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.
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 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...
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Who is responsible for Tommy Douglas' negligence?

Further to this previous post...
Sidney Braun wrote in "National spirit not part of health care" (National Post, Dec.24, 2011):

Re: In Defence Of Public Health Care, letter to the editor, Dec. 23. Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, fails to recognize her own "evidence-empty" (and very tired) arguments and alludes to facts and reasons, but lists none. Funding for health care is already divided between the public, insurance and private/corporate purse. Health care isn't about national spirit - it is about delivering quality care to those who need it. The problem is not in the funding but rather in the delivery, which is due to lack of accountability. Publicly funded and privately delivered health care is what we need to really ensure that quality care in a timely fashion is indeed provided for those who need it. If publicly funded and privately delivered care costs less, why is that not the Canadian way?
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Canada's reactionary political enforcers of status-quo  health-care, and their sycophantic self-appointed higher-moral-standard-bearing symbionts, have a very comfortable monopoly they insist on protecting and propagating.
Isn't the argument now really about private-parallel, ie, privately-funded/privately delivered , NOT about publicly-funded/-privately-delivered ?!
The latter is essentially what we already have now.
This is about going beyond monopolist, state-controlled, single-payer health-care; it is about introducing privately-funded/privately delivered health care, in other words: non-state-funded health care, parallel with the state's public (but non-monopoly) care.
But it's not surprising that the status-quo-enforcing monopolists are still agitating even against relatively innocuous improvements within the publicly-funded/privately-delivered category.
Let's recall that reactionary Liberals even demonized their own health minister Pierre Pettigrew for daring to suggest that provinces in Canada should be allowed to mildly experiment with health care in the publicly-funded/privately-delivered realm!! (see here, pg.17-20) And the same reactionary leftists also demonized John Tory for essentially saying the same thing.
Neither Silas, nor Liberal monopolists such as Deb Matthews, nor Jim Bradley, nor Kim Craitor, have yet explained who is accountable for the deaths of dozens of C. diff victims in Niagara's McGuinty-run-public-health-monopoly this year.
No one's accountable when the state's monopolists are in charge.
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see also here
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Tommy Douglas responsible for C.diff patient deaths

Lorne Gunter wrote in "Leaving Canada's health care myths behind" (National Post, Dec.21, 2011):

I was reading a fascinating piece on Canadians’ newfound national confidence in Maclean’s on Monday when a story moved on the newswires reporting that six of 10 provinces are unhappy with federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s new health-care transfer plans. It may be a bit of a stretch, but I think the two are related.
The contrast between the two shows how ordinary Canadians have escaped the insularity and smugness that have driven our elites’ image of Canada for at least four decades. No longer do we find it necessary to define ourselves through comparison with other countries, notably the United States, or by constantly reassuring ourselves that being a “soft power” makes us morally and intellectually superior.
Nicholas Kohler’s Maclean’s article claims Canadians are among the most optimistic people in the world about the future of their nation; 86% of us believe Canada is the greatest country in the world, 87% that it is the best place in the world in which to raise kids.
In a way, that’s not surprising. Majorities in most countries like to think their nation is best. But what makes it remarkable is how our sanguinity stacks up against that of other countries’ residents. Just 61% of Americans think the United States is the best place to bring up children, while 50% of Brits believe Canada is a better place for families than the U.K.
And while just 42% us of believe Canada’s best days lie in the future, rather than the past, that is considerably higher than the 36% of Americans who believe the same. Fifty-eight percent of the British are convinced their glory days are gone.
This new pride has been emerging for a while, but I think it broke through in a big way at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010. Athletically, we nearly won the thing outright. But it was culturally where we truly shone. The performers at the opening and closing ceremonies, and at various venues, were all world-class and all Canadian. But they didn’t make a big deal about being Canadian. They let their talent do the boasting.
The street parties were hip, the organization second-to-none. And we, as hosts, were neither apologetic about our success nor sneering about how this showed our way of doing things is ethically purer. We simply welcomed the world in, offered guests as good a party as they would find anywhere, then joined them in the fun.
That’s the new Canadian spirit.
Now contrast that with the way six of 10 provincial finance ministers reacted to Mr. Flaherty’s plan to solidify federal health-care transfers through 2024. The federal Finance Minister announced Monday that the federal government would continue to increase its annual health-care transfers to the provinces by 6% a year until 2017. By that year, Ottawa will be shipping the provinces about $38-billion annually to help pay for doctors, nurses, hospitals and medical equipment. Thereafter, the increases would be tied to economic growth (currently about 4%), but will never fall below 3%, no matter how bad the economy gets.
Admittedly, Ottawa sprang this “deal” on provincial governments without warning. The current 10-year health funding arrangement runs out in 2014 and the provinces had expected to have until then to make their case for more money. Mr. Flaherty and the Harper government were eager to prevent a lot of drama and political grandstanding, so they short-circuited the process.
Manitoba NDP Finance Minister Stan Struthers whined: “This is not fair, it is un-Canadian.” His Ontario counterpart, Dwight Duncan, mewled that Ottawa’s plan “destabilizes the federation” and puts at risk “access to quality health care, from sea to sea to sea, in French and English.” (Funny. I thought the point of the health-care system was to make Canadians well, not to promote bilingualism.)
Clearly many of our politicians haven’t caught on to the new confidence and independence most ordinary Canadians are feeling. Having emerged from the shadow of the United States, we no longer feel the need to define ourselves as a nation by claiming our health care is morally superior to theirs.
Provincial politicians, though, seem mired in the notion that our single-payer system is sacred. The only solution they can imagine for its shortcomings is more money from Ottawa, when what is really needed is for them to move on. Take the cash Mr. Flaherty is offering, experiment with new delivery models, permit Canadians greater health care choice and get with the new national spirit.
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In response to Gunter's above story, Linda Silas wrote "In defense of public health care" (Dec.23, 2011, National Post):

Re: Leaving Canada's Health-Care Myths Behind, Lorne Gunter, Dec. 21.
Lorne Gunter accuses provincial politicians of wanting to keep the single-payer health-care system for no particular reason. I am so tired of evidence-empty arguments calling for more corporate involvement in health care. Let's debate the merits of a single-payer public provider versus a parallel for-profit, based on fact and reason.
The national spirit that created medicare is one of a caring society, so that the sick and the poor do not have to worry that they will not get timely quality care because their health-care provider is working at the rich person's hospital.
Choice means fend for yourself and since when has that been our national spirit or even an option for those who want to see public policy based on research and evidence?
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We're tired of an unaccountable Tommy Douglas recklessly staggering around Canada, killing patients at will, while forcing them into Silas's single-payer socialist nirvana. Silas isn't talking of 'public' health care, as the headline suggests, she is propagandizing about monopoly health care. Leftists like to use the term 'public', as it doesn't sound so authoritarian, though, of course, it is, seeing as it is being used as an euphemism for no-choice.
The public should be entitled to the health care of their choice.
Silas trots out the ole 'national spirit' canard (another example of Keith Martin's noted head-in-the-sand tactic) and can find no 'corporate reason' to show why Tommy Douglas' zombie killed some 40 C.diff patients in Niagara, despite all the phony promises, all the deceptive research, all the false assurances, all the incompetent unaccountability, in Niagara's 'poor people's' monopoly hospitals, run by monopolists Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor.
It's as if patients must first shove the Constitution and the Canada Health Act in front of the faces of these despotic agents of Tommy Douglas, for them to see that they have no right to force a statist health monopoly upon the public.
Choice does mean choice - but Silas has no idea of the concept: Silas' status-quo is despotism; is the demonization of choice; is the absence of choice; is forced dependence on the state, mandated by the state.
That's exactly what statist Liberals Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor want in Niagara, and exactly why - when their monopolist health charade goes haywire, and when they no can no longer slough off the blame on "harris" boogeymen, or on some fictitious 'privatization', or on some dreaded "Americanization" red-herring - they simply vanish with their rhetoric while Tommy's dead continue to pile up in Niagara.
Yeh... that's the ticket: Ole Tommy did it.
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see also here; here
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Can Niagara trust the NHS's new Liberal-appointed hospital Supervisor?

The Sept.10, 2011 St.Catharines Standard story "Hospital Improvement Plan review gets a new direction" reported that the phony HIP review (by that Soviet-sounding Tripartite Committee, proposed earlier by Deb Matthews, and eagerly cheered for by Niagara's municipal Liberals) is suddenly being cancelled, apparently to be merged somehow with Liberal-appointed NHS Supervisor Kevin Smith's review of the NHS.

Municipal Liberals - such as ya-fooled-me-once, you-can-fool-me again, please Vance Badawey, barked long and hard for a NHS review, yet caved in to Smith the first chance they got.

Too bad that no-one - including Smith - is bothering to investigate the role of  the Liberal-created LHIN, which both demanded and approved the NHS's HIP!!! Oooops... can't talk about that!! Might lead to questions about George Smitherman and McGuintry's Liberal cabinet!!

Of course, no-one's asking any Liberal to explain where their promised province-wide LHIN review has disappeared; you know, the one which Liberal liars McGuinty and Smitherman said would regularly occur, when they first came up with their puppet-LHIN's?

You can bet Supervisor Smith isn't going to ask about that - Smith reports to the LHIN; to the Liberal government!!

Smith's only been around the NHS officially about a week, yet he has already concluded that "the illness is trust" of the NHS. No word from Smith about whether the illness might be a distrust of the Liberal lying majority government - to whom he reports.

Smith also gives us a lecture that "I believe in the Canadian Way, and that is compromise."...

 ...(reporter Shawn Jeffords wasn't clear in the story whose capital "W" that was - his or Smith's; is there a specific "Canadian Way" which Smith adheres to, or are we just supposed to nod in respectful agreement and pretend to know what this "Way" is? Is this the Tommy Douglas Way of socialist "compromise", ie my way, or no way at all?)...

... telling us that "With one exception, we never, ever, ever compromise on high-quality care for patients"

With all due respect, Mr. Smith, maybe you can save your rhetoric, which is already sounding suspiciously like typical boiler-plate Liberal political hogwash; maybe we should let a criminal court decide on behalf of patients what the exact definition of "high quality care" is; and how McGuinty's Liberals "compromised" Niagara's patients and hid from their obligations as self-appointed single-payer managers of their health monopoly.

Kevin Smith also is already telling us not to expect any new NHS health care funding, and, that any changes will have to be taken from other areas within the NHS - which is exactly what the former NHS board had been forced to deal with for years, due to the Liberals'-pre-rationed funding!  Smith is now strangely echoing seven years' worth of previous Liberal duplicity, sounding pretty much EXACTLY like George Smitherman, David Caplan, or Deb Matthews! And this is what Niagara's happy municipal Liberals such as Badawey wanted from Smith?!

But when Smith finally says "If we want to spend more in one place, we have to spend less in another",  he is now crossing the line: THIS IS NOT SMITH'S CALL TO MAKE.

THIS IS A POLITICAL STATEMENT, totally out of Smith's purview as an administrative Supervisor.

SMITH'S STATEMENT SHOULD NOT BE ACCEPTED as fact; it is fear-mongering.

By saying this, Smith is acting as a despotic single-payer MONOPOLY apologist; as a spokesman, not for the patients, but for the Liberal government.

Kevin Smith was NOT elected, and is simply a civil servant appointee - but one who already, unfortunately, seems to be operating as a government agent.

I want to hear Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Jim Craitor repeat and confirm what their newly appointed supervisor has said. Who will dare ask health care monopolists Jimmy'N'Kimmy to confirm that their Liberal health monopoly - which they fund and control - must continue to spend less? Let them explain why they cut and ration health-care in their monopoly, yet, don't allow Ontario citizens to arrange for their own private health-care?

Will the St.Catharines Standard's Shawn Jeffords or Wendy Metcalfe be contacting Liberal MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor, asking them why they have abdicated their political responsibilities to their NHS appointee?

This is really starting to stink - already - and I'm fearful that, despite earlier high hopes, Smith is just a convenient Liberal shill.
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The St.Catharines Standard's phony calls for change

What self-boasting the St.Catharines Standard's managing editor Wendy Metcalfe spun in her Sept.9, 2011 article.

She boasts about how the Standard "will campaign on behalf of the community. There are issues faced on a daily basis that are calling out for change. We pride ourselves in having an eye for injustice. We are determined to right the wrongs on your behalf."... oh, please!!

This from the local rag which does nothing but trumpet for the status-quo - in particularly, their Golden Boy Liberal Jimmy Bradley's status-quo! Hasn't the St.Catharines Standard already been campaigning for Liberal Jim Bradley - in their own slick way - for decades?!

Where's the 'justice' in the St.Catharines Standard constantly avoiding the mere mention of Liberal Jim Bradley, in any connection whatsoever to issues which are within provincial jurisdiction?

Metcalfe's rag - aka the St.Catharines Double-Standard, the St.Catharines Sub-Standard, the St.Catharines Lower Standard, the St.Catharines Bradley Buttkiss Society, the St.Catharines Bradley Sycophant - has purposefully, studiously, painstakingly AVOIDED ANY mention of Liberal MPP Jim Bradley in the last five months, when it came to anything whatsoever to do with health-care.
[After all, there are only two persons in all of Niagara responsible for health-care: Liberals Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor.]

Those great reporters Liberal-friendly stenographers such as Grant Lafleche, for instance, are extremely careful not to involve or mention Ole Liberal Jimmy in any story which remotely deals with the C. difficile deaths in Jim Bradley's OWN CITY!! When Metcalfe boasts about Lafleche's 'hard-hitting health care stories', that is such facile spin: to the Standard, 'hard-hitting' is petting Liberal MPP Jim Bradley while spinning the criticism everywhere else.

Wow: it's as if Liberal MPP Jim Bradley HAS NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS!!

It's as if Ole Jimmy's Liberals AREN'T fully responsible for funding and controlling their own single-payer health system!

Why, it's as if Jim Bradley's Liberals are NOT running an unaccountable, failing, underfunded, incompetent health-care MONOPOLY!!
Liberals such as Jim Bradley are constantly rehabilitated by the apologist press; the process never ends - it's like the St.Catharines Standard becomes the Liberal Jim Bradley Campaign Office, covering up and spinning for Liberals in-between the real elections!!

Did editor Metcalfe's "eye for injustice" ever notice that the words monopoly, health-care, and Liberal MPP Jim Bradley NEVER appear together in her rag's decades-long campaign for Bradley's status-quo Liberalism??!! Gosh: is that a "right" or a "wrong", Wendy?!

St.Cathariners don't need to be taken 'for a ride' by your biased Liberal-boosting rag, Ms. Metcalfe.

Your paper has been and still is transparently and blatantly avoiding the real health-care issues in Niagara by willfully neglecting to provide local readers with ANY in-depth coverage from our local secretive MPP Liberal Jim Bradley, on a host of issues, not the least of which is Jim Bradley's abdication of his role as Niagara's local (and senior) representative of the Liberal government.

Bradley had all but vanished from the pages of the St.Catharines Standard while some 34 C. difficile patients have died in Niagara, and dozens of others made severely ill.
   (Remember how sanctimonious, smarmy and self-righteously indignant Ole Liberal Jimmy got about Walkerton? More Ontarians died in Niagara this summer than in Walkerton... but because Jimmy's Liberals are now in gov't., then Bradley and his Liberals can be immediately forgiven by the press...)

Gosh: maybe Ole Jim Bradley didn't... uhhh... know about anything about this C. diff outbreak in his own city... and coincidentally - and also amazingly - the St.Catharines Standard didn't... ummm... know either... haha ...that ole Jimmy's Liberal monopolists were fully responsible for health care in Ontario, so, umm...  no-one from the Standard asked Jimmy 'bout anything, 'cuz no-one knew anything about anything!!

Seriously: that, sadly, is the St.Catharines Standard's credo: fer gaia's sake: just don't ask Jimmy...'bout anything!

Ms. Metcalfe, wasn't it your paper that abdicated its responsibility to provide readers with full, in-depth, relentless coverage of the Liberal-controlled health-care situation in Niagara - including constantly demanding on-going questions and interviews from Liberal MPP Jim Bradley? [y'know: the way the Standard BradleyBootlicker would have done, had it been Conservatives - not Liberals - who were running the government...]

Where the hell was the St.Catharines Standard's phony "eye for injustice" during Niagara's 2011 summer of Liberal-monopoly C. diff death??

The one-eyed St.Catharines Standard was PURPOSEFULLY BLIND to the monopolist lies, deceptions, and injustices which Jim Bradley and his Liberal single-payer-pushing ideologues wrought upon Niagara.
The Standard sure must have some kind of perverted "pride" in its long record of  kow-towing to Bradley's every whim. Because it was Bradley and his Liberals who were in government, the dedicated Bradleyphiles at the Standard just sloughed off focusing anything on their BestBuddyBradley.
Instead of covering Jim Bradley, the disgusting full-time Liberal interim campaign workers at the Standard covered up for Liberal Jim Bradley.

Metcalfe's paper now boasts that their 'News team is armed and ready to deliver' [...whatever that means, it's just typical double-speak...] so, have any of her reporters been "armed" with Jim Bradley's... umm... phone number and email address?!?
Are any Standard reporters actually "ready" to finally find Jim Bradley?!?

Just askin' - cuz apparently none of her staff reporters Liberal stenographer/marionettes have been willing or able to actually provide readers with any consistent, in-depth, long-running interviews and analysis of Jim Bradley's activities and reactions to provincially-relevant events as our local Liberal MPP.

Except for the typical staged photo-ops, there has been NO RELEVANT coverage regarding Jim Bradley and his policies, in Bradley's local home-town paper: it's as if Jim Bradley's activities as Liberal MPP have nothing to do with the fallout of the actions of his Liberal government! {The Standard as been practicing FAKE NEWS way before the Trump era}

Where's the 'justice' in that kind of skewed Liberal-friendly media bias? What kind of "issues" will the Standard be 'calling out to change"??!! (...quick answer: they'll shill for anything that deflects AWAY from any scrutiny about Jimmy, or, they'll shill for anything which GLORIFIES Jimmy)

Wendy, how about changing the way your paper treats Liberal MPP Jim Bradley?
When's the cosy Bradley ass-kissing going to end?

When will the St.Catharines Standard stop fondling Liberal Jim Bradley?

When is any St.Catharines Standard reporter going to actually pursue Liberal MPP Jim Bradley for a real interview?!
And, by now, in 2011, one token interview wouldn't - couldn't - possibly be enough to assess Bradley's years of Liberal claptrap; the Standard should have had hundreds of in-depth policy pieces regarding their local boy Bradley over the years... but this record of analysis by the Standard simply is not there!
What there is, is mostly Bradley boosterism, or puff-pieces which are JimmyFriendly-to-neutral in content. The Standard's C.difficile coverage is just the latest - but one of the most blatant - displays of its Bradley-friendly advocacy; essentially, of a long-term arc of planned, purposeful political propaganda.

The Standard  has let Liberal MPP Jim Bradley get away with murder, figuratively speaking.
It is important - again - to remember: instead of covering Jim Bradley during the C. diff outbreak, the St.Catharines Standard  has covered-up for Jim Bradley from the moment the C. difficile deaths began appearing.

This is nothing new, though: the Standard has been spinning yarn to cover-up for Bradley, for years.

Where's the St. Catharines Standard's in-depth analysis of Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's response...

- to his Liberals' creation of the LHIN's?
- to the NHS's publicly-stated under-funding concerns?
- to the 2007 CIHI report, which revealed that the NHS's St.Catharines hospital - in Liberal Jim Bradley's home town - had the third-highest patient-death rate in Canada?
- to why he didn't immediately call for a public inquiry into this shocking CIHI report?
- to Smitherman's forcing of the cost-cutting HIP onto the NHS?
- to Dr. Jack Kitts' review of the HIP?
- to his Liberal-controlled LHIN approving the HIP?
- to his Liberals creating a new health-tax, and at the same time creating a two-tier health system by summarily de-listing previously-covered "universal" health care?
- to Quebec's momentous 2005 Chaoulli decision?
- to federal Liberal Bob Rae's candid admission that there is a private (and not 'non-profit private') sector role in Canadian health care?
- to why Helen Harris couldn't get emergency health care in St.Catharines, and died in Buffalo?
- to why he and his Liberals refused to call a public C. difficile inquiry in 2008, which had already then killed hundreds of patients in Ontario's Liberal health monopoly?
- to why - for years - his Liberals refused to call the Ombudsman to investigate the NHS, until days before the 2011 election?
- to why he and his Liberals still refuse to allow the Ombudsman full access to the entire 'MUSH" sector?
- to when he first knew of his own Liberal secret G20 law, and where he was hiding when his Liberal government unleashed its massive assault on civil rights?
- to demands that he provide specific evidence - extant in 2002 - which convinced him that anthropogenic-global-warming was real?
- to why he hasn't reintroduced his own made-while-in-opposition Gasoline Price Control bill?
- we could go on and on, Wendy, about your paper's years of Jimmy-friendly biased half-stories ...

Gosh... we can only imagine how difficult it has been (...cue the sad violin solo...) for the Standard to provide readers with sanitized Lib-friendly "news", while at the same time shying away - on purpose! - from providing any meaningful analysis of Jim Bradley's decades of deceptive Liberalism!
This is thoughtful, skilled and dedicated political media manipulation!

It's not easy coddling Liberal Jim Bradley - delicately holding Ole Jimmy at arm's length from criticism, swathing him and his politics in a cosy of protective velvet, carefully avoiding even the slightest critical mention of his name - while at the same time writing supposedly "hard-hitting" stories on issues directly connected to Bradley's Liberal politics!
That kind of consistent campaign, that kind of subtle media manipulation, that kind of fifth-columnist loyalty, that kind of revisionsm, rehabilitation and evolving hagiography, takes a lot of dedication!!

Yes, it'll be difficult in the next several weeks during this inconvenient election... (whaat? There's an election in St. Catharines? Who knew?!) ...for the "hard-hitting" St.Catharines Standard to mask its deep brown-nosing allegiance to Liberal MPP Jim Bradley!

For appearance sake, the hardly-hard-hitting-at-all Standard - in the name of cross-eyed Metcalfian... umm... phony 'community justice', y'see - might have to give their Boy Jimmy an obligatory, pre-planned, tap over one knuckle with a large, soft, heart-shaped, puffy glove, on some trivial non-issue, which would suffice as "bold proof" to readers of how ...umm... 'fiercely independent' and 'impartial' and 'non-biased' this Jimmy-boosting rag has been for years.

Really, for years, the St.Catharines Standard has been essentially acting as Jim Bradley's full-time officially un-official campaign office in-between elections, spouting the Liberal party lines, protecting their Boy Jimmy and regurgitating his political diarrhea.
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Will Liberal Jim Bradley attack Liberal Bob Rae's health-care ideas?!

above: an article in the Sept.8, 2011 St.Catharines Standard. Liberal Bob Rae admits that private health care insurance is an option in Canada. He didn't even bother to coyly couch his new found health-care views with the phrase "non-profit"!!

Now, let's go back, (all the way back, to Apr.19, 2011!) to hear what the very same Liberal Bob Rae was telling the Toronto Star:

"The Liberals’ Bob Rae says Stephen Harper is dodging questions on how to repair medicare because the Conservative leader doesn’t fundamentally believe in universal health care.
“Mr. Harper is a right-wing guy, and right-wing guys don’t believe in the Canadian health-care system. They never have and they never will,” Rae declared as the Liberals sought to keep up their aggressive campaign on the key issue of health-care.
“Over the last five years, this government has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to advance the discussions with the provinces” on the future of the publicly funded health-care system, Rae said of the Conservatives. “Mr. Harper has stood by as an absentee landlord. He’s done nothing.”
The Liberals have made health-care a central focus of their election effort and are questioning whether a re-elected Conservative government would have enough money to pay for increases in medicare funding in the years ahead.
The federal-provincial agreement that provides funds from Ottawa for health-care expires in 2014 and Rae said Conservative priorities may leave little room to expand medicare transfers to the provinces. Complicating the Conservative budget choices are commitments to buy new F-35 jet fights, which the Liberals say would cost $30 billion, and $6-billion a year in further corporate income tax cuts. As well, the Liberals say the Conservative plan to balance the budget in three years hinges on unexplained budget cuts of $11 billion.
“Mr. Harper has a long record of public statements opposing universal public health care in favour of private, for-profit delivery of health services—and given the risky spending and cuts in his platform, there is no reason to trust him,” Rae, the Liberal candidate in Toronto Centre riding, said Tuesday.
The Liberals have resurfaced previous quotes from Harper questioning the federal government’s role in the universal health-care system.
But in the campaign, Harper has said his party is fully committed to improving medicare and upholding the Canada Health Act. He said a re-elected Conservative government would continue to increase health-care transfers to the provinces by six per cent annually.
“Everyone is committed to continuing a universal public health-care system that is fully financed,” Harper said. “That is this government’s No. 1 priority and that will be its position.”
The Liberals and New Democrats have also pledged to continue federal funding for health-care and to protect the Canada Health Act."
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Isn't that precious!!
Look at Bob Rae's Liberal rhetoric just five-months ago; look at the Liberal U-turn now!!
This is the same hypocritical Liberal party which in 2004 shit on one of their own health ministers, Pierre Pettigrew, for daring to speak the truth about Canadian health-care! (see here, pg.17-20 )
You really have to wonder what these Liberals believe at any moment in time.
Where's the St.Catharines Standard report asking local Liberal big shots in Niagara to rationalize federal Liberal Leader Rae's grand health care plans?!!
Let's hear Andrew Gill denounce Bob Rae!!
Let's hear McGuintyite Jim Bradley rail on sanctimoniously about 'privatization', 'Americanization', 'slippery slopes' and 'two tier'!!
Let's hear McGuinty tell us how Rae is an agent of divisiveness; how Tommy Douglas is proverbially spinning in his grave!!
Let's hear Kim Craitor misunderstand that it was his federal colleague Bob Rae - a Liberal - (not "harris"!) talking about private health insurance!
I'm sure the St.Catharines Standard will be asking these local Grits to comment on Rae's... umm... 'hidden Liberal right-wing agenda'... won't they?!
Or maybe Niagara's Liberals will just be allowed to 'dodge the questions'!!
Certainly, Jim Bradley was an "absentee landlord" when 33 C.difficile-infected patients were killed in Bradley's Liberal health monopoly in Niagara, while Bradley hid from the issue all summer.
Come on, Liberals: defend your own years of failed monopolist deceptions and hypocrisy!
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Liberal Jim Bradley's sicko single-payer moralism

Karen Selick wrote in "Medicare, heal thyself"  (National Post, Sept.2, 2011):

"Pediatrician Karen Dockrill of Whitby, Ont., will go on trial in early October before the disciplinary committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, charged with conduct that is "disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional." Danielle Martin, spokeswoman for Canadian Doctors for Medicare, was quoted in a recent National Post article, calling Dr. Dockrill's alleged conduct "unethical."
What are the heinous deeds of which Dr. Dockrill stands accused?
She owned and operated a facility called Mom and Baby Depot. For an annual $1,500 membership fee, the Depot provided parents with access to a team of child-care professionals, including breastfeeding consultants, nurses, nutritionists, social workers and a chiropractor. Members could phone in, 24 hours a day, for medical advice, including from Dr. Dockrill herself - reportedly a godsend to inexperienced parents.
Because of the membership fee, Dr. Dockrill was able to offer longer office appointments than the standard well-baby check-up for which OHIP (the Ontario Health Insurance Plan) pays practitioners only $32. But those longer appointments and all that telephone advice (for which OHIP pays nothing) also meant that she had to limit the number of patients in her practice. The College alleges that only babies whose parents paid membership fees were accepted as regular patients.
Ms. Martin, the medicare cheerleader, says it's unethical to "require people to pay again" for something that is already paid for by tax dollars.
But what if taxpayers aren't really getting what they're supposedly paying for? Ontario residents might pay several thousand dollars per year into Ontario's coffers but still find that a 10-minute appointment - all the doctor can afford to give them at OHIP rates - is insufficient to answer all their questions or resolve their children's health problems. Other taxpayers - roughly 7% of Canadians - can't find a family doctor at all. They spend hours waiting with sick infants at overcrowded hospital emergency rooms or walk-in clinics.
No discussion of ethics can ignore the distinction between coercion and voluntariness. Coercion is the very essence of socialized medicine. Under Canadian medicare, extra billing is verboten. User fees - verboten. Competing with the government's monopoly health-insurance plan - verboten. Withholding your tax payments until you get the promised services - verboten.
Forcing people to pay for services and then not providing them is tantamount to theft or fraud. It is the state system of coercive public health care that is unethical.
And it's not just unethical - there's a good chance it's also unconstitutional. In the Chaoulli decision of 2005, three Supreme Court justices pronounced Quebec's health insurance monopoly to be a violation of the rights to life and security of the person under the Charter, saying: "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care." Cases pending in Ontario and British Columbia courts seek similar rulings for their respective provinces.
Dr. Dockrill's service, by contrast, was entirely voluntary. She couldn't force anyone to join. Members who felt they weren't getting value for money simply need not have renewed.
A voluntary transaction between consenting adults, with no harm to third parties and a high probability of significant benefits to those involved - how can that be unethical? Forbidding people to use their own hard-earned resources to optimize their family's health is what's unethical.
Of course, in the topsyturvy moral code of socialists, anything that might produce inequality is abhorrent. By their logic, we should shut down all private schools - after all, customers are paying twice - and permit only hamburger to be sold until filet mignon is affordable to all.
Inexorably, the defects in socialized medicine become obvious. Contrary to official Canadian mythology, our health-care system is far from the best in the world. Among 28 OECD countries, we are the sixth-highest spender relative to GDP. However, we rank 20th out of 22 in the ratio of doctors to population, and 17th in the availability of CT scanners and MRI machines.
Yet we are the only OECD country to ban private medical insurance, and one of only four countries that does not require patients to contribute something towards the cost of using a public hospital, a general practitioner or a specialist. Are those other 24 OECD countries all behaving unethically?
Perhaps when Canada finally realizes the folly of demonizing innovative physicians like Dr. Dockrill, the 12,000-plus Canadian-educated doctors who have taken refuge from our decrepit system in foreign countries will feel more inclined to return.
- Karen Selick is the litigation direcor for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is sponsoring a court challenge against Ontario's health-care laws."
*
The above Orwellian health debacle is the work of Liberals such as MPP Jim 'I hate doctors' Bradley; this is Bradley's kind of state fascism. Bradley was there when Liberal premier David Peterson was destroying health care in Ontario in the early 1980's (see here, pg.33). Jim Bradley doesn't believe in the Chaoulli decision! Bradley's a despot who believes that a voluntary transaction between an MD and a patient IS unethical - and that a jackbooted 'liberal/left' HAS a moral right to intervene.

33 C. difficile patients were killed in Niagara in the summer of 2011, yet secretive Liberal Jim Bradley didn't once say anything about this horror which happened in his own local Liberal-monopoly hospitals. Bradley also neglected to link Niagara's C. diff deaths in 2011, to the false assurances which Bradley's own Liberals made in 2008 that Ontario's hospitals were safe.

It's Liberal health-monopolist-pushing scum such as MPP Jim Bradley who are truly "disgraceful, dishonourable, and unprofessional". It's amazing how the left can always vilify another scapegoat, launch another sanctimonious witch-hunt, yet never have to account for the blowback of their own despotic policies.
*
The monopolistic state-socialist-single-payer healthcare model charade continued to be pursued by the likes of Danielle Martin, as seen in this nice "fake news" story appearing on Bell media's CTV network , Jan. 11, 2017).
Of course, the reason Martin was suddenly "made into news" again in January 2017, is because the Canadian leftist media are gearing up to revive their anti-US agit-prop groundwork, after 8 years of shameless Obama-fawning, Now that Hillary and Obama's legacies were soundly rejected and demolished in the US election, and with Trump about to become U.S. President, the majority of Canada's media will have to revise their narratives. It's back to the old template, back to America-bashing, back to their usual anti American narratives to demonize the U.S. This timing is meant to coincide with the moves in the States to dismantle that horrible Democrat failed abortion known as Obamacare. Canadian lefties loved Obamacare, so the reason for this story appearing now {....ah, yes - look; Canada GOOD! America BAAAAD..!}is self explanatory.
Canadian Liberals had used that Anti-American narrative as their touchstone for years, Jim Bradley and McGuinty and the Chretien gang used that meme on a daily basis
But what about Dr. Dockrill? Take a look at the fascistic, evil results stemming from the kind of state-socialist 'ethics' beloved by Danielle Martin.
Martin's media sycophants often refer to her espousal of a construct called 'universal' healthcare, but which in reality is no-choice state-run monopolist, single-payer healthcare, They hide behind the true definition and real nature of the system for which they shill, and work diligently to confuse the issue, claiming that only their kind of "universality"should exist - ie, single-payer monopolist health-care fascism.
Furthermore, in order to deflect from Canada's monopolist healthcare failures, Canadian lefties will predictably trot out their usual fear-mongering conflation that the only possible alternative to Canada's current single-payer system, is the American system! (...which is the cue for Canadian media to immediately flame knee-jerk hatred towards the Americans) It's a slick bit of deception, fear, and false-comparison, but this tactic has worked well to cover up for the deficiencies in Canada's single-payer heal monopoly.
I think it is disgusting how Danielle Martin's kind of political 'ethics' helped wipe Dr. Dockrill's practice "off the map". She even traveled to the States to smugly shill for Obamacare, as some kind of hero of Canada's demonic no-choice health-socialism.
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Deb Matthews: it's not about the 'confidence in the NHS' as you claim; it's about what YOUR Liberals have done to the NHS

The St.Catharines Standard's Jeff Bolichowsky wrote a Sept.2, 2011 piece, stating that "Ontario is the only province where an ombudsman does not have a mandate to oversee hospitals".

However, this intrepid Standard reporter, naturally, DID NOT bother to ask the local Liberal MPP in his own city, Jim Bradley, why this might be! Was reporter Bolichowsky warned by his editors not to mention or involve Liberal Jim Bradley in any possibly-embarrassing policy questions?!

Wow: after all the secrecy and lies and patient-deaths surrounding McGuinty's Liberal healthcare monopoly, is it any wonder that McGuinty's Liberals DID NOT want the ombudsman nosing around their health monopoly?

Deb Matthews is hypocritical beyond belief when she crows piously that she's "sad when I see people playing politics with something as important as health care"! What a dump-load of crap that is, spewed by the Liberals for whom health-care [specifically, ideologically-motivated monopolist health-care] IS NOTHING BUT POLITICAL!!

Come on, Deb -  your Liberal contrition is so phony, you should be embarrassed.This is NOT about the 'confidence in the hospital', as Deb Matthews claims, and wants us to believe: IT'S ABOUT WHAT HER MONOPOLIST LIBERALS HAVE DONE TO THE NHS !!

What glib, deceptive Grit greaseballs these McGuintyites are! This is from the same sanctimonious Liberals who created the LHIN's, and who forced the NHS to create the cost-cutting Niagara HIP!!

These are the same Liberals who under scummy Smitherman  ran away and hid from having any public inquiry into their last killer C. difficile outbreak in 2008!!

Why didn't reporter Bolichowsly ask Niagara's local Liberal hacks Bradley and Kim Craitor why - after eight years of Liberal majority rule - the ombudsman STILL doesn't have access to hospitals?!!

How many Ontario patients would have been spared death in McGuinty's health-care horror hospitals if the ombudsman had been allowed independent access to scrutinize what McGuinty's monopolists were doing?

Waazzat, you say: but Deb Matthews did allow the ombudsman into the NHS!! She is gloriously transparent!!

Sorry: this last-minute pre-election Supervisor/ombudsman game we see unfolding in Niagara was a planned one-off affair; this is in no way the same as the ombudsman having full investigatory access to any Ontario hospital, anytime, without Liberal-government-pre-approval.

McGuinty's secretive Liberals refuse to allow that kind of independent scrutiny of their failing ideological single-payer health monopoly.

Bolichowsky also failed to mention that it's not just activities within the hospitals which McGuinty, Bradley, and Craitor want to keep the lid on, but the ENTIRE 'MUSH' SECTOR (Municipalities, Universities, School boards, Hospitals) is a no-go zone for ombudsman scrutiny; McGuinty's secretive Liberals have ensured that Ontario has the most limited ombudsman access to these sectors in all of Canada.

But why would the self-appointed wrong-righters at theSt.Catharines Standard bother to ask their pride'n'joy JimmyBoy about such trivial matters?!
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Deb Matthews' snitch line fails to report her own Liberals' complicity in the monopolist mass-murder of 31 Niagara C.difficile victims

Tom Blackwell wrote in "Ontario's cure for medicare: snitching" (National Post, Aug.17, 2011):

"As provincial governments across the country grapple with the thorny issue of for-profit medicine, Ontario has taken the unprecedented step of setting up a toll-free snitch line for people to report cases of illegal private health care — and says it has triggered 35 investigations in barely a month.
The service was prompted by evidence that doctors and clinics are routinely flouting medicare rules with sometimes creative methods of generating extra income, Deb Matthews, the province’s Health Minister, said Tuesday.
The government has ordered 4,500 patients to be reimbursed out-of-pocket fees they had been levied by colonoscopy clinics in the last few years, while Ms. Matthews said she has heard of a surgeon charging $100 for a post-operative glass of orange juice.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that people are trying to get around (the law)…. I think it’s really important that we all protect our universal health-care system,” the Health Minister said in an interview. “It’s just important that we are ever-vigilant.”
Critics, however, call the initiative a politically motivated waste of money that could be better spent on improving actual medical services. In the lead-up to this fall’s provincial election, the Liberal government seems anxious to portray itself as a steadfast defender of public health care.
“How is this going to improve patient care for anybody?” Brett Skinner, president and health-care analyst at the conservative Fraser Institute think-tank, asked about the snitch line. “It’s not helping patients get better access. In fact, it’s designed to prevent patients from getting better access.”
The Canada Health Act generally forbids health-care providers from charging patients directly for services that are covered under medicare. Various private health services have cropped up in Quebec, B.C. and Alberta in recent years, however, with little interference by the federal government.
The Ontario Liberals, on the other hand, have presented themselves as strenuous foes of private health care.
Since the “extra-billing and queue-jumping report line” and email address were set up in June, the province has received 130 calls and 60 emails from patients who believe they were wrongly forced to pay for health care, Ms. Matthews said. Those have in turn led to 35 investigations, some dealing with cataract surgery clinics where patients were allegedly required to pay for tests or lenses as a condition for receiving the operation, the minister said.
She conceded that unlawful private health is not “rampant” in Ontario but said there are signs that it is occurring regularly. Since 2006, for instance, the Health Ministry has investigated 16 clinics offering colonoscopies — diagnostic procedures that check for symptoms of colorectal cancer — and found that four were charging illegal “block fees” directly to patients, in addition to the payments they received from medicare.
Those reviews resulted in 4,500 people having fees totalling $226,000 — or about $50 each — reimbursed by the clinics, said Ms. Matthews.
An aide to the minister said officials were unable to separate out the cost of the hot line, which is being funded out of the ministry budget.
One private clinic that offers colonoscopies to its clients — and says it follows all the appropriate rules — stressed that bolstering the public system is important, but questioned how seriously that system is being threatened.
“It’s hard to tell whether going to this length is worth it as the government has not indicated the extent of the problem,” said Bronwen Evans, a spokeswoman for Toronto-based Medcan. “We would hate to see precious health dollars and ministry staff time diverted away from other things, like reducing wait times.”
An official with the group representing registered nurses applauded the hot-line initiative, however, saying the incursions by private medicine are significant, and could be leading to a system where those who can afford to pay more will get better service. That in turn pushes up the total cost of health care, and draws doctors away from the public system, said Rhonda Seidman-Carlson, president-elect of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario.
“That is a slippery slope,” she said “You start having a for-profit system.”
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Scaaarrrey stuff, eh: "for profit"!!! Ooooohhhh!!!
That's the same tired, failed old socialist-slippery slope-style rhetoric which Doris Grinspun and Jim Bradley once spewed. Btw: What's Deb Matthews done about Ontario's never-ending health-card-fraud problem?!
And where's the Liberal snitch line to report Dalton and Bradley for the negligent monopolist murder of 31 C.difficile patients, who were unwittingly trapped and sacrificed to Tommy Douglas in Niagara's McGuinty-controlled hospital death-camps??
Maybe Deb Matthews can turn herself and Smitherman in, as well.
FLICKING LIBERAL monopolist killers. Who will hold McGuinty's negligent Liberal political health-care-criminals to account?
The Ontario ombudsman's investigation of the NHS can't start soon enough; but, there should also be a concurrent, separate criminal investigation into how Dalton McGuinty's ideologically-infected single-payer-health-monopoly fascism (...of which Matthews' snitch line is another prime example) led to Niagara's summer of C.diff death.
The criminal investigation ought to start with Liberal health minister George Smitherman's monopolist activities.
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The NHS's HIP was 100% Liberal-made

An interesting, yet quite misguided, lettter appeared in the July 23, 2011  St.Catharines Standard by John G. Bullivant, titled "Creating more problems".
Bullivant wrote (regarding the Niagara Health System's HIP)  "...it is difficult to understand why the NHS board of trustees, whose decisions created the problems in the first place, was then empowered to solve them."
You know what is truly difficult to understand? People who actually think that only the NHS created "the problems". (see another misguided Bullivant letter here)
Is this guy serious?
Time to replay the facts (again):

#1 - the NHS DID NOT originate the HIP.

#2 - George Smitherman was trying to cover up the 2007-CIHI-report which revealed that the NHS had the third-highest patient mortality rate in Canada. (see here; here)

# 3 - Liberal MPP Kim Craitor whined about governance reviews at the time - but did not bother to ask or explain WHY the NHS had this horrible death-rate. (see here)

#4 - Liberal MPP Jim Bradley also said nothing about the NHS's high mortality rate.(see here)

#5 - to this day, no Liberal has yet publicly explained the reasons for the 2007 CIHI revelations about the NHS's high-death rate. (see here)

# 6 - Smitherman, to appease Craitor, suddenly demanded that the NHS cut its spending - yet, no mention was made, by any Liberal, about the NHS's death-rate! Smitherman ordered cost-cutting reviews at the NHS, which led to the LHIN ordering the NHS to create a HIP plan. (see here)

# 7  - obviously, Bullivant doesn't remember this stuff.
In case Bullivant and others like him forgot, the LHIN's were created by Smitherman. The Niagara LHIN was tasked with ordering the NHS to come up with a HIP plan. (see here)

#8 - the NHS DID NOT  just come up with the idea of the HIP all on its own.
The NHS was ordered to create a HIP by the Liberal government which controls it, and pays its bills. What utter dis-ingenuousness to pretend that the NHS did all this, all on their own, in some policy vacuum!! That's what Liberals want us to think!

#9 - Bullivant and others like him should now understand that the McGuinty Liberal government, through their LHIN-smokescreen agents, directed the activities at the NHS.
The HIP at the NHS was 100% Liberal-made. Bullivant should try to grasp that reality.

#10 - the Niagara LHIN, a Liberal-created, completely non-independent proxy of the McGuinty monopolist government, not only ordered the NHS to create the HIP plan, but this same LHIN also approved the HIP plan, after the recommendations of the Kitts Report were taken into consideration.

#11 - for some reason, the Bullivants of Niagara don't remember this.
The Bullivants blame the NHS for creating 'the problems' - yet 'the problems' were created by the Liberals and their LHIN!
The LHIN approved the NHS's HIP plan - the same plan which Smitherman and his Liberals (through their LHIN agents) demanded that the NHS come up with, in the first place!
The NHS complied with what its monopoly-pushing Liberal masters had ordered them to do!
The NHS did what their boss - Liberal hack Smitherman - told them to do; so why can't Niagara's Bullivants understand that?!
Doesn't Bullivant see this catch-22 circle, orchestrated by McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopolists?!

#12 - McGuinty's Liberals had no problem whatsoever with the HIP which their LHIN imposed upon the NHS!
Have we all forgotten how George Smitherman, then David Caplan, and then Deb Matthews all were quite happy with the HIP, and REFUSED to RECONSIDER it? (...until the last minute, just before an election!!!!)

#13 - so when Bullivant now talks of how 'the people who created the problems are being empowered to solve them', doesn't he see that this is exactly the deception which Jim Bradley and his Liberals set in motion?
Bullivant believes the Liberal deception that 'the NHS is to blame' and that the 'NHS board is to blame, and so doesn't seem to understand that it was the the Liberal-controlled LHIN which created 'the problems', and which is laughably now in charge of the solutions!!

    (...busy beaver Liberals, busily um... 'fixing' what other busy Liberals had umm... been busily 'fixing' before...! ... an eternal Liberal make-work project, a socialist wet dream)

Yes:
this is the same LHIN which demanded that the NHS come up with a HIP in the first place; the same LHIN which then approved the HIP; and this is the same LHIN which ordered the NHS to begin implementing the HIP!!
And now this same LHIN is supposedly going to "solve the problems which the NHS created" ???! Come on!!!!
This was a Liberal-orchestrated fiasco by McGuinty's monopolist Liberals since day one.
The LHIN created the problems - not the NHS!!!
Yet the Bulivants pretend that Ontario's Liberas had nothin' to do with it!!!!!

This is the travesty of the non-independent, loyal LHIN doing the dirty work of McGuinty's health monopolists, while the locals, tanked up on monopolism, are led to believe by deceptive doofuses such as MPP Kim Craitor that the NHS is solely responsible for everything that's going on, and that the LHIN's are doing a great job! 

The Bullivants and the Craitors and the left-wing media in Niagara are loathe to connect the Mess In The NHS to the LHIN or to Dalton McGuinty's fascist health monopolism.
For the purposes of the Liberal-friendly narrative, the NHS must be blamed, while the LHIN's and the LHIN's Liberal-creators and policy-makers are to be given a free pass.
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Why weren't McGuinty's Liberals charged for their 2008 Ontario C. difficile cover-up?

Brett Clarkson reported in  "C.difficile deaths up to 24; NHS pledges 'new corporate culture'" (Niagara Falls Review, Jul.19, 2011): 

"As another patient who had acquired C. difficile died Monday at the St. Catharines General Hospital, local health officials announced that a new infection control manager has been brought in from Hamilton to help the Niagara Health System manage the ongoing outbreaks.

Andrea Iacurti, a registered nurse with a certification in infection control based at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton, started with the NHS on a secondment Monday and will be reviewing NHS practices, cleaning schedules, and sharing strategies until the NHS hires a full-time infection control manager.
"Andrea started today and will report to Kim Stephens-Woods, our vice-president of patient services," said Dr. Sue Matthews, interim president and CEO of the NHS.
The death of the patient in St. Catharines early Monday raises the total number of deaths associated with the outbreak reported by the NHS to 24 since the first outbreak was declared on May 28.
"This patient had multiple health issues and passed away this morning," Matthews said.
The total number of cases reported by the NHS for the three outbreaks in St. Catharines, Welland and Niagara Falls was at 75 on Monday.
So far there has been 13 deaths at the St. Catharines General, six at Welland County General Hospital, and four at Greater Niagara General Hospital in Niagara Falls.
As well, Matthews drew a line in the sand between the NHS' "new corporate culture" and the health system's previous efforts to stonewall a Hamilton media outlet's freedom-of-information request about the 2008 C. difficile outbreak at GNGH.
The request for information sought info about how the 2008 outbreak was dealt with. Twice, the release of that information was blocked by the NHS.
"This approach is inconsistent with our new corporate culture and I have directed those involved to allow the disclosure to proceed," Matthews said. "As I've said previously, I'm committed to adhering to the highest standard of transparency."
Matthews said that the information, which could possibly be released in a matter of days, will likely shine a negative light on the NHS and its infection-control practices three years ago — practices she said have been improved greatly since then.
"I do expect that the content of the FOI request will include statements of concern about our infection control practices in the past," Matthews said. "Though I find this concerning, in the time since the emails and these information were authored, we have made tremendous strides towards the best possible practices."
The NHS' ongoing public relations campaign, which now includes daily media briefings, comes amid criticism from the public and elected officials who accuse the NHS of being less than forthcoming with public disclosure. That criticism evolved to anger and eventually lead to a protest in Niagara Falls on July 6 after word emerged that the four C. difficile-related deaths at GNGH happened between May 12 and June 16 but weren't divulged until an outbreak was declared on June 23.
On Friday the site head of GNGH, Frank Demizio, announced his intention to retire at the end of August, a move that Matthews said had nothing to do with the current controversy enveloping the hospital, which is also battling outbreaks of VRE and MRSA.
As well, former communications chief Christine Clark departed the NHS in early July.
Matthews credited St. Joseph's in Hamilton for helping the NHS manage the outbreak and said Brady Wood, a St. Joseph's public relations director, has also been working with the NHS. So has Dr. Christina Lee, an infection control physician also based at St. Joseph's, Matthews said.
Asked about the safety of the hospitals, Matthews said she understands the public's fear but said that anybody who needs to go to an emergency room or hospital should still go.
As well, Dr. Joanna Hope, NHS interim chief of staff, said the symptoms of C. difficile include diarrhea as well as generalized symptoms including fever, chills, feeling ill, and cramps. However, there can also be serious complications including bloody diarrhea, acute renal failure, also known as kidney failure, and toxic megacolon, a form of colonic distension, which can sometimes require surgery".
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Only now - after two dozen patients died in Niagara - they're bringing in an infection control manager - and temporarily, at that? Sounds like way too little, way too late, doesn't it?

Why didn't Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor's Liberals fund such a position full-time, since the last Ontario C. diff outbreak?

Didn't Kimmy'n'Jimmy think Niagara's patients deserved full time infection control?! Funny about that, isn't it: Kim'n'Jim's Liberals didn't call a public inquiry into that last killer C. diff outbreak of theirs in 2008, so, Ontarians weren't told whether such a position ('infection-control manager') would be necessary in Niagara's hospitals. Liberals made sure Ontarians weren't told about all the problems ...

So, let's see - what do the Liberals who dictate how Ontario's health-monopoly-prison is run, think??

Hm, funny: there's nothing from Niagara's secretive, health-monopoly pushing scumbag MPP Jim Bradley on what happened during that period in 2008, with all those HUNDREDS of C. diff deaths in Ontario, when Jim Bradley, Kim Craitor, and George Smitherman shut down and refused to call an inquiry into that monopolist-murder.
McGuinty's negligent Liberals told us all to wash our hands, and that all would be fine; McGuinty's Liberals told us that they knew all there was to know about C. difficile, so therefore, no public inquiry was needed.

As we now see, McGuinty's lying Liberals perpetrated a deadly health-care fraud onto Ontario's patients.
We don't know how many lives might have been saved in Niagara in 2011, had we been properly informed back in 2008 - through an independent inquiry - as to the correct infection control procedures and protocols which ought to be implemented province-wide; we were simply browbeaten and bullshitted by McGuinty and Smitherman's Liberals to 'trust them' that 'all was gonna be OK'. McGuinty's Gritty corporate-political-fascist culture is one of  Liberal healthcare duplicity.

Funny how NOW, these two outbreaks are being linked: read the red portion of the story above: an ombudsman's or other independent inquiry in 2008 (which McGuinty's Liberals refused to allow) would have certainly uncovered the reasons behind the McGuinty-Smitherman-Craitor-Bradley Liberal government's C. difficile cover-up.
We see that in 2008 McGuinty's Liberal scumbags tried - successfully - to keep the NHS's information hidden, in the same way they tried to keep their entire province-wide C. diff disaster covered-up.

Since the NHS does not make policy, is not independent, and does not raise its own funding, and is entirely a creature of the Ontario government (as is the NHS's overseer, the Liberal-created LHIN) we therefore require a criminal investigation into what specific directions McGuinty and his Liberal ministers gave the NHS, since 2003, and what the repercussions were, in terms of preventable C. difficile patient deaths.
The NHS's 'transparency' or lack thereof was directly related to what it was told to do by the Liberal government which controlled and funded them!!
Where, for example, is the subpoena for ALL of George Smitherman's five-year's-worth of correspondence with the NHS, including all of his ministerial discussions and directives??

Two dozen dead C. diff  patients in Niagara (so far...) and Jim The Pathetic Liberal Scumbag Monopolist Bradley hides from view.
Why isn't secretive Jimmy calling for more transparency?!!!

This FLICKING Liberal gang of single-payer health-care monopolists should be in jail.
Corrections Minister Jim Bradley could wear a GPS on his ankle when he's let out on parole in twenty years.
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Now 24 patients are dead in Niagara's C.difficile outbreak; yet local Liberal health-care monopolist Jim Bradley vanishes

As of July.17, 2011  24 patients have now died in the Niagara C. difficile outbreak.

Local Liberal health-care-monopoly pushing despot MPP Jim Bradley has vanished, hiding and avoiding any comments on this issue - the same way he hid from his last killer C. diff outbreak in 2008, which killed hundreds of Ontarians, and which McGuinty's Liberal scumbags refused to investigate.

Meanwhile, Bradley's Liberal doofus buddy MPP Kim Craitor does his disingenuous best to pretend that... somehow... ummm... Harris killed these patients, and not Dalton McGuinty! ha ha ha... Kimmy's a laugh-riot...

That's how these secretive Liberal scumbags roll: hide from scrutiny, with a lot of help from their leftist media and municipal  buddies, and then pretend that their own failing monopolism, their own ideological single-payer, no-patient-choice health-fascism, has nothing at all to do with any of this.

The dead patients pile up in Niagara's Liberal under-funded health-monopoly, while Liberal secretive health-care-cutting scumbags continue to hide from scrutiny and from their own guilt.
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McGuinty's Liberals lied; C. diff patients died

ALERT:

Take a look here at duplicitous Dalton McGuinty's possibly-homicidal bald-faced health-care lies, which McGuinty made to Ontarians, as seen in a Sept. 24, 2008 report by CP's Keith Leslie.

Look at what Ontario's Premier Liberal Liar McGuinty said:

"...McGuinty said hospitals now know how to protect against the spread of C. difficile, and he noted that medical experts say an inquiry would not tell them anything they don't already know.
"The experts that we hear from, both here in Ontario and from south of the border, (say) we have a good understanding of C. difficile and the manner in which it is spread," McGuinty told the legislature.
"The next thing that we could and must do is to make information public about the incidents of C. difficile in our hospitals, and that's what we plan to do."

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The Liberal scumbag McGuinty told us in 2008 that "hospitals now know how to protect against the spread of C. difficile"   - but, McGuinty WAS LYING!! Where was this 'protection' for Niagara's  C. diff patients?

Just look at Dalton McGuinty's and Jim Bradley's disgusting, despotic Liberal record, folks: these Liberal scumbags are dangerous, deceptive LIARS.

McGuinty blatantly deceived us in 2008 with his political claims that an inquiry 'would not tell us anything more than we already knew': yet, if that were true, then why did Niagara's killer C. diff outbreak occur in 2011??

If McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopolists, in 2008, truly had "a good understanding of C. difficile and the manner in which it spreads" - then WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE FOR THIS CLAIM, three years later in Niagara, when twenty more C. diff patients were killed in the Liberal's despotic health monopoly??

This was outright Liberal fraud.

Why isn't anyone in the media challenging McGuinty on his blatant lies?!

And in 2008, McGuinty spun more yarns about 'making C. diff information available to the public' - yet, in 2011, Niagara's population had NO IDEA that a C. diff outbreak was brewing within the NHS - because McGuinty's Liberal health-care monopoly KEPT IT SECRET !!

This deliberate, ideologically-based Liberal negligence is mind-boggling in its blatantly deceptive, monopolist depravity: 'We know what's best for you; so just shut up and don't ask any questions'.

Why aren't Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal cabinet in jail for the consequences of their health-care lies??

Liberals have lied, patients have died.

The Liberals are responsible.
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Time for a class-action C.difficile lawsuit against McGuinty's Liberals

It's amazing: St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley unabashedly keeps prancing about Niagara, doling out pre-election cash here there and everywhere, with his weaselly mug popping up in staged photo-op after staged photo-op - yet, after an almost two-month long (since apparently May 12) and partially secret C.diff outbreak in his own city - nobody from the media has bothered to ask Jim Bradley about it!!
The unfathomable Jim Bradley ass-kissing from the Niagara media continues unabated.
Forget about the media not asking Jim Bradley when he first knew about his Liberal-created secret G20 law;  now, nobody's asking Jim Bradley when he first knew of the C. difficile outbreak in St.Catharines.
Did Bradley know about it when it was still being kept secret (from the public, as far back as May) by the NHS?
Why aren't Lafleche, Bolichowsy, Herod, Bergsma, Fraser, Downs, Williscraft, Zettel, etc... asking Good Ole Jimmy to explain himself, and his Liberal culpability in the mess in the NHS?
Where is the scrutiny over Jim Bradley's years of Liberal health care duplicity?
Why isn't anyone assessing the criminal liability of Bradley's Liberal government, connecting the dots between the secretive actions by Bradley's Liberals in 2008 (by refusing to allow a public inquiry into the already-then hundreds of Ontario C. diff.-patient-deaths) and the recurrence of the same scenario in Niagara, in 2011?
The incompetent Liberal health minister, monopolist George Smitherman, simply sloughed off having any kind of independent inquiry: Ontario's population - trapped in the Liberal's single-payer health-care monopoly - was simply told: 'Don't worry, just trust us... why, we've instituted reporting guidelines, so... everything's going to be fine, folks. Yep: Just trust us, and stop asking questions.'
That's what happened in 2008. A cowardly C. diff cover-up by McGuinty's Liberals.
Now, in Niagara in 2011, nobody seems to know exactly what those guidelines, which had so-vociferously been trumpeted by Smitherman, actually were, or are... the public WAS NOT warned that there was C. diff in the NHS - but, were they supposed to have been warned?
At what point was it still an un-reportable, in-hospital occurrence, but not yet an outbreak? One case; two cases?
Were Smitherman's 2008 C. diff reporting policies (the ones he made up to hide from an inquiry) actually understood and followed in Niagara in 2011?
Now Deb Matthews thinks they weren't...

[but, in this confusion,  you try to figure out where Deb Matthews stands on this: see her comments in this report from late June : "...Asked if the NHS was right in how they handled the disclosure of deaths, the minister said she needs to learn the details of what happened.
"I'd like to get more information on that specifically," Matthews said. "I can't comment on that right now."

and then see Deb Matthew's reaction when the NHS suddenly got rid of  their long-time spokesperson Christine Clark:

"...That information (shared with the public health department) was flowing extremely well. I think the issue is what did the public know," Matthews said. "I think we can do better.
"I'm delighted that they are now doing daily briefings, so that they are able to answer questions. We all know that information is what people need. And where there isn't information, sometimes we'll speculate. So I think that in the interests of public confidence, that we need to let the public in on what is happening so they know what's going on in their hospitals.]

... this signifies that Smitherman's original C.difficile policies [...and I repeat, once again: policies which Smitherman designed in 2008 to placate the public, to make it look like he was doing something (a typical Liberal tactic: offer 'appearance' over substance) while desperately trying to avoid any public C. diff inquiry...] were merely window-dressing, meant as a political diversion, allowing McGuinty's Liberals to kite some more time, to hide a little longer from any independent inquiry.
That's what Smitherman's Liberals - including Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor - did: these secretive cowards sloughed off a proper independent public inquiry in 2008, when hundreds of Ontario C. difficile patients had already been  killed; today's C. diff victims in Niagara are simply additional footnotes in the massive monopolist despotism that is McGuinty's negligent health-care ideology.
Why isn't anyone in the Niagara media comparing what Smitherman (hiding from a public C. diff inquiry) concocted in 2008 as a convenient smokescreen to show that his Liberals 'did something about it'; and how this very same scenario, using Smitherman's template, replayed itself in 2011 in Niagara?
Smitherman's pathetic 2008 rationalization, which he used to hide the Liberals from a public C. diff inquiry, can be seen in my previous July 6, 2011 post,  Why McGuinty's Liberals are guilty of C. difficile negligence.
During the 2008 Ontario C. difficile outbreak, the opposition was repeatedly shut down by McGuinty's secretive Liberals in its attempts to find answers:

"...When hundreds of people have died in hospitals and we know it's connected to C. difficile, we need to have an inquiry," said NDP Leader Howard Hampton.
"The government was warned several times about this - we saw what happened in Quebec - but the McGuinty government failed to act, and now we see the deaths of more than 100 people."
Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer agreed with Hampton that some deaths probably could have been prevented if the Liberal government had moved earlier to make it mandatory for hospitals to report outbreaks of C. difficile, a potentially deadly hospital-acquired infection.
"Certainly. They took steps in other provinces to make sure that mandatory reporting did take place, that there was a plan for outbreaks," Witmer said. "The question remains: How many people have needlessly died because this government refused to take action?"
But Smitherman and Premier Dalton McGuinty both said Monday that a coroner's inquest into a C. difficile outbreak in Sault Ste. Marie and other reports gave the government and health officials enough data on which to act, and that an inquiry is not needed..."

Now, it happens AGAIN, this time right in Niagara - and McGuinty's disgusting Liberals (and many of their media friends) continue to ignore the Liberals health-care lies, duplicity, and incompetence.

Here's Brian Lilley's Jul.8, 2011 column, "Public health care is killing people":

"There was a small protest of a few dozen people outside of the Greater Niagara General Hospital on Wednesday. What there really should be is outrage across the land.
The rally in Niagara Falls was sparked over the handling of a local outbreak of C. difficile, an antibiotic-resistant superbug linked to 16 deaths in the Niagara region since mid-May.
Part of the outrage in Niagara is over the fact hospital officials knew the superbug was in the hospital long before they told the public.
The outbreak started May 12 and the public was told June 23. ¬ e hospital kept the people they serve in the dark.
It’s much the same across Canada. There have been deadly outbreaks of C. difficile in Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Niagara and several other cities and towns.

Canadian hospitals have been dealing with this problem since 2002 but there has been very little public anger over these thousands of deaths.
Compare that to what happened in the tainted deli meat scare a few years ago.
When bad deli meat from a Maple Leaf Foods plant was linked to 57 people falling ill and 23 people dying from a listeriosis outbreak, the outrage was fast and furious.
Family members, doctors, politicians and the media demanded to know how this could have happened.
Investigations were launched, a class-action lawsuit was filed.
Maple Leaf issued an apology, pledged to do better, changed its practices and settled the lawsuit within a few months for $27 million.
Since then, there have been ongoing questions about our food inspection system and continuing calls for review.
Why not the same for C. difficile?
The history of this antibiotic- resistant infection shows most people get sick while in hospital.
The problem is a lack of cleanliness, either from doctors and nurses not washing their hands as they move from patient to patient, or cleaners not doing their jobs properly.
Ultimately, though, when this many people have been infected and died, the responsibility has to move higher.
Why are hospital boards and the provincial governments that fund the health care system not demanding higher standards?
Why is the media not turning this into the biggest story in the country the way some bad deli meat became THE story in the summer of 2008.
I think it is because to do so would require us to question the public health care system.
And to put things bluntly, most of our media would rather question the actions of a private company than the actions of a public institution like health care.
A friend told me the other day if we had the ability to sue hospitals the way that our American neighbours do, hospitals would be scared into cleaning up their act.
Except we do have the ability. Lawyer Gerry Chipeur appeared on my Sun News Network show Byline on Tuesday and said the same law that allowed the families of the deceased to sue Maple Leaf would allow people to sue our hospital system.
I say, given the failure of our politicians and health officials to fix the problem, a lawsuit, or several, just may be in order".
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It is time to sue McGuinty's Ontario Liberal government.
These Liberal anti-patient-choice health-care monopolists should no longer be held harmless from the consequences of their despotic, secretive, iron-fisted statist single-payer ideology.
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