2003-08-18

We predicted this would happen. Sadly, it did. You can't spend eight years hammering away at the provincial infrastructure and expect that everything will keep working. Massive homelessness was probably the first sign. Then the problems with our water supply showed up at Walkerton. Ambulances being re-routed from emergency wards, long waits for many procedures and finally SARS testified that our health care system is in trouble. We didn't need children being thrown in jail to know that our public education system is in crisis. And we didn't need the double cohort to tell us there is a problem in our colleges and universities. Skyrocketing tuition fees already told us that.

The blackout on August 14 hopefully will also signify the blacking out of the Tory's election hopes. Not this time Ernie!

Eves' spin-doctors will try to minimize the province's culpability in the power outage. Don't believe them. Whatever the trigger event was, the underlying problem is that we have been importing power from other jurisdictions for more than five years. The Tories cut the NDP's conservation programs as part of an effort to create an artificial shortage in Ontario. They did this in order to raise the profit potential for buyers in their planned sell off of Ontario Hydro.

When privatization proved to be a disaster, Eves backed off temporarily. His desperate attempt to reverse eight years of neglect by spending billions to restart aging nuclear plants and bringing in supplementary generators proved to be too little and too late. When the U.S. supply failed, we could no longer meet domestic demand so the power grid collapsed in a spectacular fashion.

The impact isn't just in the shutdown of almost every segment of our economy for days. People died as a result of this. Businesses already on the brink because of SARS will fail. Millions lost their refrigerated foods. For the overwhelming numbers of the poor in this province, those losses are not easily recovered.

The rotting corpse of the Common Sense Revolution is stinking up the province. It needs to be buried. It's time to call the election Ernie!

Gary Dale, Provincial NDP Candidate
Scarborough East