Ontario announces Windsor-Toronto High-Speed Rail line
Tricks @ Fri May 26, 2017 2:07 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Tricks Tricks:
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
I was kind of enjoying a discussion on something less partisan in nature.

I mean... we could just hijack the thread. What's your top 3 hand guns?

My personal favorites:
1. My two stainless steel Detonics 1911 .45 pistols with a double-Alessi shoulder holster that permits concealment and a very fast deployment.
2. My 1911
compact Star .45, it's compact and sweet in close quarters. Easy to conceal.
3. The 1938 Krieghoff Luger 9mm I inherited from my father-in-law. It's an oddball Naval variant in stainless steel (serial #747) with matching numbers on
both magazines and on the excessively large holster. It's amazing that he found such a thing with all of the kit it was issued with.
I've fired about ~250 rounds through it and it's ridiculous in how smooth it is with a minimal recoil.
It's not my favorite because it's not a .45 but it's right up there.

There is little as satisfying as a solid 1911. The luger has got to be a beauty though. That's family heirloom style shit right there.
Alright, top three rifles.
Have you seen John Wicks 2?
There's a part where John slips into this secret room at a Hotel to get supplied with firepower for his war with the crime cult, or whatever it is.
Man, those guns are sexy.
But as to High-speed rail for Ontario, for me, the idea lost a reason to be taken seriously at the mention of what happened in California.
So I'll follow the conversation wherever it goes now. 
Tricks @ Fri May 26, 2017 3:08 pm
N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:
Have you seen John Wicks 2?
There's a part where John slips into this secret room at a Hotel to get supplied with firepower for his war with the crime cult, or whatever it is.
Man, those guns are sexy.
But as to High-speed rail for Ontario, for me, the idea lost a reason to be taken seriously at the mention of what happened in California.
So I'll follow the conversation wherever it goes now.

I still need to see that! I wonder if it's downloadable yet, I'll have to check when I get home.
Tricks Tricks:
Alright, top three rifles.
For fun you can't beat one of these.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Les Baer Monolith! ![Cheer [cheer]](./images/smilies/icon_cheers.gif)

Coach85 Coach85:
BeaverFever BeaverFever:
Ok so you understand that you don't just get elected then snap your fingers and everything is instantly fixed overnight right? Liberals were elected in October 2003, the wait time strategy was developed and launched November 2004 and then of course it takes time to improve results, hence the improvement after 2005. They have been improving since that time.
It's been 14 years, Beaver. If you don't think 14 years and the health premium are enough to improve the system, you have very low standards for performance.
As per the links YOU shared, current wait times are ~15.6 weeks in Ontario. They are no better than they were in 2005 and worse since they took office in 2003.
BeaverFever BeaverFever:
It's about Liberal Derangement Syndrome. Apparently.
In one post, you comment about someone making childish comments and then you use one yourself. Perhaps you should practice what you preach?
Commenting on the obvious failures of a government, and this government has many, is just something objective people with common sense do.
Well unfortunately Fraser institute stopped publishing that timeline graph and doesn't provide detai on its methodology so we don't have data continuity. But fortunately 2005 is the benchmark year for most current wait times measurements (not the target, but the baseline)so let's go straight to the horses mouth shall we?
You can get realtime wait time data by procedure at the link. As you can see, well below 2005 in places with the longest waits
http://www.ontariowaittimes.com/Surgery ... trend.aspxThese PDF reports shows 5-year change in wait times 2010 to 2014 and 2011 to 2015 by procedure :
https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/20 ... ved_EN.pdfhttps://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/wa ... 016_en.pdfAnd from 2012, following McGuimtys resignation:
$1:
According to the Fraser Institute’s findings, Ontarians now have to wait 7.2 weeks for an appointment with a specialist — down from the 7.8 weeks recorded in 2010. This figure is considerably lower than the national average, which is pegged at 9.5 weeks for an appointment.
It’s also far lower than the pre-McGuinty era figure of 10.7 weeks recorded by the Fraser Institute in 2003.
Minister of Health Deb Matthews attributes the reduction in wait times to an increase in the number of doctors.
“There’s no question there was a serious physician shortage right across the province,” Matthews said earlier this year during a speech to the Toronto Board of Trade. “The number one call to my constituency office, when I was first elected, was from people desperate to get a family doctor. This was a very high priority for us, to increase the number of family doctors practising in the province and to get them practising in the right places.”
The Liberals inherited the doctor shortage when they were elected in 2004. Medical school spots had shrunk and physicians were leaving in droves for the U.S. Many Ontarians were without a family doctor, the all-important ‘gatekeeper’ in Canada’s public health care system.
The government has since opened up more medical school spots, built the northern medical school — the first new facility of its kind in 30 years in the province — and has more than doubled the number of international med school graduates given residency spots in Ontario.
Financial incentives were also offered to get doctors into rural areas.
“And we’ve reversed the brain drain, so we have far more doctors moving to Ontario now than leaving Ontario,” Matthews said in a recent interview with Sun Media. “Our doctors were very underpaid and we’ve addressed that issue, and now they’re well-paid and we’re retaining them. We’re not only retaining them, we’re attracting Ontario doctors back to Ontario and from elsewhere.”
The Canadian Institute for Health Information said in a recent report that an increase in the supply of Ontario physicians—thanks to provincial programs such as interest-free loans for medical students—is at least part of the reason for reduced wait times.
The CIHR report on the supply, distribution and migration of Canadian physicians shows that the number of doctors across the country increased nearly 14 per cent between 2007 and 2010, with Ontario leading the pack.
....Put it is perhaps on the issue of specialist wait times that Ontario has made the most progress, according to Canadian Institute for Health Information’s Wait Times in Canada report released last week.
Four of the most commonly performed surgeries—cataract, cancer treatment, and hip and knee replacements—have seen dramatic drops in time waited. Whereas a patient had to wait 311 days for cataract surgery in Ontario in 2005, the time has decreased to 134 days in 2012. Moreover, some 97 per cent of Ontarians received radiation therapy for cancer treatment within the recommended 28-day time frame.
Ontario now has the shortest wait times in Canada, according to CIHI....
https://thewardottawa.wordpress.com/201 ... re-record/And there's this :
[quote]Thousands more nurses are on the job. Since 2003, 23 new hospitals have been built or are underway. When it comes to surgical wait times for key services,
Ontario has gone from worst to first in Canada, and over two million more Ontarians have a family doctor.
http://www.longwoods.com/blog/progress- ... n-ontario/
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The
Les Baer Monolith!
![Cheer [cheer]](./images/smilies/icon_cheers.gif)

What's the rifle Bart. Isn't the Les Baer a 1911 in 45 ACP?
BeaverFever BeaverFever:
Well unfortunately Fraser institute stopped publishing that timeline graph and doesn't provide detai on its methodology so we don't have data continuity. But fortunately 2005 is the benchmark year for most current wait times measurements (not the target, but the baseline)so let's go straight to the horses mouth shall we?
You don't get to cherry-pick data.
They started to govern in 2003. You have to include data from 2003 right to 2017. You can't skip the years 2005-2010 because that's when some improvement started to show.
$1:
http://www.ontariowaittimes.com/SurgeryDI/EN/wt_trend.aspx
A useless link with charts with no historical data beyond the last 12 months.
$1:
All Canadian reports, not Ontario specific and the moral of the story, not much change from 2010 to 2015.
$1:
Ontario now has the shortest wait times in Canada, according to CIHI....
Correct. There's no denying that.
The LPO should really cut you a cheque. Being part of the 12% that approve of this government must be worth something, especially to the lengths you go to defend their record.
BeaverFever BeaverFever:
Well unfortunately Fraser institute stopped publishing that timeline graph and doesn't provide detai on its methodology so we don't have data continuity. But fortunately 2005 is the benchmark year for most current wait times measurements (not the target, but the baseline)so let's go straight to the horses mouth shall we?
"Data continuity" is it.
Now there's a BS-y sounding term that I'm sure can mean anything you want it to depending on the place and time of day.
How's this for "Data continuity" though?

You can find the full reports for 2014, 2015 and 2016 here:
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/categor ... wait-timesThere are more graphs in the reports there. Also links to infographics. Perhaps even some "Data Continuity."
N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:
BeaverFever BeaverFever:
Well unfortunately Fraser institute stopped publishing that timeline graph and doesn't provide detai on its methodology so we don't have data continuity. But fortunately 2005 is the benchmark year for most current wait times measurements (not the target, but the baseline)so let's go straight to the horses mouth shall we?
"Data continuity" is it.
Now there's a BS-y sounding term that I'm sure can mean anything you want it to depending on the place and time of day.
How's this for "Data continuity" though?

You can find the full reports for 2014, 2015 and 2016 here:
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/categor ... wait-timesThere are more graphs in the reports there. Also links to infographics. Perhaps even some "Data Continuity."

Well what's your point? The chart still shows that wait times increased steadily under Mike Harris then declined steadily after 2005, and even with the inching upwards a few years layer, still well below 2005 levels exept in ONE blip in the most recent year, and even that is still slightly below 2005.
And again, this is all with me taking Fraser Institute at their word, even though they're a right-wing ,anti-medicare, anti-Liberal group that actually employed Mike Harris after he resigned from office. But hey, I brought them up so I'll have to live with that.
Well my first point would be Mike Harris wasn't in power in 2005. The Liberals were in power under Dalton McGuinty.
The next would be you keep noticing the 'blip' downwards to 2009, but can't appear to clue into the fact it was temporary. Wait times rose again and that tendency to rise still appears to be the case. Any "improvement" was temporary. It was not a trend. The only real trend was a long term upwards trend. Wait times rose in Ontario from 1993 to 2016 by 54%
In fairness that's not the Ontario liberals' fault. The upward trend is national. But this idea the Conservatives blew it then the Liberals fixed the problem is nonsense. Didn't happen. That's a lie. To believe it you would have to convince us time stopped in 2009. Good luck with that.
(btw how many days would .3 of a week be? I don't trust my math, but I'm thinking about 2. Also the graph above is GP to specialist. Saskatchewan's wait time is shorter from specialist to treatment.)
[quote="N_Fiddledog"]
In fairness that's not the Ontario liberals' fault. The upward trend is national. But this idea the Conservatives blew it then the Liberals fixed the problem is nonsense. Didn't happen. That's a lie. To believe it you would have to convince us time stopped in 2009. Good luck with that.
Ok then if you say so. But Ontario has the shortest times of all the provinces and from what I can tell, has been #1 since 2008 so how is this Liberal mismanagement?
BeaverFever BeaverFever:
Ok then if you say so. But Ontario has the shortest times of all the provinces and from what I can tell, has been #1 since 2008 so how is this Liberal mismanagement?
The bar is low. We should aspire to be more than the best of a bad bunch.
Being almost on par with 2005, when the 'plan' started, add on the HC premium, we should expect more than the same wait times we had 12 years ago.