At Home in Hespeler

“I don’t know how it happened mother,” says Premier Dad to Elizabeth McGuinty, his Czar in charge of all policy decisions.

“I was trying so hard not to turn into Mike Harris, that I never noticed I had turned into Bob Rae.”

Dalton, Economic Fundamentalism Bob Rae, Dalton McGuinty, Dalton's Mom, Mike Harris, Premier Dad

Joe Warmington Gets it (emphasis mine):

Like a giant boa constrictor, they are slowly sucking the breath out of the lives of Ontarians and the lifestyles they’ve come to know…

The public is too busy paying taxes to keep track of how this land is becoming is [sic] a giant tax, fee and regulation society that builds very little, except massive debt to pay for bureaucratic insanity.

It seems the whole game is more about saving their false economy…

They are rapidly eroding the life we understand and replacing it with a collection business, which seems to be the only industry thriving on Ontario.

Dalton, Premier Dad, writers Joe Warmington, Premier Dad

If you don’t like the policy, wait around 6 months, it’ll change:

March 2010:

“If I was to knock on 1,000 Ontario families‘ doors and ask them for their top three concerns, I’d be surprised if anybody said, `Well … one of those is we’ve got to start this new kind of mixed martial arts in Ontario. That’s going to mean a lot to me and my family,’” said McGuinty.

“It’s just not a priority for our families and it’s not a priority for me.”

August 2010:

Our government has been monitoring MMA for some time. We know that the sport has evolved and that Ontarians want to see it here.

Geez Premier Dad. You’re on about it’s not a priority for you, then you say you’ve been monitoring it for some time. Which is it?

And if Ontarians want to see it here, can we presume that if you knocked on “1,000 Ontario families‘ doors and ask them for their top three concerns,” somebody would say MMA in Ontario?

Dalton, Dalton Dalton Dalton, Premier Dad Dalton McGuinty, MMA

King Dalton the 1st today deeming the legislature unnecessary to the running of government, the members leisure more important than the people’s business, will prorogue the Provincial Legislature.

The Ontatrio MLA’s, who are currently on an extended Christmas to family day holiday, will appear for a sitting Tuesday where they will be told to go home until after the Olympics.

The Liberal government will duck questions on several issues including the handling of the Caledonia land dispute, including a Christmas holiday announcement that the government settled a lawsuit with a family claiming the police did not protect them. Other questions will include why possible criminal charges against OPP chief Julian Fantino were dropped by a Provincial Crown and why an outside Crown wasn’t appointed to review the charges. Further questions on the Provincial deficit and how the government plans to reduce it, a new all day kindergarten program were costs are spiralling out of control and why autoworkers, partially owned by both the Federal and Provincial government, don’t get Dalton’s family day to spend with their families and watch the Olympics.

Opposition MLA’s will now have to wait until March to ask those questions, causing stocks in democracy inc. to fall dramatically on the TSX. In the coming days facebook groups will sprout up as if from nowhere, university professors will release  a presser demanding this unconstitutional abuse of power be stopped and Michael Ignatieff will hold his breath until his face turns blue, proving once and for all that Dalton McGuinty is a big meany pants who can’t be trusted with power and who is less popular than this cheeto.

By press time tomorrow there will be full outrage at the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, and the rest of the media…

Won’t there? Bueller? Anybody…

Democracy, we hardly knew ye.

Dalton, Dalton Dalton Dalton Dalton McGuinty, Prorogue

The Province is appointing a crown attorney to proceed with criminal charges against the provinces top police officer:

The Ontario government is going ahead with plans to appoint one of its own Crown attorneys to prosecute Julian Fantino…

A provincial Crown will first address the matter in court on Friday morning.

Even though OPP commisioner Julian Fantino will answer for to a criminal charge, one lonely blogger calls for his resignation.

crime and justice, Dalton, In Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario… julian fantino, OPP

Stevie Cameron, where are you? Where is “On The Take II: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the McGuinty Years”? The elements are all there, the spending scandals piling up, even the traffic incident to throw in to somehow prove the other crimes.

First up is eHealth, in which McGuinty appointees and insiders where granted single source contracts and spent taxpayers money like drunken Chrétien era Liberals.

Then came the lotto file, where insiders where winning a statistically high number of big claims. Once eyes turned towards the Lotto Corp. it was soon discovered the board of the The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) thought their expense account was to cover any expense they might have, professional, personal or otherwise:

Dalton McGuinty: Sitting Down on the Job.

Your sister-in-law is having a housewarming and need a ’96 La Mondotte? No problem, that’s an expense; car broken down and, hey, I can’t get to work without a car. That’s an expense; just had a $3,713 meal (alcohol: $1458) and whoops! Left my personal credit card in my other pants. No problem, they accept Government of Ontario Diners Club card; damn grocery store is now charging a nickel for plastic bags and why should you have to fork over $1.12 for a cloth bag? Just expense it.

Bottom line, just over a week ago the whole board resigns, except for CEO Kelly McDougald who was dismissed with cause.

I won’t dwell on Michael Bryant, he wouldn’t otherwise belong, unless your spoofing Stevie Cameron’s book on the Mulroney years in which every irrelevant issue is used to prove what Cameron had no evidence for, that Mulroney was personally corrupt. Including in that evidence was Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs Bernard Valcourt, who had an impaired driving conviction in 1989 after a motorcycle accident that cost Valcourt an eye. So in the Cameron tradition, Bryant is evidence of criminality, corruption, an above the law attitude amongst McGuinyites (hey, this is Canada, it doesn’t have to be good journalism).

Which brings us to today:

The agency that assesses property values for homeowners in Ontario broke its own rules for hiring consultants and acquiring information technology systems, The Globe and Mail has learned.

The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation’s rules state that contracts with external consultants that are extended beyond their initial term cannot have a dollar value more than twice the amount of the original contract.

But an internal audit done by MPAC found the agency extended contracts to anywhere from five-to-14 times the initial value, for a total of $11.4-million, a revelation that suggests MPAC had been quietly grappling with some of the same issues over spending taxpayers’ money that have come to light at eHealth Ontario and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.

Of course, the issue was “problems with the agency’s procurement practices in 2005 and 2006,” and the “report is out of date.” In other words, “we already solved the problem.” But why are we only finding out about the problem now? And, of course, we’ve heard this song and dance before: past practices, new procedures. Which doesn’t explain why the lotto board resigned on masse or eHealth keeps coming back to haunt us like a bad Karl Heinz Schreiber movie.

That can only be explained by Dalton’s culture of corruption.

Dalton, Dalton Dalton Dalton, dalton spend, spend dalton spend Bernard Valcourt, Brian Mulroney, Dalton McGuinty, ehealth, Jean Chretien, Kelly McDougald, Michael Bryant, MPAC, Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, OLG, Ontario Lotto Corp, Stevie Cameron

It’s a sad state of affairs when the local newspaper starts reading like The Onion, but that’s the case today. These guys are nuts, and they’re running this province.

Health care in Ontario is a +$30B dollar ministry in Ontario, and the guy running the show doesn’t have the native intelligence to figure out how unpleasant it might be to wear a soiled diaper:

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman says he’s considering personally road-testing a new absorbent adult diaper to see if it’s appropriate for the province’s nursing home residents.

“As a matter of conscience, it’s something that I have been seriously considering,” Smitherman told reporters yesterday.

The super diapers have become a flash point in the debate around adequate staffing in long-term care facilities.

It’s a mighty cold day in hell, and Hespeler when Sid Ryan and Peter Kormos are the guys making sense in a debate, but in Dalton’s Ontario, that’s how effective banning pit bulls has been against global warming:

Ryan:

“So if the minister wants to play silly games, let him put on a diaper and sleep in it all night long and come into the legislature and wear it until 12 o’clock, and let him soil that diaper and lay around in it for the length of time our seniors have to do in this province.”

Kormos:

“Smitherman’s a damned embarrassment. One doesn’t have to use or exhaust one’s imagination to understand the humiliation, the indignity, of sitting in one’s own waste for what could be hours at a time.”

Really, wet socks are annoying, how much brains and imagination does it take to know spending hours in wet diapers is not good enough.

Then there’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister Duncan Bryant, who is telling developers not to pay extortion to the Six Nations Development Institute, a group who is demanding $7,000 fees to develop along the Grand River, land which the institute has no legal claim on:

Ontario will not stop Six Nations from charging developers fees on disputed land near the Grand River, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant said.

He spoke yesterday as calls mounted for the government to halt what some are calling extortion.

A Six Nations development institute is demanding developers pay fees to build around the site, while protesters continue to occupy a former Caledonia housing project.

Developers who got letters seeking fees say the province is hanging them out to dry by not intervening or guaranteeing their safety.

But Bryant said it’s up to police to intervene and press charges.

“Developers … didn’t just fall off the turnip truck,” he said. “They know very well what the rules are and the laws are.”

But Bryant won’t step in and nobody can reasonable expect the OPP to do anything about it. Not after Caledonia. So the developers pay the bribes necessary to do business in Ontario (how about a new slogan? “not your average third world country.” That ought to rake in the tourists). So the developers pay, the Liberals pretend the issue has gone away, businesses moves on to the next province, and Ontario sinks in to have-not status.

Speaking of which, Dalton is doing a fair bit of whining this week:

Federal politicians have to stop “talking down” the Ontario economy, Premier Dalton McGuinty says.

The premier said he wasn’t prepared to follow their advice to cut taxes because he would have to close hospitals, cut social services and stop buying textbooks for students.

Instead, the Stephen Harper government should be partnering with his government on strategic investments in training, jobs and infrastructure to help grow the provincial economy, he said.

“It’d be nice to have the federal government in our corner,” McGuinty said. “It’d be nice to have a federal government which doesn’t seem to take so much delight in talking down the Ontario economy.” Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s comment that the McGuinty government is letting Ontario slide into “have not” status and should cut taxes to improve the business climate did not go over well at Queen’s Park.

It would be nice to have the federal government in our corner. Instead, the feds are reduced to acting like stern parents, warning the province of the consequences of it’s actions. Dalton’s response? Right on cue, here comes the petulance. Answer one question Dalton, are we or are we not heading for have-not status according to the federal equalization formula? If not, answer the argument with facts. If so, why? And don’t say it’s Mike Harris’s fault.

Better yet, someone give this guy a diaper.

Finally, we go back to article two, Bryant Skips Home Fight, for one last item:

Meanwhile, Tory party leader John Tory wrote Gary McHale yesterday opposing the Richmond Hill activist’s “inappropriate” planned Caledonia demonstration Sunday at OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino’s home in Woodbridge. Public figures accept protests with their jobs, but “have a reasonable expectation that our families and our private homes will be left out.”

While I agree in principle, don’t the people of Caledonia have a reasonable expectation that there families and private homes will be left out of protests, whether by native bands, angry unionists or local nutjobs? And if they do end up in the middle of “inappropriate” protests, that their leadership, both politically and in the police, will aid them? And if that doesn’t happen…?

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Government of Ontario: a rash on all their asses

Dalton, John 'Red Green' Tory, Politicians acting badly, Silly Politicians

Hmmm. Hidden camera’s at a Tory convention? Ads of John Tory being evasive? Cut and Pastes of Tory bloggers speaking poorly of John Tory? (without links, in case your looking for integrity). Looks like it’s going to be a dirty campaign, and looks like it’s started.

I just wish I liked anybody in this campaign so I could join the fun.

Dalton, John Tory, Ontario Election, Silly Liberals

Last week I was driving south along Townline Road here in Cambridge, toward the site of the new RIM Centre, home of the Waterloo Predators (Names are based on pure speculation and is not to be taken as fact; Site location, however, is based on conjecture, and may be treated as such). This section of Townline is a two lane road, yet some guy on a motor bike travelling north was passing in the centre of the road, between cars. Which brings me to one of the funniest stories of the week:

About 40 motorcyclists from across the province held a rally at Queen’s Park yesterday calling for stiffer penalties for motorists whose actions put bikers’ lives at risk.

“Bikes have a right to share the road and we need to cut down on the carnage,” said Brian Burnett, provincial vice-chairman with Bikers Rights Organization Canada. “The province set up new laws to stop street races. We want to see changes to the Highway Traffic Act regarding the usually lax charges laid in regarding tragic collisions with bikes.”

The group took part in a Fallen Riders Memorial Awareness Ride and held a ceremony for 67 bikers killed on the road since the late 1960s.

Burnett said as many as 40 bikers can be killed on Ontario roads every year.

Because I’m responsible for clown boy passing cars in the middle of the road. Or that guy last year who was driving on a 410 exit ramp at over 200 KM/ hour.

I have always been amazed that I am not allowed to drive to the grocery store at 40KM/hour, without a seat belt, but these guys can drive 100KM/hour on the highway with, as cousin Eddie would say, “nothing between the ground and my brain but a piece of government [approved] plastic.”

With that in mind, they should be careful what they ask for. When Dalton McGuinty sees that 40 bikers a year number, he will be looking to ban bikes; that’s how he solves problems. But really, should they be asking for greater protection from drivers until they have done more about the lousy bike riders on the road. They are out there, they are a legion, and anybody who drives regularly sees them everyday in the summer. It’s not all of them, certainly not, but it’s enough.

But none of that is why the story is so amusing. It’s the last line that makes it so:

The biker group also wants the province to strike down the mandatory helmet law.

Dalton, freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy, Funny., Humour