Cheap, dirty politicians
Apparently a three-week break from the trials and tribulations of the workaday duties of being His Awesomeness, a trip down to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and millions of dollars worth of partying in St. John’s with Justin Bublé and Michael Bieber and the rest was still unable to put Us in any better mood than this:
Meowch.MS MICHAEL: I hope for his sake, Mr. Speaker, the day does not come when the Premier has somebody from his back bencher saying something against him and his executive, because he will say it is not the individual you have to listen to, it is the executive you have to listen to.
I saw and heard the Premier pull exactly the same kind of grandstanding up against the nurses, yet eventually he had to bow down and they had to come to an agreement. He pulled the same tactics.
Is the Premier going to stop grandstanding and deal with the issue of negotiating with the elected representatives of the doctors through their NLMA?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you for the Sermon on the Mount. That was lovely; I really appreciate it. I do not need a lecture from you or anybody else, I can tell you that much.[...]
MS MICHAEL: Mr. Speaker, during the last seven weeks at least one thing has happened, we have had doctors speak out about what they are experiencing; the difficulties they are experiencing as family physicians, as ER doctors, as internists. The stories have been out in the media, they are telling us what they are going through.
When will this government stop dealing with things piecemeal and acknowledge that we have major problems in our health care system and need an external review of this system, Mr. Speaker, I ask the Premier?
PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, what did we do when the ER/PR situation came up? What did we do when the oncologists wanted to meet? What did we do when they wanted to have a raise? We acted immediately. We gave them a significant raise which virtually put them close to Ontario parity. So we stepped up immediately. What have we done as a government? We are now up to I guess close to $2.6 billion, $2.7 billion that is what we have done. We have dramatically increased it. We have put money into information technology. We have put money into equipment. We put money into long-term care facilities. We put money into nurses. Yes we settled the nurses. So we, are you trying to get my goat because we bowed down. I will bow down to anybody if we want to get an agreement. This is about getting an agreement and bringing good health care to the people of the Province not playing cheap, dirty politics like you do.SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
PREMIER WILLIAMS: Holier than thou, the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.
And this, coming from the guy who once complained about someone else’s supposed snottiness?
What a hypocrite.
What a pathetic, childish, pathetic again, childish again, hypocrite.
PS: incidentally, Mr. Speaker, Do your job. It is not parliamentary for members, not even His Awesomeness, to refer to one another in the second person, or to speak other than through you.
Labels: bow-wow parliament, hypocrisy
posted by WJM @ 12:18 AM
3 Comments:
The rest of the Premier's initial response is worth quoting in extenso, because the last line is perhaps the most revealing of all:
"PREMIER WILLIAMS: Thank you for the Sermon on the Mount. That was lovely; I really appreciated it. I do not need a lecture from you or anybody else, I can tell you that much.
We are trying to get this resolved. There is a letter that is going out this afternoon that is putting $79 million of public money on the table and offering close to Atlantic parity which is exactly what the doctors have been looking for. What more do you want?
You are just trying to grandstand, you are trying to make small-p politics out of it, you are trying to make us look bad and everything else, when we are trying to do the best thing, we are trying to protect the public purse. All the social things that we have done in this Province, whether it is in health care, it is on the municipal side, it is on the education side, it is in human resources and poverty reduction, it is never enough for you! There is never enough money around because all you want to do is criticize; get on the bandwagon!"
There was another revealing statement yesterday afternoon, this one in response to a question from the Leader of the Opposition on the government's fishery policy:
"MR. JACKMAN: Mr. Speaker, I think if you check back through the years it is a bit naive to think that she can lay it at our feet....
MR. JACKMAN: Mr. Speaker, I can tell you one thing that I am not going to put to the table - I said it on Friday - and I have said to both of the parties: I am not interested in bringing forward to this government or the people of this Province a huge sum of money that will open a fishery for this year and that we find ourselves back in the same situation next year. We have done that for year after year after year, but, Mr. Speaker, what has it accomplished? It accomplishes that every spring we are back in the same situation, so something has to be done different...."
It will be interesting to see whether the Premier decides that he must miss one or more upcoming Question Periods because of more pressing business.
Hanging with Justin Beiber all weekend has convinced him to act like a 12 year old I suppose.
It will be interesting to see whether the Premier decides that he must miss one or more upcoming Question Periods because of more pressing business.
His participation rate is back up over 70%, so he's overdue to start skipping again.
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