Dalton McGuinty – mackaycartoons

Friday February 1, 2019

February 8, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 1, 2019

1,000 Ontario hospital patients a day being treated in corridors: Report

Roughly 1,000 hospital patients in Ontario are getting medical attention in corridors instead of proper treatment spaces on “any given day,” Dr. Rueben Devlin says in his first report to Premier Doug Ford on improving health care and ending “hallway medicine.”

While the retired head of Humber River Hospital notes there is “much to be proud of” in the provincial health care system, his report found it is “too complicated” to navigate after hearing from more than 340 patients.

“People are waiting too long to receive care and too often are receiving care in the wrong place; as a result, our hospitals are crowded,” Devlin, an orthopaedic surgeon, wrote in the 32-page document titled “Hallway Health Care: A System Under Strain.”

“There needs to be more effective co-ordination at both the system level, and at the point-of-care. This could achieve better value (i.e. improved health outcomes) for taxpayer money spent,” he added. “As currently designed, the health care system does not always work efficiently.”

Animated!

One problem is people with mental health and addictions troubles often go to hospital emergency rooms when they could get better care from a family doctor or community agency, but wait too long and reach a “crisis point.”

According to one survey last year, 41 per cent of Ontarians who went to hospital emergency departments, and 93 per cent who went to walk-in clinics, were treated for conditions that could have been handled by a family physician or nurse practitioner in a primary care setting. This is often because hospitals are the only health care centre open 24 hours a day. (Toronto Star)

The 2018 Ontario Election

May 9, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

The Writ Drops

The coming provincial election promises to be an interesting one. At Queen’s Park, Premier Kathleen Wynne has controlled the levers of an unpopular government since 2013, that, combined with 10 years of Dalton McGuinty’s tenure, adds up to 15 years of rule by Ontario Liberals. The projected net debt is at an all time high of $325 billion (compared with $138 billion when Liberals assumed power in 2003). The debt to GDP ratio is approaching 40%. Hydro costs have ballooned under the Liberals, and despite efforts to tackle emergency ward wait times, hospitals continue to be overcrowded. Falling grades are indicating a decline in Ontario’s education, and transit projects aren’t keeping pace with congested 400 series highways. The combined corruption storms resulting from the McGuinty years regarding gas plant emails, and the Sudbury by-election bribery case haven’t helped matters for the current Liberal leader.

The unpopularity problem

The election results of 2014 clearly showed that voters were intent on forgiving the Liberals for their many misdeeds and confident its new leader Kathleen Wynne would build the trust and good government that had been lost in the dying years of McGuinty’s reign. Ontario voters even rewarded the new leader with a majority victory in 2014, after slapping the previous one down with a slim minority. This is often forgotten in the current #metoo climate when supporters of Kathleen Wynne deal the misogyny and homophobe cards to explain her dreary popularity numbers.

Polls consistently show that voters are done with Kathleen Wynne (ranked as the least popular Premier in Canada), and indeed the Liberal government in Ontario. To answer this, the Liberal Party platform is chock-a-block full of big spending progressive (NDPesque) promises for child care, health care, senior support, and dental and pharmacare. Despite the efforts, the mood among comment boards, call-in shows, and letters to the editor, seem to be very much about “throwing the bums out”. If, at this point the Liberal’s defeat is quite certain, then the question of who wins and by how much remains to be answered.

The numbers problem

Andrea Horwath enters her 3rd provincial election leading the NDP with poll numbers matching the governing Liberals. After attempting to make her party more palatable to centrist and Liberal Party voters in 2014, while outraging the most leftie members in the process, she has steered the party back to its traditional NDP position with campaign promises embracing free dental care, free tuition, and undoing Kathleen Wynne’s privatization of Hydro.

The populism problem

As big spending platforms rule the day on the left with the Liberals and NDP, the Doug Ford PCs are the very opposite. Even with no platform to run on the Tories are banking on poll numbers that are 15% plus above the numbers of either competitor. They are assumed to be the winning player in the game to take power back, to trumpet fiscal prudence, reining in spending, cutting away public services, and doling out incentives to business’ and wealthy folk.

Hastily assuming the leadership of the PCs beset by scandal and malaise under Patrick Brown, Doug Ford seems to have used populist energy to recharge a party lacking confidence in direction. With new leadership comes learning, and based on the amount of sloganeering dished out by Doug Ford, and an increasingly obvious dearth in policy expertise, or even knowledge (i.e.: how a bill becomes law), it’s becoming evident by the day that the presumptive Premier requires a steep learning curve to adequately prepare himself for the top job. It’s merely a matter of time before we find out if Doug Ford just managed to be the right person at the right time, no matter how uninformed he proves himself to be.

At this point there’s no betting on who will be in charge at the pink palace after June 7, 2018. The PCs may now be riding high in the polls, but its leader is just one gaffe away from throwing the party’s support away in the same way John Tory did with faith based schools, or Tim Hudak did with his one million jobs gimmick. What is predictable about the coming 4 weeks are polls that will turn out to be way off reality. Nothing can really forecast how strategic voting will factor on election day, not to mention, the no shows: declining participation of the electorate, which has been dropping with each ballot, and was below 50% in 2014. There’s no predicting the outcome of this election. It really is anyone’s game.

1995 – 2014 Election retrospective

2014

2011

2007

2003

1999

1995

2014 Ontario Election (Click Here)

SaveSave

SaveSaveSaveSave

SaveSave

Tuesday February 23, 2016

February 22, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 23, 2016

Dalton McGuinty portrait set to be unveiled at Queen’s Park

Three years after leaving in tense times, Dalton McGuinty is coming back to Queen’s Park. Permanently.

Mike Harris

His official portrait will be unveiled Tuesday and hung outside Premier Kathleen Wynne’s office in a hallway that’s home to two other paintings by the same artist, Istvan Nyikos, who painted former Progressive Conservative premiers Bill Davis and Mike Harris.

McGuinty is his first Liberal premier but Nyikos, who left Hungary as a refugee in 1967 and studied at what is now the Ontario College of Art and Design, says he wouldn’t touch politics with a 10-foot paint brush.

“It’s none of my business. As a taxpayer, maybe, but not as an artist,” he quips from his Collingwood studio.

Jean Chretien

In fact, Nyikos — who has also painted four speakers of the legislature, six chief court justices and former governor general Ray Hnatyshyn, to name just a few — prefers not to know his subjects too well.

“I take the face value, literally, of what the people give me . . . a superficial knowledge is good enough.”

Nyikos adds, tellingly: “I can’t paint my wife or my family. I’m too close to them. I love them. I know them too well.”

He has several sittings with each subject, sketching or painting the face and taking photographs of hands and other details. He works from those over the course of six to eight weeks, often painting several portraits concurrently.

Nyikos says his clients, who may well have ruffled feathers in their professional lives, are unfailingly polite as they make small talk.

“I try to paint them at their best.”

Coincidentally, the unveiling takes place the night before the second court date of McGuinty’s two former top aides, chief of staff David Livingston and deputy chief Laura Miller.

They face criminal charges of breach of trust, mischief in relation to data and misuse of a computer system following a lengthy Ontario Provincial Police investigation into deleted emails.

Livingston and Miller deny any wrongdoing. McGuinty co-operated with the police investigation and was not a suspect. (Source: Toronto Star)

Friday December 18, 2015

December 17, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 18, 2015

OPP charge two former McGuinty aides in connection with gas plants scandal

Ontario Provincial Police laid criminal charges Thursday against two top aides to former premier Dalton McGuinty in a gas plants scandal that cast a cloud over his final days in power.

David Livingston, McGuinty’s former chief of staff, and Laura Miller, the deputy chief who went on to work for British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, are each charged with breach of trust, mischief in relation to data and misuse of a computer system to commit the offence of mischief.

The charges stem from the destruction of thousands of government emails about the Liberals’ decision to cancel planned gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga prior to the 2011 election. The province’s auditor found the move will cost ratepayers up to $1.1 billion.

March 21, 2013

McGuinty’s lawyer, Ronald Caza, issued a statement Thursday saying the OPP had made clear last June that the former premier was not the subject of their investigation.

“Today’s events again confirm there was no wrongdoing on the part of the former premier,” Caza said.

Miller issued a statement announcing she had stepped down as executive director of the B.C. Liberal Party, and accused the OPP of having a bias against her because of a complaint she filed with the Ontario Independent Police Review Director.

December 18, 2013

The director ordered the OPP commissioner to hold a police misconduct hearing for Det.-Const. Andre Duval, but the commissioner “resisted” this finding by appealing it to the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario, said Miller.

“Officers involved in a substantiated complaint should not have been allowed to continue investigating,” she said in her statement as she vowed to vigorously defend herself against the charges in court.

“Every Canadian expects and deserves impartiality and fairness in police charging decisions. I do not believe that to be the case here.”

Both Livingston and Miller are scheduled to make their first court appearances in Toronto on Jan. 27. Like Miller, Livingston’s lawyer has also denied he did anything wrong. (Source: Canadian Press)

Tuesday September 29, 2015

September 28, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 29, 2015

Furor over Sudbury bribery scandal continues

Ontario’s New Democrats demanded Premier Kathleen Wynne “come clean” Friday about her role — if any — in the Sudbury byelection scandal that led to criminal charges against a senior Liberal operative.

OPP charged prominent Sudbury Liberal Gerry Lougheed on Thursday after an investigation into allegations he offered former candidate Andrew Olivier a job to step aside for a Feb. 5 byelection.

Wynne refused to answer when asked directly who had instructed Lougheed to make the job offer, insisting she couldn’t comment because the case is now before the courts.

All the premier has to do is say “No,” said NDP house Leader Gilles Bisson.

“If she didn’t do it she should at least say so,” he said. “And I don’t see the courts as having anything to do with her ability to be able to deny that in fact she had anything to do with it.”

The Progressive Conservatives said they too want to know if Wynne ordered Lougheed to offer Olivier an incentive to step aside, and called on the premier to step down until the charges are dealt with.

Wynne maintains the Liberals were just trying to keep Olivier in the party fold, and there was no need to offer him anything to step aside because she had already decided he would not be the byelection candidate.

Wynne had convinced federal New Democrat MP Glenn Thibeault to be the Liberal candidate in the byelection, and Lougheed said the premier wanted Olivier to step down and agree to nominate his replacement.

Olivier released recordings of his conversations with Lougheed and with Wynne’s deputy chief of staff, Pat Sorbara, but he did not record his conversation with the premier.

“I come to you on behalf of the premier,” Lougheed said. “The premier wants to talk to you. They would like to present to you options in terms of appointments, jobs or whatever that you and her and Pat Sorbara can talk about.”

The recording is pretty damning, said Bisson.

“It is clear somebody in the premier’s office said: ‘go and offer Mr. Olivier a bribe not to run in the provincial byelection.’ The tapes are clear,” he said. “The premier has a responsibility to the people of Ontario to say I did or I did not order this particular thing to happen.” (Source: Toronto Sun)