This sitting Liberal government is way out of control when it comes to making public pronouncements and announcements.
It seems that every day for the past month, three “media alerts” have arrived via e-mail explaining that Health and Long-Term Care Minister George Smitherman will be in Wawa or Winchester to make “an important health care announcement.”
Smitherman appears to be well on his way to announcing the details of every penny spent on health care by the province in every community where it was spent. And the campaign hasn’t even started yet.
The only thing worse than government by press release is government by photo opportunity. We have been cursed by both in record number with this McGuinty McGovernment.
A scan in the past few days of the front page of The Toronto Star, which never met a Liberal election promise it didn’t feel was worth the line story, is revealing: Liberals Promise New Holiday, Liberals Woo Parents With Plans for Preschoolers and Undergrads, Liberals to Promise More Help to Students.
The McGuinty government is like a puppy dog who wants to be loved so much, he keeps whacking you in the face with his tail, as if to say — see, I’m really, really glad to be here.
Somebody should point out to the Premier and his friends that leadership does not mean trying to be all things to all people by throwing money strategically at every cause on the horizon. The public is already suffering from promise fatigue.
Having broken his commitment not to raise taxes shortly after taking office in 2003, you’d think the Premier would not be so prolific in his profligacy this time around.
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Chalk up one for the good guys.
Yesterday at general committee, City councillors refused to allow Hydro One to continue to use a piece of property on Mavis Rd. near the railway tracks, where the utility has been storing the wood chips from the trees it has been systematically eradicating from its right-of-way which that traverses the City’s south end.
That is obviously scant comfort to the residents who have watched the trees behind their homes — which appeared to be no threat whatsoever to hydro wires far away — be completely flattened.
But the good news is that the cutting has apparently stopped while Hydro removes the wood chips it stored without council authorization.
When Ward 2 Councillor Pat Mullin met with Hydro officials at the home upset Lorne Park resident Larry Steinman in August, she proposed that they stop the chain saws and start the dialogue with residents, a suggestion Hydro has apparently taken to heart.
Mullin has asked Hydro One to provide detailed maps showing which trees it plans to completely remove, and which can be trimmed. There are a lot in the latter category.
A scheduled meeting next Monday has now been postponed to Oct. 22 and the trees may have a reprieve until then.
The pile of tree remains on City property are obviously being used as bargaining chips, you should pardon the expression, to try to get hydro to sit down with the angry residents.
Self-described “tree-hugger” Carolyn Parrish says, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I was not about to aid and abet their butchering of those trees by letting them have a burial ground in ward 6.”