Impeach McGuinty? Why let Ontario's Liberals off that easily?

In Let's impeach the premier (Hamilton Spectator, Oct.6, 2012) Stephen Skyvington wrote

"Like Brian Mulroney before him, Dalton McGuinty seems determined to take his party down with him

Dalton McGuinty is lucky he’s the Premier of Ontario and not the President of the United States. If he were the President, we’d all be calling for his head and Congress would be preparing Articles of Impeachment.
But as we all know, McGuinty isn’t president, and we don’t have any articles of impeachment or a Congress to prepare them. And after receiving a strong endorsement from his own party at their convention in late September, McGuinty is giving every indication he intends to lead the Liberals into the next election.
All of which boggles the mind, quite frankly. Not since former prime minister Brian Mulroney has there been a politician so vilified as Dalton McGuinty. Type the words “Liberal scandals” into any search engine and you’ll be bombarded by the premier’s legacy. It’s actually quite sobering to go through the list. It would almost be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic.
We’ve had the eHealth scandal. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming scandal. The Samsung deal scandal. The Eco Tax scandal. The Ornge scandal. I could go on and on — one website lists 30 different scandals before running out of gas.
Then we have the granddaddy of them all — the Power Plant scandal. Or as I like to call it, the Seat Saver scandal. For those who haven’t been paying attention, the Liberals announced they were stopping construction on two power plants in order to save some Liberal seats in danger of being wrestled away by the PC or New Democratic parties last year. The seats were saved, although McGuinty’s Liberals were held to a minority government, after having won two consecutive majorities in 2003 and 2007. The cost for this disgraceful, politically motivated decision is $230 million and counting.
Surprisingly, McGuinty has chosen to throw his very capable Energy Minister (and former attorney general) Chris Bentley under the bus. Not only is Bentley taking the heat for this one, he could actually go to jail if found in contempt of the legislature. To his credit, the premier did eventually try to defend his minister, albeit lukewarmly, saying: “These attacks, these threats, this heavy-handed, unprecedented process — using the full force of the legislation against one MPP — these are decidedly not in keeping with the standards and traditions we seek to uphold.”
One question Liberal supporters and backbenchers must be asking is: “How did it come to this?” How indeed. My opinion, as a longtime political operative and former political staffer, is that the Liberals (like all parties who win back-to-back majorities) were the victims of their own success. To use a sports analogy, they started reading (and believing) their own press clippings. Shortly after their second term began, a rot began to settle in. Once that happens, deception and corruption can’t be far behind.
Or to use another sports analogy ... if Dalton McGuinty was the coach of the Leafs, Raptors, Argos or Blue Jays, the fans would be singing in unison by now: “Goodbye, Dalton. Goodbye, Dalton. Goodbye, Dalton. We’re glad to see you go!”
The premier did have the opportunity to make a graceful exit during the Liberal convention last month. But he chose instead to stick around.
Am I surprised? Not one bit.
I’ve never written about this before, but in 1996 then-MPP Dalton McGuinty asked me to drop by his office. I was working for the Ontario Medical Association at the time and Dalton was reaching out to potential supporters. He told me that he was thinking about running for leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario and wanted to know what I thought about that. Nobody gave him a chance. Everybody underestimated him. It was hard to take him seriously. I can’t remember my exact response, but I’m sure I told him to go for it. After all, what difference would it make? It wasn’t like he was going to win.
Now, 16 years later, I don’t expect to be receiving a call from Premier McGuinty asking my advice. But if I did get such a call, I’d tell him it was time. To go. Now."
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First off, what utter disingenuous pap from Skyvington, attempting to smear Mulroney by equating him to that scumbag Liberal Dalton McGuinty! Oh, come on, man!! Nice try, but your bias is evident in your first line!

If anything, Skyvington should be looking at a more apt comparison: Liberal Jean Chretien's disgusting scandal-plagued years - that's the proper McGuinty comparator, not Mulroney! Skyvington also could have used the socialist stench of Bob Rae's years as Dipper premier, as a scandal-plagued comparator to McGuinty - but, Skyvington chose not to focus on that socialist-paradise-fiasco either!! hahah

But as far as scandals go, McGuinty's Liberals take the cake for expensive policy disaster after flicking expensive fiasco-laden ideological policy disaster, as mentioned by Skyvington.

I do find it odd, if Skyvington was in some way associated with the OMA in the past, that he today has managed to overlook what I think is Dalton McGuinty's most horrendous crime: the McGuinty Liberal government's direct complicity [as sole managers and funders of Ontario's single-payer health-care monopoly] not to submit their health-care monopoly to a public inquiry, when hundreds of Ontarians were dying in C.difficile outbreaks throughout Ontario in 2008.

McGuinty's Liberals, under George Smitherman, hid from a public inquiry in 2008, while giving Ontarians promises (falsehoods, we would later learn) that the Liberals 'knew all there was to know about C. diff'; that there was no need to 'waste money' on any damn inquiry; that Ontarians didn't need to worry; that Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal gang of serial liars had 'everything under control'...

'Under control' - until 2011, when dozens more patients died in Niagara in another C.difficile outbreak... [under circumstances which should have been previously anticipated and prepared for] ...had McGuity's Liberals not covered-up their health-monopoly from public scrutiny back in 2008.

Dalton McGuinty blatantly lied in 2008 when he publicly stated that Ontario's "hospitals now know how to protect against the spread of C. difficile" .
If McGuinty's state-monopoly-run hospitals were prepared, then, where was this 'protection' in 2011, for Niagara's C. diff patient-victims??!

No-one (...especially from the Jim Bradley-Friendly St.Catharines Standard..!) ever bothered asking McGuinty to explain his false and negligent 2008 reasurrance - even when more patients began dying in Niagara in 2011!!

The St.Catharines Standard couldn't even be bothered to pursue their buddy Jim Bradley for an interview during Niagara's Liberal Summer of C.diff Death.
Instead of covering Jim Bradley, the Standard's disgusting wrong-righters covered-up for Jim Bradley.
With great skill, they managed to make it look like Ole Liberal Jimmy had nothin' to do with all these deaths... nuthin' at all...

[If McGuinty and his Liberals had been somehow 'impeached'  - or better yet, jailed - on this issue, then we wouldn't have had the costly Power Plant fiaso. We could have had more funds for healthcare, instead of having Dalton still here, wasting millions to save the asses of his Liberal gangmembers.]

Maybe Skyvington or some other Spectator reporter can re-examine the direct connection between what McGuinty's secretive Liberals did in 2008, and how that arrogant decision subsequently - and detrimentally - impacted the C. difficile outbreak and patient deaths in Niagara, only 3 years later, in 2011.

After all, Hamilton Spectator reporters Naomi Powell and Joan Walters had already begun this investigation back on July 4, 2008 (...perhaps Skyvington can read it, and ponder this story's sad, long, deadly arc (which is still unresolved today, in 2012) while the Liberal perpetrators walk around scot-free, still in power...) A lot more has been revealed about McGuinty's operating procedures since 2008 - so, where is the follow up on this story?

You can bet that no Niagara press, such as the St.Catharines Standard, will bother looking into that! If they can't somehow blame harris, or Diefenbaker (or Mulroney - eh, Skyvington?!) then, they're not interested. The point is not to make Liberals look bad.
The local Niagara Liberal MPP, the disgusting Dishonourable Jim Bradley, literally disappeared from public view  in 2011 while scores of C. diff patients were dying in Bradley's own Liberal-monopoly-underfunded hospitals.

All these other Liberal scandals were about wasted money and Liberal lies - bad enough, yes, to boot McGuinty out of power - but... McGuinty's secrecy, and outright callous brute-force state-monopolist thuggish response in regards to the C.diff outbreak already underway in 2008, ended up costing other Ontario patients their lives in 2011.

McGuinty going now, or not going now, should not absolve him, or his Liberal majority government's health-monopoly-pushing ministers, of their direct role in the deaths of those Niagara patients.

McGuinty and his Liberals, such as Niagara MPP's Jim Bradley and Kim Craitor, pushed a single-payer monopolist health-care utopia when they were campaigning; then, when elected, they were negligent in not submitting their monopoly to a public inquiry after hundreds of C.diff outbreak patients had already died - under the Liberal's own watch.
Ontario's Liberals played politics with their health-care monopoly, and they decided instead to hide their monopoly from scrutiny, even when they knew the risk that subsequent patients would die. This was a perverted Liberal ideological decision, where Liberal politics were prioritized above patients - patients who were forced into and stuck within a no-choice, state-run health-care monopoly.
In other words - this was a brutal and deadly example of Liberal healthcare duplicity.
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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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Liberal MPP Jim Bradley doesn't answer letters

Here’s an early example of  Jim Bradley idolatry, as written by a fawning Bill Walker, in “Jim Bradley, environmentalists' saint”, (Toronto Star, Jan.12, 1986):
"Most days, Jim Bradley forgets the lesson learned when he lay motionless in a hospital bed for 19 days, blinded by heavy bandages due to a serious eye injury suffered in a shinny hockey game.
"It was quite an experience. But I learned afterward that the world went on, that St. Catharines went on and survived without me. I guess I should remember that once in a while."
Most of the time, he doesn't.
And so, at one o'clock in the morning on many weeknights, Bradley can be found padding down the carpeted hallway of his office in stocking feet, shirttails hanging out, tie wrenched loose, to reach the photocopy machine for the simple task most cabinet ministers would leave to others.
To call him a workaholic is an oversimplification. Ontario's environment minister is keen about his job. No detail is too small to merit his attention, no group's opinion not worth listening to, no letter not worth answering.
And in a department that has seen 11 ministers in the past 10 years, Bradley hopes the revolving door will be removed from his office. "I want to stay in this job for the rest of my political life," he says enthusiastically. "I love it."
The eye injury in 1980, when he was the Liberal Opposition member for St. Catharines, slowed him down. But little else does. This fall, Bradley faced one of the most expensive and sophisticated business lobbies ever mounted but ignored the threats and bullied his way straight ahead.
The powerful lobby tried to stop the Liberals' proclamation of the spills bill, which saddled owners of dangerous substances with absolute liability for damages caused by spills in Ontario.
Lined up against the new Liberal government was the Canadian Manufacturers Association, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, huge chemical companies Polysar Ltd., Dow Chemical Canada Inc., and many others.
"A lot of misinformation was spread, a lot of worst-case scenarios were spread. They used a lot of scare tactics," Bradley says.
But after a month of public hearings, the bill became law on Nov. 29.
One pro-environment lobby group, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, gave Bradley its first "Hanging Tough Award" because of the spills bill. It's a poster-sized tribute filled with newspaper clippings of the fight and it's been hung proudly on his office wall.
"The premier did not back down, and I will say this on so many occasions, the reason there is any success in this ministry, is that we've been able to be innovative and somewhat aggressive on environmental issues because of the support of Premier (David) Peterson," says Bradley.
"Without that support, we would not be able to be either innovative or aggressive on environmental matters."
Bradley has been greeted almost as a saint by environmentalists because of the spills bill, his tough policy on acid rain emissions controls, the St. Clair River cleanup and action on other issues.
But his gung-ho attitude has met with some opposition in the Liberal cabinet, where every minister must jockey for position and push for the programs ministry staff have developed.
Many felt Bradley was going too far, too fast. Some cabinet ministers were swayed by the lobby groups denouncing Bradley - each minister was contacted in the exhaustive effort to stop him - and disagreements erupted, particularly on the acid rain question.
"The acid rain program was a challenging one," Bradley told The Star in an interview in his office, while an aide sat by and made a subtle slashing motion across his throat as if to say to the boss: "Keep quiet on this one."
"In this case there were questions asked and concerns expressed," Bradley says.
"I pointed out the consequences of this program, the potential for adverse effects and positive effects. Cabinet made a decision on that basis and I was extremely pleased."
The decision had been delayed after a stormy cabinet meeting when Bradley had first hoped for approval for the acid rain plan. A week later at the Dec. 11 cabinet meeting a beaming Bradley emerged, intoxicated by victory.
He triumphantly announced the new acid rain plan in a press conference that was beamed live via satellite to Washington, to be watched by Canada's acid rain adversaries.
Acid rain and the spills bill have been giant victories for the 40-year-old bachelor from the Garden City.
A former school teacher, he was raised in Sudbury, but at age 11 his father, a machinist, was laid off. The family of seven moved to St. Catharines because southern Ontario offered more jobs.
His working class family does not have any political background. "We were not a wealthy family, but some people don't know when they're poor."
He grew up beside the ravages of pollution a few kilometres from the smelters in Sudbury, where vegetation did not grow and the rocky landscape looked like the moon. Broken men were often forced out of their smelter jobs by painful asthma from breathing sulphur dioxide emissions.
"The big event was watching the slag dump at night. That was really something then," he recalls. "We had some good rock fights too and I miss that . . . except in the Legislature, I should say."
He was bitten by the political bug in Grade 5, when elected president of the Junior Red Cross at King George School, now a Sudbury radio station. By age 21, he had won the provincial Liberal nomination in St. Catharines, but he lost the 1967 election.
Two years later, he ran successfully for St. Catharines city council. He served there during heated debates over development in the city before running provincially again in 1971. Again he lost.
He finally came to Queen's Park in 1977. By the time his party was preparing for last May's fateful election, Bradley had been a frontbencher in the Opposition, a deputy House Leader, and held critic roles in correctional services, consumer and commercial relations and education.
"There were some bleak days in Opposition," he recalls. "But there was always a hope that I felt people would want change. That hope was there."
As soon as it became apparent the Liberals would form a government after almost 42 years of Progressive Conservative rule, Bradley immediately knew he wanted to be environment minister. He had hoped for a cabinet post because of his work in eight years in opposition and would have accepted anything, but the environment job was his true desire.
Now he has a chauffer-driven limousine and a posh office overlooking the Toronto skyline from the penthouse 15th floor of a building at St. Clair and Avenue Rd. The office has a personal bathroom and shower so Bradley's marathon work sessions can end with a refresher.
His goals in the ministry were simple: to make it a proactive and not reactive ministry which didn't wait for events to occur but acted to prevent them altogether.
"We had a lot of catching up to do," he says.
He began last summer by scheduling a series of theme weeks, where he met with interest groups on all sides of issues. He has surrounded himself with good people, including former environmental activists Mark Rudolph and Gary Gallon, his executive assistant and senior policy adviser respectively.
In the environmental community, Bradley has drawn widespread praise.
As for Tory environment critic Susan Fish, who is paid to make Bradley look bad, when asked about Bradley's performance by The Star she said: "I'd really not care to comment."
New Democratic Party environment critic Ruth Grier, whose party wrote some of Bradley's policy moves in an agreement to support the Liberals as government, gave him a qualified endorsement.
"I certainly think he has displayed good intentions," Grier said, "but I'm not sure I'm ready to give him an A all the way through."
Both Grier and Canadian Environmental Law Association spokesman Toby Vigod say Bradley's policy decision on soft drink dispensers, mainly pop cans, was disappointing.
Vigod wanted deposits so cans would be returned and not thrown away as litter, but the government nixed the idea, instead calling for a certain number of cans to be recyclable.
"A simpler solution could have been put in place but the soft drink lobby didn't want it," Vigod says.
Grier feels Bradley tried to get the optimum solution environmentally, but lost his battle in cabinet. "There was evidence that stronger people in cabinet than he prevailed," she says.
The harshest Bradley critics, those in industry who will bear the brunt of his new policies, shied away from rating him in print. Robert J. Redhead of the chemical company Tricil (Sarnia) Ltd., told The Star that since his company will have future dealings with the ministry, it had chosen not to comment.
Harry Pelissero, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, said his organization will issue a policy paper when the next election is called asking its members in the farming community not to vote Liberal unless the absolute liability clause in the spills bill is changed to limited liability on owners of spilled substances.
Pelissero said the public hearings were somewhat of a charade. "The government made its intentions known about what it was going to do with the spills bill," he said. "We made our views known and right now, we're still opposed."
"We'll make some enemies in the short term," Bradley says, "but I don't see the dire political consequences in that. I think we've shown our fairness and now at least, they know where the government stands."
Vigod said that although Bradley marks a night-and-day difference from past Tory environment ministers in terms of accessibility and action, he has fallen short on several issues including pop cans, the Keswick marsh and hazardous waste disposal.
For Adele Hurley of the Canadian Coaltion on Acid Rain, Bradley "is the first environment minister in this province who has deserved the title.
"He's doing a great job. He's quickly learning how to manage his own portfolio and how to move in the circles which are bilateral and national in scope.
"On the other hand, you're quite permitted to argue with him or to debate. He has a humility about him that makes that possible. He's very unassuming."
When he's not tallying his political friends and foes, Bradley likes to retreat to St. Catharines on the weekend, take in a Friday night junior hockey game and have a few beers with his local friends, some of whom are newspaper reporters in the area.
And on Sundays, he loves to spread out his ministry homework on a table in front of the television set and alternate between career duties and National Football League coverage.
But most of the time, including many weekends, he's tackling his work as minister. And he is humble enough to realize that his progress in a short time as minister is partly due to public attitudes toward the environment.
Recently, political pollsters have been telling parties the public has a high level of concern for environmental issues and is supportive of money spent in the area. They have even suggested that such action could translate into votes at election time."

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It must be tough being a wealthy saint for the environmentalists - with the limos and posh offices - as well as being an unassuming politico, pretending that no letter isn't worth answering . Jim Bradley didn't answer a number of letters which I sent to him. How many other letters, messages, or emails, does Jim Bradley pick and choose NOT to reply to?

Did Bradley read this letter to the editor from St. Catharines Dr. George Fitzpatrick?
(St.Catharines Standard, Mar.7, 2005):

"I noticed your series of articles on health care and this government's treatment of Ontario doctors in the health system. As a delegate to the section of family practice of the Ontario Medical Association, I would like to share some of my frustrations with the members of the public.
- The Ontario government is making it harder for physicians and their patients.It refuses to negotiate a fair deal with doctors. Despite the fact that one million patients in Ontario are without family doctors, the government refuses to address the concerns raised by Ontario physicians. Picking fights with our doctors, and remunerating them less than those doctors in six other provinces is not the way to recruit physicians to Ontario. Why doesn't the province stop playing politics with patients and their health?
- One in three specialists will be older than 55 in the next five years.- Waiting times for referrals, operations and diagnostic tests, such as MRIs and CAT scans can take up to six months in this community.
- Doctors who are working harder and harder cannot solve these problems.Only a reasonable government that co-operates with health professionals can.
- A government that tries to dictate "take-it-or-leave-it" deals will not solve the problem of wait times and shortages.- We want to work constructively with the government, patients and other health professionals to solve these problems.
- Our health system is under-funded. In 1992, Ontario had the highest per-capita spending on health care in the country. Now we rank seventh.
I ask St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley to intervene on behalf of families in the St. Catharines riding to tell Dalton McGuinty and George Smitherman to co-operate with the professionals who make our health system work."

Did Jim Bradley ever bother to respond to the above letter?

This is a letter I wrote to Jim Bradley, Mar.30, 2006:
On Mar.13, 2006 the Standard’s Marlene Bergsma reported on city/provincial cost-sharing for the planned QEW widening. Millions will be spent to overhaul or to completely replace six QEW overpasses in St. Catharines.

On Mar. 29, 2006 in your Niagara News column you wrote: “One of the major (budget) announcements was the unveiling of Move-Ontario, a major new province-wide investment in transit, roads, and bridges.”

I ask that you consider that now is an opportune time to ensure that funding is available so that the proposed QEW bridges are designed with safety barriers to discourage vandalism and suicides.

Looking at the Burgoyne bridge over the 406, you’ll see that someone, sometime ago in the city thought it prudent to install at least a partial section of safety barrier – yet it wasn’t it finished. The Standard reported that a suicide occurred there on Mar. 2, 2006

Over the years there have been several local reports - from Grimsby to Niagara Falls - of persons throwing objects, or themselves, onto the roads below. The Standard reported Jan.21, 2002 of a truck on the QEW skidding out of control after being hit by an object thrown from the Niagara St. overpass. On Mar.15, 1999 Marlene Bergsma reported vandals at the Lake St. overpass hit a car below with ice. Niagara Regional Police Sgt. Terry Reese commented that the passengers “were lucky they weren’t killed.” On Feb. 22, 2006 at the Lake St. bridge, a teenager threw herself onto the QEW lanes below.

I forwarded my suggestion regarding installation of overpass barriers to the city, which at its regular Mar. 20, 2006 meeting “directed that no further action be taken.”

Why? Millions were already allocated on QEW bridge reconstruction prior to your third budget announcement – now with Move-Ontario, there are apparently millions more for Niagara infrastructure.

Why not insist that barriers become an inherent bridge design element? Is it that barriers ‘don’t look nice’? Well, neither does a blood-splattered road.

Is the cost itself the barrier? What is the incremental cost today to prevent tomorrow’s tragedies, injuries, possible deaths and subsequent negligence lawsuits? It’s not as if the City or the Province are unaware of the dangers – but what have they done to mitigate them? Is public safety this low of a concern? I look forward to your response.

Here’s a letter I wrote, published in the St. Catharines Standard, Apr.5, 2006, “Highway overpasses should have barriers for public safety”:

“Re: City plans 50% hike in works spending, The Standard, March 13.
Millions will be spent to overhaul or to completely replace six QEW overpasses in St. Catharines.
Now is an opportune time for the city to insist that these new bridges are designed with safety barriers to discourage vandalism and suicides.
Looking at the Burgoyne Bridge over Highway 406, you'll see that someone, some time ago, thought it would be prudent to install at least a partial section of a barrier.
The Standard reported that a suicide occurred there on March 2 of this year.
There have been several local reports over the years of persons throwing objects, or themselves, onto the roads below.
The Standard reported on Jan. 21, 2002, about a truck on the QEW skidding out of control after being hit by an object thrown from the Niagara Street overpass.
On March 15, 1999, it was reported vandals at the Lake Street overpass hit a car below with ice. Niagara Regional Police Sergeant Terry Reese commented that the passengers were lucky they weren't killed.
On Feb. 22 of this year, a teenager threw herself onto the QEW lanes below the Lake Street overpass as well.
I forwarded my suggestion regarding installation of barriers on city overpasses to the city, which at its meeting on March 20 directed that no further action be taken.
Why?
Millions are being proposed on bridge reconstruction -- why not insist that barriers become an inherent part of their design?
Is cost itself the barrier?
What is the incremental cost today to prevent tomorrow's tragedies, injuries, possible deaths and subsequent negligence lawsuits?
It's not as if the city or the province are unaware of the dangers, but what have they done to mitigate them?
Is public safety this low of a concern?”

No answers from Jim Bradley!!!

I sent another letter to these people, Apr.21, 2006: (only answer came from a spokesman for Takhar. Nothing from Bradley, Rigby, Partington)

Mr. Tim Rigby, Mayor of City of St. Catharines
Mr. Peter Partington, Chair, Region of Niagara
Mr. Harinder Takhar, Minister of Transportation
Mr. Jim Bradley, Minister of Tourism

Dear Sirs,

Re: the Apr. 11, 2006 traffic fatality of Emily Phillips at the Niagara St. QEW on-ramp, St. Catharines, Ont.

In the Apr. 13, 2006 St. Catharines Standard story, “Changes urged at deadly on-ramp” the Mayor of St. Catharines was quoted saying that both the city and Niagara Region “have been asking MTO to make changes to that ramp. It certainly has been suggested it not remain open.”

Can Mr. Rigby produce any specific past documents which clearly verify that the City of St. Catharines or Niagara Region did suggest, or request, or recommend to the MTO that the Niagara St. on-ramp be closed? And if so, what was the MTO’s response to the city, or to the Region?

Mr. Rigby said that the city can’t close the ramp because the province has jurisdiction over the roads that lead to it. Did the City of St. Catharines, or Niagara Region, ever contact local MPP Jim Bradley (who presumably has jurisdiction over provincial roads) with a specific request to close the Niagara St. on-ramp? On Apr. 19, 2006, Bradley suddenly urged the MTO to close the ramp. But prior to that, did Bradley ever directly respond to any city or regional request regarding closing that ramp?

Did Jim Bradley ever receive any requests from the city or Niagara Region regarding closure of that ramp? Did he ever receive any request from the public, or from his constituents, about the safety of this ramp or its possible closure? After almost three decades as the local MPP, did Bradley just now discover the dangerous, now deadly, nature of this ramp?

I raise these concerns because MTO spokesman Will MacKenzie was quoted saying that the MTO has never had a request to close the ramp and has no intention of doing so.

There seems to be a glaring discrepancy here. Whose version of events are citizens to believe? Either the City did contact the MTO, or they didn’t. But even if the City or Region didn’t (and we should then ask why), are we to believe that the MTO was therefore unaware of this ramp’s danger?

There certainly seems to be a level of complicity and a degree of negligence to be attributed to the levels of government which have knowingly tolerated this inadequate ramp and done nothing to mitigate its danger to motorists. The police have laid no charges in this fatality, so who is culpable here?

It’s truly unacceptable that after this fatality, the MTO spokesman still declares the MTO has no intention to close the ramp. How many more car crashes, personal injuries, or deaths, is Transportation minister Harinder Takhar willing to tolerate? As Tourism minister, what has Jim Bradley done to warn or protect unsuspecting tourists - let alone his own constituents - of this deadly QEW merge?

I am adding my voice to the list who are calling for this ramp’s immediate closure and re-engineering. Can’t Move Ontario funding be utilized here?

I look forward to your individual response to any of the questions raised in this letter. Thank you
Cc: Greg Washuta, Councillor, St. Catharines

*

I wrote in Pulse Niagara, Apr.20, 2006:

"The notorious Toronto–bound QEW on–ramp at Niagara St. was the scene of a fatality on Apr. 11, 2006. Most Niagarans know the white–knuckle feeling you get when you’re squeezed on that ramp. Pray for the motorists visiting our city who are unfamiliar with it.

People have said that ramp should have been closed years ago. St. Catharines mayor Tim Rigby said that the city and the regional government “have been asking MTO to make changes to that ramp. It certainly has been suggested it not remain open.”

MTO spokesman Will MacKenzie responded that the MTO has never had a request to close that ramp and has no intention of doing so. (St. Catharines Standard, Apr. 13, 2006)

Who’s version of the truth are citizens supposed to believe here? Can the City of St. Catharines or Niagara Region produce documentation to rebuke MacKenzie’s claim; to show that in fact, the MTO had been previously notified to consider closing/improving this ramp? If so, that would indicate that the MTO has been taking calculated risks with public safety at that ramp, which have not only resulted in previous injuries, but now in death.

The one influential politician most conspicuous by his silence on this issue is MPP Jim Bradley, who’s supposed to represent the citizens of St. Catharines at Queen’s Park. During the almost 30 years in which Bradley has sat in office, what has he done about this killer ramp? Did he not know how dangerous it was?

Prior to approaching the Niagara St. on–ramp, motorists on the QEW are faced with a huge blue advertising sign. But the sole warning for the upcoming merge is a small yellow sign. Considering the known inadequacy of the upcoming ramp, is this little sign the best they could do? That this situation has been tolerated for so long by finger–pointing politicians and bureaucrats is unacceptable."

*

Then there was a hit and run on Apr.26, 2007 on the Niagara St. bridge over the QEW, where pedestrian Jessica Cormier was killed by a dangerous driver whose car mounted the sidewalk, hitting her and throwing her over the railing onto the road below. Would not a barrier have mitigated the injuries in this circumstance?

Did Jim Bradley respond to these letters:

Suzie Sheehan wrote in “Speak up to avoid another tragic accident”, St. Catharines Standard, May 28, 2007:

"Re: Address the Glendale/406 interchange before someone is hurt, The Standard, May 14.

Wow! Was I thrilled to read this letter. I, too, was very close to becoming a fatality with my three young children.
I spent the morning at the Pen and was on my way home to make lunch when the lady in front of me was "spooked" by the transport approaching in the right lane.
Instead of entering the highway, she stopped! I was already building speed to follow her onto the highway when I realized she stopped. I made a split second decision to speed up and enter the highway because I would have hit her car - and more than likely killed her.
Needless to say, I closed my eyes, said a prayer and entered the highway - pedal to the metal!
I thought my children and I were dead because I thought we were going to be crushed by the transport truck.
As it turned out, the transport blared his horn and moved into the passing lane. I was a basket case and will never forget this. Maybe if more residents voice their concern, another death will be avoided. Let's not have a repeat of the Niagara Street tragedy.”

Phil Baranoski wrote in “Glendale ramps pose Hwy. 406 safety hazard”, Welland Tribune, May 10, 2006:

"For years I have been complaining to the Ministry of Transport about the unsafe engineering design of the Niagara Street ramp to the Toronto-bound QEW since it was built.
Unfortunately, it has been a year now that a girl's life was taken tragically on this ill-designed ramp.
On Feb. 11, 1994 I contacted the MTO about the dangerous conditions created when the sound-barrier walls were installed on the Glendale Avenue northbound Hwy. 406 on-ramp at the Pen Centre location. To date the problem still exists and is more dangerous with the increase in traffic volume.
The problem is the northbound on-ramp is too short. It doesn't provide motorists space to accelerate and merge safely on to the highway without hitting a sound barrier wall. Also, there is a lack of visibility for the on-ramp motorists viewing the high volume of speeding traffic coming down the hill because of another secondary high sound-barrier wall located on the overpass bridge. It blocks the driver's sight-line vision of the on coming traffic.
This problem is compounded for Hwy. 406 motorists travelling northbound down the escarpment at a high rate speed. There is the force of gravity as they come down and are squeezed from four lanes of traffic down to two, unaware the northbound Glendale Avenue on-ramp traffic is hidden because of the high unnecessary sound-barrier wall that interferes with their sightline.
A lot of Hwy. 406 motorists get a surprise when they suddenly see northbound on-ramp traffic merging into their lane and cannot pull over into the left lane because it is blocked by other traffic.
Because the ramp is too short for merging it gives the Hwy. 406 northbound motorist two choices. The highway driver must brake to let the on-ramp traffic onto the highway with the possibility of being rear-ended or speed up hoping the on-ramp driver slows down and enters from behind.
The on-ramp drivers also face a quick decision, to either speed up to merge and get in front of the hidden motorists coming down the hill on Hwy. 406 just in time, praying not to misjudge and hit the sound-barrier wall or slow down hoping to not get rammed by the driver from behind.
There are solutions.
First, immediately take down the inner northbound sound-barrier wall located on the Glendale Avenue overpass bridge, adjacent to the ramp. It serves no purpose in a commercial area. It is a safety hazard creating blind spots for motorists travelling north on the highway and for the motorists merging onto the Highway 406
Second, the Glendale on-ramp needs to be re-extended like the Niagara Street-QEW ramp to allow enough distance for the northbound motorist to safely merge onto northbound Hwy. 406.
The Ministry of Transport needs to be proactive and act to rectify this traffic hazard as quickly as possible. We do not need a tragic death at this on-ramp location because of poor road design, installation of a useless dangerous sound barrier in a commercial area and the lack of common sense safety engineering.”

*

Dear Mr. Bradley:

Has the Ministry of Transportation studied installing safety barriers on ministry bridges? In the last 30 years, prior to April 2006, has the Ministry of Transport ever been contacted by the local St. Catharines MPP, Jim Bradley, or by the local city or regional government, to improve or close the Niagara St. on-ramp? Will the Ministry be acting to rectify the Glendale/406 ramp hazard?
*

Pseudo-doctors in Ontario's pretend health-system

Terence Corcoran wrote in “Ontario doctors sold out again”, (National Post, Nov.6, 2004):

"Throughout next week, Ontario's 20,000 doctors, members of the Ontario Medical Association union monopoly, will vote by phone on a new four-year agreement with the province. The OMA has a long history of selling out its members, stripping doctors of their freedom and sacrificing patient care at the altar of socialized medicine. This new union contract, reached in secrecy two months ago, sets new lows in undermining doctor and patient rights.

More than a decade ago, I wrote: "The Canadian health care system creeps relentlessly toward its ultimate destination, the Soviet model, a centrally planned monster run by commissars issuing directives in a futile attempt to control the uncontrollable. The end result of the Soviet system, extensively documented, is chaos and corruption and collapse." With the new OMA-government agreement, Ontario appears to be entering the second phase of that progression.

The agreement, which includes classic blunders of central planning to manipulate doctor behaviour (35% pay gains for docs who do what the government wants; 4% or even less for those who don't), further co-opts individual doctors into the OMA strategy, which seems mostly aimed at embedding OMA top brass deeper into the Ontario health care politburo. Forgive me for deploying old Soviet jargon, but nothing else does justice to the union's latest pact with the bureaucratic and political devils who manage the province's health care monopolies.

The worst highlight of the agreement is a one-page "letter of understanding regarding the improvement of drug therapy." From the moment it was leaked to the media more than a month ago (everything was going to be secret prior to the vote, until the leaks started), critics branded it a corrupting breach of medical ethics. Under the drug agreement, the OMA agrees that doctors will undertake to cut $150-million from their drug prescription costs by 2007. If the "savings" target is met, the doctors will get a $50-million bonus.

The $50-million bonus was immediately labelled a kickback by critics, and a breach of medical ethics. Doctors would be put in the position of cutting back on patient drug prescriptions -- a dubious objective in itself -- in return for a payment from the government. One anesthesiologist (among many doctors who appeared anonymously in media reports for fear of government and OMA retaliation), told The Toronto Star: "The government does not have the right to coerce me or try to buy me off into providing substandard care."

Alas, the OMA negotiators have agreed to take away that doctor's rights. Even more, it contemplates direct and constant government control over the prescriptions of each doctor. "It is agreed that the Parties will develop a Drug Utilization Review that will provide, where practical, direct, confidential feedback to physicians regarding their prescribing practices." The implications are vast and disturbing.

Remember that "the Parties" here are the OMA and the Minister of Health, George Smitherman. He co-signed the secret drug agreement, which means Mr. Smitherman and his staff (through the review) will begin collecting individual prescription information from each doctor on each patient, information the government does not now have access to. Doctor and patient prescription records remain confidential, even when paid by the provincial hospital insurance plan. The government would, under the agreement, begin monitoring doctors and patients through prescription information.

Even more perverse is that the kickback scheme is worth much more than the $50-million mentioned in the agreement. Thanks to information circulated by Dr. Arnold Aberman, professor of medicine and former dean of medicine at the University of Toronto, we learn that the scale of the kickback is $200-million, not $50-million.

In a widely circulated critique of the union contract and the drug side agreement, Dr. Aberman reports that the OMA's chief negotiator, Dr. Stewart Kennedy, told an information meeting that the value of the drug deal to doctors is actually $200-million. Dr. Kennedy said, and other officials confirm, that the original OMA agreement with the health minister was considered to be $150- million too rich for the government's finance and management board officials. To get around their objections, the OMA and health ministry officials "devised the drug deal to get the $150-million" from another area of Ontario's health spending, the $2.8-billion drug budget. If the doctors can save the drug budget $150-million, they can keep the money. Thinking they had a good thing going, they threw in another $50-million as a later bonus. It turns out, writes Dr. Aberman, "that the OMA is getting all of the $200-million ... Don't we all feel much better now -- knowing the OMA sold out our patients' interests for $200-million, not only $50-million."
Other parts of the overall four-year contract, reportedly worth more than $1-billion in new spending, take away more and more of doctors' freedoms. Payment schemes are clearly designed to draw doctors into salaried positions as members of "family health teams." As part of teams, family physicians will receive 35% wage increases; fee-for-service docs will receive increases of 4%. Most of the payment increases occur in later years of the contract.

The agreement is filled with clauses and conditions that will transfer more doctor powers and decisions to bureaucrats and committees. In hospitals, for example, the agreement calls for "comprehensive standardization of prodecures and products." A task force will begin planning for the development and use of a common provincial drug formulary for hospitals. It will also oversee "the selection and use of surgical devices."

Even if doctors should be foolish enough to approve the contract, it apparently is not binding on the government beyond two years. Two years into the contract, before any significant wage gains are in place, the government has the right to unilaterally reassess the contract. A legal opinion from Toronto lawyer Brian Shell to the Coalition of Family Physicians states that the four-year contract, as written, "amounts to [a] two-year low-increase arrangement, with little likelihood and certainly no certainty" that the three- and four-year increases will ever be paid.
The OMA has sold out its members in the past. Back in 1991, the OMA agreed to become a province-wide closed shop, making the OMA union a total monopoly, beyond anything Buzz Hargove could dream about. Any autoworker can quit GM and and work as a non-union worker somewhere else. Doctors have no such right, thanks to the OMA, which decided years ago to join the government health care dictatorship rather than fight it.

The OMA was also part of the central planning fiasco of the early 1990s that created the current doctor shortage. Back in 1993, the University of Toronto medical school agreed to be paid $10-million a year not to produce doctors. Enrollment at the medical school was cut 30%. The planning reason: Ontario had too many doctors. Foreign doctors were systematically kept out of the province. The OMA also agreed later to schemes that capped the annual revenue of specialists at $400,000, thus limiting the supply of specialists. Under the new contract, that cap will not be lifted until 2008, but more likely it will never be lifted.

Doctors in Ontario, and across Canada, are no longer bearers of noble principles aimed at the health and welfare of their patients. They are already indentured servants of bureaucrats, politicians and union bosses at the OMA. This is exactly as planned.

A federal-provincial health policy paper, written by two eminent members of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Morris Barer and Greg Stoddart, concluded back in 1991 that doctors were no longer to be in charge of their destinies. "There is a continuing evolution from the view of physicians as private agents for their patients and their own interests, to the view of physicians as clinically skilled agents serving the collective goals of a publicly funded health care system."

The OMA union monopoly has offered its doctors a contract that further entrenches that trend. Let's hope, as patients, that Ontario doctors have the courage to turn it down."

*

2004 was a giddy year for the Liberals - they got their Commitment to the future of medicare act, they started the LHINs monster, they pretended their newly instituted multi billion dollar health tax was just a premium, and they paid off/settled with the OMA for four years.

Well, in 2008, the four years is up, and we'll see what McGuinty has to shell out to keep our doctors as vassals to the provincial overlords. The insiduousness of this system, the interdependence of all levels on the state, is shocking. And what do we have to show for it - shortages, wait-lists, line-ups, suffering , death, and , truly, no-one - they have made sure of it - can be held liable. The circle almost always points elsewhere up or down the line. You can't blame the doctors for organizing - Tommy Douglas set that puppy's tail wagging the minute the state began to socialize the insurance system, which has impacted every aspect of health delivery. It's always in the state's favour to fan the proletariat to blame doctors for their system's ills - but when you outlaw and remove the accountability which stems from a contractual payment relationship between doctor and patient, the state noses its way in as the monopoly payer, with good intentions, originally, of course, and then skews the market with its interventionist whims, acting really like the Soviet's central-planning fiasco.

Laura Callaghan (St. Catharines Standard, Dec.12, 2007) wrote in "Give alternate-care providers more responsibilities":
"The OMA also opposes changes to the scope of practice in the current legislation, which would allow them a larger role in providing health care within a hospital or community."
She asks "What will it take for the NHS to start focusing on displacing the demands of the OMA with the needs of the people of Niagara?" So, contract time is coming in 2008, the shortages, etc. are piling up...the time is ripe for some good old labour politics. "The needs of the people"...will be met by, what... by not giving them health-care payer/provider choices?!? By more monopolism?! Really, Laura?
The "needs of the people" will only be met by force-feeding patients more monopolistic Tommy Douglas single-payer-rearrrange-the-deck-chairs-while-the-ship-sinks crap? Really, Laura?!

It's sad it has come to this. What if a patient WANTS a qualified DOCTOR?

We aready have a pretend universal health system, with systemic problems directly associated with its inherent command-and-control structure: a bait-and-switch system that promises medicare, but can't deliver it; now, after McGuinty's Liberals cut coverage while increasing premiums (...mull that hypocrisy, that contradiction of so-called "universal healthcare" for a while...) the next thing on the list to try, in a desperate attempt to beat Ontario's dead horse of a single-payer system to life, is having pseudo-doctors in our pretend system!!
Isn't that just perfect?  So the OMA can be demonized again: lookit thare - dem docters is aginst cost-savings! Save the costs!!
It's Barer-Stoddart-style B.S. all over again, from another side. Get rid of doctors, but still pretend that you have the same system.
If I wanted a nurse practitioner, then I should get a qualified one. If I want a doctor, I should be able to get a doctor, not a reasonable facsimile of a doctor. Will these nurse practitioners have the professional liability to cover themselves for any medical negligence on their part caused to patients? Or, will that too be compromised by the state (against the patient, in favour of the nurses), by having limits on malpractice suits and awards? This is the very reason we need a private parallel health system, with its own facilities and organizational structure, where patient-accountable sanity prevails. When the monopoly is our only choice {therefore it is NOT "a choice" at all} it's the Callaghan's who have the upper hand, certainly not doctors, and least of all, patients.

As the saying goes, too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.
*

Time for Ontario towns to declare themselves a medicare-free zone!

Niagara This Week’s series of healthcare stories, “Is there a doctor in the house?”, (Nov.23, 2007) was refreshingly detailed, varied, and surprisingly candid.

We should be asking tough questions about the nature of socialized healthcare and the results it has brought after some forty years of imposition.

It’s unfortunate this story didn't appear prior to the Oct. 2007 Ontario election, because healthcare is a provincial responsibility, and this election sadly took place in a virtual vacuum of healthcare debate.

St. Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley barely said anything about healthcare: all was good. Any problems were typically glossed over and downplayed. He’s building us a hospital, you see, soon…well, eventually…so we should be grateful to Bradley and his Liberals for their great effort to do this favour on our behalf!

Healthcare was always ‘in crisis’ when Bradley’s Liberals were in opposition, you see. Now, as far as Grits would have us believe, all is well.

NTW wrote “The OMA estimates Ontario needs at least 1,000 family doctors now”.
However, I’ve read reports (National Post, Nov.15, 2007) where the Ontario Medical Association’s Janice Willett says Ontario is short 2,000 GP’s and specialists. The Liberals aren't close to delivering either number.

Gord Bowes column “Faith-based funding should be all or nothing” was equally refreshing: this is a writer who should appear more often. McGuinty and his Liberals were nothing less than “smarmy” in how they hypocritically flamed the faith-based-funding issue, pandering to an embarrassing latent bigotry in the populace. Yet, about 1.2 million Ontarians (which is almost 10% of our population) don’t have a family doctor, and this wasn’t even an election issue!

Mike Williscraft’s comments in “Doctor shortage needs more attention”, regarding physicians and “priority” waiting lists are also timely and worth further debate.

Why are local councils subsidizing health care in the first place - it’s a provincial responsibility. Our medicare myth has for too long promulgated the illusion that there are no priorities or preferences, let alone waiting-lists, in socialized healthcare. Many of us cling to the perception that socialized medicare delivered by a single-payer government monopoly, in and of itself, can’t be the source of our current problems.

It is an insidious argument that just because a fed-up municipality foolishly puts up, for example, $50,000 to lure doctors to their jurisdiction (because the province failed to fulfil its obligations) somehow then entitles that municipality’s citizens to preferential treatment. This is specifically the kind of muddled, egalitarian argument that is bogging down our entire system.

You want socialized medicare, but then you want to claim entitlement to priority socialized medicare?! You want the doctor beholden to government lists as a servile civil servant?

Such meddling by various layers of government, constant interference, and centralist manipulation, mixed with a blind belief that just a little bit more big-government intervention will cure healthcare’s woes, is manifest all around us: it’s even emotionally ingrained to be part of our patriotic national psyche.

It would be interesting to see those municipalities who use taxpayer cash to lure doctors to their jurisdiction try something bold, something radical – to rise up in the face of Ontario’s restrictive, failing healthcare monopoly and declare their jurisdiction a government-monopoly-medicare-free zone to encourage medical practices. It could be a kind of incubator functioning in the vacuum of the province’s ineptitude to deliver on its obligations, and to alleviate the market-restrictions of its health monopoly. They’ll then see how fast Health Minister George Smitherman flies over to complain and shut them down!

Let him try.

Such a symbolic declaration by towns across Ontario would show the extent of the problem and the unnecessary discontent and suffering Smitherman's monopoly is causing.

Ontario’s Liberals are already facing a constitutional court challenge from plaintiffs Lindsay McCreith and Shona Holmes, similar to Quebec’s Chaoulli challenge, which brings into question the Liberal government’s “right” to deny patients timely medical treatment, while at the same time banning patients the option of arranging for their care themselves.

Williscraft is correct in observing that “what is being done is not enough”. It depends on whether you believe in shared market solutions or government–only solutions. What the Liberals are doing is putting Ontarians at risk in waiting lines, then exporting patients to the States for treatment that medicare is unable to provide here.

Should we continue to dump more money into Ontario's plainly-evident failure of socialized medicare? (As premier Dalton McGuinty himself said during the televised leaders' debate during the last campaign, Ontario already spends 50% of its budget on healthcare).

Or should the Ontario Liberals reform their failed Commitment To The Future of Medicare Act, before the courts do their job for them and render that authoritarian legislation obsolete?

Should we remove the federal Canada Health Act from its pedestal, and make it more accountable to actual patients, rather than function as an 'enabler' maintaining the status-quo? The CHA could be reformed so it would no longer be used as a shield to cover inept provincial health systems which operate exclusively as single-payer, single-provider monopolies.

Patients should have access to choice in buying private health insurance, and Ontario’s restrictive OHIP health marketing board should face payer and provider competition.

We should seek a healthy private-parallel health-care system.
*

Is it time to remove the Canada Health Act from its pedestal?

This story, "Medicare's Mr. Fix-It", is by Gloria Galloway (Globe and Mail, Dec.18, 2004):

"Twenty years ago, Bill Tholl helped to draft a law so irritating to Canada's doctors that some of them hit the bricks. Today, he's their top troubleshooter. Did he change his tune -- or did they?

A glass-encased handwritten letter occupies a prominent spot on the wall in Bill Tholl's expansive office at the Canadian Medical Association.
It's from Monique Bégin, the former Liberal health minister, thanking Mr. Tholl for his role in the creation of the Canada Health Act -- the thread that binds the country's cherished public health system.
"A most sincere 'thank you' for all your work in our Medicare legislation," Ms. Bégin writes. "As one of the three musketeers -- with Don and Dave -- you won all your fights against time, stupidity, resistance, passivity, etc., etc. Good for you! And good for all of us, for it is such a great program,"
Twenty-one years ago, Mr. Tholl and his Health Department colleagues Donald MacNaught and David Beavis were handpicked by Ms. Bégin to draft the law that today ensures all Canadians have equal access to publicly funded medical treatment.
It was also the law that ended doctors' ability to charge patients more than medicare would pay, and the law that eventually prompted Ontario doctors to close their office doors for 23 bitter days in the spring of 1986.
So what is a self-declared, public-health advocate like Bill Tholl now doing as secretary-general of the CMA -- that is, the doctors' chief advocate?
Even today, the question of support for socialized medicine periodically comes up for discussion, and "it always," Mr. Tholl says, with characteristic understatement, "engenders a very animated debate. But when it comes time to push the button, yes or no for medicare, the answer is always yes.
"And the biggest push came on April 17, 2001, when they went out and hired a guy they know is committed to medicare. Why would they hire me, if they didn't think that's really where they wanted to go?"
Outgoing and outspoken, the 51-year-old health economist hails, appropriately, from Saskatchewan, the home of Tommy Douglas and Roy Romanow. In the fall of 1983, when he got the call from Ms. Bégin, he was assistant director of her department's health-policy branch. "She brought me in as the new kid on the block," he said, as someone "who had a different policy sense."
The Canada Health Act that she envisioned was controversial from its inception.
The initial 50-50 cost-sharing agreement between the federal and provincial governments had been replaced in the mid-1970s with block funding for health care. This approach gave the provinces much greater flexibility in spending and took away Ottawa's ability to claw back funds when it disagreed with what a province was doing. But it also opened the door to accusations that health-care money was being diverted, that it was building roads instead of hospitals.
Still, Ms. Bégin -- someone possessed of "tremendous political instincts," Mr. Tholl says -- had to persuade the cabinet of Pierre Trudeau that a new law was needed. And there were some powerful opponents, including every province and the Canadian Medical Association.
"The provincial governments are saying, 'You don't need this, just give us our flexibility,' " Mr. Tholl recalls. "Meanwhile, extra-billing and user fees are starting to go up and there are more and more concerns, particularly from the Canadian Labour Congress and . . . the Canadian Health Coalition."
Ms. Bégin asked him to put together a "stoplight" chart for the cabinet that would show where all the parties stood on the various elements of the proposed act, each denoted with a red, yellow or green sticker. The top half, representing the provinces and the doctors, was awash in red. The bottom half, representing labour, nurses and health-care advocates, was green.
Mr. Trudeau took a look at the chart and said: "Now, let me understand this. The doctors are against it, all the provinces are against it, but the people of Canada want it. We're going do it," Mr. Tholl says, recounting Ms. Bégin's version of the meeting.
So the Canada Health Act was on the agenda -- and the battle lines with the nation's doctors were drawn.
One of Mr. Tholl's first tasks was to establish an appropriate penalty for provinces that allowed doctors to overbill. "We actually did a bunch of studies, and said, 'How much is it going to take to bribe provincial governments to not allow this stuff?' "
They settled on a dollar-for-dollar clawback. Some provinces, including Quebec, Alberta and Ontario, protested loudly but eventually relented and ended the extra-billing. And the medical profession was livid.
In June, 1986, Ontario doctors took to the streets. Emergency wards were closed, the public was frantic and, at one point, Liberal premier David Peterson found himself surrounded by 150 placard-waving doctors calling him a "gutless tyrant." The strike ended just over three weeks later with all sides bearing scars.
Mr. Tholl won't talk about the current dispute between the Ontario Medical Association and Queen's Park. However, he believes that the province's doctors stropped short of walking off the job this fall after rejecting the government's offer because the wounds from 1986 -- and the belief that the public has never forgiven those 23 lost days -- still linger.
Even after the doctors returned to their jobs, the CMA and the OMA pressed ahead with a court challenge against the act that they had launched a year earlier.
"I was the lead guy in developing the agreed statement of fact for the government of Canada," Mr. Tholl says. Because the act had no provisions for resolving disputes, the doctors were calling it "organized begging, not organized medicine."
Then, in July, 1988, Mr. Tholl was part of a delegation to Poland that included Dr. Léo Paul Landry, a former CMA secretary-general. "For 10 days, we rode on this bus through Poland and I kept . . . using the line, 'If you win, you lose. If you win in the court of law, you lose in the court of public opinion forever. This is stupid.'
"We got off the plane in Montreal and he said, 'You are going to come to work for me some day,' and I said, 'Never, not as long as you guys are taking the Canada Health Act to court. It's an albatross around your neck.' And so we struck up a friendship."
A short time later, Mr. Landry called to ask if he would meet the CMA executive to explain the organization's many shortcomings. Mr. Tholl revelled in the opportunity. And it wasn't long before he was formally asked to work for the doctors' association as director of health policy and economics -- and to extricate the CMA from the court challenge. He took the job.
"We signed a letter saying, 'We're sorry and we promise we'll never do it again,' and we paid an amount that was substantially less than $1.3-million," which was what the government was demanding.
In 1996, Mr. Tholl left the CMA to become executive director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, but he was recruited back in 2001, this time to the association's top position. The former enemy was now in charge -- a fact that Mr. Tholl said signalled something beyond mere acquiescence to the publicly funded system. The doctors, not all of them, but a clear majority, had embraced medicare.
"I think there has been a sea change in medicine's approach to things. My past was absolutely not a secret. Everybody and their dog knew who I was. Would they have hired me as secretary-general if they hadn't crossed that Rubicon?"
He and the CMA played a key role in the federal-provincial health accord reached with much fanfare in September, and will help to oversee its implementation. However, he warns, the accord falls well short of the much sought-after "fix for a generation," and the Canada Health Act still has detractors within the medical profession.
They are "those libertarians . . . who fought hard to make sure that governments never got in between them and their patients," and "really don't want to get sucked into an employer-employee relationship with government," he said.
But there is also a whole new generation of doctors raised in the post-medicare world. Younger doctors "wouldn't know what to do with a Visa machine if it were put in their office tomorrow to charge people," Mr. Tholl says. "They are not entrepreneurs; they are great clinicians."
And many have gown more fearful of the big health-management organizations (HMOs) that run medicine south of the border than they are of government control. "Doctors in Canada get a heck of a lot more clinical autonomy and flexibility than they do in the United States," Mr. Tholl said
He laments the huge southward migration of doctors during the 1990s as the federal government chopped transfer payments to the provinces. He also laments that the migration is still taking place -- a net loss of about 200 doctors a year.
But "there is a certain kind and class of physician that's been left in Canada and it's almost a kind of Darwinism," he said. Also, as the defected doctors age, many are returning to Canada to be with their families -- and to take advantage of this country's health system.
After all, as Mr. Tholl noted, it was the Canadian Medical Association that first proposed a national health-insurance program back in 1933.
That was "way, way, way before governments were even thinking about it," he said. "So, I like to think, in many respects, it's almost a return to the basic sense of the most caring of the caring professions." "

*
With this background to the CHA, is it surprising that six months after this story was written, Quebec's Chaoulli decision came in June of 2005? Some Canadians were wondering what took so long. The damaging consequence of state-run, single-payer monopoly medicine was successfully challenged. The promises that the CHA makes are broken in practice all the time. For years, provincial governments, through sheer inertia, were able to simply bulldoze, dismiss, bluster, and gloss over the accruing problems festering under utopian-CHA cover. We wanted to believe the snake-oil that Douglas, Tholl and Begin, Romanow, the CLC and Trudeau were selling, and for years the charade of sustainability and the perception of a government-orchestrated, yet market-receptive healthcare system were seemingly working before our very eyes. A true wonder - doctors who don't know about Visa machines, while central-planner bureaucrats bribe provinces to interfere with the healthcare market!
Nothing wrong with that "libertarian" picture at all!
Which leads us to 2007, and the healthcare mess Ontario is in now, after two decades of Thollist-style market manipulation: Ontario is now also facing its own constitutional healthcare court challenge. Individuals are only now able to fight back against the no-patient-choice medicare menace which ostensibly was supposed to help them, but is now working against patients, and almost killing them.
The collective must answer to the individual. Or, do we believe that the individual must submit to the collective?
I believe the Canada Health Act must be reformed to preclude it from being utilized as a cover, an enabler, an apologist, for authoritarian collectivized health-care.
It's utter stupidity to passively maintain this Liberal charade.

Can Jim Bradley explain why he "stood up and said 'I hate doctors'"?

The following story by Michael Valpy (Globe and Mail, Jan. 5, 1991) gives an interesting overview of the tenuous relationship between doctors and the Liberal bullies of the David Peterson Ontario government. It’s hard to believe that a cocky Liberal like St. Catharines MPP Jim Bradley, as outlined in this story, would say that he hates doctors. Why would he say that? Does Liberal Jim Bradley still hate doctors? Even today, in 2007, Bradley’s Liberals are still forcing patients to the States for treatment that Bradley’s healthcare monopoly fails to deliver at home: maybe Bradley hates patients too? Maybe if Bradley and his Liberals had actually listened to doctors, not attacked them in the 1980’s, then our present healthcare shortages may have been averted.

It was certainly the height of gauche hypocrisy for Bradley to have spoken at the memorial service of Suzanne Aucoin (St. Catharines Standard, Nov.17, 2007) when he said "She spotted deficiencies in the health-care system and brought them to everyone's attention." The utter smarminess of this Liberal! Jim Bradley, over his 30 years in office, had a lot to with these "deficiencies" in the first place.

He's a proud supporter of the very system whose deficiencies let Aucoin down, that denied her funding, that forced her to the States for treatment - because it was unavailable in Jim Bradley's single-payer, no-choice monopoly system! Aucoin got her treatment where it was available - in the States, whose system Liberals like Jim Bradley love to deride, and where Jim Bradley's Liberals still force patients to because they can't receive care here in Ontario. How convenient to preach the merits of Ontario medicare while utilizing the American system to cover Ontario's systemic inadequacies.

Many Ontarians have suffered due to Jim Bradley's Liberal handiwork. Valpy's story is an account about how the Liberals cavalierly treated the medical profession in the 80's.
We have to wonder ... how much different are they now? I say they're still the same, they've more subtly ingratiated themselves into a position where they appear as outsiders to the problems which they set in motion years earlier.

*

“HEALING THYSELF , Physicians want government to discuss a concept called utilization management. It may help contain health-care costs - and get doctors out of the doghouse Ontario MDs seek to mend rupture with province.

By Michael Valpy
In September, when Ontario's new government surprised everyone including itself by getting elected, there was immediate speculation about who would be named attorney-general. The wisdom emanating from the designated experts on the election-night television panels was that it must be someone who could deal with the Law Society of Upper Canada, who could work with the legal profession and have the respect of the bar. It also should be noted that a substantial number of those invited by TV stations to sit on these expert panels were lawyers.

Not doctors.

No doctors were to be seen offering political analyses to the public or speculating on the identity of the next health minister - this in a province where $13.9-billion, a third of Ontario's budget, is expended on health care (compared to $950-million for the combined ministries of the attorney-general and solicitor-general).

No doctors, at a time when health care, one of the few remaining national assets universally valued by Canadians, is deemed to be in crisis.

And no concerns raised by the TV pundits about whether Ontario's titularly socialist government would appoint a health minister who could work with the doctors. No one cared.

This makes a statement about the comparative political weight doctors and lawyers wield in Canada. It also is evidence that the doctors and the Ontario Medical Association are still, to put it mildly, in the doghouse.

A search through two years' of newspaper files turns up a surprising number of plaintive pleas from the OMA to be allowed to "work with government," to be accepted as being "onside with government" in trying to control health-care costs and more effectively manage the system. All these entreaties appear to have fallen on deaf ears - both political and news media.

Ontario's doctors have been out in the cold politically since their disastrous 26-day strike in 1986 in protest against the then-Liberal government's Health Care Accessibility Act, which banned extra-billing. Their strike had no public support. After its collapse, a number of doctors further fouled the profession's nest by continuing to bill in excess of government-approved fees in defiance of the law. The OMA, in addition, initiated a constitutional challenge both to the Ontario legislation and to the Canada Health Act.

The doctors failed to recognize the fundamental political axiom that, if no one with influence supports your cause, government has carte blanche to do terrible things to you - and end up looking good in the process. The doctors believed their strike to be about professional freedom; the public thought it was about greed.

Recently, in interviews, Dr. Ted Boadway, the OMA's director of health policy, and Dr. David Peachy, the OMA's director of professional affairs, talked about the previous Ontario government's scorched earth policy on the OMA and the medical profession. The Liberals, they said, assumed a "messianic mania" to "save" medicare from the doctors.

"It was (former Liberal health minister) Murray Elston's policy to take no prisoners," said Dr. Boadway. "If he could have exterminated us, he would have. Jim Bradley (the former environment minister) stood up and said: 'I hate doctors.' The Liberals acquired a perverse delight in attacking us." [passage red-bolded by me for emphasis]

Said Dr. Peachy: "There never was a relationship with Elinor Caplan (the last Liberal health minister). She was unrelateable to. Her ministry was the least consultative I've ever seen. Amendments to regulations we'd learn about the day before (they were promulgated), sometimes the day after."

The fallout from the strike and the Ontario government's retribution has been devastating to the profession, the OMA officials said. Surveys of doctors have shown they feel rejected by their communities and in turn have rejected their communities.

Last April, the OMA abandoned its legal challenges. "The times have changed and we have changed," said OMA president Dr. Carole Guzman. "This system of medicare is what the public wants . . . and we are willing to work with that system."

But no peace doves were released at Queen's Park. Requests from the OMA to meet with the government continued to engender no response. "We've told the government: 'We're onside, we'll work with you.' But the government has never called," said Dr. Boadway.
And, so far, neither has Ontario's now-ruling New Democrats.

In mid-December, however, after some frantic messages sent to Queen's Park indicating the OMA's enthusiasm for a meeting, the association did receive a letter from Frances Lankin, chairwoman of Cabinet's management board, suggesting everyone should get together in the new year.

"There is a lot of anxiety about the first contact and we want to start out on the right foot," said Dr. Boadway. "We don't know what conventional view they may have of the ugly OMA or whether they're still worried about being slam-dunked by us."

The OMA has a number of reasons for being eager to reopen communications.

It wants to strengthen its credibility with Ontario's 24,000 doctors. The OMA has image problems trying to appear as the tough and powerful vehicle of the medical profession. It does not compare well to, say, the Law Society of Upper Canada.

It wants to get negotiations going with government toward a new fee schedule. It wants the government to deliver on Premier Bob Rae's unofficial promise to give the doctors the instrument of binding arbitration to resolve fee disputes.

The association also believes it has an important message to bring to the New Democrats - a message that it can get the medical profession behind major economies in the cost of health care: "Everyone has been looking for a new platform and we think we've found it," he said. The platform is utilization management - what Dr. Boadway describes as "clinical guidelines without the cookbook approach, leading to better care . . . and showing you can be efficient and also save money".

It is not a strikingly new idea. But until now it has been on the periphery of the debate over costs. The OMA wants to bring it to centre stage.

Essentially, its thesis is that the costs of new technology and new treatment procedures are grossly under-assessed before they are introduced into hospitals and doctors' offices. And it is these new technologies and procedures that have become major items driving health- care costs. This is held to be true about health care in Canada as well as elsewhere in the industrialized world. Most of the fat in these systems has been squeezed out, Dr. Boadway said, yet costs continue to rise - and they all seem to be rising on the same slope.

Utilization management is an attempt to assess whether a proposed new procedure or piece of equipment is really better than what it is replacing - almost always at far greater cost.

Prof. Adam Linton of the University of Western Ontario's medical school and epidemiologist David Naylor of Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre limned the dimensions of the problem in a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine. "The system in Ontario," they wrote, "has failed to stem the tide of drugs and devices of questionable usefulness. . . . The same lack of assessment and control is evident for novel or more intensive applications of established techniques or equipment.

"Furthermore, accepted practice patterns are rarely scrutinized, in part because there are no formal criteria for assessing the indications for a host of medical and surgical tests and procedures. . . ."

The two doctors also point out that these new technologies are marketed aggressively by manufacturers - and often by medical specialists - as life-saving devices and treatments, leaving hospitals and the provincial ministry of health obviously reluctant not to find the money somewhere to pay for them.

Hospitals and doctors, indeed, have a practical reason for going along with the new technologies: they fear their insurers might reduce coverage unless they accept them.

Drs. Linton and Naylor cite one case where a diagnostic drug was introduced universally into the Ontario health-care system even though it lacked satisfactory epidemiological evaluation and despite the existence of data from Britain that said total conversion to the drug in that country might save 15 lives a year but at a cost exceeding $2-million each.

The drug, known as a low-osmolarity contrast medium (LOCM), is injected into the body for such procedures as kidney X-rays and angiography. It causes less discomfort generally to patients than traditional contrast mediums and, in some cases, could prevent death from adverse reactions to other chemicals.

Drs. Linton and Naylor argue that if Ontario had opted for selective use of the drug only for those patients known to be at high risk from other mediums, the cost to the health-care system would have been a fraction of the $35-million spent for conversion (which was about $35- million).

In an interview, Dr. Linton said probably not a month goes by without "something out there being swept into use without proper evaluation of cost and application." And while there is no adequate way of calculating how much total extra cost is being imposed on the health-care system, Dr. Linton said, the cost of new technologies is increasing astronomically.

The development of sound clinical guidelines on what should or should not be accepted into the health-care system is a thorny issue. The OMA and Dr. Linton (one of the association's most active members) believes that doctors will support utilization management only if the guidelines are flexible, supportable and related to quality of care - which is what Dr. Boadway means when he says guidelines "without the cookbook approach".

Dr. Linton suggested three categories. Where the evaluation of a technology is supported by hard science, then a usage-standard can be set. Where the science is reasonably good, then a guideline - with some flexibility - can be written. Where the science is very soft, then options, or "optimal practice patterns", can be drawn up.

The OMA believes the best chance of selling guidelines to the profession is if the OMA draws them up itself along the lines suggested by Dr. Linton. Any attempt to impose guidelines on doctors from outside will be branded a totally intolerable intrusion into professionalism.

The first step is getting government to listen to what they have to say."
(Globe and Mail, Jan.5, 1991)
*

And Jim Bradley today, in 2007, has the audacity to talk about "deficiencies', as if he had no role whatsoever in creating them. Un-flicking-real.