What C. difficile outbreak?! Liberal Jim Bradley's fighting climate change again!!

More climate-change innuendo and dastardly GreenFear TM is being spread like manure by photo-op Liberals Jim Bradley and Glen Murray. What a pair.

Notice the fearmongering headline chosen by the St.Catharines Standard's editors for this July 12, 2011 story: "Grant will help winemakers fight climate change".  Of course, no-one from the Standard bothered to ask Bradley or specify what he actually meant by "climate change"!!

And hey, there Jimmy: don't strawberry growers need to... umm... "fight climate change" too?! Or pear growers? What about peach growers? Or what about the apricot industry - or for that matter, anyone, in any industry - won't we all be doomed unless Jim Bradley gives us all a grant, and personally saves us from 'Climate Change' ??!
Bradley bullshits about "changing climates", about "significant weather incidents", about "dramatic swings" and about "climatic change incidents"... extremely scary, worrisome stuff - of course, though, Bradley carefully says nothing specific, and gives no actual definitions to explain what he meant.

What Bradley really meant was to use climate fear to spend (our) money. Simple. Fear-monger a bit, give away some tax cash, pretend you've accomplished something. This is Jimmy's groove, man. Let's remember: Global warming is all settled to greensheviks such as Jim; there's "no doubt" about all of this, sez Jim: yep, just trust Jim... don't ask any questions, just believe what Jimmy sez...

So glad to see Bullshit Bradley's on the climate case. Screw the C. difficile file (...thankfully, no hack from the St. Catharines Standard bothered to ask these two Liberal hacks about that l'il problem...)  JIMMY'S FIGHTIN' GLOBAL WARMING again!! YAHOOOO! Long live the Mann-made hockey stick graph!!

And Gary Pickering's fearsome exaggeration is great, isn't it; and we - through Bradley's "generosity" - get to pay for this climate fear exercise. As if industry - and mankind - has NEVER had to "adapt to changing weather" ever before - or at least, until Bradley came by, waving 2.86 million tax-dollars around, singing "Come get it...and vote for me..." ...for the love of gaia...

Here's St. Catharines Standard reporter Bolichowsky's story (I swear he's a VanDongen doppelganger...no perspective to the story but what the government fed him)

"From chilly springs to flash frosts, Niagara's grapes could become hardy enough to handle it all thanks to a provincially funded research team.

The Ontario government kicked in about $2.86 million in funding Monday for Brock University's Cool Climate Viticulture and Oenology Institute. The grant will go to a 19-person team studying how to adapt the region's wine industry to changing climates.
"We can't sit on our laurels," said Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation Glen Murray, speaking at a funding announcement attended by many big names in the wine business. "We have, quite frankly, 7,000 jobs in Ontario that rely on wine and grape growers."
The cash will go toward projects like breeding hardier grapevines and studying the effects of climate change on Niagara's grape-growing. The team will also look at controlling invasive species and bringing in new products, like wine made from grapes ripened off the vine.
Murray couched the Brock research as part of the growing knowledge-based economy in Ontario.
"There's little doubt that we're going to see significant weather incidents and climatic change incidents," said Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Jim Bradley, the St. Catharines MPP. That could include dramatic swings in the weather.
He said those changes could deal a harsh blow to grapes.
In especially bad years, he said, foul weather could leave grape growers empty-handed.
He said the funding will likely kick in this year and is already accounted for in the provincial budget.
Brock professor Gary Pickering, who will head the research team, called climate change "the single most urgent challenge facing our world." He said industries will have to adapt to changing weather to succeed.
The grant, he said, will position the wine industry well to tackle that change.
If the temperature does rise in the region, cold-weather grapes like Pinot Noir and Riesling could have it rough. But warmer conditions could open the door to big, red grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon.
An expanded warm zone could also see more parts of Ontario become prime real estate for grapes.
Bradley said even if the province's wine zone expands, Niagara would likely still be Ontario's grape heavyweight.
"This will always be the area which is very favourable," he said. "The climatic conditions here are such that it's very favourable."
Still, he said, "it's good for the entire province, and I think we all benefit when anyone in Ontario is creating wealth for the province."
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And see Mike Zettel's equally devoid-of-scrutiny report  Liberal stenography in the Jul.11, 2011 edition of  Niagara This Week.
Pathetic.
In Zettel's report, Gary Pickering's unchallenged GreenFear-mongering money-shot-quote is his contention (...a contention which naturally went uncontested, of course, by NTW - that's how the local press works: to amplify the climate fear bullshit spread by Liberals, but never to challenge it..!) that the struggle to face climate change “represents the greatest challenge facing humanity.”
Sure, Gary.
Where's the MUSH sector oversight??
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Time to get the Niagara Mid-Pen highway rolling

Re Paikin's Agenda Camp (May16, 2011, TVO) Liberal MPP Kim Craitor tells us he's not in favour of the mid-pen highway, and also says that Port Colborne mayor Vance Badawey supports extending only a 406 extension. Then Paikin brings in Badawey...
 (I don't recall whether Paikin told the audience that Badawey was a former Liberal contender in Niagara south, and would have been Craitor's colleague at Queen's Park!)
...who goes on to tell the audience that he wants the mid-pen continued on beyond Niagara to south-central Ontario - essentially as it was envisioned by the Conservatives before Craitor, Jim Bradley (and Badawey himself, through his Liberal candidacy) destroyed those very same plans in 2003!
And now Badawey says (correctly) that the mid-pen environmental assessments have been done and basically sitting collecting dust for years - and Badawey should know: his Liberals are the ones who delayed, postponed, dicked around, and made sanctimonious political hay on the mid-pen for the last eight years: all ya gotta do is ask St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley about that  (...which Doug Herod ha ha didn't do in his May17, 2011 Standard column!! Bradley...? What does Ole Jimmy got to do with any of that...?! Yowzers, indeed... frankly...)
 So it's interesting to see how the Liberals are spinning and skewing the whole mid-pen file, pretending to be against it, or for it, or studying to be against it, or for it, or pretending to only want part of it, and then calling it something else...
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[Interesting as well during this show, that Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor actually stated that he was NOT in favour of free trade!!!  What an imbecile. If Craitor had his leftist way, there'd be no wine industry in his riding at all... flicking clown...]
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Liberal free-trade hypocrites

The Hamilton Spectator wrote in "CanGro’s shock waves" (Jun.28, 2008):

“Kate Steifelmeyer, a research associate at the George Morris Centre, an independent think tank, conducted a comparative study of the U.S. and Canadian agri-food processing sector and found the Canadian sector needs an overhaul.
She said the Canadian tender fruit processing sector is suffering from regulatory, and to some extent, taxation issues. They’re also just not keeping up in terms of capital investment and automation.”

Sounds like she got that one down pat.

Interesting to see what Greenbelt Liberals such as Kim Craitor and Jim Bradley will do about lowering tax rates and regulatory burdens on the industry… probably nothing. (see: Good things USED to grow, in On - ta - ri - o!) Who cares about the mounting impact of Liberal greenbelt, taxation, and agricultural policies upon the farmer? They’re not designed for farmers…they’re designed to capture the Liberal urban vote! (see: Stealth MPP Jim Bradley's cloaking device - it's not science fiction anymore!) To Liberals, the farmer is secondary to the greenbelt, in the very same way that the patient is secondary to their health-care system. (see: Greenbelt vassals pay tithe to Liberal Lord Bradley)

As Craitor said in the Legislature (Mar.3, 2005): “Last week, this assembly passed the important greenbelt legislation to preserve the farmlands of Ontario. In my riding, the farmlands are primarily the finest grape and tender fruit lands in North America. With the greenbelt legislation, our government made an important first step to preserve the land, but now we have to take another step to preserve the farmer; for what good is one without the other?”

Of course, the Liberals didn’t think that far ahead when they enacted the greenbelt in the first place – so there are now more steps for busy little Liberal central-planners and social-engineers to ‘save the farmer’. Priceless … this flicking Liberal government’s interventions just don’t end. Just take their farms away and make them wards of the state, already – isn’t that McGuinty’s plan, anyway? This is all collectivization in slow motion.

The fallout from the closure of Cangro should have been anticipated a long time ago; one of the main problems was that it was a monopoly in that industry, there was no competition. Why was that? Shouldn’t the Liberal Jims and the Kims have been working diligently to create an Ontario economy which encourages competition, in all sectors?? (see: Trouble ahead for Niagara's fruit industry? )

Leaving the tender fruit sector to put all their peaches in one basket, to rely on only one processor, the only game in town, was an obvious hint of the potential problems to come should this one player close down. Whether it’s a health-care monopoly run by government, or a private-sector monopoly in a niche agricultural sector, the challenge is to create competition (not corporate welfare).

I wonder how the farmers are going to sell their crops largely as fresh market … one can only eat so much summer fruit. The whole point is to preserve this abundance of summer, canned or frozen, so it can be stored and shipped as a commodity during the rest of the year until the next year’s crop comes in. Fresh market can only take you so far.

This “buy local” fad is a crock, as well – you want to buy local, fine, but to what extent - will you then also give up your right to sell your product in other areas??? Come on!! ‘Buy local’ is quite meaningless. Will you whine when others deny you the privilege of exporting your produce to their market  - - - across the street; across the ocean??? You’ll have to limit all your exports (have NONE to spare) and live in some utopian commune, each with its own vehicle assembly plants, and canning plants and tractor factories…why, it’s socialist’s dream come true! OOPS – you had a good year, with an abundance of nice peaches, way too many for your closed village to eat, well, you'll just have to bury them! Exporting is forbidden!! And in the next village, which had a poor harvest, well, they'll just have to starve, because importing peaches from another village would be illegal! Sudbury would just have to grow its own peaches, and St. Catharines would have to mine and smelt its own nickel. This is the bizzarro protectionist world of the Greensheviks. (see: Liberal Jim "Aw, shucks" Bradley: Greenshevik Idol)

The Spectator story also wrote about Donald Ziraldo, (a member of the Greenbelt-creation task force, and co-founder of Inniskillin Wines):

“Ziraldo said the challenge before the fruit growers is much like that experienced by the grape growers in 1989, just after Ottawa signed the North America Free Trade Agreement.

“We were wiped out. We were told we were going to keep the beer industry and throw away the wine industry and give it to Ernst and Gallo. In 1990, we were given a grant to tear out old vineyards,” he said. “There are now about 120 wineries.””

But nowhere in this story is it mentioned who was making all these dire predictions about the wine industry, as much as there was of it in 1989.

Ziraldo doesn’t mention who was saying these things!

But we all know, don’t we, that it was MPP Jim Bradley’s Ontario Liberals, under David Peterson [along with their 'accord'-buddies, Bob Rae's NDP] who were whining about free trade!

We know it was federal Liberals under John Turner who were whining about free trade! To them this was the end of the world! Protectionist Liberals everywhere whined and whined about the wine industry being somehow ‘sold-out’. (see: Free trade a "bust"? Not for Niagara wines)

Now, as Ziraldo says, there are some 120 wineries – and that is with no thanks to Liberal rhetoric, Liberal fear-mongering, Liberal protectionism, and Liberal jingoism. Free trade wasn't the enemy, it was Liberal protectionism. (see: Obama blames Canada and NAFTA for Ohio job losses )

To mark the upcoming twentieth anniversary of their political-pandering against the wine industry, Liberals such as Jim Bradley should be awarded a token bottle of 1989 Niagara Chagrin - this ruddy vintage, from a bitter harvest of sour grapes, has subtle hints of hypocrisy, with overtones of duplicity, hints of lies, and a touch of irony, all with a bouquet reminiscent of an overwhelming stench of bad gas.

It nicely complements the eating of crow.
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[update: it's interesting to now hear (on Steve Paikin's TVO show, Apr.8, 2011) Robin Sears (former Ontario NDP'er Bob Rae's chief of staff in the late 1980's) actually admit that he personally believed in free trade, yet, nevertheless, Sears actively helped the socialists continue with their anti-free-trade idiocy - all of course, geared to smear conservatives, at any cost, no matter how wrong the socialists' own dogma was!!]
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Also interesting to see how writers in the future (in 2018, in Trump's era) create deceptive narratives about free trade, as the Toronto Red Star's Rick Salutin did in Aug. 2018, writing about how Mulroney was not a supporter of free trade. What Salutin fails to mention, is the nuance that Mulroney's position in 1983 - when he was still fighting for the Conservative leadership - was against unfettered free trade... a big difference to having a formalized trade agreement! Guess it's inconvenient for Salutn to point that out!! Salutin purposefully - deceptively - also FAILS to mention how a campaigning Chretien LIED about tearing up Canada's free trade agreement if he was elected - - -and, when he was elected, Chretien the Liberal liar, DIDN'T DO IT!!
Now in 2018 under Trump's Presidency,  we note the irony that Trump is doing what the leftists in Canada always wanted: to destroy our trade agreements! Yep: Trump's dong what Chretien, Peterson, David Suzuki, Salutin, Pierre Berton, Maude Barlow, Bob Rae, wanted  - getting rid of NAFTA. Irony of ironies for the drooling Trump haters, that Trump is carrying out their wet dream. 

Compare what the Toronto Star's Salutin wrote in 2018, to what the Toronto Star's Brett Popplewell wrote back in 2009, in NAFTA the nasty no more, Feb, 7, 2009 :

"...It was 21 years ago that the issue divided Canadians along party lines. The 1988 general election was fought over free trade, a policy championed by then-prime minister Brian Mulroney. He said Canadians would profit from lowering tariffs on exports to the U.S. Liberal leader John Turner charged that by enacting the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the U.S., Mulroney had with one stroke of a pen signed away Canada's sovereignty.

But the forecasts of impending doom for Canada have not come true. In fact, many of the industries that some predicted would die (most notably Canadian wine production) have actually benefited from open access to the U.S. market.

While there have been problems, as when the U.S. imposed tariffs on our softwood lumber and we imposed tariffs on their dairy products, most agree the Free Trade Agreement of 1988, which later incorporated Mexico and morphed into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has benefited Canadians..."

It was Liberal pieces of sh!t such as Turner and Peterson who were fear mongering against free trade.

Here's what Fred Lum wrote about "Mulroney's Lasting  Legacy" in the Globe and Mail (Oct.23, 2012):

 "...Mr. Mulroney deserves a great deal of personal credit. Free trade was not an agenda he originated. It emerged from a Royal Commission appointed by the Liberals and headed by a Liberal, Donald Macdonald. But when his government decided to make freer trade with the U.S. a priority, Mr. Mulroney threw himself into it, at great political risk. His willingness then to roll the dice made all the difference.

Mr. Mulroney was a great campaigner and a tough negotiator, surrounded by a team of tough negotiators. The success achieved on Oct. 3, 1987 has shaped Canada's economic development and its place in the global economy for the better. As he points out, trade volumes have tripled, and while there were casualties of the FTA, it did not result in the end of industries many had feared, such as the vintners in Niagara and the Okanagan, who emerged stronger. In a speech in Toronto Wednesday night, Mr. Mulroney said the FTA had erased old doubts and fears about Canada in the world, in favour of confidence and ambition. He's right..."

Funny how in 2018 the Toronto Star hagiographer/revisionist Rick Salutin just kinda swept aside Mulroney's pivotal role!! Let's look back to when Mordecai Richler schooled the fear-mongering Salutin on BarbaraFrum's CBC show. Classic!

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Free trade a "bust"? Not for Niagara wines

The St. Catharines Standard story, "Free trade a bust for most Canadians, report says", (Dec.28, 2007) reported the "left-wing think tank, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives argues in a report to be released today that while the bilateral trade deal, and its successor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, has boosted corporate bottom lines, for most Canadians it has been a bust."

This Canadian Press article by Julian Beltrame didn't provide any other views on the report.

Niagarans well remember the fearmongering about free trade from the likes of Liberals John Turner and (shudder) David Peterson. It was the global warming hysteria du jour. The Liberals pandered to fears that the protected, plodding, same-old-same-old grape and wine industry would simply disappear. It was a common whine from the Liberals that the wine industry was doomed for destruction...only protectionism and cozy market non-competitiveness could solve their problems. Of course, the Liberals played their greatest card, their anti-American rhetoric, to the fullest.

There was necessary restructuring, but there was new opportunity, as well. Look how well Niagara's wine makers are doing today. The boutique wineries have flourished and are exporting, meeting their competition on levels of service, of price, and most importantly, on quality.

Let's not pretend that free trade, so despised by the Liberals, was a bust for Niagara's wine industry; that it had no part in the impetus to reform and propel the wine industry to greater success.

To pretend otherwise is sour grapes.