It’s one of those polls that really shouldn’t matter

Most Conservatives are not committed (Poll CRA/Guardian chart NJN Network)

Paul MacNeill, Eastern Graphic

It’s one of those polls that really shouldn’t matter … unless it happens to be a poll that reflects very poorly on the perceived front-runner for the leadership of the Island Progressive Conservatives.

Then it becomes a poll that could have a significant impact.

There is little for Olive Crane to be satisfied with in results of the Corporate Research poll commissioned by The Guardian. It found 26 per cent of Islanders favour Jamie Ballem as leader of the PCs. Crane follows in second with a meager 20 per cent and the remaining three candidates trailing far behind. The poll featured a massive undecided factor of 34 per cent and a large margin of error of 5.6 per cent. Read the rest of this entry »

Conservative Bagnall sees gains for Tories and weakness in Ghiz as leader

Liberals have double lead over Tories in decided voters (chart NJN Network)

The September 2, 2010 CRA poll says the Liberals are steady in voter support on Prince Edward Island.

CRA disguise this with mumbo jumbo about “over six in ten (62%, compared with 64% in May 2010) Islanders offer a positive assessment of the performance of the Liberal government.”

Jim Bagnall, interim leader of the PEI Progressive Conservatives, doesn’t agree.

“This government has put out over 60 press releases in the past month,” said Bagnall. “They’ve spent thousands of dollars hiring additional communications people; they are constantly revamping and developing fancy web sites to promote themselves; they’ve put out glossy document, after glossy document, yet their support is going down. The Progressive Conservative party hasn’t had a permanent leader since 2007, we have only three MLAs and yet our support has been increasing.”   Read the rest of this entry »

Innovation and Advanced Learning Minister Allan Campbell says he has covered the Prince Edward Island with slow speed networking

PEI hi-speed from Aliant is 1/10th Eastlink service

With great fanfare, Innovation Minister Allan Campbell declares PEI is ready to join the broadband world of hi-speed internet.

P.E.I. entirely covered by broadband network headlines the Charlottetown Guardian without a clue what they are talking about. Or perhaps they want to be a public relations extension of the government.

The truth is that outside of the Charlottetown and Summerside, Aliant customers are getting slow speed internet.   Read the rest of this entry »

Another tale of everyday life in the Department of Health, Archaeology and Aboriginal Affairs

Carolyn Bertram, PEI Minister of Healthcare and Wellness

by Donnie St Pierre, QEH ER Waiting Room

La Ministre Bien Aimée was in a rage. The 72 inch plasma screen television beside the Canaletto on the south wall of her office was freeze-framed to the moment she so unconvincingly assured viewers that we have a really good health team on PEI. Still reeling in her mind was the incomprehensible gabble which preceded it – incomplete sentences, stutters, false starts, statements without conclusions. Her eyes blinked and swivelled like a frog suddenly caught in the landing lights of a 747. Her glorious smile was nowhere to be seen.

She grabbed the 4^th century BC Etruscan vase with the Cloud Forest orchid flown in that morning from Ecuador and hurled it at the screen. Fragments bounced off the Michelangelo bronze of The Hospitalier on the plinth which has come from the Parthenon, and came to rest on the 9^th century Isfahani silk rug on which it stood.  Read the rest of this entry »

Effective September 1 – Seniors’ Drug Co-pay Reduced by 25 per cent

Genuflecting for small crumbs - Minister of Health Carolyn Bertram, President of the PEI Seniors’ Federation John Kenny, Executive Director of the PEI Pharmacists Association Erin MacKenzie, and Premier Robert Ghiz (government photo)

Premier Robert Ghiz announced he is cutting the co-pay for the PEI Senior’s Drug Plan by 25% on the 1st of September.

The co-pay is being reduced from $11 to $8.25. The government estimates the savings to PEI’s seniors at $900,000.

Seniors with disabilities would still like their wheelchairs, walkers and hearing aids when the Premier has time away from his golf game and checking his bank accounts in Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

What Ghiz didn’t announce is the promised coverage of 8,900 Island seniors with disabilities in the PEI Disability Support Program. That was his promise in the last election.

Everyone with a disability on Prince Edward Island, other than seniors, qualifies for assistance under the PEI Disability Support Program. Robert Ghiz promised to fix that inequality before he became Premier. Read the rest of this entry »

The $200,000 cocktail party was especially galling considering the budget for the Disability Support Program was cut $35,000 while Myrtle Jenkins Smith got another $90,000 contract

Updated – Two years after this story, the Disability Services Review has come and gone without any material improvements in the PEI Disability Support Program.

May 2008 was a firestorm for the Ghiz government. It weathered  crisis after crisis generating reams of bad publicity.

The $200,000 cocktail party was especially galling considering the budget for the Disability Support Program was cut $35,000. Yes they had one of those luxury cocktail parties under the Tories and it was just as odious.

If then-Minister Valerie Docherty was in a party mood, maybe she could have one of those cocktail parties in every town in PEI and invite the poor and disabled instead of rich high-class friends.

It appears people get elected on a platform of “change” but once in power become mesmerized by the money. Economists say that most people can’t handle sudden a increase in personal income. It’s like winning the lottery.

For most of our newly elected officials, their incomes have doubled and tripled after the election. Obviously for some ministers the sudden wealth has gone to their head. They want to hobnob with the rich and famous.  Read the rest of this entry »

The PEI Health Information System is out of control with a spiraling budget likely to exceed $150 million and no end in site.

A Begin Consulting Services mystery company

Updated – With thousands of families needing a primary physician and ER in crisis, what is the government doing with scarce health dollars? It’s like a family facing bankruptcy but buying one of those fancy plasma TV’s – why not, they’re on sale.

The computer system is supposed to compensate for doctor’s bad handwriting according to press reports. I don’t think doctors’ handwriting is going to be cured by a computer, if that is even a problem.

Announced to cost $10 million, the current budget is $50 million with no end in site. Is this another Gun Control project?

As a former software developer and computer executive, I can assure you from hard experience these projects are usually out of control and no amount of money will fix them.

Anyone with a shred of common sense does not buy the first of anything. The Province is the guinea pig for the software developer with taxi meter running overtime at tens of millions per year.  Read the rest of this entry »

New project to build small wind power site on Prince Edward Island

West Cape, PEI wind farm, don't tell the Prime Minister it's already built (photo: David Grenier)

It’s Old Home Week on Prince Edward Island so Prime Minister Harper has come here to announce a $12 wind test site for West Cape.

Two years ago PEI had a wind turbine development company and the Liberals were promising a 500 megawatt project.

Someone we’ve slipped back in time and a small wind test site is big news. It’s true: PEI wind projects are dead in the water

Perhaps Prime Minister Harper is so far behind the news about PEI he didn’t know that. He came to hand out beads and trinkets. Why not another wind test site for PEI?

The Calgary Herald reports:  Read the rest of this entry »

Need proof that Health PEI’s secretive ways are a recipe for abuse, just look to Ontario, which is once again showing itself a poor role model for our little Island.

Premier Robert Ghiz, leading a culture of secrecy

By Paul MacNeil, Eastern Graphic – Last week Ontario’s Ombudsman ripped the culture of secrecy fermented in the four years since the Ontario government created politically appointed health boards to run the health care system.

Sound familiar? It should. Robert Ghiz recently adopted a similar system here. The Liberal Premier created Health PEI, hand-picked its board and is allowing it to operate in absolute secrecy. In essence the premier is saying one third of PEI’s total budget of $1.4 billion can be spent in secret.

Related:  Secretive nature of fledgling bureaucrats raises questions

This is the very issue that drew the ire of Ontario’s Ombudsman. He described the local boards as ‘sneaky’. In one case he determined a board held ‘illegal secret meetings’ to discuss emergency room closures and health care structuring.

In addition the Ombudsman concludes health authorities have made a mockery of public consultation, while building a new, and expensive, bureaucracy around the health boards.

Sound familiar?   Read the rest of this entry »

4 new parking places at Brackley Beach are a start thank you

Parks Canada wheelchair ramp at Brackley Beach not accessible

On Sunday morning I checked out the disabled parking at the Prince Edward Island National Park. I am pleased to report that 4 new accessible parking spots were painted in at Brackley Beach. Thanks to Parks Canada for responding to Why is Parks Canada not accessible to disabled ?

That only leaves Stanhope Beach, Ross Lane, Dalvay and all the other beaches in that section of the park to be upgraded. The situation is more or less the same at Cavendish so it would be a kindness for Parks Canada to just upgrade the lot of them.

Unfortunately, our luck ran out with Minister Jim Prentice and Fisheries Minister Gail Shea. Ernie Hudson replied from Shea’s office that the Brackley Beach wheelchair ramp is accessible. That’s a joke.  Read the rest of this entry »

Another tale of everyday life in the Department of Health and Archaeology

Eugène Delacroix, The Noble Lions Remove the Screeching Mothers of Rustico from the Pancake Breakfast 1826. From the collection of La Ministre Bien Aimée

By Donnie St Pierre, Cymbria

La Ministre Bien Aimée was in a rage. Picking up the priceless Roman 2^nd century BC vase (presented to her by dear Silvio Berlusconi on the occasion of their meeting in St Aubin sur Mer) with the Cloud Forest orchid flown in daily from Ecuador, she hurled it at the wall, spraying Delacroix’s “The Noble Lions Remove the Screeching Mothers of Rustico from the Pancake Breakfast” with the Veuve Cliquot she uses to keep her flowers at their peak. A shard of glass joins the sliver of crystal lodged in the door of the Doge’s palazzo in the Canaletto hanging by the columned portico leading to the inner waiting room.

Fortunately a dreadful week has been marked with one signal triumph. The simpering yes-man Vessey has been stripped of the culture police she had trained to a razor’s edge of efficiency during her tenure as Minister of Cultural Conformity, and they have replaced the sorry platoon of knuckle-dragging enforcers she had recruited from Unit 9 and the clinic at Sleepy Hollow. Now, at last, she was again in a position to seek out and punish dissent and non-conformity. Best of all, Ko-Ko is back, and with him The List.

At the ministerial mansion in the fetid swamps west of Hunter River, the Outdoor (Informal) Ceremonial Thrones have been placed on the front lawn beneath the graciously columned veranda, where she can sit of an evening sipping an ice-cold ’76 Meursault from a hand-cut 18^th century Bohemian crystal flute and watch the little people toiling in the valley below, cowed in the shadows of the gallows erected on Hunter River hill, at both the entrance and the exit to the village. Made from the finest flame maple recovered from early 19^th century shipwrecks in Lake Superior, the Adirondack Thrones have been carefully glazed with a white finish to accentuate the grain and tastefully show off the inset pearls.  Read the rest of this entry »

Opposition charges Liberals dropped the ball no more wind development

West Cape, PEI wind farm (photo: David Grenier)

The Opposition Conservatives charged yesterday that the 500 megawatt wind development on Prince Edward Island was dead.

“What we have is maybe six megawatts of energy that this government is going to bring since they’ve been elected,” said Bagnall. “It’s very disheartening that government would mislead Islanders to the extent that they were going to put a major wind project here in the province, and actually come up with six megawatts.” CBC

The scuttlebutt around Charlottetown is that the Liberals can’t agree on wind development because the companies haven’t offered a big enough – or any – kickback to the Liberal Party.

Premier Ghiz assumed that wind power was going to be another Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) with foreign money flowing in all directions including into Liberal off shore bank accounts.  When Suez and the other potential developers wouldn’t play ball, the government refused to approve the plans.  Read the rest of this entry »

Jamie Ballem gives disaffected Tories a place to park their vote

Jamie Ballem, candidate for Tory leadership

By Paul MacNeill, Eastern Graphic - It would be naive to call provincial PC leadership hopefuls the Fab 5. But the last minute entry of former cabinet minister Jamie Ballem dramatically changes the race and, at a minimum, gives the contest a pulse.

Ballem’s entry will energize an otherwise boring contest that was setting itself up as a forced coronation of Olive Crane. The only real question was who would finish second and how many votes would they drain from the front-runner. It actually had a similar feel to the coronation of Catherine Callbeck back in the early 90s. Despite being the establishment candidate, and facing no real competition, Callbeck only managed to win the Liberal leadership with 85 per cent of the vote.

Ballem’s entry means Tories not enamored with the prospect of an Olive Crane leadership – and there are plenty of them – have a credible place to drop their vote.

The Island’s political winds are blowing in competing directions these days. There is perhaps no Island government in recent Island history so susceptible to being turfed after a single term – and this analysis comes from senior Liberals.  

Read the rest of this entry »