SNAPSHOTS: GAYS TO HEALTH CARE TO BEARS

Not Recommended Reading For The Politically Correct

George Smitherman is so gay, he flaunts his husband. And it will cost him because when Torontonians vote for mayor, without PC watchdogs in the little booth, suburbanites far from the gay haunts of Wellesley and Church will decide they would just as soon not have a leader from that lifestyle.
It won't help the former deputy premier that the spending scandals of eHealth, lotteries and just about everything else with the McGuinty government will be tied to him like a steak around the neck of a man facing wolves.
Taxpayers are furious at spending scandals at City Hall where bureaucrats couldn't buy a computer or even a bottle of germ killer without paying far more than market. Unions rule, not taxpayers. A refugee from Queen's Park, which lurches from embarrassment to spending stupidity, is hardly going to seem the saviour.
Now Smitherman's homosexuality won't be as big a problem in the central city which managed to elect David Miller when the suburbs preferred John Tory. The downtown likes activism, big government, gliberals and socialists. But many suburbanites are more conservative, more uncomfortable with government-knows-best, especially when it comes to culture grants, toadying and endless festivals. Most don't think we should ignore merit and discriminate against a person because of their group, whether colour, origin or sexual orientation. And that's proper. But voting is all about choosing whom you want to represent you. So you are free to dislike the individual and Smitherman as an individual is hardly my neighbours' cup of tea.
Toronto surprised Canada when it elected a Jew, Nathan Phillips, in 1955. The city didn't get around to its first Catholic mayor, Art Eggleton, for another 25 years. Torontonians aren't about to surprise the country again by electing Smitherman, and the reasons will include his attack pit bull reputation and background as a big-spending Liberal bully, but it's nonsense to pretend his homosexuality doesn't matter.
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Don't you watch the U.S. health care debate and thank heavens that you live in Canada. OHIP is something we should treasure, even though our health bureaucracy is hardly a shining model of administration. (See Smitherman above.)
It was the Ontario Health Restructuring Commission nearly a decade ago that warned our health record keeping was a disaster and the dismal fact that hospitals couldn't share basic patient information via digital flow was almost an insurmountable barrier. So the health ministry finally lurches into action only to waste a billion or more on an improvement that isn't working yet.
Does it not strike you from the endless costly advertising around the swine flu shots that our public health bureaucrats do a better job of lecturing us on obesity or smoking than they do in just ordering and giving us a simple shot? After all, this was not cancer research.
I know they say older Canadians have built up more immunity than younger Canadians and didn't need to be among the first target groups to get shots.
If they're wrong, it's certainly an interesting way to lower pension costs by sneaking euthanasia into our country when our legislators keep rejecting that terrible idea of killing older and sicker people.
Now I'm just being sarcastic, some grisly over-the-top irony. But....
Consider the elderly who were shoved aside from the head of the line by everyone from hockey and basketball players to hospital directors (and probably their buddies.) For example, I know a couple who hobbled into the Etobicoke municipal centre and were rejected. Too old! She was 74 and taking eight prescription drugs. He was 73 and has atrial fibrillation and diabetes. Doctors have been inside his heart twice. Not good enough. I heard that he said he was off to commit a crime because prisoners were a priority group.
Now there has been a lot of hype and fear about what is really just another flu, and more people this year will probably die from other varieties. (One reason I always get a flu shot.) But the exaggerated concerns are not eased because we just don't trust everyone in our public health system.
But we're decades ahead of the Americans.


P.S.
I got my swine flu shot on the third try at the former Etobicoke municipal centre. There was no waiting, except the bureaucracy around the shot was so intense, it took 50 minutes just to read and answer the forms and follow the rules. Seem like the process was dictated more by cover-your-ass liability lawyers than it was by health pros.
And then, when I left, with all the halls empty, some petty bureaucrat insisted I had to walk away from where I had parked my car. I pointed out that my car was in the other direction and what was the reason because the long corridor was empty. Not one other person. "Because I said so," said the pettycrat, who was obviously a failed school principal, jail guard or security domo.
The swine flu is costing us a fortune. In one room alone, there were nine people festooned with badges doing nothing but gossiping. At least we avoided a pandemic, that is if you believe the swine flu is more dangerous than the ordinary seasonal flu that kills far more than the swine flu has. One reason why I get a flu shot every year, with no fuss at all, and not one form or pettycrat in sight.
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That story of the Inuit teenager who was rescued from an ice floe in Hudson Bay is a wonderful Canadian tale.
The repeated attempts to find him for three days by our military, And then the two rescuers who went into the sea. And then they had to be helped too. In the end, 10 Inuit and military were involved.
The floe was only about 50 metres by 50 metres. So when a polar bear and her cubs came near him, he shot her. And then comes all the politically correct stuff with officials explaining that he shot the bear because he feared for his life. Of course he did, The mother was stalking supper. Turns out the cubs were nearly grown and she was probably teaching them how to hunt.
Do we really always have to worry about what Greenpeace and PETA might say about the shooting of anything? Do we really have to justify the actions of a young Canadian in saving his own life? He was only 17.
Some times excuses are just galling! And they certainly are when we grovel before armchair activists who make a good living attacking those who live off the land. May they be trapped on a small floe with three bears.


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