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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News Record, 2016-12-14, Page 5Wednesday, December 14, 2016 • News Record 5 Teenaged MPP doomed by liberal intolerance Poor Sam Oosterhoff. Here he is just 19, a home -schooled farm kid from Ontario wine country, newly landed in the Big Smoke and keen to make his mark as the province's youngest -ever MPP. But his political career is already doomed. Reason: Oosterhoff is an orthodox Christian and social conservative in an era when being such is tantamount to thought crime, punishable by revulsion, penalty to be administered by flash mob on social media. This is the new face of tolerance in liberal Ontario. The MPP for Niagara -West Glanbrook is, of course, a pawn in a larger game -- the tortuous effort by Ontario's self-defeating Progressive Conservatives to replace the catastrophically incompetent Dalton McGuinty-Kathleen Wynne Liberals. You have to sympathize with leader Patrick Brown. So desperate are his troops for a win in 2018, having fired the puck into their own net in three successive Ontario elec- tions -- 2007, 2011 and 2014 -- that any hint of a possible stra- tegic blunder causes him to THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov Nineteen -year-old Sam Oosterhoff speaks to members of the media before he is sworn in as the youngest -ever member of the Ontario legislature in Toronto on Wednesday, November 30, 2016. The Progressive Conservative was elected Nov. 17 in a byelection in Niagara West-Glanbrook, previously held by former party leader Tim Hudak. recoil as though poked in the kidney with a stick. Allowing his party to be aligned with social conserva- tism -- whether through opposition to abortion rights, opposition to equal marriage or parenting rights for gays and lesbians, belief in creationism, opposition to sex education or any other reli- gious -inspired view that smacks of fundamentalism -- would be just such a blunder. As a former federal Con- servative MP in Ottawa and veteran of the culture wars in the Harper years, Brown knows what's at stake. He was a so -con himself, as Ontario Liberals adore pointing out. To the teensy extent Ste- phen Harper allowed formal expressions of social conserv- atism within the federal party, Brown as an MP joined them. In campaigning for the Ontario PC leadership, and again during the byelection fight in September in Scarbor- ough -Rouge River, he aligned himself with opponents of sex education -- though in the lat- ter case he famously recanted. Brown is now quashing any so -con tendencies within his ranks for the same reason Harper did a decade ago: He understands this will be the surest weapon in the Liberals' arsenal as they seek to shift attention away from their gro- tesque mismanagement of the energy file, among other items. That is presumably why Brown whipped the vote last week on Bill 28, the Wynne government's All Families Are Equal Act. Though nearly half the 29 -member PC caucus were sorting their sock drawers during the vote -- including Oosterhoff, whose swearing- in was unaccountably delayed until the next day -- none voted against. Bill 28, which enshrines equal parenting rights for LGBTQ Ontarians, passed unanimously. As Obi - Wan tells Anakin in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: 'Another happy landing." But this decisive victory for social progressives wasn't enough, apparently. We now return to Oosterhoff, who'd tweeted a critique of the bill on voting day, and on the morning of his swearing-in was led out -- by his own han- dlers -- to face a media grilling unabashedly hostile. Oosterhoff's criticism of Bill 28? It was, in his opinion, "dis- respectful to mothers and fathers," in removing the terms "mother" and "father" from the legalities of parental status. The PCs had proposed allowing these to co -exist within the legislation and were overruled. For publicly voicing his objection, Ooster- hoff got the modern-day equivalent of a tarring and feathering. It was voters who sent Oost- erhoff to Queen's Park. Con- tempt for him is contempt for those who elected him. Less - than -urbane social conserva- tives could, one supposes, be dismissed en masse as a "bas- ket of deplorables." But this approach has not always worked out wonderfully well, for the progressive side. - Postmedia Network Paging Dr. Hoskins, a new Rx is needed What this province needs is more doctors and more nurses in our hospitals help- ing those in need. What this province is get- ting is more bureaucrats, more red tape and a new $90 -million unneeded layer of lard in a health-care sys- tem where front-line practi- tioners have been cut to the bone. The group Concerned Ontario Doctors is raising the alarm that new legisla- tion will not just siphon money from services to sick people, it will also allow for invasion of people's privacy. Bill 41 will allow bureaucrats to access patients' records without their knowledge or consent. We've already been warned that the 14 local health integration networks (LHINs) are out of control. Former provincial ombuds- man Andre Marin slammed them for their lack of accountability and "clandes- tine" decision making. Provincial auditor -general Bonnie Lysyk has been criti- cal of them for their waste. This new legislation will spawn a network of 60 to 70 sub-LHINs. Will we never learn? These are unelected, unaccountable people, often with limited medical knowl- edge, making far-reaching decisions about hospital closures. It has to stop. In the 2014 election, for- mer Progressive Conserva- tive leader Tim Hudak pledged to scrap the LHINs. That's what should happen. They shouldn't multiply. The more this Liberal gov- ernment adds to the health- care bureaucracy, the worse it gets. Meanwhile, our doctors and nurses are stretched to the limit trying to provide more services to an aging population with fewer resources. We see the results all the time. Trent Hills Mayor Hector Macmillan was forced to go to Germany for life-saving NanoKnife treatment for pancreatic cancer. We have the technology here; we don't have the money to operate it. We see it every day with drugs that aren't funded by OHIP — so patients face the indignity of begging for money for cancer drugs on GoFundMe. We don't have a revenue problem with health care. The Liberals brought in their health-care "levy" in 2004 — until then, the biggest tax hike in the province's history — ostensibly to pay for good care. Then they squandered it on eHealth, Ornge, LHINs and countless other money pits. Health Minister Eric Hoskins — a doctor himself — should heed the good doctors' diagnosis. As the saying goes: Physi- cian, heal thyself. - Postmedia Network Eric Hoskins. File photo