Category: Canadian politics

From  Toronto Star
Almost two years after she left as boss of eHealth Ontario in a politically damaging scandal, Sarah Kramer has a new job in California.

Kramer, who came under fire at eHealth for runaway spending by consultants and her $317,000 severance package, is executive director of a team bringing electronic health records to the UCLA Health System’s patients in four hospitals and clinics with 2,000 doctors. She is working as a consultant, and is not on staff.

It is a bit ironic that Kramer goes from a province facing fiscal difficulty to a state that some term a financial basket case. I guess it’s true what they say misery really does love company.

From QMI Agency
Premier Dalton McGuinty won’t call a public inquiry into police actions at the G20, he said Monday.


“With five separate reviews under way, I think we are coming at it from a number of perspectives,” McGuinty said. “I’m going to let the reviews speak to that.”


The Canadian Civil Liberties Association released its report into the actions of police and treatment of protesters during last summer’s summit, which involved the largest number of mass arrests in Canadian history.

From Canadian Free Press
Today, Jim Wilson, MPP Simcoe-Grey, warned Ontario families that there are three key indications that Dalton McGuinty will introduce a carbon tax for Ontario.

“It is time for all of us to start to get comfortable with two words: Carbon tax. Without it, all these dreams of a green tomorrow are hallucinations.” (Glen Murray, Toronto Star, May 27 2007).


“I have looked at increasing taxes in some areas. For example, I argued for moving toward more carbon taxation.” (Jack Mintz, The
Agenda With Steve Paikin, February 23, 2011).

fast forward to minute 949 in the video to hear the quote

 

Rendezvous with Destiny is a documentary based on the biography of president  Ronald Reagan by Craig Shirley here is an in-depth interview with the author.

This documentary  along with one produced by the History Channel puts the president’s achievements in historical context.

with the passing of time  we realized that Reagan was not just a good president but he was one of the most influential leaders of the last half of the 20th century.

 

The Ontario legislature is back in session and the spring  sitting promises to be a minor overture to the provincial election this fall. However the premier decided to take his show on the road instead of staying for what promises to be an eventful time at Queen’s Park.

From Ottawa Citizen

McGuinty’s staff say the premier would use those days to deliver a speech on his government’s accomplishments in its first seven years in office.

But longtime Queen’s Park observer David Docherty says there is some irony to the premier’s new approach. As an opposition leader, McGuinty railed against the then-Conservative government’s indifference to the legislature.

“It’s a very different kind of strategy for someone who was elected on a pledge to bring back relevance to the legislature,” said Docherty, a political-science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. “It was McGuinty who brought in rules saying cabinet ministers had to be there 75 per cent of the time. So it’s odd now that going into an election year he’s decided not to be in the House to answer questions but would rather be on the road taking it directly to the so-called people.”

From a optics standpoint this is a bad decision, this looks like the premier does not want  to deal with the daily grind of  slings and arrows in a increasingly feisty legislative session.