Ontario Election June 7, 2018
Welcome to Liberal Wynne’s Ontario!
Kathleen Wynne, feeling that Disney magic, has got a super train for you
For those not mesmerized by the prospect of low-emission locomotives hurtling across the countryside, serious questions remain
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-kathleen-wynne-feeling-t...
Kathleen Wynne, feeling that Disney magic, has got a super train for you
For those not mesmerized by the prospect of low-emission locomotives hurtling across the countryside, serious questions remain
Are you not, in another thread, simultaneously arguing for rail instead of highway?
I'll just ask again.
Are you not, in another thread, simultaneously arguing for rail instead of highway?
Is the problem that someone you don't like proposed the thing you say you like?
Kathleen Wynne, feeling that Disney magic, has got a super train for you
For those not mesmerized by the prospect of low-emission locomotives hurtling across the countryside, serious questions remain
Are you not, in another thread, simultaneously arguing for rail instead of highway?
I'll just ask again.
Are you not, in another thread, simultaneously arguing for rail instead of highway?
Is the problem that someone you don't like proposed the thing you say you like?
Do you actually think he will put intellectual honesty ahead of his mindless spin doctoring?
One of the many reasons the Liberals are in third place:
Ex-Liberal political aide sentenced to four months over deleted gas plant emails
http://torontosun.com/news/provincial/ex-top-ontario-political-aide-face...
Human rights complaint filed against two Hamilton area NDP MPPs. What’s that about?
Human rights complaint filed against two Hamilton area NDP MPPs. What’s that about?
We will see the investigation result.
I have always been convinced that this happens in all parties. The fact that this can come out in all parties is a good thing. It might mean change is possible.
I have no idea as does anyone else here if these are well founded but I hope if they are that justice will be done.
This issue has to rise above political loyalty. Workers have to be safe everywhere and allegations must be investigated. I assume I am saying something that pratically everyone here agrees with so -- at the moment -- that is what this is about.
It must be tough being a Liberal in Ontario these days!
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-why-its-not-time-to-write-off-ontarios-ndp-just-yet/
This does not look good on the NDP here! Smarten up Andrea!
http://rabble.ca/news/2018/04/one-issue-too-hot-all-ontario-parties-exce...
If you want to send your child to a religious school and fill their heads up with some bullshit so they can be just like you, you can damn well pay for it. I mean why can't the government pay for my Church of the Frank Zappa Luna Invicta school, where we will make you play the 12-bar blues progression 1,000,000 times before you turn 13?
Fucking hayseeds.
NDP promises $12-a-day child care and lower deficits if elected
The child care promise is the cornerstone pledge of party’s ambitious 97-page platform, Change for the Better, launched Monday.
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/04/16/ndp-promises-12-a-day...
Leaving Liberals for dead, Andrea Horwath out-lefts Kathleen Wynne with a smile on her face
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/reevely-leaving-liberals-for-de...
Leaving Liberals for dead, Andrea Horwath out-lefts Kathleen Wynne with a smile on her face
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/reevely-leaving-liberals-for-de...
Wow - victory or defeat the NDP can stand tall with this offering.
People should be very concerned with the Doug Ford "outside audit" approach. It is meant to say that the facts coming from the civil service cannot be trusted in true Trumpian form. It is also a gimic that is the kind that works politically even if it is simplistic. Put in practice it is even more dangerous. "Outside Audit" means a format that will select an outsider to place values on the government and be endorsed by the government. So for example Ford could call in the Fraser Institute to apply government spending and decisions against their values. Outsode audit means someone with their own agenda be declared the judge of the government direction and value.
Bluntly this is a proposal to hand all judgment of the government to politics. It is those politically allied to Ford who get to determine value. Ultimately the cost of this audit is a political campaign to be paid for by the government. It is the formal ending of independent audits since the choice of auditor would become political. Independent audits of the public are founded in institutions with career workers not expected to change radically with a change of government.
People who do not fall for this should be very concerned.
People should be very concerned with the Doug Ford "outside audit" approach. It is meant to say that the facts coming from the civil service cannot be trusted in true Trumpian form. It is also a gimic that is the kind that works politically even if it is simplistic. Put in practice it is even more dangerous. "Outside Audit" means a format that will select an outsider to place values on the government and be endorsed by the government. So for example Ford could call in the Fraser Institute to apply government spending and decisions against their values. Outsode audit means someone with their own agenda be declared the judge of the government direction and value.
Bluntly this is a proposal to hand all judgment of the government to politics. It is those politically allied to Ford who get to determine value. Ultimately the cost of this audit is a political campaign to be paid for by the government. It is the formal ending of independent audits since the choice of auditor would become political. Independent audits of the public are founded in institutions with career workers not expected to change radically with a change of government.
People who do not fall for this should be very concerned.
I understand what you're saying here, but would an internal audit be any better? I wouldn't trust an OPP report on police brutality, unless it was conducted by an "outside" organization. Why would I trust an internal audit by civil servants on government spending? Pretty big conflict of interest.
I'm not defending Ford's audit, I think it's clearly just red meat because everyone knows about the Liberal government's waste (gas plant closures, the hydro deferral scam, etc), but isn't the problem just with the promise to investigate a previous government rather than the method? Or would have been okay if Ford was promising an internal audit?
Wow - victory or defeat the NDP can stand tall with this offering.
Media bias clear as day here - it's an article about the NDP and Andrea Horwath with a video about "Doug Ford comes to Ottawa" at the beginning.
All media is biased isn't it?
Bluntly this is a proposal to hand all judgment of the government to politics. It is those politically allied to Ford who get to determine value. Ultimately the cost of this audit is a political campaign to be paid for by the government.
You mean like the Libs did with the Drummond Commission?
Bluntly this is a proposal to hand all judgment of the government to politics. It is those politically allied to Ford who get to determine value. Ultimately the cost of this audit is a political campaign to be paid for by the government.
You mean like the Libs did with the Drummond Commission?
Yes -- when you go outside you get a bias. Your choice determins the bias.
People should be very concerned with the Doug Ford "outside audit" approach. It is meant to say that the facts coming from the civil service cannot be trusted in true Trumpian form. It is also a gimic that is the kind that works politically even if it is simplistic. Put in practice it is even more dangerous. "Outside Audit" means a format that will select an outsider to place values on the government and be endorsed by the government. So for example Ford could call in the Fraser Institute to apply government spending and decisions against their values. Outsode audit means someone with their own agenda be declared the judge of the government direction and value.
Bluntly this is a proposal to hand all judgment of the government to politics. It is those politically allied to Ford who get to determine value. Ultimately the cost of this audit is a political campaign to be paid for by the government. It is the formal ending of independent audits since the choice of auditor would become political. Independent audits of the public are founded in institutions with career workers not expected to change radically with a change of government.
People who do not fall for this should be very concerned.
I understand what you're saying here, but would an internal audit be any better? I wouldn't trust an OPP report on police brutality, unless it was conducted by an "outside" organization. Why would I trust an internal audit by civil servants on government spending? Pretty big conflict of interest.
I'm not defending Ford's audit, I think it's clearly just red meat because everyone knows about the Liberal government's waste (gas plant closures, the hydro deferral scam, etc), but isn't the problem just with the promise to investigate a previous government rather than the method? Or would have been okay if Ford was promising an internal audit?
An internal audit is less likely to have a systemic bias than one coming from a source organizaed around a private interest or at the choice of the government. Internal audits are done by career civil servants, among them there may be biases in different directions. A private company will reflect the bias of the owners or of the private sector.
You could imagine, if you like, a reading of bias of an internal audit towards governance as a whole but there would be unlikely much of a bias in favour or opposed to this or that program or initiative.
An internal audit is less likely to have a systemic bias than one coming from a source organizaed around a private interest or at the choice of the government.
If the auditors are internal, they may be biased in favour of their own civil service and collegues.
If the auditors are external, they may be biased in favour of whoever cuts their cheque.
I don't disagree with that, however:
1. Bias can sometimes gently nudge something this way or that, but big leaps and gains would be too obvious. To look at it from the other direction, if someone's really clearly and obviously guilty of something, bias can only really round off some of the edges.
2. For many people, whether the system was biased or not is a function of the outcome, not the process. If someone believes that the Liberals are guilty of some crime, it really doesn't matter who says they're not. If someone believes the Liberals aren't guilty of some crime, it doesn't matter who says they are.
That's been Trump's genius message for over a year now: whoever doesn't support me is fake news. Whoever does support me is a national hero for courageously fighting against fake news.
Wow - victory or defeat the NDP can stand tall with this offering.
I agree. The platform is the most ambitious I have seen in decades. The challenge is getting heard in an environment where the MSM basically ignores the NDP 80 % of the time by framing the battle as a Liberal-Coservative horse race without even mentioning the NDP, failing to discuss issues, and negatively reporting on the NDP most of the time when they do discuss it.
One thing the party needs to get much better at is using social media to get its message out.
Moody’s sounds ratings warning shot over Ontario budget
A major debt-rating agency is sounding the alarm on the Liberals’ big-spending pre-election budget.
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/04/18/moodys-sounds-ratings...
Hydro One privatization is the reason voters distrust Kathleen Wynne
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2018/03/hydro-one-privatization-reason-voter...
Denley: Ontario NDP's Andrea Horwath has a plan. Now, does she have momentum?
The NDP document is the kind of big spending, high deficit, higher taxes, bigger government plan PCs hate, but that’s not the point. The NDP isn’t going after PC voters. If it has a path to victory, it’s by attracting fed-up Liberal supporters.
The NDP has a real opportunity here. Even when PCs are doing well in the polls, as they are now, it’s a rare poll that does not show the combined NDP/Liberal support constituting a majority of voters. The NDP has a lot of potential supporters, with a recent Ipsos poll showing that 77 per cent of voters want a change of government.
The Liberals have just launched a $1-million ad campaign attacking PC leader Ford. It’s as likely to help the NDP as to help the Liberals. The NDP should be happy to let the Liberals throw mud and try to drag down the front-runner. It allows Horwath to take the high road without spending a cent and plays right into her key campaign point, that voters don’t need to choose either of the two other parties.
The new NDP platform certainly has a lot of positives for a progressive voter. It offers universal pharmacare and expanded dental care, along with a vision of a government that will address every conceivable problem.
We can expect Horwath to talk a lot about her plan for child care that is free for those with an income under $40,000 and an average of $12 a day for those who earn more. It’s a more appealing plan than Wynne’s free day care starting at two-and-a-half years. Most parents don’t want to be out of the labour force that long, and would still bear the burden of expensive infant care.
The NDP is at least willing to pay for part of its plan, with the usual higher taxes on the rich and corporations. That’s always attractive to people who aren’t rich and don’t own corporations.
To succeed in June, the NDP needs to use its platform to build some quick momentum. Stopping Doug Ford is a motivator for progressive voters. They need to pick a party to achieve their goal. It’s imperative for the NDP to climb past the Liberals in the polls. If Horwath can achieve that, you will be calling her leader of the Opposition, and maybe premier.
http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/denley-ontario-ndps-andrea-h...
Ford is using Facebook to target voters showing "interest" in Trump.
Even as Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford pushes back hard against comparisons to Donald Trump heading into this spring’s Ontario election, he has been using Facebook advertising to target Ontarians who are “interested” in the U.S. President.
Meanwhile, local candidates for Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals have been highlighting exactly how much their government’s last-ditch spending spree will bring to their ridings. Issue-specific petitions are being used by all the province’s major political parties to encourage voters to share their data. And an array of outside interest groups – some doing one party’s bidding, others trying to drum up cross-partisan support for their issue of choice – are doing their best to shape voters’ opinions.
This is the sort of online messaging that will help shape Ontario’s spring election – and that tells the story of what a modern political campaign looks like, as digital micro-targeting increasingly replaces mass communication through more traditional advertising.
Much of that story will by its nature fly under most voters’ radars, because they will only see the sliver of ads targeted directly to them. But through a partnership with the U.S. investigative journalism non-profit ProPublica, The Globe and Mail is monitoring as many of those ads as possible, to give readers the fullest available picture.
The more Ontarians who install a web-browser extension designed by ProPublica to capture the Facebook ads in their feeds – available here, along with a full explanation of privacy protections – the more complete the picture will be. Before the provincial campaign officially begins, it is already starting to take shape – as evidenced by these examples of ads, and their targeting information, captured so far.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ford-targeting-the-trump-...
The best that can be hoped for is that the Liberals go all in on attacking Ford, while the NDP reaps the benefit. But it's a tricky proposition.
What's the difference between this thread and the 2018 Ontario Polls thread? It's kind of redundant,wouldn't you say?
I'd address that question to the person who started both threads.
What's the difference between this thread and the 2018 Ontario Polls thread? It's kind of redundant,wouldn't you say?
It focuses much more on issues than polls. It's interesting that you only began complaining about this after the latest poll showed the Liberals falling 7% behind the NDP. Most of the Liberals posting here only rarely address specific issues as issues, focusing instead on why NDP voters need to vote Liberal to stop the Cons.
What's the difference between this thread and the 2018 Ontario Polls thread? It's kind of redundant,wouldn't you say?
It focuses much more on issues than polls. It's interesting that you only began complaining about this after the latest poll showed the Liberals falling 7% behind the NDP. Most of the Liberals posting here only rarely address specific issues as issues, focusing instead on why NDP voters need to vote Liberal to stop the Cons.
Uh..no. I don't give a fuck that the Liberals went down 7%. That's Ontario's problem,not mine. I just find that NR is addicted to starting threads,many of which are redundant.
Bingo!
What's the difference between this thread and the 2018 Ontario Polls thread? It's kind of redundant,wouldn't you say?
It focuses much more on issues than polls. It's interesting that you only began complaining about this after the latest poll showed the Liberals falling 7% behind the NDP. Most of the Liberals posting here only rarely address specific issues as issues, focusing instead on why NDP voters need to vote Liberal to stop the Cons.
Bingo!
What's the difference between this thread and the 2018 Ontario Polls thread? It's kind of redundant,wouldn't you say?
It focuses much more on issues than polls. It's interesting that you only began complaining about this after the latest poll showed the Liberals falling 7% behind the NDP. Most of the Liberals posting here only rarely address specific issues as issues, focusing instead on why NDP voters need to vote Liberal to stop the Cons.
Hey moron. Jerry (a) called me a Liberal (b) said I came out because the Liberals are down 7% and (c) assumed I'm an Ontario voter.
Bingo?
Survey says.... XXX!
Elections Ontario
Compare Ontario party platforms and you'll find huge differences
April 19, 2018
There is only one party in Ontario that has put its complete electoral program on its website for all to see, including detailed costing, and that is Andrea Horwath’s New Democratic Party (NDP).
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives (PC) had a platform under deposed leader Patrick Brown, but they scrapped it. Now all they have is rhetoric and a few vague promises.
The Liberals have been in power, under two premiers, for 15 years, so one would expect them to have a record of accomplishment to boast about. No such luck. The Liberal website is gnomically silent on almost everything Liberal governments did over the past decade and a half.
Recently, Premier Kathleen Wynne’s party made some significant commitments in its provincial budget. Most notably, the Liberals committed to universal childcare for families with children over the age of two and a half. Amazingly, the Ontario Liberal party website is silent on that pledge, which would be the first new universal social program we have seen for decades in Canada.
The only achievements or promises the Liberal site promotes are the $15 an hour minimum wage and the free-prescriptions-drugs-for-those-under-25 program that came into effect in January of this year.
Ford plays peek-a-boo; Wynne smiles and avoids details
Now, a party’s website is not its entire campaign. Still, Liberals and Conservatives alike seem to have decided that voters who seek information directly from them, online, will be content with extremely scant gruel. Both parties’ websites are focused on fundraising, promoting personalities and slogans, not on policy.
That approach might make sense for the PCers, but seems odd for the Liberals.
At this stage in the game, the Ford party appears to have decided not to put forward anything resembling a comprehensive plan. We may never get what the British call a manifesto, and we refer to, quaintly, as a platform from the Ontario Conservatives.
PCers obviously believe their path to victory is not through any kind of coherent vision for the province. They think it will be enough to mercilessly attack a (notionally) highly unpopular Wynne.
When you open the PC site, you get a photo of Ford greeting a rapturous crowd of notionally ordinary folks, with the words: “I have a message for Kathleen Wynne: The party with the taxpayers’ money is over.”
Instead of a platform, the Conservatives have a series of brief statements: “tax dollars will be respected,” “clean up the hydro mess”, “stop the carbon tax” -- and, yes, “no tax for minimum wage earners.” We would not want voters thinking Ford does not have a heart, after all. Taking minimum wage earners off the tax rolls, but not increasing the wage, will mean they take home less money than if the wage were to rise to $15 per hour. That, it seems, is just a messy detail, and Ford’s Conservatives are not about details.
Just about the only policies Ford has enunciated so far are about taxes, the most recent being a pledge, you guessed, to cut the corporate income tax. All those tax cuts will create a great bog hole in the budget and Ford says nothing about how he will fill it, aside from promising to run the government the way he runs his labelling business.
There is a lot the Liberals could talk about via their website: their successes in education and health care, the positive labour relations in Ontario’s public sector, the meaning of a minimum wage hike, and the fact that universal childcare from the age of two and a half, coming on the heels of public pre-kindergarten, could be a game changer for Ontario families. It is, frankly, a mystery that the Liberals choose not to talk about their record and pledges. Instead the party’s website provides vapid photos and announcements of candidate nominations.
Maybe it is all part of a grand plan. Or maybe it is just political maladresse, if not outright incompetence.
NDP might have found its mojo with a robust platform
With the launch of their platform, the New Democrats seem to have found a theme, a tone and the substance on which they will fight the coming battle. Their slogan is “change for the better”, which is fairly bland but tells voters that if they want change, but find Ford’s PC party to be scary, there is a sane alternative.
The NDP platform focuses, as do the Liberals, on expanding the welfare state. New Democrats promise universal pharmacare now in contrast to the Liberals’ incrementalist approach.
They also tackle childcare, but here they do not seem to have improved on the Liberals’ offering.
While Wynne, heeding a report by respected economist and childcare advocate Gordon Cleveland, pledges to provide childcare on a universal basis from the toddler stage and up, Horwath would start publicly supported childcare from birth, but make it free only on a means-tested basis.
Childcare advocates are befuddled at the NDP’s approach, which seems mostly designed to be different, not better than the Liberal policy.
There was a time when the NDP and its predecessor, the CCF, were fierce advocates of universality. The idea was that the whole of society would not support a public service if only part of society were to get it. And, after all, we have universal health care and free public education. Why should childcare be different?
On other fronts, the New Democrats are on firmer footing.
They say they will deal with student debt by converting student loans to grants. They will create 15,000 more long-term care beds for seniors and re-establish a minimum standard of care in institutions that house and care for seniors. They also pledge to increase funding for home care, to support midwifery, provide complete coverage for take-home cancer medications, and create 35 new community health centres over an eight-year period.
The NDP makes a series of education related promises, including working with school boards to institute a moratorium on school closures and ending standardized tests. The party does not propose to end waste and duplication by abolishing the archaic denominational system; but neither does anyone else, save the Greens.
Revenue sharing would be revolutionary for First Nations
For First Nations, the most significant of a series of NDP pledges, which cover a broad spectrum, is for sharing resource revenues with Indigenous groups and communities. The party says, clearly, that it will transfer the province’s share of mining royalties to First Nations, which is truly a revolutionary idea. In this area, the Liberals could have acted long ago but chose not to.
The NDP candidly says it will pay for its many and ambitious plans by raising taxes on high income individuals and corporations. If Justin Trudeau could do it federally -- why not provincially? And, interestingly, the NDP’s rather detailed costing reveals a far lower deficit than that projected by the Wynne government.
In the end, however, there is not a huge gulf, ideologically, between the Horwath New Democrats and Wynne Liberals. The days when the Left could chant “Liberal, Tory, same old story” are gone. What used to be the moderate and responsible Right is now the extremist outlier on the Canadian political landscape.
For voters, this NDP-Liberal affinity creates a conundrum. Many among the chattering class are already postulating that voting for the New Democrats will only help elect the dreaded Ford. Thousands of Ontarians, however, who do not define themselves ideologically, seem to have decided, for better or worse, that it is time for a change. The multiple Liberal scandals and bad choices (privatize hydro anyone?) have fuelled that change mood.
The NDP’s proposition is that it, not the Doug Ford PC party, offers not only change, but change that makes sense. The party says it can provide compassionate, evidence-based government, without the Liberal smugness, sense of entitlement and corruption.
Will that message get through the fog of polls and punditry to the voters? The election is still about two months away. There is lots of time for public opinion to churn and churn again.
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http://rabble.ca/news/2018/04/compare-ontario-party-platforms-and-youll-...
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Liberal campaign falls on its face today and is forced to apologize for disgusting and obnoxious comments
How low can the Liberals go?
Herle, one of Paul Martin's boys, is quite the charmer, eh!
Ontario Liberal campaign chair apologizes for saying ‘People think Doug Ford’s a bit of a dick’
Ford told 640 Toronto’s Alex Pierson that he thinks the Liberals are “going to get dirty” in the campaign. He said that he wants to focus on the issues.
“I have a thick skin and that doesn’t bother me,” he said of Herle’s comments. “What does bother me is them attacking my supporters. They’re insulting every single person who wants change, everyone who wants to get Ontario back on track.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/4157884/ontario-liberals-doug-ford/
Liberal campaign falls on its face today and is forced to apologize for disgusting and obnoxious comments
How low can the Liberals go?
What, that Ford was kind of a dick? What’s wrong with that? Except maybe the kind of part.
“I have a thick skin and that doesn’t bother me,” he said of Herle’s comments. “What does bother me is them attacking my supporters. They’re insulting every single person who wants change, everyone who wants to get Ontario back on track.”
This is the correct response. Would that it were true.
Herle, one of Paul Martin's boys, is quite the charmer, eh!
Ontario Liberal campaign chair apologizes for saying ‘People think Doug Ford’s a bit of a dick’
Ford told 640 Toronto’s Alex Pierson that he thinks the Liberals are “going to get dirty” in the campaign. He said that he wants to focus on the issues.
“I have a thick skin and that doesn’t bother me,” he said of Herle’s comments. “What does bother me is them attacking my supporters. They’re insulting every single person who wants change, everyone who wants to get Ontario back on track.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/4157884/ontario-liberals-doug-ford/
Get your Doug Ford for premier yard sign yet?
Let’s be clear about this.
The governing Liberals, presently last in the polls according to the latest polls, before the official election campaign has even begun, is forced to apologize because of the stupidity of the Liberal campaign chair.
It seems like it has been a no good, very bad day for the Liberals. But of course that is just a hunch.
As we approach this Ontario election mind you, Andrea Horwath is looking better and better with each passing day.
Oh, my!
Has the Toronto Star cut Wynne loose?