked with flattening health-care spending increases at about 3 per cent annually – a monumental challenge that’s central to the government’s hopes of eliminating its $16-billion deficit. Largely based on trouncing the province’s pharmacists in a fight over prescription drug costs, the Premier’s office is convinced she’s the minister best suited to winning necessary battles with vested interests.
Even beyond her own portfolio, Ms. Matthews plays a pivotal role in her party. Along with Municipal Affairs Minister Kathleen Wynne
But, of course, Mr. McGuinty won’t just come out and say any of this. And that’s going to place him in a very difficult position if, for instance, ongoing investigations show any conflict between the air-ambulance agency’s non-profit, public operations and its private ones – not to mention if other investigations show deficiencies in emergency responses. Amid allegations that Ms. Matthews was warned about problems with Ornge and didn’t take sufficient action, how will the Liberals explain why Ms. Matthews gets to keep her job, when Mr. Caplan didn’t?
In part, it appears, they will do so by trying to direct blame toward Mr. Smitherman – something they stayed away from during the furor over eHealth, when he was preparing to run for mayor of Toronto.
Mr. Smitherman didn’t win any friends earlier this month when he wrote to the Toronto Star accusing his successors of failing to oversee or even understand Ornge’s operations. And while Mr. McGuinty hasn’t publicly criticized his former minister, other Liberals have been increasingly willing to take potshots.
The Liberals will also try to draw a distinction between eHealth and Ornge, by noting that the latter functions far more independently than the former, and thus lends itself less to ministerial oversight.
And to some extent, they'll just wait until we start talking about something else.
Among the reasons Ornge has got so much attention lately is that the government hasn’t been making much other news. That will change within the next few weeks, when the release of economist Don Drummond’s
Still, it’s highly unlikely that opposition politicians will be able to resist calling for Ms. Matthews’ head when the Legislature returns next month. And since Mr. McGuinty gave them their pound of flesh last time, it will be hard to blame them.
*
Of course, Deb Matthews must be fired for what has transpired under her watch: McGuinty MUST take accountability for the Liberal-approved piles of policy sh!t which Smitherman left stinking, hidden throughout Ontario.
Smitherman was McGuinty's hand-picked glorious golden boy; McGuinty gave Smitherman free reign to destroy health care throughout Ontario. Smitherman's actions are a direct reflection of McGuinty's poor judgement.
If Caplan got his ass kicked out for essentially what Smitherman did, then the same should apply to Matthews. ORNGE is McGuinty's fiasco as well as Smitherman's: let's not forget, Smitherman WAS ALSO McGUINTY'S hand-picked Deputy Premier of Ontario!! These stinking piles of Liberal crap which still fester in Ontario were not perpetrated by some low-level Liberal hack, these policy fiascos came right from the top, from the highest positions in a Liberal majority, untouchable government!! This goes right to the heart of McGuinty's faulty "trust" in Smitherman, a mis-judgement which has now been revealed in spades. McGuinty must act to recognize the utter fiasco which Smitherman created - under McGuinty's tutelage.
AdRad writes that McGuinty tasked Matthews with "flattening health care spending increases"! Sounds like a polite euphemism for "health care cuts" - y'know, the kind of "cuts" which Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley had often enjoyed sanctimoniously chortling about, when he smear-mongered 'harris' in opposition!
AdRad doesn't quite get to the rest of the frightening Liberal ideology which is at play here: that these cuts - ooops: 'flattened increases' - are occurring to a populace trapped within a Liberal no-patient-choice, morally and financially bankrupt, state-controlled monopolist setting.
*
Little more than two years ago, Dalton McGuinty set an ostensibly high standard for ministerial accountability.
It didn’t matter that David Caplan
Based on that precedent, the woman who replaced Mr. Caplan should be feeling pretty nervous about now. The controversy at Ornge, the province’s air-ambulance service, bears a striking similarity to eHealth in the way it has unfolded – an ambitious system reform implemented in some haste under Mr. Smitherman that has blown up in a successor’s face. In some ways it might actually be worse, since the current controversy goes beyond business practices to life-and-death questions about the quality of emergency services.
But the early signs are that, while she’s in for an unpleasant few weeks or months, Health Minister Deb Matthews
Mr. Caplan, although well-liked by many of his colleagues, was considered dispensable by the Premier. Despite his senior posting, he was never quite in the top rung of cabinet, and he wasn’t central to the government’s plans. Although he had files that he tried to move forward – notably, and admirably, mental health – he was something of a placeholder.
Ms. Matthews is a different story. In fact, with the exception of Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, she’s the one front-bencher Mr. McGuinty can’t afford to lose.
Ms. Matthews has been tasked with flattening health-care spending increases at about 3 per cent annually – a monumental challenge that’s central to the government’s hopes of eliminating its $16-billion deficit. Largely based on trouncing the province’s pharmacists in a fight over prescription drug costs, the Premier’s office is convinced she’s the minister best suited to winning necessary battles with vested interests.
Even beyond her own portfolio, Ms. Matthews plays a pivotal role in her party. Along with Municipal Affairs Minister Kathleen Wynne
But, of course, Mr. McGuinty won’t just come out and say any of this. And that’s going to place him in a very difficult position if, for instance, ongoing investigations show any conflict between the air-ambulance agency’s non-profit, public operations and its private ones – not to mention if other investigations show deficiencies in emergency responses. Amid allegations that Ms. Matthews was warned about problems with Ornge and didn’t take sufficient action, how will the Liberals explain why Ms. Matthews gets to keep her job, when Mr. Caplan didn’t?
In part, it appears, they will do so by trying to direct blame toward Mr. Smitherman – something they stayed away from during the furor over eHealth, when he was preparing to run for mayor of Toronto.
Mr. Smitherman didn’t win any friends earlier this month when he wrote to the Toronto Star accusing his successors of failing to oversee or even understand Ornge’s operations. And while Mr. McGuinty hasn’t publicly criticized his former minister, other Liberals have been increasingly willing to take potshots.
The Liberals will also try to draw a distinction between eHealth and Ornge, by noting that the latter functions far more independently than the former, and thus lends itself less to ministerial oversight.
And to some extent, they'll just wait until we start talking about something else.
Among the reasons Ornge has got so much attention lately is that the government hasn’t been making much other news. That will change within the next few weeks, when the release of economist Don Drummond’s
Still, it’s highly unlikely that opposition politicians will be able to resist calling for Ms. Matthews’ head when the Legislature returns next month. And since Mr. McGuinty gave them their pound of flesh last time, it will be hard to blame them.
*
Of course, Deb Matthews must be fired for what has transpired under her watch: McGuinty MUST take accountability for the Liberal-approved piles of policy sh!t which Smitherman left stinking, hidden throughout Ontario.
Smitherman was McGuinty's hand-picked glorious golden boy; McGuinty gave Smitherman free reign to destroy health care throughout Ontario. Smitherman's actions are a direct reflection of McGuinty's poor judgement.
If Caplan got his ass kicked out for essentially what Smitherman did, then the same should apply to Matthews. ORNGE is McGuinty's fiasco as well as Smitherman's: let's not forget, Smitherman WAS ALSO McGUINTY'S hand-picked Deputy Premier of Ontario!! These stinking piles of Liberal crap which still fester in Ontario were not perpetrated by some low-level Liberal hack, these policy fiascos came right from the top, from the highest positions in a Liberal majority, untouchable government!! This goes right to the heart of McGuinty's faulty "trust" in Smitherman, a mis-judgement which has now been revealed in spades. McGuinty must act to recognize the utter fiasco which Smitherman created - under McGuinty's tutelage.
AdRad writes that McGuinty tasked Matthews with "flattening health care spending increases"! Sounds like a polite euphemism for "health care cuts" - y'know, the kind of "cuts" which Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley had often enjoyed sanctimoniously chortling about, when he smear-mongered 'harris' in opposition!
AdRad doesn't quite get to the rest of the frightening Liberal ideology which is at play here: that these cuts - ooops: 'flattened increases' - are occurring to a populace trapped within a Liberal no-patient-choice, morally and financially bankrupt, state-controlled monopolist setting.
*
Friday, January 20, 2012
Reactionary non-innovator McGuinty wants 'innovation' cash!
Further related to this previous post and this previous post...
There were two more interesting letters in the National Post, Jan.19, 2012:
"Note to premiers: Federal $ won’t buy innovation
Jeff Spooner wrote:
Re: Premiers Ask: Should PM Be At Health Talks?, Jan. 16.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s proposed health-care innovation fund — financed by the federal government and now backed by Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty — is an insult to all Canadians. What Messrs. Wall and McGuinty are saying, is that it has never dawned on them up to now to be innovative, and since they didn’t have money in an envelope marked “innovation,” it wasn’t going to happen.
Even a street con-man would laugh at what these two Premiers are trying to sell the federal government, and by extension the citizens of Canada. If this is what passes for the braintrust that will solve our health care problems, we are in trouble.
Dr. Charles Steele wrote:
“Innovation,” as proposed by Canada’s premiers, is nothing more than “more of the same” on how to extend a failing Roy Romanow system. When Dr. Brian Day was head of the Canadian Medical Association, he suggested that the premiers should buy tickets to Europe to study their successful health-care systems — a mix of public and private care. Canadians deserve better; now is the time to act."
*
The same monopolist, lying, statist-status-quo enforcing Ontario Liberals, who failed to "innovate" in health care for 8 years (...unless you count new health taxes and corresponding cuts to previously-covered-care as innovative...) now want more federal tax cash to... um... "innovate"?!
What a joke.
One "innovation" which Ontario's hypocritical Liberal hacks McGuinty, Jim Bradley, and Kim Craitor could try, is to desist from spreading their toxic, failing Liberal health care duplicity.
*
There were two more interesting letters in the National Post, Jan.19, 2012:
"Note to premiers: Federal $ won’t buy innovation
Jeff Spooner wrote:
Re: Premiers Ask: Should PM Be At Health Talks?, Jan. 16.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s proposed health-care innovation fund — financed by the federal government and now backed by Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty — is an insult to all Canadians. What Messrs. Wall and McGuinty are saying, is that it has never dawned on them up to now to be innovative, and since they didn’t have money in an envelope marked “innovation,” it wasn’t going to happen.
Even a street con-man would laugh at what these two Premiers are trying to sell the federal government, and by extension the citizens of Canada. If this is what passes for the braintrust that will solve our health care problems, we are in trouble.
Dr. Charles Steele wrote:
“Innovation,” as proposed by Canada’s premiers, is nothing more than “more of the same” on how to extend a failing Roy Romanow system. When Dr. Brian Day was head of the Canadian Medical Association, he suggested that the premiers should buy tickets to Europe to study their successful health-care systems — a mix of public and private care. Canadians deserve better; now is the time to act."
*
The same monopolist, lying, statist-status-quo enforcing Ontario Liberals, who failed to "innovate" in health care for 8 years (...unless you count new health taxes and corresponding cuts to previously-covered-care as innovative...) now want more federal tax cash to... um... "innovate"?!
What a joke.
One "innovation" which Ontario's hypocritical Liberal hacks McGuinty, Jim Bradley, and Kim Craitor could try, is to desist from spreading their toxic, failing Liberal health care duplicity.
*
Liberal Jim Bradley: public enemy of health-care reform
John Brackenbury wrote in "Canadians want to talk about private health care" (National Post, Jan17, 2012):
"It is in the national interest for Canadians to identify the enemies of health-care reform and crystallize their motives in our minds. For consideration I wish to put forward the health-care unions, which enjoy the current monopoly on health-care delivery.
Supported by forced contributions from their members, they warn against, "American-style blah blah blah" every time the subject of reform comes up.
On Saturday's Letters page, five university professors..." [see here] "...assert that Stephen Harper is out of touch on health-care reform and "the vast majority of Canadians strongly support" the status quo.
Help me, Post readers, to understand what their motivation would be for such vehement opposition to any kind of reform. Do they just hate their grandchildren, or what? We really really need to have this discussion now."
*
Well: two of the "enemies of health care reform" in Niagara are certainly Ontario Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor - along with the rest of Dalton McGuinty's gang of single-payer-pushing monopolists at Queen's Park. ['American-health-care bashing' was Jim Bradley's rhetorical touchstone!]
Many more enemies are in the Liberal-friendly press, protecting Liberals such as Jim 'I hate doctors' Bradley from any discussions, whether on his failed Liberal health-care monopolism or his failed Liberal GreenFear-mongering kyodiotry.
It's 'all settled' to them, therefore, no "discussions" are needed...
*
"It is in the national interest for Canadians to identify the enemies of health-care reform and crystallize their motives in our minds. For consideration I wish to put forward the health-care unions, which enjoy the current monopoly on health-care delivery.
Supported by forced contributions from their members, they warn against, "American-style blah blah blah" every time the subject of reform comes up.
On Saturday's Letters page, five university professors..." [see here] "...assert that Stephen Harper is out of touch on health-care reform and "the vast majority of Canadians strongly support" the status quo.
Help me, Post readers, to understand what their motivation would be for such vehement opposition to any kind of reform. Do they just hate their grandchildren, or what? We really really need to have this discussion now."
*
Well: two of the "enemies of health care reform" in Niagara are certainly Ontario Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor - along with the rest of Dalton McGuinty's gang of single-payer-pushing monopolists at Queen's Park. ['American-health-care bashing' was Jim Bradley's rhetorical touchstone!]
Many more enemies are in the Liberal-friendly press, protecting Liberals such as Jim 'I hate doctors' Bradley from any discussions, whether on his failed Liberal health-care monopolism or his failed Liberal GreenFear-mongering kyodiotry.
It's 'all settled' to them, therefore, no "discussions" are needed...
*
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Romanow's one-note chorus sings the same old tune
Further to my previous Romanow-related post...
Two interesting letters appeared in the National Post, Jan.14, 2012:
"Why Romanow is wrong on health care
Re: Roy Romanow’s One-Note Tune, editorial, Jan. 10.
Your editorial fails to appreciate Roy Romanow’s personal reasons for promoting federal control over provincial health care. While you correctly state that federal interference in the provincial domain of health-care delivery is unconstitutional, there is a valid explanation for Mr. Romanow’s position.
When he was NDP premier of Saskatchewan, he presided over the worst-performing provincial health system in Canadian history. Many hospitals were closed, waiting lists grew massively and patients suffered. It is reasonable therefore for him to believe that the federal government could do better.
In a CBC interview, I asked Mr. Romanow a direct question: “In a free and democratic society, in which citizens can legally spend their money on tobacco, alcohol, gambling and even pornography, what is wrong with the freedom to spend ones own after tax dollars on the health care of our self or our loved ones?” He fudged, obfuscated and mumbled, then changed the subject and refused to answer.
It is often stated that Canada shares with North Korea and Cuba the existence and enforcement of laws that restrict our right to choice in health care. This statement is false — we are the only country on Earth that has such laws. Our health system is therefore, as supporters of the status quo point out, a truly distinct and defining feature of our Canadian identity. We are indebted to Mr. Romanow, and indeed to politicians and governments across the country, for this unique status.
Dr. Brian Day, Vancouver.
… or is he?
The Supreme Court of Canada has clearly affirmed the constitutionality of the Canada Health Act. The suggestion that the Canadian constitution gives the federal government no role in health policy is wrong as a matter of law. The vast majority of Canadians strongly support the national, publicly funded, health-care system Roy Romanow has worked hard to defend. It is Prime Minister Harper, not Roy Romanow, who is out of touch on the issue of health-care reform.
Prof. Martha Jackman, University of Ottawa; Prof. Timothy Caulfield, University of Alberta; Prof. Colleen Flood, University of Toronto; Prof. Constance MacIntosh, Dalhousie University; Prof. Emeritus Sanda Rodgers, University of Ottawa".
*
That's the usual one-note monopolist line from Jackman.
*
Two interesting letters appeared in the National Post, Jan.14, 2012:
"Why Romanow is wrong on health care
Re: Roy Romanow’s One-Note Tune, editorial, Jan. 10.
Your editorial fails to appreciate Roy Romanow’s personal reasons for promoting federal control over provincial health care. While you correctly state that federal interference in the provincial domain of health-care delivery is unconstitutional, there is a valid explanation for Mr. Romanow’s position.
When he was NDP premier of Saskatchewan, he presided over the worst-performing provincial health system in Canadian history. Many hospitals were closed, waiting lists grew massively and patients suffered. It is reasonable therefore for him to believe that the federal government could do better.
In a CBC interview, I asked Mr. Romanow a direct question: “In a free and democratic society, in which citizens can legally spend their money on tobacco, alcohol, gambling and even pornography, what is wrong with the freedom to spend ones own after tax dollars on the health care of our self or our loved ones?” He fudged, obfuscated and mumbled, then changed the subject and refused to answer.
It is often stated that Canada shares with North Korea and Cuba the existence and enforcement of laws that restrict our right to choice in health care. This statement is false — we are the only country on Earth that has such laws. Our health system is therefore, as supporters of the status quo point out, a truly distinct and defining feature of our Canadian identity. We are indebted to Mr. Romanow, and indeed to politicians and governments across the country, for this unique status.
Dr. Brian Day, Vancouver.
… or is he?
The Supreme Court of Canada has clearly affirmed the constitutionality of the Canada Health Act. The suggestion that the Canadian constitution gives the federal government no role in health policy is wrong as a matter of law. The vast majority of Canadians strongly support the national, publicly funded, health-care system Roy Romanow has worked hard to defend. It is Prime Minister Harper, not Roy Romanow, who is out of touch on the issue of health-care reform.
Prof. Martha Jackman, University of Ottawa; Prof. Timothy Caulfield, University of Alberta; Prof. Colleen Flood, University of Toronto; Prof. Constance MacIntosh, Dalhousie University; Prof. Emeritus Sanda Rodgers, University of Ottawa".
*
That's the usual one-note monopolist line from Jackman.
*
Badawey recycles his 'Niagara South mini-monopoly' bandwagon
Further to my earlier post...
As reported in the Jan.19, 2012 Standard, it's interesting to see failed McGuinty-Liberal candidate Vance Badawey now jumping on his own recycled bandwagon, to create another health fiefdom, an NHS-South, citing the reasons for the failure of health care in Niagara being that the NHS is currently too big - which doesn't quite explain why Ontario's Liberal-run monopoly health care is systemically failing everywhere else. But no matter; anything to spin the blame on the NHS, and not on 8 years of failed McGuintyist Liberal monopolism.
Yes, that's right: the new smoke-and-mirrors "solution" is to create a new bureaucracy out of the old failing bureaucracy - this is exactly the statist's preferred way of perpetuating the same old status-quo by shifting the problem, not by acknowledging it (or even recognizing it!); it's just the perfect answer for getting sanctimonious well-meaning Liberals to busily "fix" problems which other sanctimonious well-meaning Liberals had busily created in the first place - a perpetual make-work project for busy well-meaning sanctimonious Liberals.
Will we see a new McGuinty-stacked LHIN overseeing Badawey's new 'Southern Son Of The NHS' health-nirvana, as well, or will the same old Liberal-appointed LHIN hacks be administering this fledgling monopolist fiefdom on the Lake Erie shore - y'know, the same Liberal LHIN which CREATED THE CURRENT NHS HIP IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?!?
What spin from these politicians; their hypocritical cry is not acknowledging that their Liberal monopolist ideology has failed; it is that they don't have enough monopolist bureaucracy yet!!
This old idea of breaking up the NHS also has Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's stink all over it, seeing as Craitor had advocated the same thing in the pre-HIP days; upon which Smitherman laughed and rewarded Craitor's efforts by forcing the NHS to create the HIP.
Niagara's lefties seem to overlook all that: y'know, while blaming 'harris' and 'sevenpifer'!
Liberals Kim Craitor, along with Smitherman, are the dead-beat co-fathers of the Liberal-LHIN-created HIP in Niagara, which Badawey doesn't seem to acknowledge as he pushes for his new Mini-Me-NHS bureaucracy, to supposedly "solve" the problems which Badawey's own Liberal colleagues created in the existing NHS!
The catch-22 duplicity just rolls along...
*
As reported in the Jan.19, 2012 Standard, it's interesting to see failed McGuinty-Liberal candidate Vance Badawey now jumping on his own recycled bandwagon, to create another health fiefdom, an NHS-South, citing the reasons for the failure of health care in Niagara being that the NHS is currently too big - which doesn't quite explain why Ontario's Liberal-run monopoly health care is systemically failing everywhere else. But no matter; anything to spin the blame on the NHS, and not on 8 years of failed McGuintyist Liberal monopolism.
Yes, that's right: the new smoke-and-mirrors "solution" is to create a new bureaucracy out of the old failing bureaucracy - this is exactly the statist's preferred way of perpetuating the same old status-quo by shifting the problem, not by acknowledging it (or even recognizing it!); it's just the perfect answer for getting sanctimonious well-meaning Liberals to busily "fix" problems which other sanctimonious well-meaning Liberals had busily created in the first place - a perpetual make-work project for busy well-meaning sanctimonious Liberals.
Will we see a new McGuinty-stacked LHIN overseeing Badawey's new 'Southern Son Of The NHS' health-nirvana, as well, or will the same old Liberal-appointed LHIN hacks be administering this fledgling monopolist fiefdom on the Lake Erie shore - y'know, the same Liberal LHIN which CREATED THE CURRENT NHS HIP IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?!?
What spin from these politicians; their hypocritical cry is not acknowledging that their Liberal monopolist ideology has failed; it is that they don't have enough monopolist bureaucracy yet!!
This old idea of breaking up the NHS also has Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's stink all over it, seeing as Craitor had advocated the same thing in the pre-HIP days; upon which Smitherman laughed and rewarded Craitor's efforts by forcing the NHS to create the HIP.
Niagara's lefties seem to overlook all that: y'know, while blaming 'harris' and 'sevenpifer'!
Liberals Kim Craitor, along with Smitherman, are the dead-beat co-fathers of the Liberal-LHIN-created HIP in Niagara, which Badawey doesn't seem to acknowledge as he pushes for his new Mini-Me-NHS bureaucracy, to supposedly "solve" the problems which Badawey's own Liberal colleagues created in the existing NHS!
The catch-22 duplicity just rolls along...
*
Hypocrite Liberal McGuinty has been cutting health care in Ontario
While McGuinty's smug Liberals are whining about the feds' health-care transfers, why hasn't anyone bothered to ask Dalton or Good Ole Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about how Ontario's Liberals were cutting their provincial hospital transfers in St.Catharines?
And: that was occurring under the existing Paul Martin 'health care solution for a generation' arrangements (having nothing to do with any of the current squabbles) and under the new-cash-flow auspices of McGuinty's 2004-created multi-billion-dollar hated Health Tax!!
One would think that the St.Catharines Standard's Wendy Metcalfe and her self-appointed gang of laughable wrong-righters would bother to remember their own FLICKING story from just a year ago, from Jan, 15, 2011, and examine what McGuinty and Jim Bradley were doing to their own hospital budgets, in context to what the smarmy, sanctimonious McGuinty was just recently spinning on the federal stage
But Niagara's wrong-righters haven't interviewed local Liberal hack Jim Bradley about his Liberal health care cuts, have they?!!
Nope: best not to dim Jim Bradley's carefully-constructed impeccable Liberal aura with pesky questions about ideological contradictions... ... hey: lookit!! Jimmy's shilling coke rain barrels! That's fun! Let's go see!!!! haha
*
And: that was occurring under the existing Paul Martin 'health care solution for a generation' arrangements (having nothing to do with any of the current squabbles) and under the new-cash-flow auspices of McGuinty's 2004-created multi-billion-dollar hated Health Tax!!
One would think that the St.Catharines Standard's Wendy Metcalfe and her self-appointed gang of laughable wrong-righters would bother to remember their own FLICKING story from just a year ago, from Jan, 15, 2011, and examine what McGuinty and Jim Bradley were doing to their own hospital budgets, in context to what the smarmy, sanctimonious McGuinty was just recently spinning on the federal stage
But Niagara's wrong-righters haven't interviewed local Liberal hack Jim Bradley about his Liberal health care cuts, have they?!!
Nope: best not to dim Jim Bradley's carefully-constructed impeccable Liberal aura with pesky questions about ideological contradictions... ... hey: lookit!! Jimmy's shilling coke rain barrels! That's fun! Let's go see!!!! haha
*
Liberal Jim Bradley is the GreenFear-mongering enviro-goof putting Ontario in peril
Garnet Bloomfield Ilderton wrote in "McGuinty's Mickey Mouse ideas just plain goofy" (Beacon-Herald, Jan,19, 2012):
"Premier Dalton McGuinty and his great adventure have entered into la la land. First there was the great discovery of smart metres then the curly light bulbs followed by the sun pads and then came the big grounded whirly birds. All of these fads were supposed to greatly assist in his race to be politically correct and solve our energy problems at the same time. Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter, in his recent report, has questioned the rush into these programs of renewable energy without good solid research taken into consideration or what the likelihood would be of success or failure of these programs. Maybe just good old fashioned horse sense would have served Dalton much better.
The best description of our present provincial situation could be that we have a Mickey Mouse operation with Goofy running it."*
Well, Ontario's environment minister is the cartoonish Jim Jimmy J.J. James Jimbo Bradley, aka Mr.Kyodiot.
Bradley has not yet been asked by anyone to respond to McCarter's recent report, or to Gord Miller's recent report, about the blowback from Bradley's Liberal GreenFear fiasco!!
Secretive, slippery Ole Jimmy gets away with this regularly!
Just yesterday, the local Niagara paper in Jim Bradley's own riding of St.Catharines did a fine butt-kissing story fawning about Ontario's environment minister shilling Coca-cola rain barrels at some save-the-planet-from-doom GreenFear-mongering event; yet, reporter Fraser - when he had a chance - couldn't be bothered to ask Bradley about his costly failed Liberal GreenFear-instigated energy experiments!!
Was this reporter ordered by his bosses at the St.Catharines Standard not to question Liberal Jim Bradley?
As has become blatantly clear, Niagara's local press bends over backwards to accomodate their local Liberals. As we saw at yesterday's feel-good-Jimmy photo-op, there is no questioning Jim Bradley's failing Liberal policies and politics; just loyal stenography and blind GreenFear-biased acquiescence from the Mickey Mouse press.
Actually, it is McGuinty and Bradley (and their cheerleaders) who give Disney's good characters a bad name.
*
Liberal Jim Bradley's toxic barrel of GreenFear
Funniest thing, to see Ontario's environment minister Jim Bradley, freely propagandizing his GreenFear yet again in the pages of the St.Catharines Standard (in "Putting the fizz in water conservation", Jan.18, 2012) with "reporter" Don Fraser obligingly writing snippets of what Ole GreenFear Jimmy said, without asking any questions at all about Jimmy's pronouncements.
Yep: Ontario's environment minister Bradley came out to stand as a photo-op prop at some save-the-planet rain-barrel sale...
(...btw: Bradley was shilling old plastic Coca-cola syrup containers! Note how very interesting it was that Liberal environment minister Jim Bradley - Ontario's greatest hater and demonizer of carbon dioxide - didn't say one damn word about the gas contained in Coca Cola's carbonated soft drinks; you know, the gas which makes the "fizz", which the Standard cleverly (but ignorantly) referred to in their headline.
What gas is that, Jim??!
Why did McGuinty's environment minister Jim Bradley demure from slamming Coca Cola's toxic planet-murdering gasses?! 'Cause Bradley's shilling their discarded syrup holders as save-the-planet rainbarrels?!
And why didn't "reporter" Don Fraser bother to ask?! heh heh heh...)
...incoherently blabbing his greenshevism that "Even though we have a lot of water...as the years go on, the population increases and climate changes (so) we're going to want to conserve as much water as we can".
Really Jim?! What specifically do you mean? Or are we just all supposed to nod knowingly and bow our heads in silent deference to Ontario's great Kyodiot, Ole BS Bradley?
Naturally, the Standard's stenographer Good Ole Donny Fraser couldn't think of even one question to ask Good Ole Environmental Jimmy about Enviro-Jim's claims and general GreenFear-spinnery! Fawning: well done!!
Why didn't the Standard's Fraser - when he had the chance - actually ask Ole Jimmy why his Liberals are re-releasing old reports about the supposed "safety" of their GreenFear-instigated wind turbines??????????????????!
Looks like more Metcalfian wrongs have been righted by theunofficial standing committee to reelect Jim Bradley St.Catharines Standard!
*
Yep: Ontario's environment minister Bradley came out to stand as a photo-op prop at some save-the-planet rain-barrel sale...
(...btw: Bradley was shilling old plastic Coca-cola syrup containers! Note how very interesting it was that Liberal environment minister Jim Bradley - Ontario's greatest hater and demonizer of carbon dioxide - didn't say one damn word about the gas contained in Coca Cola's carbonated soft drinks; you know, the gas which makes the "fizz", which the Standard cleverly (but ignorantly) referred to in their headline.
What gas is that, Jim??!
Why did McGuinty's environment minister Jim Bradley demure from slamming Coca Cola's toxic planet-murdering gasses?! 'Cause Bradley's shilling their discarded syrup holders as save-the-planet rainbarrels?!
And why didn't "reporter" Don Fraser bother to ask?! heh heh heh...)
...incoherently blabbing his greenshevism that "Even though we have a lot of water...as the years go on, the population increases and climate changes (so) we're going to want to conserve as much water as we can".
Really Jim?! What specifically do you mean? Or are we just all supposed to nod knowingly and bow our heads in silent deference to Ontario's great Kyodiot, Ole BS Bradley?
Naturally, the Standard's stenographer Good Ole Donny Fraser couldn't think of even one question to ask Good Ole Environmental Jimmy about Enviro-Jim's claims and general GreenFear-spinnery! Fawning: well done!!
Why didn't the Standard's Fraser - when he had the chance - actually ask Ole Jimmy why his Liberals are re-releasing old reports about the supposed "safety" of their GreenFear-instigated wind turbines??????????????????!
Looks like more Metcalfian wrongs have been righted by the
*
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Dalton McGuinty: Liberal destroyer of Ontario
Further to my previous related post...
Kelly McParland wrote in "McGuinty demonstrates Ontario's loser mentality" (National Post, Jan.17, 2012):
"How mortifying it has become to be from Ontario.
Once we were Canada’s cocky engine of growth and defender of federalism, bestriding the country and lecturing lesser provinces on their inadequacies. Now we send our premier to a gathering of the provinces, where he bleats about our inability to compete, desperation for handouts and need for guidance from Ottawa.
Dalton McGuinty went to Victoria to join the other premiers in a discussion about health care and other shared interests, and quickly joined Quebec Premier Jean Charest in decrying the raw deal Ontario gets from Ottawa. Quebec, of course, is Canada’s unchallenged champion in moaning about the lack of appreciation it’s been getting from Canada since approximately 13 September 1759, but only recently has Ontario taken to backing it up, shaking its first and grousing in tandem: “Yeah, you tell ‘em Jean! We’re getting robbed.”
Here’s what Mr. Charest had to say on Monday, while Mr. McGuinty almost injured himself from nodding so hard: “There are two realities in Canada. There are the economies of oil, gas and potash – and others.”
Get that? There’s the rich guys and the poor guys, and Ontario now reflexively counts itself among the poor guys. More than that, it has adopted the hang-dog attitude of the habitually embittered, which holds that the rich provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. — only got that way because they happen to stumble on valuable energy resources within their borders. It’s not like they did anything to deserve their wealth; any idiot can get rich if they drive a stake into the ground and oil spurts up.
The have-not provinces are upset that Ottawa’s recently revealed funding plans for health care — a generous pledge to maintain increases at 6% a year until 2017, followed by a minimum annual increase of 3% — treats all provinces the same. The funds will be distributed per capita, which means Albertans will receive as much as Nova Scotians, as if all Canadians were equal. When it was rich, Ontario used to ignore the discrepancies in federal funding because it could afford to. Now that it has to share space with the rabble, it’s incensed at being short-changed.
Mr. McGuinty has made it clear he doesn’t feel the provinces are up to the task of efficiently and effectively operating the health care system without regular input from Ottawa, even though health care has long been a provincial mandate. “It’s unacceptable for the Prime Minister to say he’s effectively going to passively preside over the evolution of health care in Canada,” he told the other premiers.”We need the federal government to be an actual committed participant in this.” As in: “Wait a minute. We’re good at spending the money. But make smart decisions … are you crazy?”
If there was any doubt that the axis of influence in Canada has shifted to the West, Mr. McGuinty is here to dispel it. The western provinces are more comfortable with Ottawa’s funding formula, since they’re the fatcats now, and perhaps because they’ve always been more skeptical of Ottawa’s right to meddle in provincial affairs. Alberta has long chafed at being issued instructions by eastern politicians and their tame bureaucrats. From habit and necessity they’ve grown more confident in their ability to fend for themselves.
Ontario, unfortunately, has been going in the other direction. It now eagerly seeks subsidies and support payments from federal coffers, from taxpayer-funded regional development offices to debt-financed “stimulus” schemes. It fears that Ottawa’s plan to fund health on a per capita basis will translate into a long-term shift in the West’s favour, as people uproot from Ontario and head west in search of opportunity, taking their subventions and tax points with them.
Of course, if Ontario had better managed its economy, this might not have happened. But Mr. McGuinty happily spent and spent, borrowed and spent, then borrowed some more, during his first eight years as premier. Latest figures show the province missed falling into recession by the skin of its teeth, but is still struggling with high unemployment and low productivity, and an accumulated debt approaching $300 billion. Moaning about Alberta’s unfair advantage doesn’t cut it when the province has contributed so mightily to its own demise. Having brought the province to this unhappy position, Mr. McGuinty now shows he’s given up believing he’s capable of reversing it, and has joined the ranks of permanent supplicants. When the Montreal Canadiens’ Mike Cammalleri recently berated his team for thinking and acting like losers, they summarily shipped him off to Calgary. Too bad Ontario couldn’t go with him."
*
Jack M. Mintz also had a great summary on this federal/provincial health-transfer issue in "What is the premiers' beef?", (National Post, Jan.18, 2012):
"...The provinces were unhappy with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty when he laid out the funding plan at a lunch a few weeks ago. Almost choking on their sandwiches, the Ministers of Finance came out swinging, arguing there should have been consultation before the federal announcement. But for what aim? More money? They already got that in spades, getting good support even though the federal government is once again challenged with deficits.
In the past, provinces were more than happy to take federal tax dollars that they could spend on programs that made their own voters happy. So the premiers this week continued to complain that they are not getting enough.
Some premiers, including Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty, who has his own financial headaches, are proposing an ill-defined “innovation fund” for health care. I’m not sure what innovation means in health care. The federal government already supports medical research and development through various programs so the notion is to help provinces introduce new management techniques. This is something they should already do to contain costs, rather than adding to the total with more federal dollars.
The most important principle being introduced by the federal funding formula is that the provinces, which cover 90% of health-care costs in Canada, should be accountable to their electorates for their constitutional responsibilities, especially health care. Unlike the Martin government, which tied funding to five specific waiting-time objectives, the Harper government is not attempting to micro-manage provincial decisions.
The Harper arrangement, providing a solid funding base and principles under the Canada Health Act, lets the provinces decide how best to spend the money that they receive. If the provinces botch their efforts, they can no longer blame the feds for a lack of funding, which is at historically high levels..."
*
Just think back several years, when Ontario's premier Liberal liar McGuinty was laughing with derision at the west's "we want in" mantra. Now McGuinty, Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, and the rest of Ontario's unaccountable Liberal douchebags, 'want in', too; by whining about the unfairness of it all, by demanding strings, by spinning the blame on the feds, by jealously blaming the west - by looking everywhere else but at their own hypocritical, miserable Made-In-McGuinty-Ontario have-not-status selves.
*
Kelly McParland wrote in "McGuinty demonstrates Ontario's loser mentality" (National Post, Jan.17, 2012):
"How mortifying it has become to be from Ontario.
Once we were Canada’s cocky engine of growth and defender of federalism, bestriding the country and lecturing lesser provinces on their inadequacies. Now we send our premier to a gathering of the provinces, where he bleats about our inability to compete, desperation for handouts and need for guidance from Ottawa.
Dalton McGuinty went to Victoria to join the other premiers in a discussion about health care and other shared interests, and quickly joined Quebec Premier Jean Charest in decrying the raw deal Ontario gets from Ottawa. Quebec, of course, is Canada’s unchallenged champion in moaning about the lack of appreciation it’s been getting from Canada since approximately 13 September 1759, but only recently has Ontario taken to backing it up, shaking its first and grousing in tandem: “Yeah, you tell ‘em Jean! We’re getting robbed.”
Here’s what Mr. Charest had to say on Monday, while Mr. McGuinty almost injured himself from nodding so hard: “There are two realities in Canada. There are the economies of oil, gas and potash – and others.”
Get that? There’s the rich guys and the poor guys, and Ontario now reflexively counts itself among the poor guys. More than that, it has adopted the hang-dog attitude of the habitually embittered, which holds that the rich provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. — only got that way because they happen to stumble on valuable energy resources within their borders. It’s not like they did anything to deserve their wealth; any idiot can get rich if they drive a stake into the ground and oil spurts up.
The have-not provinces are upset that Ottawa’s recently revealed funding plans for health care — a generous pledge to maintain increases at 6% a year until 2017, followed by a minimum annual increase of 3% — treats all provinces the same. The funds will be distributed per capita, which means Albertans will receive as much as Nova Scotians, as if all Canadians were equal. When it was rich, Ontario used to ignore the discrepancies in federal funding because it could afford to. Now that it has to share space with the rabble, it’s incensed at being short-changed.
Mr. McGuinty has made it clear he doesn’t feel the provinces are up to the task of efficiently and effectively operating the health care system without regular input from Ottawa, even though health care has long been a provincial mandate. “It’s unacceptable for the Prime Minister to say he’s effectively going to passively preside over the evolution of health care in Canada,” he told the other premiers.”We need the federal government to be an actual committed participant in this.” As in: “Wait a minute. We’re good at spending the money. But make smart decisions … are you crazy?”
If there was any doubt that the axis of influence in Canada has shifted to the West, Mr. McGuinty is here to dispel it. The western provinces are more comfortable with Ottawa’s funding formula, since they’re the fatcats now, and perhaps because they’ve always been more skeptical of Ottawa’s right to meddle in provincial affairs. Alberta has long chafed at being issued instructions by eastern politicians and their tame bureaucrats. From habit and necessity they’ve grown more confident in their ability to fend for themselves.
Ontario, unfortunately, has been going in the other direction. It now eagerly seeks subsidies and support payments from federal coffers, from taxpayer-funded regional development offices to debt-financed “stimulus” schemes. It fears that Ottawa’s plan to fund health on a per capita basis will translate into a long-term shift in the West’s favour, as people uproot from Ontario and head west in search of opportunity, taking their subventions and tax points with them.
Of course, if Ontario had better managed its economy, this might not have happened. But Mr. McGuinty happily spent and spent, borrowed and spent, then borrowed some more, during his first eight years as premier. Latest figures show the province missed falling into recession by the skin of its teeth, but is still struggling with high unemployment and low productivity, and an accumulated debt approaching $300 billion. Moaning about Alberta’s unfair advantage doesn’t cut it when the province has contributed so mightily to its own demise. Having brought the province to this unhappy position, Mr. McGuinty now shows he’s given up believing he’s capable of reversing it, and has joined the ranks of permanent supplicants. When the Montreal Canadiens’ Mike Cammalleri recently berated his team for thinking and acting like losers, they summarily shipped him off to Calgary. Too bad Ontario couldn’t go with him."
*
Jack M. Mintz also had a great summary on this federal/provincial health-transfer issue in "What is the premiers' beef?", (National Post, Jan.18, 2012):
"...The provinces were unhappy with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty when he laid out the funding plan at a lunch a few weeks ago. Almost choking on their sandwiches, the Ministers of Finance came out swinging, arguing there should have been consultation before the federal announcement. But for what aim? More money? They already got that in spades, getting good support even though the federal government is once again challenged with deficits.
In the past, provinces were more than happy to take federal tax dollars that they could spend on programs that made their own voters happy. So the premiers this week continued to complain that they are not getting enough.
Some premiers, including Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty, who has his own financial headaches, are proposing an ill-defined “innovation fund” for health care. I’m not sure what innovation means in health care. The federal government already supports medical research and development through various programs so the notion is to help provinces introduce new management techniques. This is something they should already do to contain costs, rather than adding to the total with more federal dollars.
The most important principle being introduced by the federal funding formula is that the provinces, which cover 90% of health-care costs in Canada, should be accountable to their electorates for their constitutional responsibilities, especially health care. Unlike the Martin government, which tied funding to five specific waiting-time objectives, the Harper government is not attempting to micro-manage provincial decisions.
The Harper arrangement, providing a solid funding base and principles under the Canada Health Act, lets the provinces decide how best to spend the money that they receive. If the provinces botch their efforts, they can no longer blame the feds for a lack of funding, which is at historically high levels..."
*
Just think back several years, when Ontario's premier Liberal liar McGuinty was laughing with derision at the west's "we want in" mantra. Now McGuinty, Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, and the rest of Ontario's unaccountable Liberal douchebags, 'want in', too; by whining about the unfairness of it all, by demanding strings, by spinning the blame on the feds, by jealously blaming the west - by looking everywhere else but at their own hypocritical, miserable Made-In-McGuinty-Ontario have-not-status selves.
*
Monday, January 16, 2012
Smitherman's Liberal stench still haunts Ontario
Martin Regg Cohn in the Toronto Star, Jan.11, 2012, noted how that disastrous former Liberal hack George Smitherman's festering turds are still smelling throughout Ontario.
Earlier on it was David Caplan who found Smitherman's piles of eHealth shit sticking to him; then we had Smitherman's secretive multi-billion-dollar GreenFear-instigated Samsung deal; now it's Deb Matthews' turn to wipe Smitherman's droppings from her shoes, dealing with the air ambulance fiasco, which has Smitherman's stench all over it, though Furious Diaperman claims he had nothing to do with this dump:
"...Last month, infuriated by a series of Star articles, she [Matthews] sidelined the charismatic Chris Mazza from his perch as CEO — he of the egregious $1.4 million annual income.
This week, she swept aside the rest of that legacy by bouncing the interim ORNGE president and the entire board. The affiliated Ornge Global Solutions — whose questionable side deals were shrouded in secrecy — will be wound down.
Matthews is not covered in glory here, nor are the Liberals. The government ignored persistent opposition questioning for months, and it took sustained coverage in the Star to ratchet up the pressure.
But she has acted decisively against an organization that was midwifed by her government and is still heavily staffed by Liberal insiders. Mazza’s rise to power at ORNGE came courtesy of former health minister George Smitherman, who eagerly embraced his vision for a privatized air ambulance service. As with ORNGE, Smitherman’s fingerprints are also on eHealth — another notorious political albatross that Matthews inherited.
But in retirement, Smitherman refuses to wear any of this, blaming his successors for dropping the ball and insisting he would never have let things get out of hand. In an 800-word letter-to-the-editor published online last month, he lashed out at the Liberal government.
“That the ministry did not conduct proper oversight, and did not (as of two days ago) understand what was happening at ORNGE, is a commentary on my successors and the ministry,” he argued. “The lack of a defence of the Ontario Air Ambulance service shows a withering backbone that day in and day out becomes a more prominent feature of the current government.”...
*
Smitherman will probably also deny that he had anything to do with the NHS's HIP; that it was all solely somehow Harris' fault... oh, and Debbie Sevenpifer's... but certainly neither he nor his LHIN had anything to do with it!!
And, so what about that continuing C.difficile outbreak in Niagara in 2011-12? Only 40 patients dead?! What's that got to do with Smitherman's secretive Liberals in 2008 quashing a C.difficile public inquiry, at a time when hundreds of C. diff patients died in Ontario?
Cohn could look into that, seeing as that Niagara's local Liberal friendly press couldn't be bothered to.
*
By Jan.19, 2012, the CBC and CTV were reporting about 4 alleged deaths in relation to ORNGE.
*
Earlier on it was David Caplan who found Smitherman's piles of eHealth shit sticking to him; then we had Smitherman's secretive multi-billion-dollar GreenFear-instigated Samsung deal; now it's Deb Matthews' turn to wipe Smitherman's droppings from her shoes, dealing with the air ambulance fiasco, which has Smitherman's stench all over it, though Furious Diaperman claims he had nothing to do with this dump:
"...Last month, infuriated by a series of Star articles, she [Matthews] sidelined the charismatic Chris Mazza from his perch as CEO — he of the egregious $1.4 million annual income.
This week, she swept aside the rest of that legacy by bouncing the interim ORNGE president and the entire board. The affiliated Ornge Global Solutions — whose questionable side deals were shrouded in secrecy — will be wound down.
Matthews is not covered in glory here, nor are the Liberals. The government ignored persistent opposition questioning for months, and it took sustained coverage in the Star to ratchet up the pressure.
But she has acted decisively against an organization that was midwifed by her government and is still heavily staffed by Liberal insiders. Mazza’s rise to power at ORNGE came courtesy of former health minister George Smitherman, who eagerly embraced his vision for a privatized air ambulance service. As with ORNGE, Smitherman’s fingerprints are also on eHealth — another notorious political albatross that Matthews inherited.
But in retirement, Smitherman refuses to wear any of this, blaming his successors for dropping the ball and insisting he would never have let things get out of hand. In an 800-word letter-to-the-editor published online last month, he lashed out at the Liberal government.
“That the ministry did not conduct proper oversight, and did not (as of two days ago) understand what was happening at ORNGE, is a commentary on my successors and the ministry,” he argued. “The lack of a defence of the Ontario Air Ambulance service shows a withering backbone that day in and day out becomes a more prominent feature of the current government.”...
*
Smitherman will probably also deny that he had anything to do with the NHS's HIP; that it was all solely somehow Harris' fault... oh, and Debbie Sevenpifer's... but certainly neither he nor his LHIN had anything to do with it!!
And, so what about that continuing C.difficile outbreak in Niagara in 2011-12? Only 40 patients dead?! What's that got to do with Smitherman's secretive Liberals in 2008 quashing a C.difficile public inquiry, at a time when hundreds of C. diff patients died in Ontario?
Cohn could look into that, seeing as that Niagara's local Liberal friendly press couldn't be bothered to.
*
By Jan.19, 2012, the CBC and CTV were reporting about 4 alleged deaths in relation to ORNGE.
*
Sunday, January 15, 2012
McGuinty tries to hide from his Liberal health-care obligations
Lee Greenberg wrote in "Ontario Liberals back health ‘innovation fund’", Ottawa Citizen, Jan.15, 2012):
" An idea designed to supplement a 10-year, take-it-or-leave-it health funding deal tabled by the federal Conservatives last month will receive key backing by Premier Dalton McGuinty at this week’s meeting of premiers and territorial leaders.
McGuinty officials say the Ontario premier likes Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s idea to create a separate ‘innovation fund’ that would add more cash to the criticized deal while also targeting specific health reforms.
Ontario has said it would like to see additional funds available for seniors and home care. It is unclear whether McGuinty will be able to convince his colleagues to adopt similar goals.
Typically, the outcome of meetings between premiers is pre-ordained. The two-day meeting in Victoria, B.C. is a rare example to the contrary. “I think there’s a little more movement at this one,” said a senior Ontario official.
Ontario officials would like to see unified support behind Wall’s idea, leading to a stronger bargaining position with the federal government.
“The hope would be that we would put some meat on the bones,” the official said. “We need to define what it will cover and how much it will be worth. I think that’s one of the most interesting things that will come out of this (session).”
Ontario officials wanted a new federal health accord with six-per-cent annual hikes in each year of a 10-year deal. Instead, they got six per cent in the first three years and a promise to tie the increase to grwoth in the GDP thereafter.
McGuinty has said that proposal, presented by federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as both a preliminary and final offer, is “less than ideal.”
The country’s largest province is seeking both more cash (the federal government funds less than one-quarter of all health spending in Ontario) and more unified goals, similar to the emphasis placed on wait times in the current health accord, which expires in 2014.
“There may an opportunity for us now to develop a consensus in terms of creating a transformation fund or an innovation fund the way we did with (former) prime minister (Paul) Martin,” McGuinty said on Friday. “Where the feds supply some additional funding and in return for that, we agree to pursue innovation in some distinctive areas. I’m hoping we can develop a consensus around that.”
McGuinty’s health minister, Deb Matthews, says Flaherty’s “bombshell” ultimatum will undo considerable national momentum on health reforms.
“They’re cutting back transfers to the provinces just as the demographic shift will be moving into full gear. It’s a very poorly thought-out proposal,” she said.
“I learn, and my officials learn, from practices in other provinces. When I go to a (meeting) with other health ministers I come back with a lot of good ideas from successes they’ve had in other provinces.”
Ironically, many provinces have in the past bucked at receiving funding with strings attached, says health reform expert Dr. Michael Rachlis. Now that the federal government has removed conditions on funding, some, like Ontario, are complaining.
" An idea designed to supplement a 10-year, take-it-or-leave-it health funding deal tabled by the federal Conservatives last month will receive key backing by Premier Dalton McGuinty at this week’s meeting of premiers and territorial leaders.
McGuinty officials say the Ontario premier likes Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s idea to create a separate ‘innovation fund’ that would add more cash to the criticized deal while also targeting specific health reforms.
Ontario has said it would like to see additional funds available for seniors and home care. It is unclear whether McGuinty will be able to convince his colleagues to adopt similar goals.
Typically, the outcome of meetings between premiers is pre-ordained. The two-day meeting in Victoria, B.C. is a rare example to the contrary. “I think there’s a little more movement at this one,” said a senior Ontario official.
Ontario officials would like to see unified support behind Wall’s idea, leading to a stronger bargaining position with the federal government.
“The hope would be that we would put some meat on the bones,” the official said. “We need to define what it will cover and how much it will be worth. I think that’s one of the most interesting things that will come out of this (session).”
Ontario officials wanted a new federal health accord with six-per-cent annual hikes in each year of a 10-year deal. Instead, they got six per cent in the first three years and a promise to tie the increase to grwoth in the GDP thereafter.
McGuinty has said that proposal, presented by federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as both a preliminary and final offer, is “less than ideal.”
The country’s largest province is seeking both more cash (the federal government funds less than one-quarter of all health spending in Ontario) and more unified goals, similar to the emphasis placed on wait times in the current health accord, which expires in 2014.
“There may an opportunity for us now to develop a consensus in terms of creating a transformation fund or an innovation fund the way we did with (former) prime minister (Paul) Martin,” McGuinty said on Friday. “Where the feds supply some additional funding and in return for that, we agree to pursue innovation in some distinctive areas. I’m hoping we can develop a consensus around that.”
McGuinty’s health minister, Deb Matthews, says Flaherty’s “bombshell” ultimatum will undo considerable national momentum on health reforms.
“They’re cutting back transfers to the provinces just as the demographic shift will be moving into full gear. It’s a very poorly thought-out proposal,” she said.
“I learn, and my officials learn, from practices in other provinces. When I go to a (meeting) with other health ministers I come back with a lot of good ideas from successes they’ve had in other provinces.”
Ironically, many provinces have in the past bucked at receiving funding with strings attached, says health reform expert Dr. Michael Rachlis. Now that the federal government has removed conditions on funding, some, like Ontario, are complaining.
Rachlis, who authored the book Prescription for Excellence: How Innovation is Saving Canada’s Health Care System, said much of the Victoria get-together is posturing on the part of the provinces. He says the reductions in federal health spending are considerably less than portrayed by the provinces.
“This is all about the spin, about who can we blame for health care problems in the future,” he said. “They’re setting up the feds to be the bogeyman for having problems with their budgets.”
Ontario received $10.2 billion in federal health funding in 2010-11. The total health and long-term care budget was $45 billion that year. (The province received $97 million that same year in targeted funding for wait time reductions.)
Any reductions in health funding would hit Ontario particularly hard. Health currently accounts for 46 per cent of total government spending and is growing at a disproportionate pace. Left unchecked, experts warn it will take up 80 per cent of the provincial budget by 2030.
The McGuinty government has telegraphed significant reforms beginning in the upcoming March budget.
At the same time, the government has come under severe criticism for some of its spending practices. It gave doctors raises of up to 40 per cent over three years, for example, in return for specific reforms, but has done “virtually no work” to learn whether the hundreds of millions in spending has resulted in better service, according to Auditor General Jim McCarter.
Rachlis credits the province for good work on reducing wait times, but says the areas of reform it now wants targeted could have been acted upon decades ago."
*
Rachlis here has cut to the chase: Liberal hypocrites, such as McGuinty's lying scumbags in Ontario, are looking anywhere else but at themselves for the problems in their health-care monopoly-fiefdoms.
Dalton McGuinty, Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, Deb Matthews: these Ontario Liberals are all about posturing and duplicity.
Vote-buying Liberals were all about smugly waving the Canadian flag alongside the myth of endless "free" medicare, spouting homilies to Tommy Douglas, while at the same time officially demonizing and denouncing ANY "innovations" whatsoever within their health monopoly status-quo.
One needs only to look, for example, at the track record - a thirty-plus year record - of Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's utterly smarmy adherence to failing health-care monopolism; to Bradley's kneejerk reactionary maintenance of the single-payer statist status-quo; to Bradley's disdain and dismissal of even the slightest innovations.
Bradley's Liberals had eight years of majority government during which to "innovate": now, all of a sudden, Bradley's Liberal hacks are spinning it that Harper has somehow failed them?!?!?! [pot: meet kettle...]
The "problem" with health care in Ontario isn't Harper or Conservatives; the problem is anti-choice, anti-innovation statists like Bradley and his lying hypocrite Liberals.
*
“This is all about the spin, about who can we blame for health care problems in the future,” he said. “They’re setting up the feds to be the bogeyman for having problems with their budgets.”
Ontario received $10.2 billion in federal health funding in 2010-11. The total health and long-term care budget was $45 billion that year. (The province received $97 million that same year in targeted funding for wait time reductions.)
Any reductions in health funding would hit Ontario particularly hard. Health currently accounts for 46 per cent of total government spending and is growing at a disproportionate pace. Left unchecked, experts warn it will take up 80 per cent of the provincial budget by 2030.
The McGuinty government has telegraphed significant reforms beginning in the upcoming March budget.
At the same time, the government has come under severe criticism for some of its spending practices. It gave doctors raises of up to 40 per cent over three years, for example, in return for specific reforms, but has done “virtually no work” to learn whether the hundreds of millions in spending has resulted in better service, according to Auditor General Jim McCarter.
Rachlis credits the province for good work on reducing wait times, but says the areas of reform it now wants targeted could have been acted upon decades ago."
*
Rachlis here has cut to the chase: Liberal hypocrites, such as McGuinty's lying scumbags in Ontario, are looking anywhere else but at themselves for the problems in their health-care monopoly-fiefdoms.
Dalton McGuinty, Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, Deb Matthews: these Ontario Liberals are all about posturing and duplicity.
Vote-buying Liberals were all about smugly waving the Canadian flag alongside the myth of endless "free" medicare, spouting homilies to Tommy Douglas, while at the same time officially demonizing and denouncing ANY "innovations" whatsoever within their health monopoly status-quo.
One needs only to look, for example, at the track record - a thirty-plus year record - of Ontario Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's utterly smarmy adherence to failing health-care monopolism; to Bradley's kneejerk reactionary maintenance of the single-payer statist status-quo; to Bradley's disdain and dismissal of even the slightest innovations.
Bradley's Liberals had eight years of majority government during which to "innovate": now, all of a sudden, Bradley's Liberal hacks are spinning it that Harper has somehow failed them?!?!?! [pot: meet kettle...]
The "problem" with health care in Ontario isn't Harper or Conservatives; the problem is anti-choice, anti-innovation statists like Bradley and his lying hypocrite Liberals.
*
Friday, January 13, 2012
Is monopoly health care legal?
Further to the subject of my detailed earlier post, Liberal Healthcare Duplicity ...
and further to my previous Romanow-related post...
The Jan.10, 2012, National Post editorialized in "Roy Romanow's one-note-tune":
Give Roy Romanow credit for one thing: consistency. For the past decade, the former Saskatchewan premier and head of the 2002 Royal Commission on health care has sung the same tune: The government health monopoly must be preserved at any cost.
Literally, any cost.
Mr. Romanow’s solution to whatever ails medicare — soaring costs, faltering health outcomes, slow uptake of new technologies and medications — is always the same: more federal money. Time and again, Mr. Romanow has stated that the monopoly public-payer system envisioned by those who favour a dogmatic reading of the Canada Health Act is the ideal around which all health policy should be focused.
Next week, the provincial premiers will convene a health-care summit in Victoria. By his own choice, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will not be there. (And given the way these meetings all turn into anti-Ottawa whine-fests, we don’t blame him.) Mr. Romanow is appalled by the PM’s hands-off approach. In an interview with Postmedia News, Mr. Romanow insisted that if the PM does not take an aggressive leadership role in talks about the future of medicare, public health care will weaken, private care will spread and the very fabric of our nation will be imperilled.
Reality check: Canada’s Constitution gives the federal government no role in setting health-care policy. None. For half a century, Ottawa has bought a place at the health-care table only by shipping billions annually to the provinces in the form of health transfers, and then slapping conditions on how the money is spent. In other words, the entire structure of the Canada Health Act — which leftists identify as one of the great pillars of our nation — is essentially based on extortion.
Then-prime minister Paul Martin bought a decade of relative health-care peace in 2004 by agreeing to give the provinces nearly $5-billion more each year through 2014. But with that agreement nearing its end, the old intergovernmental theatrics were beginning to boil once again in late 2011. So last month, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told his provincial counterparts what Ottawa was prepared to pay them annually after the current funding agreement expires: From 2014 to 2017, Ottawa will continue to raise its annual contribution to provincial health budgets by 6%. Thereafter, yearly contributions will rise only by the rate of economic growth and the rise in inflation — currently about 4%. Yet in no year will the provinces receive a rise of less than 3%.
This seems eminently fair to us — generous, in fact — especially since the feds are demanding less say over provincial health policy in return for the extra money they will be shipping the provinces.
This approach is not something new. The reduction in federal demands in return for larger health transfers began in earnest under the Liberals, who averted their eyes from the expansion of private health clinics in the 2000s — especially in Montreal and Vancouver — despite their opposition to the very same type of clinics when they popped up in Alberta during the 1990s. When Mr. Martin signed his decade-long funding agreement with the premiers in 2004, the new money came with few new obligations for the provinces — something (the admirably non-partisan) Mr. Romanow complained about at the time.
But so what if the provinces don’t all offer identical services and delivery models? Let them devise blended public-private systems that work best for their residents or for their budgets — and let provincial governments live with the political consequences of those choices. How does that threaten “national unity”?
It is time for Canada — and particularly for Canadian politicians — to get beyond the notion of health care as national symbol. The universal, government-funded health monopoly has been faltering for decades. Since Mr. Martin increased the provinces’ health transfers, each province has increased the per capita amounts it spends on hospitals, clinics and health workers, but waiting lists have continued to grow. And international rating agencies, such as the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation continue to rank Canada in the middle of the pack or below in health outcomes, such as survival rates from cancer and heart disease. That’s why people are going to private health clinics, despite their limited range of services.
This is not an argument for an “American-style” system: It should be remembered that every single European country permits private health insurance for those seeking better or faster treatment — even as those nations also provide a baseline of universal government-provided care.
The frozen-in-amber, don’t-change-a-thing attitude of Mr. Romanow is a relic of the 1990s. Canadian health consumers have moved on. And so should he.
Burton H. Kellock responded to the above editorial in "Is our health-care unlawful" (National Post, Jan.12, 2012):
Re: Roy Romanow’s One-Note Tune, editorial, Jan. 10.
I was delighted to read these statements in your editorial: “Canada’s Constitution gives the federal government no role in setting health-care policy. None,” and “the entire structure of this Canada Health Act (the CHA) is essentially based on extortion.”
I assume that is a reference to the fact that the CHA is based on federal/provincial transfer payments, which section 4 of the CHA makes conditional upon the provinces enacting provincial legislation in accordance with “criteria” mandated by Ottawa. These transfers are based upon an entirely fictitious unlimited federal spending power which, to quote section 6.8(a) of Professor Peter Hogg’s text book, Constitutional Law of Canada, “is nowhere explicit in the Constitution Act, 1867.”
In other words, the Canada Health Act is utterly unlawful. I am writing a book which demonstrates that all of the attempts to find legal support from the constitutionality of these transfer payments are not only without any foundation but face insurmountable legal obstacles including the fact that the Fathers of Confederation considered and then rejected the suggestion that the federal government should have any such power.
*
Looks like McGuinty's local Liberal health-care monopoly-pushers Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor will have some 'splainin' to do about their own despotic single-payer-health-care's systemic failure... ...well, that's only if the local Liberal-friendly 'Wendy Williscraft/Mike Metcalfe' orchestrated Niagara press ever bother to ask them, that is...
*
and further to my previous Romanow-related post...
The Jan.10, 2012, National Post editorialized in "Roy Romanow's one-note-tune":
Give Roy Romanow credit for one thing: consistency. For the past decade, the former Saskatchewan premier and head of the 2002 Royal Commission on health care has sung the same tune: The government health monopoly must be preserved at any cost.
Literally, any cost.
Mr. Romanow’s solution to whatever ails medicare — soaring costs, faltering health outcomes, slow uptake of new technologies and medications — is always the same: more federal money. Time and again, Mr. Romanow has stated that the monopoly public-payer system envisioned by those who favour a dogmatic reading of the Canada Health Act is the ideal around which all health policy should be focused.
Next week, the provincial premiers will convene a health-care summit in Victoria. By his own choice, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will not be there. (And given the way these meetings all turn into anti-Ottawa whine-fests, we don’t blame him.) Mr. Romanow is appalled by the PM’s hands-off approach. In an interview with Postmedia News, Mr. Romanow insisted that if the PM does not take an aggressive leadership role in talks about the future of medicare, public health care will weaken, private care will spread and the very fabric of our nation will be imperilled.
Reality check: Canada’s Constitution gives the federal government no role in setting health-care policy. None. For half a century, Ottawa has bought a place at the health-care table only by shipping billions annually to the provinces in the form of health transfers, and then slapping conditions on how the money is spent. In other words, the entire structure of the Canada Health Act — which leftists identify as one of the great pillars of our nation — is essentially based on extortion.
Then-prime minister Paul Martin bought a decade of relative health-care peace in 2004 by agreeing to give the provinces nearly $5-billion more each year through 2014. But with that agreement nearing its end, the old intergovernmental theatrics were beginning to boil once again in late 2011. So last month, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told his provincial counterparts what Ottawa was prepared to pay them annually after the current funding agreement expires: From 2014 to 2017, Ottawa will continue to raise its annual contribution to provincial health budgets by 6%. Thereafter, yearly contributions will rise only by the rate of economic growth and the rise in inflation — currently about 4%. Yet in no year will the provinces receive a rise of less than 3%.
This seems eminently fair to us — generous, in fact — especially since the feds are demanding less say over provincial health policy in return for the extra money they will be shipping the provinces.
This approach is not something new. The reduction in federal demands in return for larger health transfers began in earnest under the Liberals, who averted their eyes from the expansion of private health clinics in the 2000s — especially in Montreal and Vancouver — despite their opposition to the very same type of clinics when they popped up in Alberta during the 1990s. When Mr. Martin signed his decade-long funding agreement with the premiers in 2004, the new money came with few new obligations for the provinces — something (the admirably non-partisan) Mr. Romanow complained about at the time.
But so what if the provinces don’t all offer identical services and delivery models? Let them devise blended public-private systems that work best for their residents or for their budgets — and let provincial governments live with the political consequences of those choices. How does that threaten “national unity”?
It is time for Canada — and particularly for Canadian politicians — to get beyond the notion of health care as national symbol. The universal, government-funded health monopoly has been faltering for decades. Since Mr. Martin increased the provinces’ health transfers, each province has increased the per capita amounts it spends on hospitals, clinics and health workers, but waiting lists have continued to grow. And international rating agencies, such as the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation continue to rank Canada in the middle of the pack or below in health outcomes, such as survival rates from cancer and heart disease. That’s why people are going to private health clinics, despite their limited range of services.
This is not an argument for an “American-style” system: It should be remembered that every single European country permits private health insurance for those seeking better or faster treatment — even as those nations also provide a baseline of universal government-provided care.
The frozen-in-amber, don’t-change-a-thing attitude of Mr. Romanow is a relic of the 1990s. Canadian health consumers have moved on. And so should he.
Burton H. Kellock responded to the above editorial in "Is our health-care unlawful" (National Post, Jan.12, 2012):
Re: Roy Romanow’s One-Note Tune, editorial, Jan. 10.
I was delighted to read these statements in your editorial: “Canada’s Constitution gives the federal government no role in setting health-care policy. None,” and “the entire structure of this Canada Health Act (the CHA) is essentially based on extortion.”
I assume that is a reference to the fact that the CHA is based on federal/provincial transfer payments, which section 4 of the CHA makes conditional upon the provinces enacting provincial legislation in accordance with “criteria” mandated by Ottawa. These transfers are based upon an entirely fictitious unlimited federal spending power which, to quote section 6.8(a) of Professor Peter Hogg’s text book, Constitutional Law of Canada, “is nowhere explicit in the Constitution Act, 1867.”
In other words, the Canada Health Act is utterly unlawful. I am writing a book which demonstrates that all of the attempts to find legal support from the constitutionality of these transfer payments are not only without any foundation but face insurmountable legal obstacles including the fact that the Fathers of Confederation considered and then rejected the suggestion that the federal government should have any such power.
*
Looks like McGuinty's local Liberal health-care monopoly-pushers Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor will have some 'splainin' to do about their own despotic single-payer-health-care's systemic failure... ...well, that's only if the local Liberal-friendly 'Wendy Williscraft/Mike Metcalfe' orchestrated Niagara press ever bother to ask them, that is...
*
40 C. difficile patients dead in continuing Niagara outbreak
As was reported by Richard Hutton...
(under the headline "Second C.diff death at GNGH", published in the Jan.11, 2012 printed edition of Niagara This Week; the same story also appeared dated Jan.6, 2012 on NTW's web version)
...there have now been a total of two C. difficile deaths in Niagara's second outbreak, in addition to the 38 C.diff deaths which occurred in the first outbreak.
...[Note: as I had previouly written about here, the Dec.28, 2011 St.Catharines Standard had reported that 37 patients had died during the first outbreak; this differs from Niagara This Week's Jan.11, 2012 report that 38 had died during the first outbreak. What's that discrepancy all about?
Niagara's first C.difficile outbreak was declared on May 28, 2011, and lasted for 5 months, being declared over on Oct.24, 2011, with 37 (or 38?) dead.
Niagara's second C.diff outbreak was declared on Dec.8, 2011; on Dec.20, 2011, the first patient (of this second Niagara C.diff outbreak) died.]...
So: 40 Niagara patients are dead of a disease...
(which local MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor's Liberal government told us in 2008 not to worry about, that everything was under control, and, that no independent inquiry was needed into the already-then HUNDREDS of C. diff deaths occurring throughout Ontario)
... yet, what "investigative journalism" does the St.Catharines Standard decide to do?
Well, the Standard's self-appointed 'wrong-righters' are not investigating the political crime scene at the NHS, and the McGuinty Liberal's complicity by enforcing a no-patient-choice health-care monopoly while concurrently deceiving trapped-taxpayer-patients; nope, the Standard sent Doug Herod on an important mission to "investigate" how wide the seats are at the hockey rink.
Wow...! Excellent, Wendy... just grreaaat: 'Fer Gaia's sake, let's do everything we can not to ask Jimmy'N' Kimmy anything specific about anything specific! Can't have that!!'
Maybe Herod should measure the length of Ontario premier Liberal liar Dalton Pinocchio's nose.
*
(under the headline "Second C.diff death at GNGH", published in the Jan.11, 2012 printed edition of Niagara This Week; the same story also appeared dated Jan.6, 2012 on NTW's web version)
...there have now been a total of two C. difficile deaths in Niagara's second outbreak, in addition to the 38 C.diff deaths which occurred in the first outbreak.
...[Note: as I had previouly written about here, the Dec.28, 2011 St.Catharines Standard had reported that 37 patients had died during the first outbreak; this differs from Niagara This Week's Jan.11, 2012 report that 38 had died during the first outbreak. What's that discrepancy all about?
Niagara's first C.difficile outbreak was declared on May 28, 2011, and lasted for 5 months, being declared over on Oct.24, 2011, with 37 (or 38?) dead.
Niagara's second C.diff outbreak was declared on Dec.8, 2011; on Dec.20, 2011, the first patient (of this second Niagara C.diff outbreak) died.]...
So: 40 Niagara patients are dead of a disease...
(which local MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor's Liberal government told us in 2008 not to worry about, that everything was under control, and, that no independent inquiry was needed into the already-then HUNDREDS of C. diff deaths occurring throughout Ontario)
... yet, what "investigative journalism" does the St.Catharines Standard decide to do?
Well, the Standard's self-appointed 'wrong-righters' are not investigating the political crime scene at the NHS, and the McGuinty Liberal's complicity by enforcing a no-patient-choice health-care monopoly while concurrently deceiving trapped-taxpayer-patients; nope, the Standard sent Doug Herod on an important mission to "investigate" how wide the seats are at the hockey rink.
Wow...! Excellent, Wendy... just grreaaat: 'Fer Gaia's sake, let's do everything we can not to ask Jimmy'N' Kimmy anything specific about anything specific! Can't have that!!'
Maybe Herod should measure the length of Ontario premier Liberal liar Dalton Pinocchio's nose.
*
Jim Bradley's Liberals are 'transforming' - into what??
Christina Blizzard wrote in "Moody's puts Ontario on credit watch" (Toronto Sun, Dec.15, 2011):
"This province has been put on credit watch by Moody’s — one of the biggest credit rating agencies in the world.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
As far back as 2008, I can remember asking Duncan why he wasn’t freezing civil service salaries, given the downturn in the economy.
He didn’t.
It’s tempting to say he spent like a drunken sailor, but that’s an insult to sailors.
In eight years, the Liberals have doubled the debt — from $110 to $200 billion.
Spending on government programs has soared more than 70% as they’ve added costly vote-getting frills like all-day kindergarten.
They’ve squandered cash for votes — such as the estimated $1 billion they’ll spend cancelling the unpopular gas-fired power plant in Mississauga. They’ve given massive pay hikes to Liberal-friendly unions.
Now Moody’s has made it official. Worse, they warn our Double A credit rating could be at risk if Duncan doesn’t get the debt under control.
In a press release, analyst Jennifer Wong says the change ,“reflects Moody’s assessment of risks surrounding the province’s ability to meet its medium term fiscal targets given the recent slowdown in provincial economic growth and the resulting risks to the province’s ability to stabilize the recent accumulation in debt.
“The negative outlook on the province reflects the softening economic outlook, Ontario’s growing debt burden, and the extended
timeframe to achieving a balanced budget.”
“While Ontario retains sufficient fiscal flexibility inherent in the institutional framework to adjust its fiscal outcomes, thereby improving its financial position, difficult policy decisions are required.”
And she warned that if the province doesn’t stabilize the debt in the next budget, our good credit rating could be threatened.
“We believe that increased fiscal discipline will be required to sustain debt affordability,” said Wong.
Duncan was on the defensive at a hastily called press conference Thursday night.
“We do have to make some very difficult choices in the coming years to ensure that we stay on the track back to balance,” he told reporters.
“There are a number of challenging decisions ahead. We are going to have to be relentless in our pursuit of transformation to ensure that we make sure that we are focusing our resources on those pivotal areas that are going to be important to job growth in the future.”
He wouldn’t elaborate on just which parts of government will be “transformed,” but insisted it will be a “transformational agenda as opposed to straight across the board cuts.”
Hmm. Methinks I see a pattern emerging here. If the federal Tories cut, it’s “slash and burn.” When provincial Liberals cut, it’s “transformational.”
Tory MPP Monte McNaughton blamed the ratings watch on Liberal incompetence.
“We have a record deficit in Ontario. We have a government that’s doubled the debt since they’ve taken office. Ontario is in bad fiscal shape and we have a larger deficit per capita than in all the other provinces combined.
“It’s just complete incompetence on the part of Premier Dalton McGuinty and Dwight Duncan,” McNaughton said.
The credit watch makes it tough for Duncan to argue with federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty when he talks about the need to cut transfers.
And it all sets the stage for economist Don Drummond’s highly anticipated report on where the province should cut to get the deficit and debt under control. This report justifies unpopular cuts that are in the works.
How does the ad go? Fiscal prudence. Respect for our children and our grandchildren’s financial future – priceless.
There are some things money can’t buy.
For everything else, Dwight Duncan thinks you can put it on the province’s maxed out Mastercard.
Not any more."
*
When will Wendy Metcalfe's Wrong-Righters at Sun Media's (that's for, you, Kinsella) Liberal-friendly St.Catharines Standard ever dare bother to ask their secretive Grit buddy MPP Jim 'Slash and Burn' Bradley all about his sudden "transformational" Liberal hypocrisy?!!
*
"This province has been put on credit watch by Moody’s — one of the biggest credit rating agencies in the world.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
As far back as 2008, I can remember asking Duncan why he wasn’t freezing civil service salaries, given the downturn in the economy.
He didn’t.
It’s tempting to say he spent like a drunken sailor, but that’s an insult to sailors.
In eight years, the Liberals have doubled the debt — from $110 to $200 billion.
Spending on government programs has soared more than 70% as they’ve added costly vote-getting frills like all-day kindergarten.
They’ve squandered cash for votes — such as the estimated $1 billion they’ll spend cancelling the unpopular gas-fired power plant in Mississauga. They’ve given massive pay hikes to Liberal-friendly unions.
Now Moody’s has made it official. Worse, they warn our Double A credit rating could be at risk if Duncan doesn’t get the debt under control.
In a press release, analyst Jennifer Wong says the change ,“reflects Moody’s assessment of risks surrounding the province’s ability to meet its medium term fiscal targets given the recent slowdown in provincial economic growth and the resulting risks to the province’s ability to stabilize the recent accumulation in debt.
“The negative outlook on the province reflects the softening economic outlook, Ontario’s growing debt burden, and the extended
timeframe to achieving a balanced budget.”
“While Ontario retains sufficient fiscal flexibility inherent in the institutional framework to adjust its fiscal outcomes, thereby improving its financial position, difficult policy decisions are required.”
And she warned that if the province doesn’t stabilize the debt in the next budget, our good credit rating could be threatened.
“We believe that increased fiscal discipline will be required to sustain debt affordability,” said Wong.
Duncan was on the defensive at a hastily called press conference Thursday night.
“We do have to make some very difficult choices in the coming years to ensure that we stay on the track back to balance,” he told reporters.
“There are a number of challenging decisions ahead. We are going to have to be relentless in our pursuit of transformation to ensure that we make sure that we are focusing our resources on those pivotal areas that are going to be important to job growth in the future.”
He wouldn’t elaborate on just which parts of government will be “transformed,” but insisted it will be a “transformational agenda as opposed to straight across the board cuts.”
Hmm. Methinks I see a pattern emerging here. If the federal Tories cut, it’s “slash and burn.” When provincial Liberals cut, it’s “transformational.”
Tory MPP Monte McNaughton blamed the ratings watch on Liberal incompetence.
“We have a record deficit in Ontario. We have a government that’s doubled the debt since they’ve taken office. Ontario is in bad fiscal shape and we have a larger deficit per capita than in all the other provinces combined.
“It’s just complete incompetence on the part of Premier Dalton McGuinty and Dwight Duncan,” McNaughton said.
The credit watch makes it tough for Duncan to argue with federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty when he talks about the need to cut transfers.
And it all sets the stage for economist Don Drummond’s highly anticipated report on where the province should cut to get the deficit and debt under control. This report justifies unpopular cuts that are in the works.
How does the ad go? Fiscal prudence. Respect for our children and our grandchildren’s financial future – priceless.
There are some things money can’t buy.
For everything else, Dwight Duncan thinks you can put it on the province’s maxed out Mastercard.
Not any more."
*
When will Wendy Metcalfe's Wrong-Righters at Sun Media's (that's for, you, Kinsella) Liberal-friendly St.Catharines Standard ever dare bother to ask their secretive Grit buddy MPP Jim 'Slash and Burn' Bradley all about his sudden "transformational" Liberal hypocrisy?!!
*
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The Kyodiot's Suzuki sings back-up harmonies for Liberal GreenFear-monger Jim Bradley
Looks like Ontario Environment Minister Jim Bradley's symbiont David Suzuki took another smelly green dump in the St.Catharines Standard on Jan.11, 2012, spreading more GreenFear about Bradley's aborted Kyoto love child.
BTW, when you read Maria Babbage's Jan.6, 2012 CP report which mentions Jim Bradley belatedly whining to the feds about Kyoto (Bradley and Suzuki are singing from the same hymn book), why is it that Babbage did not ask secretive Jim Bradley to reveal his specific scientific evidence of AGW, which Bradley has apparently had in his possession for some twenty years, but has never publicly revealed ?!
Babbage, in her report, did not actually interview secretive Ole Liberal Jim Bradley!! All Babbage apparently did was react to some letter which Ole Jimmy sent to Federal Environment minister Kent and the Globe and Mail.
We weren't told in the story: did Babbage try to contact Jim Bradley? Or - as usually is the case with the Liberal-friendly stenographer/reporters in Niagara - did Babbage just give up, and simply rehash whatever boilerplate partisan tripe Bradley had written, instead of obtaining an actual interview with him?
Reporter Babbage would have done all Canadians a great public service, had she managed to get onto the public record, once and for all, the specific scientific evidence which twenty years ago had convinced Ontario's chief Liberal GreenFear-spreader Jim Bradley to push his non-sensical political green bolshevism.
How is it, that even da clueless Kyodiot Liberal 'da proof is da proof is da proof Chretien' had no proof of AGW; yet, somehow - over the course of two decades - no-one has bothered to ask Ole Jimmy?!
*
BTW, when you read Maria Babbage's Jan.6, 2012 CP report which mentions Jim Bradley belatedly whining to the feds about Kyoto (Bradley and Suzuki are singing from the same hymn book), why is it that Babbage did not ask secretive Jim Bradley to reveal his specific scientific evidence of AGW, which Bradley has apparently had in his possession for some twenty years, but has never publicly revealed ?!
Babbage, in her report, did not actually interview secretive Ole Liberal Jim Bradley!! All Babbage apparently did was react to some letter which Ole Jimmy sent to Federal Environment minister Kent and the Globe and Mail.
We weren't told in the story: did Babbage try to contact Jim Bradley? Or - as usually is the case with the Liberal-friendly stenographer/reporters in Niagara - did Babbage just give up, and simply rehash whatever boilerplate partisan tripe Bradley had written, instead of obtaining an actual interview with him?
Reporter Babbage would have done all Canadians a great public service, had she managed to get onto the public record, once and for all, the specific scientific evidence which twenty years ago had convinced Ontario's chief Liberal GreenFear-spreader Jim Bradley to push his non-sensical political green bolshevism.
How is it, that even da clueless Kyodiot Liberal 'da proof is da proof is da proof Chretien' had no proof of AGW; yet, somehow - over the course of two decades - no-one has bothered to ask Ole Jimmy?!
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Liberal MPP admits McGuinty's health-care delivery is all backwards
Further to Kim Craitor's supposedly new-found penchant for cost-cutting and private member's bills, when will we see his Liberal proposals to sell their LCBO liquor monopoly?!
Funny also, how Craitor is only now telling us (which he did not tell us before the Oct.2011 election) that:
"We're spending a lot of money on health care, but we're not measuring whether patients are being cared for properly," said Craitor. "So, we're spending more and more, but what are we getting? When it comes to the delivery of health care, we've kind of done it backwards. We need to start putting patients at the front end. Patient care has to come first.""
...yet, no local press has bothered to question Craitor about his sweeping statements!
How can it be that over the course of 8 YEARS, in a majority-Liberal-controlled health monopoly, no Liberal has bothered to measure what their monopoly is spending our health-care taxes on?!
So now Craitor has revealed to us that, when his Liberals raised their health care tax and cut previous coverage, they, in effect, didn't know what they were doing!
Now Craitor tells Ontarians that McGuinty's despotic Liberal health-care-monopoly-pushers have been doing it all backwards for eight years!!!
Whaaaaaat?!
Where are Niagara's grand press barons, the Liberal-friendly amalgam of 'Wendy Williscraft/Mike Metcalfe', when it comes time to assessing the Liberal's ideological proclivity to enforce a backwards, unaccountable health-monopoly onto patients, while at the same time falsely pretending that they are putting patients first?!
Craitor should be interviewed and scrutinized by the national press for his statements. We cannot rely on Niagara's inbred Liberal-licking press for any non-status-quo analysis of Liberal health care policy and its corresponding hypocrisy.
Why hasn't Liberal Deb Matthews responded to Liberal Kim Craitor's statements?
Funny also, that McGuinty's Liberals just chopped $66-million from the research budget that serves universities and hospitals, yet, the St.Catharines Standard hasn't yet shown us a cartoon of Liberals Jim Bradley, Dalton McGuinty, and Brad Duguid, dressed in their red ermine robes, with toilet paper hanging out of their asses, being assaulted for setting fire to hospitals and schools. Don't hear the St.Catharines Standard now wailing about how Jim Bradley is against health care research, because... well... Jimmy's a Liberal, and therefore, can do no wrong!!
Just imagine the Standard's (...and Jim Bradley's!) smug, unending, outrage if a conservative had done this!!
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Funny also, how Craitor is only now telling us (which he did not tell us before the Oct.2011 election) that:
"We're spending a lot of money on health care, but we're not measuring whether patients are being cared for properly," said Craitor. "So, we're spending more and more, but what are we getting? When it comes to the delivery of health care, we've kind of done it backwards. We need to start putting patients at the front end. Patient care has to come first.""
...yet, no local press has bothered to question Craitor about his sweeping statements!
How can it be that over the course of 8 YEARS, in a majority-Liberal-controlled health monopoly, no Liberal has bothered to measure what their monopoly is spending our health-care taxes on?!
So now Craitor has revealed to us that, when his Liberals raised their health care tax and cut previous coverage, they, in effect, didn't know what they were doing!
Now Craitor tells Ontarians that McGuinty's despotic Liberal health-care-monopoly-pushers have been doing it all backwards for eight years!!!
Whaaaaaat?!
Where are Niagara's grand press barons, the Liberal-friendly amalgam of 'Wendy Williscraft/Mike Metcalfe', when it comes time to assessing the Liberal's ideological proclivity to enforce a backwards, unaccountable health-monopoly onto patients, while at the same time falsely pretending that they are putting patients first?!
Craitor should be interviewed and scrutinized by the national press for his statements. We cannot rely on Niagara's inbred Liberal-licking press for any non-status-quo analysis of Liberal health care policy and its corresponding hypocrisy.
Why hasn't Liberal Deb Matthews responded to Liberal Kim Craitor's statements?
Funny also, that McGuinty's Liberals just chopped $66-million from the research budget that serves universities and hospitals, yet, the St.Catharines Standard hasn't yet shown us a cartoon of Liberals Jim Bradley, Dalton McGuinty, and Brad Duguid, dressed in their red ermine robes, with toilet paper hanging out of their asses, being assaulted for setting fire to hospitals and schools. Don't hear the St.Catharines Standard now wailing about how Jim Bradley is against health care research, because... well... Jimmy's a Liberal, and therefore, can do no wrong!!
Just imagine the Standard's (...and Jim Bradley's!) smug, unending, outrage if a conservative had done this!!
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Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Will McGuinty's Liberals retain their own comfy salary increases and pensions?
CTV reported in "McGuinty vows to protect core services as cuts loom" (Jan.5, 2012):
"Health and education will remain funding priorities as Ontario makes deep cuts to trim a $16-billion deficit, but doctors, teachers and everyone on the public payroll has to do their bit to help, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Thursday.
"We're all going to have a role to play if we're gong to be as effective as we need to be in terms of strengthening this economy and ensuring that we're getting ever more value for the public dollars that are being invested," McGuinty said at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Economist Don Drummond has said he will make some difficult and unpopular recommendations in his review of the province's public services, including spending cuts as deep as 30 per cent in some ministries.
However, McGuinty suggested the Liberal government will not follow through on all of the several hundred recommendations Drummond is expected to make later this month.
"Mr. Drummond's responsibility of course is to advise and ours is to decide, so there's a distinction, first of all, to be drawn between his responsibility and our responsibility in government," said McGuinty.
"We will ask the legislature to help us by giving the best advice on those (recommendations), and we also want to give Ontarians an opportunity to comment as well."
The deep spending cuts expected in the spring budget will not have the same impact in schools and hospitals as the cuts implemented by former Conservative premier Mike Harris in the 1990s, said McGuinty.
"We will do everything we can to protect our health care, protect our education and put in place the kind of measures that can support a stronger and growing economy."
The New Democrats were concerned that a squabble over the makeup of legislative committees in the minority government meant there were no pre-budget hearings going on, work they said should be done now in conjunction with Drummond's report.
"I'm pretty concerned about the dysfunction around here, and the fact we're not having those pre-budget conversations early on," NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said in an interview.
"There's no doubt priorities have to be set, and people can rely on New Democrats to fight for things like our health-care system, and making sure that everyday folks who are struggling don't bear the brunt of this upcoming budget."
The Progressive Conservatives said they have no confidence that McGuinty will make the spending cuts that Drummond is expected to recommend in his report.
"We don't have any inclination to believe that Dalton McGuinty and his government are going to make the tough decisions necessary to get our fiscal situation back in line," said Opposition critic Rob Leone.
McGuinty left the door open Thursday to delaying a planned cut in the province's corporate tax rate, from 11.5 to 10 per cent, which is scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2013.
When asked if he would delay the business tax cut so companies "share the pain" of the looming spending cuts, McGuinty said only that he didn't want to speculate on what would be in the spring budget to be introduced in March. The premier then dismissed suggestions that he was backing off the scheduled tax cut.
"I appreciate your interpretation of my words, but I'll just use the words," McGuinty told reporters.
"We want to be fair when it comes to finding the best way possible to addressing our economic challenge."
The government must "hit the pause button" on the corporate tax cuts, said Horwath.
"They can't complain that the cupboard's bare and then continue with their corporate tax giveaways," she said.
"As long as you keep letting corporate taxes hit rock bottom and forgo those revenues, then you're not taking a balanced approach."
McGuinty was at the university to announce people could apply online starting Thursday for the government's 30 per cent tuition rebates for college and university students from families with incomes under $160,000 a year.
The Tories said Ontario cannot afford the $420-million annual cost of tuition cuts.
*
So now Dalton and Jim Bradley will soon be cutting, cutting, cutting, when before the election they were spending spending spending... what hypocrites.
What will McGuinty's own Liberal MPP's sacrifice? How about retroactively removing all their salary increases since 2003, putting millions back into Ontario's treasury, as well as cutting the MPP's pensions?
Maybe Liberal Jim Bradley would like to proudly show Ontarians the size of his pension, if only Mike Metcalfe/Wendy Williscraft would nicely ask.
*
"Health and education will remain funding priorities as Ontario makes deep cuts to trim a $16-billion deficit, but doctors, teachers and everyone on the public payroll has to do their bit to help, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Thursday.
"We're all going to have a role to play if we're gong to be as effective as we need to be in terms of strengthening this economy and ensuring that we're getting ever more value for the public dollars that are being invested," McGuinty said at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Economist Don Drummond has said he will make some difficult and unpopular recommendations in his review of the province's public services, including spending cuts as deep as 30 per cent in some ministries.
However, McGuinty suggested the Liberal government will not follow through on all of the several hundred recommendations Drummond is expected to make later this month.
"Mr. Drummond's responsibility of course is to advise and ours is to decide, so there's a distinction, first of all, to be drawn between his responsibility and our responsibility in government," said McGuinty.
"We will ask the legislature to help us by giving the best advice on those (recommendations), and we also want to give Ontarians an opportunity to comment as well."
The deep spending cuts expected in the spring budget will not have the same impact in schools and hospitals as the cuts implemented by former Conservative premier Mike Harris in the 1990s, said McGuinty.
"We will do everything we can to protect our health care, protect our education and put in place the kind of measures that can support a stronger and growing economy."
The New Democrats were concerned that a squabble over the makeup of legislative committees in the minority government meant there were no pre-budget hearings going on, work they said should be done now in conjunction with Drummond's report.
"I'm pretty concerned about the dysfunction around here, and the fact we're not having those pre-budget conversations early on," NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said in an interview.
"There's no doubt priorities have to be set, and people can rely on New Democrats to fight for things like our health-care system, and making sure that everyday folks who are struggling don't bear the brunt of this upcoming budget."
The Progressive Conservatives said they have no confidence that McGuinty will make the spending cuts that Drummond is expected to recommend in his report.
"We don't have any inclination to believe that Dalton McGuinty and his government are going to make the tough decisions necessary to get our fiscal situation back in line," said Opposition critic Rob Leone.
McGuinty left the door open Thursday to delaying a planned cut in the province's corporate tax rate, from 11.5 to 10 per cent, which is scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2013.
When asked if he would delay the business tax cut so companies "share the pain" of the looming spending cuts, McGuinty said only that he didn't want to speculate on what would be in the spring budget to be introduced in March. The premier then dismissed suggestions that he was backing off the scheduled tax cut.
"I appreciate your interpretation of my words, but I'll just use the words," McGuinty told reporters.
"We want to be fair when it comes to finding the best way possible to addressing our economic challenge."
The government must "hit the pause button" on the corporate tax cuts, said Horwath.
"They can't complain that the cupboard's bare and then continue with their corporate tax giveaways," she said.
"As long as you keep letting corporate taxes hit rock bottom and forgo those revenues, then you're not taking a balanced approach."
McGuinty was at the university to announce people could apply online starting Thursday for the government's 30 per cent tuition rebates for college and university students from families with incomes under $160,000 a year.
The Tories said Ontario cannot afford the $420-million annual cost of tuition cuts.
*
So now Dalton and Jim Bradley will soon be cutting, cutting, cutting, when before the election they were spending spending spending... what hypocrites.
What will McGuinty's own Liberal MPP's sacrifice? How about retroactively removing all their salary increases since 2003, putting millions back into Ontario's treasury, as well as cutting the MPP's pensions?
Maybe Liberal Jim Bradley would like to proudly show Ontarians the size of his pension, if only Mike Metcalfe/Wendy Williscraft would nicely ask.
*
Monday, January 9, 2012
Jim Bradley spreads more post-mortem Kyoto GreenFear
Further to my previous post about McGuinty's Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's Bizarro world, now Liberal MPP Jim Bradley, Ontario's Mr. Kyodiot, has finally come out and revealed his statist tendencies. Maria Babbage wrote:
"Ontario is warning the federal Conservatives not to retreat from plans to create national regulations governing coal-fired power plants.
Such a "short-sighted" move would be another blow to Canada's international reputation when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and spark more serious consequences at home, Ontario Environment Minister Jim Bradley said Friday.
"It is not in the national interest to continue with coal-burning policies that fail to contribute to the global effort to combat climate change," Bradley wrote in a letter to federal Environment Minister Peter Kent.
"Nor is it in the national interest to continue with coal-burning policies that fail to protect the health of Canadians, especially young Canadians."
Bradley was reacting to a Globe and Mail report that Ottawa is offering the provinces a way to avoid new regulations that would force companies to clean up or shut down their old coal-fired plants, or require new plants to be low-emission designs.
Citing provincial and industry sources, the newspaper reported that Kent and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have privately indicated that they are willing to provide flexibility on how new power-plant emissions rules are implemented.
According to the report, the government is willing to cede regulation of power-sector emissions to the provinces, as long as they have rules in place that would achieve equivalent reductions in emissions set under 1999's Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA).
Adam Sweet, a spokesman for Kent, said the provincial equivalency component doesn't represent a shift in the government's position.
Any provincial provisions must either meet or exceed the level of environmental protection mandated under the act, he said.
It was all spelled out in draft regulations that were published online last August for public comment, said Sweet.
A review of the draft rules is still underway and the Ontario government was involved in the process as recently as the week prior to Christmas, Sweet added. No final decisions have been made.
"This is not new," he said. "These are draft regulations published five months ago and they're part of the CEPA."
But Bradley argues the regulation of coal emissions shouldn't be left in the hands of the provinces.
"It's always good to have national, consistent regulations that affect the entire country, as opposed to a hodgepodge of regulations under the jurisdiction of provincial governments," he said.
Ontario still burns coal, but Bradley said his government has made great strides in phasing it out and plans to shut down all coal-fired plants by 2014.
The lack of national regulations will send a signal to the rest of the world that Canada "is not interested" in reducing emissions after withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol — the world's only binding climate treaty, he added.
Kent announced in mid-December that Canada was ditching the treaty, just two hours after returning from marathon United Nations climate talks in South Africa.
Environmental groups have panned the move and both the United Nations and China have asked the Tories to reconsider their decision.
Canada signed Kyoto in the late 1990s, but neither the current Conservative government nor their Liberal predecessors met targets."
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Jim James Jimmy J.J. "great strides" Bradley is so full of hot air, it's unbearable that anyone should have to take this Liberal FLICKING greenshevik clown seriously. Once again, Jimmy is recycling his decade-old 'we're closing the coal fired generating plants' deceptions.
We've seen McGuinty positioning his lying Ontario Liberals by demanding that Ottawa force Ontario to take care of health care ('we want strings! we want strings!'); now Good Ole Statist Slimebag Bradley similarly wants Ottawa to force environmental regulations onto Ontario (much the way Jimmy and Smitherman forced their authoritarian GreenFear fiasco onto Ontarians, much in the way Ole Jimmy believes that the same should be done on a planetary basis...).
Funny that Bradley and McGuinty aren't playing their proud trailblazer roles anymore, and are now seeking someone else to blame for their failed, costly social engineering pipedreams.
As I outlined in an earlier post, compare what McGuinty's Liberals are saying now, demanding that Ottawa place them in bondage, to what McGuinty was saying in 2006, that Ontario "will not abide in any effort on the part of the national government to unduly impose greenhouse gas emission reductions on the province of Ontario at the expense of our auto sector." (Vancouver Province, Oct.10, 2006) Yeah: read that again, just so you know what Ontario's premier Liberal liar McGuinty is - or isn't - saying at any given point in time...
Maybe someone from Niagara's local Liberal-friendly press - maybe a 'Wendy Williscraft' or a 'Mike Metcalfe' ...ya just can't tell them apart, anymore - should actually ask Good Ole Jim Bradley about that; about how Jimmy's Liberal hypocrites are flip-flopping on a host of issues.
{...maybe McGuinty's Liberals should be forced out of governance altogether, then, by stripping Ontario of all its constitutional powers, thereby rendering McGuinty's Liberal gang of duplicitous posers irrelevant and unnecessary...! Is that whatcha want, McGinny?!}
*
"Ontario is warning the federal Conservatives not to retreat from plans to create national regulations governing coal-fired power plants.
Such a "short-sighted" move would be another blow to Canada's international reputation when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and spark more serious consequences at home, Ontario Environment Minister Jim Bradley said Friday.
"It is not in the national interest to continue with coal-burning policies that fail to contribute to the global effort to combat climate change," Bradley wrote in a letter to federal Environment Minister Peter Kent.
"Nor is it in the national interest to continue with coal-burning policies that fail to protect the health of Canadians, especially young Canadians."
Bradley was reacting to a Globe and Mail report that Ottawa is offering the provinces a way to avoid new regulations that would force companies to clean up or shut down their old coal-fired plants, or require new plants to be low-emission designs.
Citing provincial and industry sources, the newspaper reported that Kent and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have privately indicated that they are willing to provide flexibility on how new power-plant emissions rules are implemented.
According to the report, the government is willing to cede regulation of power-sector emissions to the provinces, as long as they have rules in place that would achieve equivalent reductions in emissions set under 1999's Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA).
Adam Sweet, a spokesman for Kent, said the provincial equivalency component doesn't represent a shift in the government's position.
Any provincial provisions must either meet or exceed the level of environmental protection mandated under the act, he said.
It was all spelled out in draft regulations that were published online last August for public comment, said Sweet.
A review of the draft rules is still underway and the Ontario government was involved in the process as recently as the week prior to Christmas, Sweet added. No final decisions have been made.
"This is not new," he said. "These are draft regulations published five months ago and they're part of the CEPA."
But Bradley argues the regulation of coal emissions shouldn't be left in the hands of the provinces.
"It's always good to have national, consistent regulations that affect the entire country, as opposed to a hodgepodge of regulations under the jurisdiction of provincial governments," he said.
Ontario still burns coal, but Bradley said his government has made great strides in phasing it out and plans to shut down all coal-fired plants by 2014.
The lack of national regulations will send a signal to the rest of the world that Canada "is not interested" in reducing emissions after withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol — the world's only binding climate treaty, he added.
Kent announced in mid-December that Canada was ditching the treaty, just two hours after returning from marathon United Nations climate talks in South Africa.
Environmental groups have panned the move and both the United Nations and China have asked the Tories to reconsider their decision.
Canada signed Kyoto in the late 1990s, but neither the current Conservative government nor their Liberal predecessors met targets."
*
Jim James Jimmy J.J. "great strides" Bradley is so full of hot air, it's unbearable that anyone should have to take this Liberal FLICKING greenshevik clown seriously. Once again, Jimmy is recycling his decade-old 'we're closing the coal fired generating plants' deceptions.
We've seen McGuinty positioning his lying Ontario Liberals by demanding that Ottawa force Ontario to take care of health care ('we want strings! we want strings!'); now Good Ole Statist Slimebag Bradley similarly wants Ottawa to force environmental regulations onto Ontario (much the way Jimmy and Smitherman forced their authoritarian GreenFear fiasco onto Ontarians, much in the way Ole Jimmy believes that the same should be done on a planetary basis...).
Funny that Bradley and McGuinty aren't playing their proud trailblazer roles anymore, and are now seeking someone else to blame for their failed, costly social engineering pipedreams.
As I outlined in an earlier post, compare what McGuinty's Liberals are saying now, demanding that Ottawa place them in bondage, to what McGuinty was saying in 2006, that Ontario "will not abide in any effort on the part of the national government to unduly impose greenhouse gas emission reductions on the province of Ontario at the expense of our auto sector." (Vancouver Province, Oct.10, 2006) Yeah: read that again, just so you know what Ontario's premier Liberal liar McGuinty is - or isn't - saying at any given point in time...
Maybe someone from Niagara's local Liberal-friendly press - maybe a 'Wendy Williscraft' or a 'Mike Metcalfe' ...ya just can't tell them apart, anymore - should actually ask Good Ole Jim Bradley about that; about how Jimmy's Liberal hypocrites are flip-flopping on a host of issues.
{...maybe McGuinty's Liberals should be forced out of governance altogether, then, by stripping Ontario of all its constitutional powers, thereby rendering McGuinty's Liberal gang of duplicitous posers irrelevant and unnecessary...! Is that whatcha want, McGinny?!}
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