A Brief Commentary by Doug Draper
Posted November 20th, 2016 on Niagara At Large
“It was my mistake,” Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne told more than 800 Liberal delegates at the party’s annual general meeting in Ottawa this November 19th.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne on CBC earlier this Novmeber, saying on of the lessons for politicians from Trump’s election victory is to pay more attention to the concerns of everyday people.
A mistake? Some bloody mistake!
Wynne was talking about province’s hydro rates that have been rocketing into the outer stratosphere under her watch Then Wynne tells the delegates this –“Standing before you today, I take responsibility as leader for not paying close enough attention to some of the daily stresses in Ontarians’ lives. Electricity prices are the prime example. … People have told me that they’ve had to choose between paying their electricity bill and buying food or paying the rent. That is unacceptable to me.”
No kidding, it is unacceptable.
How smug and out of touch with the realities facing so many everyday Ontario residents can Kathleen Wynne get?
People have been trying to tell Wynne exactly that for most of the three and a half years she has been Ontario’s premier.
Leaders of the province’s opposition parties, including PC leader Patrick Brown and his predecessor Tim Hudak, and NDP leader Andrea Horwath, have talked about the pain people are feeling paying their hydro bills so many times it has, by now, become background noise.
Whether it is soaring hydro rates or the calls for an investigation into the billion dollar, gas-fired power plant scandal or the termination of the pay-to-play party fund-raising scheme, or just about anything else that requires some serious action that doesn’t fall into whatever political agenda she’d rather pursue, it is painfully apparent that Wynne has morphed into one of those political elites who has to be smashed over the head with a blunt instrument about eight or nine thousand times before she is willing to accept some responsibility and take action.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t bode well for the call Welland Riding MPP Cindy Forster and members of the public are now making on Wynne’s government to do an independent and thorough forensic audit on a Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority many of the same public members no longer trust to spend their tax dollars responsibly.
The day Donald Trump was declared the winner of the U.S. election, this same Premier Wynne was on a morning CBC current affairs program saying that Trump’s triumph shows that “we (meaning those holding people office) all have to pay very close attention to how this happened and why it happened. … “People were voting against a system that they perceived wasn’t working for them and was not fair.”
It was a rare moment of clarity for Wynne that, first and foremost, she ought to apply to herself.
For more news and commentary from Niagara At Large – an independent, alternative voice for our greater binational Niagara region – become a regular visitor and subscriber to NAL at www.niagaraatlarge.com .
NIAGARA AT LARGE encourages you to join the conversation by sharing your views on this post in the space below the Bernie quote.
A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who also share their first and last names.
Niagara At Large 
I had a call from a polling company today, asking me how I thought the Ontario Liberals were doing. I answered a long series of detailed questions as honestly as I could. Judging from the questions, the Ontario Liberals are definitely starting to “get it”. Now — will that just prompt more expenditure on “spin”, or will they actually start listening to the electorate? I’m not holding my breath…
LikeLike
These clowns are selling the cow and then having to buy the milk. They sell off money making assets like the ETR for a one time bonanza to pay off the debts THEY created by mismanagement and graft instead of keeping such assets that pay off continuously. The same with the LCBO and Hydro. Once that one time payout is gone they look for more to sell. This isn’t government, it’s a pawn shop. Unfortunately most of what they’re pawning isn’t theirs but ours. With sell offs to private concerns, the prices go up in order to make profits for their investors who sure as hell are not you or me. Simple economics. If they’re too stupid to realize that they do not deserve their jobs and if they do, they need to be fired by their employers (that would be us) en masse.
She sure is out of touch if she finally just found out now how prices are increasing for workers with marginal incomes and the elderly on fixed pensions, if they even have pensions at all. She will never have to worry about that will she? Those folks also don’t have plush expense accounts used for everything from limos to doughnuts (or orange juice like good old Bev Oda). Wages for the average workers are not increasing nearly as quickly as for the big guys. They say, we only got a 3% increase, but 3% of $250,000 is a lot more that 3% of $30,000.
She can be gone in a flash but then who will we get, more idiots through the revolving door. Of course she will be handed some other cushy job afterward. All politicians do is posture, play musical chairs and take their turns enriching themselves at the public’s expense. I can see why Trump won in the US and if we don’t wake up, educate ourselves to what is going on in our own country and the politicians don’t wake up or acknowledge the same, we can end up in one major mess.
LikeLike
Wynne is beginning her “I will buy your support in the next general election”. I felt that she would not put any electricity cuts in place until January 2018 but it seems she plans to try to buy our votes now (Liberal polls must be even lower than the public polls).
I am surprised that there has been no argument regarding the structure of the electric billing system. I have heard various complaints for people who are unable to leave home but nothing regarding those who work nights and/or weekends. I argue that it discriminates against those who work nights and/or weekends because they have no option as to when they use electricity.
The gas plant shut down, initiated by McGuinty, saved her Finance Minister’s re-election. With the money is continues to throw to the GHTA she continues to buy that area’s support.
The residents in downtown Toronto are too good to have a casino in their area but it has to stay in the Toronto area so let’s choose Rexdale (you can provide the reasons).. She will most likely sell(?) the operating rights for the casino to a foreign corporation which will take as much profit as possible out of the country. Does she care that the potential Toronto area casino will create hardship for the Niagara Falls and Rama casinos?
Wynne pays lip service to the Indigenous people. Why does her government not go after the companies responsible for polluting the waters to correct the situation? Why does her government treat the Indigenous
people as second class citizens?
LikeLike
Linda
As usual; you cut to the chase with Truth, Logic and Reality and it seems to me that most if not all Politicians are NOT intellectually endowed with the sense God gave a jackass …..BUT…..they certainly do know how to milk the system and from day one that attribute seems front and center in their makeup of greed and bewildering Entitlement ….Bewilderment? Yes absolutely,,,,For during the run of their aspiration don’t they promise to work for You and I, to represent and look after our best interests?? What a crock of shit these clown and the media perpetuate to hide the truth under…
Then, I ask, how do “WE” change the program to that which truly represents the electorate, The common folk? it does not help to change the Channel from one Corporate Party to another equally Corporate Party for in real life they are inoculated with the same gramophone needle of servitude to the Corporation Elites.
Have you noticed when a Liberal or Conservative, Federal, Provincial, or even Regional loses their elected “POSITION” they are immediately picked up by the Corporate Community or made a Senator??
Often I, and many others including You Linda, have written about the crowning of Corporations and the “total” control of the world by the 1%ers, the fact that in this Province 1 in 5 Children live below the poverty line while so many others live the grandiose life style so vividly illustrated in the Corporate owned Media.
Linda I can imagine You being asked by associates and maybe even friends and family , Why do you Bother??? because at the age of 80+ I hear the same question too often…BUT the rise of Bernie Sanders and the enlistment of so many “Young” people into the ranks and acknowledgement of “We are the People” is gratifying and I hope and pray it grows to Tsunami proportions that engulfs the entire planet…..Thank You Linda, Once again I thank you.
LikeLike