Nuclear only way for OntarioNuclear only way for Ontario, McGuinty says
April Lindgren
CanWest News Service
Sunday, June 25, 2006
LONDON, Ont. -- Premier Dalton McGuinty says he's no fan of nuclear power but that building more nuclear plants is still the most environmentally sound way to ensure the lights stay on in Ontario.
"I don't like nuclear energy," McGuinty bluntly told Liberal party riding executives Saturday at their annual council meeting. "There's the radioactive waste we saddle future generations with.
"(But) the alternative is to build more coal and spew stuff into the air and have it contribute to climate change. At least with respect to radioactive waste I know how to contain it, I know how to manage it and it doesn't cause irreparable harm to our planet."
In a speech that provided a taste of what's to come as Ontario's political parties position themselves for an election 16 months from now, McGuinty defended his government's recent decision to construct two more nuclear power plants to meet the province's future electricity needs.
"The best advice we got was that even if we do as much as we can with respect to renewables and even if we are as aggressive as we can be when it comes to conservation, we're still going to come up short" without additional nuclear capacity, the premier said.
McGuinty said his government has reduced wait times for key medical procedures and brought peace to the education sector and then went on the offensive, singling out John Tory, whose opposition Conservatives are now virtually tied with the Grits in the polls.
"The Tories," McGuinty said, "have wrapped themselves in some convenient plain paper packaging in the hope that they will seem less threatening to the Ontarians who remember what they were like just three years ago. Most of the time their real intentions are tightly wrapped up inside that packaging but every now and then we get a little glimpse of what they are hiding."
The Conservative agenda, he noted, includes a plan to provide tax breaks for parents who send their children to private schools. McGuinty, who broke a campaign pledge not to raise taxes by introducing a new health-care levy, also said Tory's plan to cancel the $2.5-billion tax will undermine the quality of the health-care system.
His third line of attack was to suggest the Tories still have a taste for divisive politics: "Every time their leaders visit a rural community they attack what we've done for cities," he charged.
A key Conservative strategy has been to attack McGuinty's leadership and to remind Ontarians of his broken promises, including the pledge not to raise taxes and a recent decision to back off completely from a promise to shut all the province's coal-fired power stations.
In a statement Saturday, Tory said McGuinty prefers to fight old battles rather than dealing with current challenges.
"Mr. McGuinty chalks up his promise breaking to `making tough decisions'. I say it shows that the McGuinty Liberals will say anything to get elected and then turn around and break their promises without a second thought. They do it so often it's become second nature," Tory said.
Nice to see Canada is coming around and realizing how important green energy is.
Happy trading and here's to a breakout soon.
and that other writer also mentioned tsc and chx together , sounds dam good in yukon