Election season is coming and Dwight Duncan claims he knows what this election is about.

Election season is coming and Dwight Duncan claims he knows what this election is about.

1.       He claims it’s about healthcare.

This is his government’s record on healthcare:

- 1 billion dollars wasted on E-Health scandal with only a small percentage of health files actually converted to electronic form.

-$250 million spent on another level of healthcare bureaucracy the LHIN’s staffed with you guessed it Liberal Party loyalists.

-The Ontario Health Premium or tax or fee or donation depending on the du jour; this money grab goes to the general fund.

      2.   He claims it’s about energy.

His government took a power grid with 130% power generation capacity which was affordable and abundant for industry and residents and replaced it with one of rationing and exorbitant.

Dwight has claimed had he not intervened that we’d have rolling blackouts.  In fact, he was frightened to leave the province. Had he left the province and travelled down to Ohio where the 2003 power outage originated, he would have learned it was from a software bug, known as a race condition, existed in energy management system.

The power outage wasn’t caused because of an absence of Liberal backed high priced Solar and Wind projects, rather it was an absence of clear lines of demarcation in the grid.

Dwight would have you believe otherwise.

3.       Then there’s that pesky claim which pops up every election; we are really going to phase out coal this time.  The facts tell a different story.

Coal consumption and production is up 29% this year but the claims continue for the children of course.

Dwight’s new booklet he mailed out admits there will be a 70% rise on electrical rates over 20 years.

This, again, is a best case scenario.

What Dwight fails to calculate is how much industry will pack up and leave Ontario over the coming years when his energy plans come to fruition and how his government would have to spread that revenue loss over existing customers to recoup fixed costs.

4.       He claims it’s about jobs.

Better than any tax cut to individuals or industry to spur economic growth would be to have affordable and abundant electricity Dwight has pursued the opposite and the result will be a stagnant economy.

Had Dwight’s Liberals just pursued tax cuts for the Ontario’s existing manufacturing sector, instead of driving up the cost of electricity and taxes to experiment with his new green manufacturing sector, maybe Ontario wouldn’t have become a have not province on his watch. We learned this week in the Windsor Star that he promised 50,000 GREEN jobs by 2012. However, there are at best 1500 heavily tax payer subsidized jobs.

This government isn’t only running one of Ontario’s largest fiscal deficits, but they are running a truth deficit as well.

The recession began when many Ontarians lost their jobs: the recovery begins when the Liberals lose theirs.

Matt Ford

Pay increases to Ontario public sector workers

Pay increases to Ontario public sector workers

Globe and Mail Update

Published Wednesday, Feb. 02, 2011 9:43PM EST

Last updated Thursday, Feb. 03, 2011 7:40AM EST 

Pay increases awarded to 65,700 public sector workers who bargain collectively in Ontario following the government's call for a two-year voluntary wage freeze in the budget last March. The list includes 23 employee groups with 300 members or more.

For universities:

EMPLOYER	EMPLOYEES	AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE % (FIRST 2 YEARS)	AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE % (ENTIRE TERM)	TERM	COST TO EMPLOYER
University of Toronto	2,800 faculty and librarians	2.25	2.25	2 yrs	$18-million
Carleton University	600 teaching assistants, contract workers	1.5	1.67	3 yrs	$310,000
Carleton University	830 faculty	1.5	1.5	2 yrs	$1.1-mllion
Carleton University	750 support staff	1.75	1.83	4 yrs	$500,000
University of Western Ontario	1,700 faculty	1.5	1.5	4 yrs	$4.4-million
University of Western Ontario	1,100 staff	1.5	1.5	3 yrs	not available
University of Western Ontario	1,900 teaching assistants	0.6	0.6	2 yrs	not available
University of Waterloo	1,030 faculty	0	1.8	5 yrs	not available
University of Waterloo	1,300 staff	0	1.8	5 yrs	not available
Trent University	363 support staff	0	0	2 yrs	zero

More related to this story

• The Ontario public-sector wage freeze that wasn’t

For hospitals:

EMPLOYER	EMPLOYEES	AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE % (FIRST 2 YEARS)	AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE % (ENTIRE TERM)	TERM	COST TO EMPLOYER
38 hospitals	16,000 support workers	2	2	2 yrs	$27.1-million
Ottawa Hospital	2,250 paramedical and professional staff	2.5	2.5	2 yrs	$4.86-million*
Ottawa Hospital	3,300 offices, trades, registered practical nurses	2	2	2 yrs	$4.9-million
Windsor Regional Hospital	400 social workers, psychologists, lab technicians	3	3	2 yrs	$1.44-million**
St. Joseph's Health Care, London	600 full and part-time mental health workers	2.5	2.5	2 yrs	$890,000
Northeast Mental Health Centre	460 workers	2.5	2.5	2 yrs	n/a

For long-term care homes:

EMPLOYER	EMPLOYEES	AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE % (FIRST 2 YEARS)	AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE % (ENTIRE TERM)	TERM	COST TO EMPLOYER
100 Homes	17,000 personal support, dietary, housekeeping workers	2	2	1 yr	$27.8-million***
Extendicare	1,438 employees	2.3	2.3	2 yrs	***
Oakwood Retirement	1,150 employees	2.2	2.2	2 yrs	***
Revera	550 employees	2.4	2.4	3 yrs	***

Other sectors:

EMPLOYER	EMPLOYEES	AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE % (FIRST 2 YEARS)	AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE % (ENTIRE TERM)	TERM	COST TO EMPLOYER
Ontario Provincial Police	5,700 uniformed officers, 2,700 civilians	2.54	1.7	3 yrs	$35.1-million****
Municipal Property Assessment Corp.	1,400 employees	0	0	2 yrs	zero
Art Gallery of Ontario	382 employees	0	0	2 yrs	zero

* Includes $564,000 in higher shift premiums

** An arbitrator awarded retroactive pay last October for a two-year period ending March, 2010, but the extra money will come from this year’s hospital budget.

*** The cost of all wage settlements for contracts that expired last year for long-term care homes, including $7.5-million awarded through arbitration for the 17,000 employees.

**** Figure calculated by The Globe and Mail. Neither the OPP nor the OPPA provided an exact figure.

Sources: Ministry of Labour reports, arbitration awards, compensation agreements, employers

Decades of Bad Foreign Policy

Decades of Bad Foreign Policy

    The recent upheaval in Egypt and the demands from Cairo’s streets is yet another example of the U.S. meddling improperly in foreign affairs.  I could cite: Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Panama, Chile and others if it pleases.  But, the ‘nation of the free and the home of the brave’, too often is a nation which supports oppression and engages in cowardice.   How is it that a nation so proud of it’s independence and the document which supports such could demand tyranny and allow suppression of others?    It seems no matter what administration or the political stripes of it, the U.S. continuously embarrasses themselves on a global scale as an insult to an ideology they only pay lip service to.  The U.S. seems always to err on the side of stupidity when it chooses a dictator over democracy.   But, fine people, they always find an excuse for their wrongs, or  find a scary group or individual to blame it on.  Sometimes they choose to blame the tyrannous leader they once supported, like Saddam.   I fear Yemen, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are not far behind in the tide of failing or falling governments.  This could spell disaster, huge instability and possibly war for the Middle East!

    Not so long ago just after the ‘Twin Towers’ fell in New York, 2001, President George Bush suggested that the notorious hijackers gained entry through Canada.  This was proven to be absolutely false!  All of the radicals who flew those planes, landed legally upon American soil and actually trained to fly those airliners in the U.S. with loans from U.S. banks.  In 2008, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (D) stated that the threat of terrorists entering through the Canadian border was still a problem.  February 2011, Senator  Joe Lieberman stated “the Canadian border poses bigger terror threat to U.S. than Mexico border”.   See the Americans are  never wrong, more like they can just never admit they are wrong, probably because the truth is too embarrassing.  It must be nice to rewrite the facts so they suit your mind set, but this skewing of data and truth is what the U.S. does best.  We must admit that our American cousins really do have a major problem admitting their colossal plunders and not learning a thing from them.  Because they keep damn well keep repeating them!

    Unfortunately, the United States has had decades of really bad foreign policy which lead to unsound foreign affairs, hostile relations and heinous decisions which have a body count.  Accusing everyone else but self of wrong when the only common denominator in error, is you, is completely ridiculous!   Unfortunately, the world sees it but 'apple pie' America does not!

Rob Cheshire