alpha mike fox: Dalton McGuinty

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Ontario ranks 49th of 60 North American jurisdictions in economic freedom

Dalton McGuinty and Dwight Duncan at Queens Park March 2011

So many of us have bought into the myth that governments create jobs in the private sector, even governments themselves have come to believe it. In the United States, President Barack Obama claims to have added back 2.6 million private sector jobs as of September 2011; in Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty boasts of his government’s job creation record, claiming nearly 300,000 jobs since the last recession.

If one means only public sector jobs, one can credit governments with job creation or job losses, otherwise our political masters should not take or be given either the credit or the blame.

Governments, however, can, and too often do, take actions that cost private sector jobs. Unfortunately for the poor souls residing in the province of Ontario, Premier McGuinty and Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan are past masters at poking their political noses into the province’s economic affairs. Under their leadership, the province has lost its way.

Ontario, once the economic engine of the land, now finds itself on the receiving end of hand-outs from the federal government in the form of equalization payments. Ontario, that is to say, has become a “have-not” province under the Liberal watch. And is it any wonder we have fallen from “have” to “have not” status within the federation?

Ontario ranked fifth among Canadian provinces—and a disappointing 49th when U.S. states are included—in economic freedom, according to a new report released today by the Fraser Institute. The report, Economic Freedom of North America, rates economic freedom on Size of Government, Taxation and Labour Market Freedom. On a ten-point scale, Ontario scored a measly 5.8.

The report shows an interesting contrast between Ontario and British Columbia:

Between 1993 and 2000, economic freedom in British Columbia was growing at a slower pace than that in Ontario at both the all-government and subnational levels. During this period, British Columbia’s economic growth was just 11%, compared to Ontario’s 23%. British Columbia suffered from relatively weak economic freedom growth while Ontario benefited from relatively strong growth. In the most recent ten-year period, 2000 to 2009, economic freedom in British Columbia has increased while Ontario, which had escaped from the bottom 10, has now slipped
back. As economic freedom grew in British Columbia, so did its economy, by 26%; in Ontario, economic freedom declined during this period and the economy grew at just 11%, the lowest rate of growth of all Canadian provinces. [Emphasis mine.]

In further contrast to Ontario’s weak showing, Alberta ranked highest among the 60 North American jurisdictions with a score of 7.9. The three other provinces that outscored Ontario are: Saskatchewan (32nd – 6.5), Newfoundland & Labrador (37th– 6.4) and British Columbia (43rd– 6.1).

Ontario’s mediocre record is significant because there is a direct correlation between economic freedom and prosperity of citizens. According to the report, the North American jurisdictions having the highest levels of economic freedom had an average per capita GDP of $54,435, which compares vary favourably to the average per capita GDP of $40,229 in the lowest-ranked jurisdictions.

Ontario is failing because of its government policies. Among provinces with high levels of economic freedom there is a commitment to low taxes, small government and flexible labour markets. These are the conditions that foster job creation and greater opportunities for economic growth. Ontario leads in none of these critical areas.

Moreover, Ontario is one of five provinces that have shown declines in economic freedom between 2000 and 2009. And more’s the pity for with the premier depending on Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats to keep his job over the next couple of years, economic freedom in Ontario is not likely to increase any time soon.

Staying the current course and maintaining low levels of economic freedom will see Ontario residents experience lower standards of living and reduced opportunities.

The really sad part is that the Grits probably do get it and understand only too well the mess they’ve made. But they lack the wits to make the necessary changes without losing their precious jobs and perks and those of their cronies.

© Russell G. Campbell, 2011.
All rights reserved.

The views I express on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of political parties, institutions or organizations with which I am associated.

Hudak ready to pull plug on McGuinty’s government?

Ontario’s Liberal minority Parliament is hardly settled in and already Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak is threatening to pull the plug on them. Apparently, Dalton McGuinty “shot down” Mr. Hudak’s ideas for a public-sector wage freeze and a reformed apprenticeship system, and this triggered the threat and a fundraising letter to PC supporters calling for support.

From where I sit, this looks too much like an empty threat intended only to fire up the PC base and, perhaps, collect a few bucks for the party coffers. Unfortunately, it will take more than good ideas and brave words to defeat the Grits. On what topic and on what timing would there be a meeting of minds between the PCs and Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats?

If there is such an issue, it’ll have to be a bigger one than the charging of HST on home heating bills. Any such vote is not likely to be one of confidence in the government, so win or lose the Grits will remain in power.

And, frankly, I don’t see the Grits putting anything in their next couple of annual budgets that will give the opposition something to rally round and vote the Liberals down.

Furthermore, can any of the three parties really afford another election in the next 24 months or so? Surely they need at least that much time to build up their war chests. Though the thought of listening to these guys huffing and puffing at one another for the next two years is a dismal one.

My advice would be to sheathe sabres and dispense with the empty threats. Take the fight to the committee rooms at Queen’s Park, there to influence Liberal legislation as best as can be done.

Liberals will be in a bind:

On one hand they have to rein in spending or see the budget deficit grow out of control. That’ll be hard to sell in the next election. On the other hand, spending restraint will be tough for public sector unions to swallow and that might dampen their support for the Grits in a future return to the polls.

The Queen’s Park Liberals are a spent force; in 18 months, they’ll be wanting to do almost anything to stay in office. At that point, they’ll likely turn first to the Dippers for help, and the resulting compromise legislation will sink them in the next election—probably Oct. 2015.

Negative 3rd party ads didn't buy an election

In today's Toronto Sun, John Snobelen writes:But the Working Families ads go beyond the normal limits. The nasty (why are teacher unions, of all people, always so nasty?) ads we all endured during this election were not intended to make a point or raise a policy. They were designed to kneecap Hudak. The unions did the heavy lifting for the Liberals during the campaign. I'll say it one more

Is there’s a rat in the House?

MPP Klees | PHOTO COURTESY OF FRANK-KLEES.ON.CA

Frank Klees, a veteran Progressive Conservative MPP, broke ranks with his party saying he’ll run for speaker of the Ontario Legislature. Should Mr. Klees be victorious, the ruling Liberals with 53 seats would be tied with the Tories and New Democrats who hold a combined 53 seats, excluding that of the speaker who does not vote except in ties.

This is a major blow to PC Leader Tim Hudak, who, along with NDP leader Andrea Howath, have reportedly said that no one from their party would run for speaker so as not to prevent them from defeating the McGuinty government, should such an opportunity present itself. Mr. Klees’s decision to run for speaker puts the opposition’s strategy in jeopardy because the speaker traditionally votes with the government and Premier Dalton McGuinty could keep power until the 2015 election.

So does this imply that Frank Klees is a turncoat?

I always thought he was a party-first kind of a guy, but perhaps the lure of the prestigious post as “Presiding Officer of the House” with a comfortable $152,914-a-year pay cheque, a suite of offices and a private apartment at Queen’s Park was too much for him to pass up.

Mr. Klees denied Tuesday there was an agreement among his fellow MPPs to stay out of the race—“I wasn’t privy to that caucus,” he said—but he seems to stand alone on that one. According to a report in today’s National Post newspaper, Mr. Hudak said on Tuesday:

We’re surprised and disappointed that Frank has decided that this is a better approach for him in the assembly. Frank’s made a decision. And Frank is Frank. We did our best as a team to encourage Frank to take on a couple of key critic portfolios, but Frank felt that his energies were best directed elsewhere.

It also seems disingenuous of Mr. Klees to deny that his victory would hand the Liberals a de facto majority. Scott Stinson quotes Mr. Klees in his Full Comment blog as telling reporters on Tuesday:

While convention is that [the Speaker] would cast the vote with the government, that’s not a rule—the speaker always has the prerogative to cast a vote based on what he or she believes is the right thing to do, and I’ll conduct myself accordingly.

Who is he trying to kid? I’d give his remark more credence if he’d provided a single example of a speaker in a parliament following the Westminster tradition ever voting against a government in a confidence vote. In other words, When has a speaker ever cast a vote that led directly to the defeat of a government? I don’t believe one ever has.

Being more candid, Mr. Klees also said that after 16 years at Queen’s Park, he is simply looking to stay interested. Perhaps he would have better served his constituents of Newmarket-Aurora had he owned up to his boredom earlier and retired from Queen’s Park before the October election.

Given the present circumstances at Queen’s Park, I believe Mr. Klees has done the equivalent of “crossing the floor,” that is, he’s a “rat” and Tim Hudak should turf him from the Tory caucus.

McKenna wins her spurs

The following is a re-print of my weekly column at Our Burlington online newspaper.

The philosopher-lawyer Joseph de Maistres famously said, “Every country has the government it deserves.” And so, I might add, does every Canadian province. Maistre’s words were on my mind when I went to bed early this [Friday] morning while contemplating Jane McKenna’s and Ted Chudleigh’s victories for the Progressive Conservatives here in Burlington, which helped the opposition parties keep the Liberals from a three-peat majority.

I’m in Jane McKenna’s Burlington riding and that was the race I keyed on throughout the weeks leading up to Oct.6. McKenna won handily taking the riding with about 40% of the ballots cast. Liberal candidate Karmel Sakran got a respectable 36% and NDP Peggy Russell received almost 19% of the votes.

Given Burlington’s voting history over the past several decades, the election was McKenna’s to lose, and the Liberals certainly seemed to believe they had a candidate with the stuff to spoil the Tory record. Unfortunately for the Grits, their candidate ran a lackluster campaign. I still shudder as I recall the image of Karmel Sakran slavishly reading verbatim—head-down and droning on in a monotone—from his briefing notes as he answered questions at the recent Chambers of Commerce all-candidate session. If Sakran expressed an original thought the entire morning, I missed it. Peggy Russell, though, ran an excellent campaign, keying in on local issues and emphasizing her political experience. But Burling is not a riding to give an NDP candidate much of a look.

From where I stood, Jane McKenna spent a good deal of her time knocking on doors trying to meet as many voters as she could, even at the expense of attending group meetings where the media would see more of her. Her strategy worked: she didn’t play to the media, she played to the voters—and she won.

Progressives have asked this question in various forms: How has voting Tory helped Burlington? PCs like me respond with: How has a Liberal government at Queen’s Park helped Burlington—before the recent election goodies were tossed our way?

Progressives may also want to ask the residents of nearby Caledonia just how much Burlingtonians should depend on Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal party. And how about this quote from the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2008:

“At too many hospitals, infection control is given about as much attention as ‘a lump of sod on the front lawn,’ complains a frustrated infection control specialist.

“Dr. Michael Gardam has investigated Clostridium difficile outbreaks that led to deaths at 4 Ontario hospitals, including the recent highly publicized case of 62 patient deaths at Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in Burlington, Ontario.”

That was on the Liberals’ watch, and during the term their candidate served on the hospital’s board.

If the current seat-count holds and the Liberals are denied a majority, they’ll have to put a bit of water in their wine and that will have to do for now. Burlington won last night, for the election campaign forced the Liberals to finally give our hospital much needed funding for its expansion—something no other Liberal government has ever done, and they’ve been in power for about 13 of the past 26 years and all of the last eight. It also forced the Liberals to abandon their plan to pave over a significant portion of our escarpment.

And I am pleased that, in Jane McKenna, we will have an energetic, quick-learner representing us at Queen’s Park—someone who has shrugged off a past failure at the polls and shown she can win when it really counts. She’ll be there to hold Grit toes to the fire.

I offer my thanks to all candidates for running, and wish Jane all the best as she embarks on her term in the legislature.

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McGuinty gets the hat-trick

Dalton McGuinty, Andrea Horwath and Tim Hudak at their Sep. 27, 2011 televised debate.

| Peter J. Thompson/National Post

The fat lady sang loud and clear, but she wasn’t singing a tune to which the Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak would care to tap his toe. Current and future Liberal premier, Dalton McGuinty, won a strong minority, missing the big prize by a single seat—doesn’t get closer than that. Here’s the preliminary results compared to my predictions:

	LIB	PC	NDP	GREEN
Vote	37.6%	35.4%	22.7%	2.9%
My prediction	39%	34%	21%	3%

Looks like I got lucky with my guesses and came within a reasonable margin of error. As I wrote when I made them, I had felt the Liberals were surging above 41% in support—strong majority territory—and the NDP were moving into the mid-twenties. This would have left Tim Hudak’s PCs about where they finished under John Tory’s leadership, 31%.

By election day, however, I was sensing some pull-back from the brink on the part of some right-leaning Liberals (yes such a species does exist), denying Dalton McGuinty his three-peat majority.

Only a little over 2 points separate the Grits from the Tories in percentage of votes cast—enough to make me wonder how the Progressive Conservative campaign might have turned out had we not been weighed down by Hudak’s reference to immigrants as “foreigners”, and had more of a what-I’ll-do-for-you emphasis and less don’t-vote-for-the-taxman negativism.

Back in July-August, polls were suggesting Tim Hudak held an 11-point lead and could win a majority. McGuinty and his experienced team, though, showed the rookie PC leader a trick or too about running an effective political campaign. The PCs’ backroom guys and gals took one on the chin. Let’s hope they’ll lose some of their centric I-know-best arrogance in time for the next campaign. We have 107 local ridings, and we need to harness more of their knowledge of local issues, their energy and resourcefulness—and, yes, their election expertise.

Both Hudak and Horwath won their home ridings handily and improved their parties’ seat-counts enough to earn those leaders another shot in four years or so. I predict that whichever of the pair build the strongest grassroots organization from the riding level on up, will win when next we go to the polls. McGuinty was mauled (lost 17 seats) yesterday, next time he’ll be ripe for the knock-out punch.

Too early for a final tally, of course, but early statistics suggest this election had one of lowest turnouts—perhaps the lowest ever. Ontario has roughly 8.5-million eligible voters, of whom only about 4.1-million (48%) seemed to have cast a ballot. This is especially disappointing considering the increased advanced polling and the fine weather we enjoyed on voting day. Ontario citizens seem far more concerned with rights and than with obligations. But I digress.

A big shout-out to all the candidates across the province who put their lives and families on hold so they could help lead us in this precious opportunity to engage in democracy. Thank you all.

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Ontario election: my guess on how they’ll finish tonight

My general sense of the just-concluded Ontario election campaign is that the race got tighter at the end and that Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals will barely eke out a majority or finish with a big minority, easily kept in power by Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats—at the urging of the powerful public service unions, her real masters—for, at least, 30 months and maybe for the full four-year term.

Recently, I felt the Liberals were surging above 41% in support—strong majority territory—and the NDP were moving into the mid-twenties. This would have left Tim Hudak’s PCs about where they finished under John Tory’s leadership, 31%. But today I’m more optimistic about the PCs’ chances and less bullish about both the Grits and the Dippers.

A lot depends on the vote-split between the right of the NDP (is there such a thing?) and the left of the Liberals, of course, and whether these splits come in ridings in which the PCs have a chance of benefitting from a strong NDP showing. My guess is the Tories will benefit somewhat, but not enough to upset the Grits—just enough to put a bit of a spoiler on their victory celebration.

So, with crystal ball firmly clutched in both hands, I offer this prediction for tonight:

Liberals at around 39%, Progressive Conservative around 34%, NDP at about 21% (maybe a tad higher) and the Greens at around 3% of the vote. I also predict a fairly low voter-turnout, somewhat less that 55% of eligible voters.

I’m terrible at seat projections—too many variables—but, just for fun, I’ll put some numbers up so you can tell me how wrong I was: Liberals: 53–56, PCs: 30–35 NDP: 18–22 seats.

There’s room for a long-shot minority victory by Hudak, but even so, since I can’t see either the NDP or the Liberals allowing him to form a government, it really will be McGuinty’s night one way or another.

Unintended consequences

This is reaching I know, but while watching Prohibition, a three-part PBS documentary film, I was struck by similarities I saw between the lead-up to the laws to enact Prohibition in the United States and the campaigns we see to enact legislation to implement a carbon tax, cap and trade or other such schemes.

After nearly a century of activism, Prohibition passed into law early in the last century as the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It had been “sold” to Americans as a way to improve their lives and to protect their families from the oftentimes devastating effects of alcohol abuse.

But almost the instant the laws were passed, formerly law-abiding Americans seemed to change their definition of morality and embarked on a binge of lawlessness that saw corruption and criminality spread from the cop on the beat to the White House, making a mockery of the U.S. justice system.

Prohibition was a cautionary tale of unintended consequences. And I fear that we now risk unintended consequences on a world-wide scale as we follow the bleating of climate-change activists just as sheep follow Judas goats to slaughter.

Proponents of Prohibition had important things in common with those of man-made climate change/global warming. They both sought to deal with very real and important problems and to avert what they believed were pending disasters of tragic proportions. And, just as Prohibition zealots quickly silenced anti-Prohibition voices and demonized their owners as purveyors of sin, similarly treated are those who dare question the role mankind has in climate change and man’s ability to slow or reverse what some consider an un-stoppable, irreversible force of nature.

Moreover, we know the heavy toll Prohibition took on American society: law-abiding citizens became criminals, illicit drinking was seen to be glamorous and fun, neighborhood gangs became powerful national crime syndicates, government officials routinely bent and even broke the law. Prohibition fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded a general respect for the law and rent the very social fabric of America—perhaps irreversibly.

And now we are beginning to see a similar pattern emerge from our earliest attempts to deal with carbon dioxide emissions.

One alarm is being sounded by the Toronto Sun’s Lorrie Goldstein who writes:

“One of the great scams of the cap-and-trade market—a regional version of which Premier Dalton McGuinty wants to bring to Ontario some day—is the purchase of carbon credits through the United Nation’s hopelessly inept and ironically named Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).”

As Mr. Goldstein points out, the CDM was one of the mechanisms defined in the Kyoto Protocol. It is part of the UN’s efforts “to save the planet from man-made global warming.” With the CDM facilitating a transfer of wealth from the developed to the developing world, rich nations and corporations can offset their carbon dioxide emissions by investing in greenhouse gas reduction projects in the developing world. Carbon credits generated in the process can then be sold for a profit. That’s the theory anyway—not a great one, but there you have it.

Unfortunately, many so-called emission reduction projects apparently should never have been approved in the first place, and fraud has entered the system. We know this from a report by the science journal, Nature, which is based on a leaked (thank you, WikiLeaks) 2008 U.S. state department cable. According to the cable, while projects are supposed to go through a two-step validation and verification process, officials in India, in this case, take project developers at their word without requiring independent evidence.

Mr. Goldstein’s tale is a cautionary one indeed. You really should read his full story, but here’s part of his conclusion:

“As Eva Filzmoser of CDM Watch, a Brussels-based organization, told Nature: ‘What has leaked just confirms our view that in its present form the CDM is basically a farce … it is no wonder the United States has backed away from emissions trading.’ Canadians should be thankful they just elected a Harper majority government. Had it been an NDP or Liberal one, or an NDP-Liberal minority, Canada would now be setting up a cap-and-trade market. This would have undermined our economy, imposing a new cost on Canadian businesses not reflected in the policies of the U.S., our largest trading partner, towards its industries.

“We would also have been walking, like babes in the woods, into the international carbon trading market, whose sole achievement to date has not been to lower emissions, but to raise consumer prices for electricity and other goods and services.”

I appreciate Mr. Goldstein’s optimism—he’s younger than I and less of a cynic—but I fear that under a provincial Liberal government we will indeed be setting up a cap-and-trade market with all the inherent risks to our economy. And it will be only a matter of time before we see the rise in “consumer prices for electricity and other goods and services” he warns us about.

Ah, those unintended consequences can be killers.

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Name-calling as a substitute for open debate?

The phenomenon of using name-calling as a tactic to silence debate is alive and flourishing in this Ontario campaign. Homophobia seems to be the slur of the day: the Grits are slamming the Tories because of “Hudak’s homophobic flyers” (pictured) that the Grits claim falsely accuse Dalton McGuinty of “keeping parents in the dark” about the province’s sex-ed school curriculum.

According to this CTV report: “The Toronto District School Board has developed a 219-page curriculum resource guide for kindergarten through Grade 12 called ‘Challenging Homophobia and Heterosexism’.”

The report claims the resource guide “recommends schools not advise parents when teachers will be introducing concepts such as gender discrimination and non-traditional families in the classroom.”

About 17 months ago, Dalton McGuinty had to back off from a controversial sex education curriculum planned for our grade schools, because of outrage from parents. At the time, he seemed to be caught by surprise by the new curriculum, and within hours of his education minister defending it in the provincial legislature, he told reporters the sex-ed program was halted.

Curious that in 2010 he wasn’t calling parents who were outraged by the sex-ed plan “homophobic”. Back then, he said:

“…it’s very important that as a government …we listen very carefully to what parents have to say and we take their concerns into account and lend shape to a curriculum that they are comfortable with.”

Apparently, the education ministry did not heed McGuinty’s words for nothing much has changed in the past year as far as the content and tone of proposed sex education is concerned, at least, not in our provincial capital, Toronto. And when the PC party publishes a flyer demonstrating that party stands on the side of parents, the Liberal war room slurs Tim Hudak as being homophobic.

That’s it isn’t it? In the eyes of the progressives, one can never criticize a pro-gay, lesbian, etc., agenda without being homophobic. We must all genuflect before the alter of Gay Pride or risk being accused as having an irrational fear of homosexuality and homosexuals, being labeled a bigot, and suffering other unattractive and insulting consequences.

Dirty tricks dreamed up in the smoky backrooms of the political bosses are nothing new, of course, but they remain as cynical as they always were and have a corrosive effect on our democracy. Playing clean is anathema to any Grit party machine. To expect otherwise is like expecting scorpions to stop stinging—its part of their innate nature.

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Will vote-splitting and getting out the Tory vote be enough to save Hudak?

The Dalton McGuinty Liberals seem poised to “three-peat” in tomorrow’s election. Some polls show them in majority territory and none have the Progressive Conservatives in the lead. PC leader Tim Hudak needs something akin to a miracle to put him in office.

Some PC supporters take solace from the fact Tories have an excellent record of delivering their votes on election day. And, of course, the strong New Democrat showing is likely to split-off some Liberal voters. But will those factors be enough to give the PCs a last-minute reprieve? I fear they will be too little too late.

The shame of it is the PCs once held a comfortable 11-point lead on Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals, but a new Ipsos poll reported in the National Post today suggests McGuinty—with 41% support from voters—will win his third majority in a row. Not only is McGuinty’s party leading, but it is pulling away and now finds itself in majority territory.

Mr. Hudak’s PCs trail by 10 points at 31% and Andrea Horwath’s New Democratic Party is in third place with 25% support.

Should the trend suggested by this poll hold through the next 36 hours, the collapse of the Hudak campaign will virtually duplicate the sorry effort of John Tory’s 2007 team, when that brain-trust managed only 31.6% of the popular vote—about where the Tories are one day before this election.

For those interested in the technicalities of the survey: the poll of 1,020 adults for The Ottawa Citizen was conducted Sept. 30–Oct. 3 and has a margin of error of 3.1%.

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In Burlington the PCs offer the best choice on Oct. 6

Those of us living in Ontario get a chance to exercise our franchise in the provincial general election on Thursday, Oct. 6. By all accounts, the race is between Dalton McGuinty’s ruling Liberals and Progressive Conservatives led by Tim Hudak, assuming no late “orange crush” from the rejuvenated New Democrats and their popular leader, Andrea Horwath.

My local riding, Burlington, has an interesting race underway. After the retirement of incumbent PC Joyce Savoline, the seat has opened up and could be lost to the PCs for the first time since 1943. The race here is mainly between local businesswoman Jane McKenna running as the PC candidate and Liberal candidate Karmel Sakran a lawyer, though, with vote-splitting, the New Democrat Peggy Russell could be a dark horse set for a run up the middle.

One local pundit asks, “Will you vote for the party or the person?” And suggests, “If you decide at this point that you will vote for the party no matter what—well then you’re some kind of an idiot or at best an irresponsible citizen.”

I agree with him, but only to a point. For my money, when there is no clear-cut “best person” running in a riding, and the other party has made a cock up of the economy over its eight-year term, wouldn’t one have to be our pundit’s “idiot or at best an irresponsible citizen” if one voted for a particular candidate just because she/he was not running for the Progressive Conservative Party? Well, perhaps not an idiot, but I think you get my point.

For many in Ontario, this election is an anybody-but-the-PCs campaign. This is clearly the case with the teachers’ unions and with the various powerful, rich public sector unions and other diehard leftists. And, with due respect, I believe it’s the point of view of the pundit I quoted above.

So I ask myself, why not vote PC in Burlington?

The PC party’s candidates have held the Burlington riding in its various configurations since the 1943, and during that time the town, later the city, has grown and prospered. Since the mid-eighties (a 26-year span), the PCs have only been in government for about eight years, so local candidates were handicapped in obtaining funding and other benefits for the city.

There are two main election issues in Burlington: a new highway the Liberal government was considering that would have cut across the city’s section of the Niagara Escarpment; and provincial funding for the expansion of Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital (JBMH).

As to the highway: all parties agree it will not be built across Burlington’s escarpment. The anybody-but-the-PCs crowd would have us believe otherwise, but both the local PC candidate and PC leader Tim Hudak have made their position clear on this file.

So we can safely vote PC on this one.

As to funding for the hospital. The hospital desperately needs to expand, but lacks the funds. Apparently, one floor is closed because it also lacks funds to keep it open. So who do we blame?

Do we blame the incumbent MPP who is in opposition? Or is the fault with the Liberal government that has been in office for about half of the last 26 years, and all of the past eight years? It is the Grit politicians who hold the purse strings, not the bureaucrats. No number of telephone calls and badgering of bureaucrats by an opposition MPP will get you anything unless their Liberal political masters give their OK. And apparently Burlington and our hospital wasn’t one of their priorities.

By the way, JBMH opened in 1961 (under a PC government) and doubled in size in 1971 (under a PC government). It made internal renovations in 1993 (under an NDP government) and a minor expansion occurred and 2001 (under a PC government). Where were the Liberals? For Burlington’s hospital, they’ve always been missing in action.

And, by the way, where were the Liberals when a 20-month-long outbreak of C. difficile led to 62 deaths at JBMH in 2006–07. Our pundit says, “The hospital got so run down and so difficult to keep clean that it had a serious C.difficile outbreak that resulted in the loss of more than 90 lives. That kind of funding failure in any community is criminal.”

Let’s be absolutely clear: cleaning standards, or lack thereof, led to the C.difficile crisis at JBMH. A responsible CEO and board would have closed the facility if the governing Liberals were not giving them enough funds to keep the place clean. What sort of people would have risked our lives like that? People died under a Liberal government watch, and, with respect, trying to blame an opposition party MPP for not “deliver[ing] for the community” just doesn’t cut it on this file.

But I do agree, “That kind of funding failure in any community is criminal.” So why hasn’t someone from the Liberal government gone to jail?

So on this file too, I’ll vote PC and not the do-nothing-for-our-hospital Liberals.

In summary, PC candidate, Jane McKenna has given clear, unambiguous support for Burlington’s two major issues in this election, convincing me that (a) while the mid-peninsula highway is important to Ontario’s future economy, it will not be crossing Burlington’s section of the fragile Niagara Escarpment; and (b) Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital will receive provincial funding for its expansion project, should the PCs gain power.

By the way, for the Liberal candidate to keep insisting the PCs may not carry through with funding is morally reprehensible—after all, it’s a bit rich coming from the Liberals whose record for breaking election promises is second to none.

So I voted PC and hope you readers who live in the Burlington riding will do the same.

Is Ontario doomed to four more years of Dalton McGuinty?

From September 27, 2011 Ontario election debate | screengrab from YouTube

The prospect of four more years of a government led by Dalton McGuinty leaves me with a sense of dread. Based on recent polls, we’ll probably to have a Liberal minority government, which is most likely to be propped up by the NDP with their anti-corporation, high-social-spending, pro-public-service-union agenda.

With only four days to go, most voter-preference polls show the Liberals in a lead or a statistical tie with Tim Hudak’s Tories. Andrea Horwath’s NDP trail with a respectable third-place showing.

I have already voted for the PCs, but it was not that the alternative to McGuinty was so attractive, but that the Liberal government has been so inept and deceitful over the last eight years—mismanagement of the security and energy files, broken promises, waste at public agencies like eHealth and out-of-control spending, which since 2003 has increased far faster than the province’s GDP growth rate.

Fundamental responsibilities of any state government is enforcement of the law, maintenance of the peace and protection of citizens. On this front, the Liberal government has been a miserable failure and do not deserve another term. Two examples for the sake of illustration:

First, in what Ontario ombudsman Andre Marin called a mass violation of civil rights, McGuinty passed a law that police used to exercise heightened powers during the G20 summit in Toronto and, by his own admission, failed to tell people that it had given police extra powers for the June summit.

Secondly, I remind readers of the travesty of justice that started in Caledonia in 2006 and continues today, though in reduced form. Residents of Caledonia were forsaken by their government and left to fend for themselves in the face of a violent insurrection by native band-members that saw non-native residents terrorized, police officers assaulted and public property destroyed. And, for the most part, the Ontario Provincial Police refused to intervene and arrest native lawbreakers, though some arrests were made later. Throughout, Dalton McGuinty has sought the moral low-ground on this file as he appeased the lawbreakers by abandoning the law-abiding.

Mismanagement and waste have been hallmarks of this McGuinty government. Remember in 2009 when Ontario’s auditor general issued a report in which he castigated the Liberal government and the senior management of the provincial agency, eHealth, for wasting $1-billion over a decade during which it failed to create an electronic health record. The report claimed the Liberal government allowed eHealth to waste millions on unused computer systems and to pay out other millions to consultants for contracts that were never tendered. This mismanagement occurred when then Energy Minister George Smitherman was health minister and continued under his successor, David Caplan, who resigned as health minister over the affair.

The number of McGuinty’s broken promises and flip-flops have reached comic proportions. It began with his now infamous 2003 written pledge not to raise taxes and continued in the last election when he again made his no-tax promise, both of which he broke when he enacted the Health Premium, eco-fees and the harmonized sales tax. And members of his caucus have mused about implementing a carbon tax or a cap and trade system that will have a similar negative effect on our pocket books. More recently, two gas-fired power plants in the Toronto area have been cancelled because of a voters’ backlash. The Grits had assured us these were essential to our energy plans, but quickly bowed to a not-in-our-backyard campaign. With Grits, principle is soon jettisoned and replaced with appeasement and pragmatism.

Yes, there was labour peace with the teachers and other public sector unions, and some gains were made in education and health care, but, boy, did we ever pay and pay and pay for it. Interest on Ontario’s provincial debt is over $10-billion a year—money that could better be spent on education, health, roads, transit or returned to residents as tax relief. And these staggering debt charges come during a time when interest rates are very low. Just imagine what debt charges will be when interest rates go back to more traditional levels—the era of cheap money won’t last.

I’ll conclude with this shameful example of duplicity. Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal government promised to freeze the wages of provincial public-sector employees. Not only was that promise not kept, but the Grits tried to deceive voters by making an agreement with union workers for secret bonuses to be paid to them once election day has passed. Shameful.

And the voters of Ontario are asking for four more years of this?

Except photo, © Russell G. Campbell, 2011.
All rights reserved.

The views I express on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of political parties, institutions or organizations with which I am associated.

Undecided

Four days to the vote, and I remain undecided . . . not about which party to vote for, but rather, whether to vote at all.The PC Party of Ontario had an opportunity here to live up to their *Changebook* and blow the stale and bloated Liberal government out of the water. Instead, I haven't even heard the word *Changebook* since maybe May or June? You pick up a few bits and pieces in the news over

Burlington candidates faceoff

The following is a re-print of my column at Our Burlington online newspaper.

Candidates representing Ontario’s three main parties in the Oct. 6 election faced off last Tuesday at a question and answer event hosted by the Burlington Chamber of Commerce. The Q&A format gave little opportunity for the cut-and-thrust I enjoy in these all-candidate encounters; however, the event did provide an opportunity to see the politicians in action.

Considering that every response given was already available on the parties’ websites, I could just as well have stayed home and surfed the Internet. There was nothing new, nothing spontaneous, no insights gained. So I won’t give a detailed reportage—that’s already been done elsewhere in these pages. My objective was to take the measure of the candidates themselves and get a view of how well they think on their feet and how persuasive they are.

Anyone who attended expecting spirited debate left disappointed. The candidates mainly read from prepared notes, giving the impression these were not the well-prepared, self-confident, facts-at-their-fingertips sorts one might hope for, or even expect, from politicians seeking high office. Quite a contrast to the polished performances we saw later that day on the televised Leaders’ Debate. I place great emphasis on “form” at such events. After all, candidates have every reason to be well prepared and at their best, just as their leaders were—none of them read from briefing notes.

Is it too much to ask that candidates memorize their party platforms and related statistics? And, when questions are not specifically covered by party material, don’t we expect them to speak from their hearts? Furthermore, not answering the question asked and not answering in the allotted time may well be symptomatic of not properly preparing oneself and/or lacking personal discipline.

Liberal candidate Karmel Sakran was the least effective performer. Given his legal background, I expected more from him, and his audience deserved better. He spoke with his head down as he read in a monotone from prepared notes, as might a shy grade niner seeking the class presidency. And he so poorly planned the length of his opening remarks, he barely got the chance to tell us who he was and to give his connection to Burlington before running over his allotted time. Throughout the morning, he offered little eye-contact, no spark, no spontaneity. And he also ran over his allotted time before completing his closing statement.

Mr. Sakran did, however, introduce the main elements of his party’s platform and defended its record in government. He also showed he knows our community. Unfortunately, however, he read answers without enthusiasm and was unconvincing. When he had nothing specific in his briefing notes to cover a question, he seemed to select a phrase—like “health care”—and matched it to a general response from his notes, ignoring the question’s context. I only remember him answering two questions in an impromptu fashion, looking up at the audience and without reading from his papers. They related to an immigrant business tax credit, which he defended ably, and the relocation of a gas plant in Oakville. All candidates were, uncharacteristically for the morning, spontaneous and animated as they agreed that the gas plant should not relocate to Burlington.

Those already inclined to vote Liberal, are unlikely to have changed their minds because of this event. But, while he might not have harmed himself or his party, he missed an opportunity to shine and convince voters in attendance and watching on Cogeco Cable that he was ready and able to take over from the retiring incumbent MPP Joyce Savoline.

Conversely, New Democrat Peggy Russell made a lot of eye-contact and showed flashes of passion, although, she also depended too heavily on prepared text. At one point, she read the wrong prepared answer. And there were opinions she expressed that I found curious:

First, on the issue of education, she blamed former premier Mike Harris for the lost schooldays due to strikes. I don’t remember Mike Harris locking out the teachers as much as the teachers withholding their labour at the expense of students. But I quibble.

Secondly, Ms. Russell claimed small businesses will benefit from a higher minimum wage, because workers would have more to spend. Following her logic, businesses should all give massive across-the-board raises to their employees. How strange it is they haven’t cottoned on to this NDP strategy?

Ms. Russell also went overtime on several responses, but she seemed sincere and seemed to “own” her answers. In my view, she won the morning in that she was passionate, made eye-contact and showed a level of political maturity not as evident in her rivals.

I rated the PC candidate Jane McKenna’s performance somewhere between that of her rivals. Following the pattern of the morning, she referred too frequently to her briefing notes, but, at least, she was animated and made far more eye-contact with her audience than did Mr. Sakran. She also, for the most part, finished her statements and answers within the allotted times. And she gave the best closing statement of the three.

She sounded nervous at times, but her deliveries, even when read out, seemed to be her own opinions and beliefs. That is, she, like Peggy Russell, seemed to own her answers despite them being couched in party rhetoric.

Ms. McKenna gave clear, unambiguous responses, convincing me that (a) while the mid-peninsula highway is important to Ontario’s future economy, it would not be crossing Burlington’s section of the fragile Niagara Escarpment; and (b) Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital will receive provincial funding for its expansion project, should the PCs gain power. And, on a couple of occasions when she did not have an answer to a question, she said so without trying to retrofit her prepared text and offering it in place of a meaningful and specific answer.

So there you have it: an astonishingly amateurish affair with an NDP winner, a solid performance by the PC and a lackluster one by the Liberal.

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Ontario Leaders Debate 2011: fiddling while Ontario burns

To the credit of the three leaders of Ontario’s largest political parties, there was a great deal of talk about policy in last night’s leaders debate. That is always nice to see both from the perspective of a policy wonk and a voter. I found, however, that most of the policies that were being hotly debated were pretty irrelevant.

Ontario is in economic and financial trouble. This is the issue that should be dominating the election but by tacit agreement none of the major parties are really talking about it. There are two questions that were asked that should have brought this issue to the forefront but all three leaders allowed each other off the hook and gave incredibly weak answers.

The first question was how the budget is going to be balanced.

Dalton McGuinty responded by talking about how much spending he introduced and plans to introduce.

Tim Hudak responded by talking about how he will make sure that ¾ of the budget is defended from cuts (health and education).

Andrea Horwath responded by saying something about blank cheques to corporations which I think was referring to corporate tax cuts, but that doesn’t make any sense on a couple of levels.

The second question is closely related to the first question, although perhaps not many people realize it. The last question of the night asked if the party leaders would be open to more private participation in the health care system. With health care spending growing faster than government revenue and taking up about half of the budget this is an important question for deciding how to get Ontario out of deficits.

Dalton McGuinty responded by saying he will beg for more money from the federal government (forgetting it seams that there is only one taxpayer).

Tim Hudak responded with an anecdote about how it sucks to have a child that is sick (I have absolutely no doubt that it sucks a lot).

Andrea Horwath responded with a rant against the capitalist system (which to be fair is at least on message).

There was another question that asked why politicians aren’t bolder. Each tried to respond by saying that they are bold, but the answers described above makes a lie of these claims. Yet the solutions to Ontario’s problems will require boldness and none of the leaders last night showed that they have an ounce of it.

Ooohhhh . . . now I get it

See the new PC ad? Finally . . . NOW I get it . . ."Dalton McGuinty, higher taxes . . . lost jobs Tim Hudak, lower taxes . . . new jobs"Wow! What an informative ad. So inspiring. So unique. So convincing. Finally, the PC war room is getting the point across . . . Dalton bad.Tim good.Now we know. Now I feel like an informed citizen.Thank you PC Party, for giving me a solid reason to vote.(Btw, do

Why bother voting for the Ontario Tories?

I've been following the Ontario election for the past few weeks hoping that I'll hear something, anything, that will make me enthusiastic about voting for Tim Hudak. I've got to say, it's been a tough slog.

Hudak proposes to balance Ontario's budget (which, by the way, is projected to be $25 billion in the hole this fiscal year) largely by eliminating "waste". However, he plans to INCREASE funding for education and health care (which together account for over half of the province's expenses) by some $5 billion. At the same time, he plans to extend full-day kindergarten to all Ontario schools by 2014, fill classrooms with expensive technology, increase the number of spaces at post-secondary schools by 60 000, hire more doctors and expand hospitals and home care, all while reducing taxes by 5%. This will be paid for largely by eliminating "waste and fraud" and reducing the size of the civil service. I'm sorry, but the PC economic policies just don't make sense, and there are no serious proposals for the type of sweeping structural changes that are going to be necessary to pull Ontario back from the brink.

The Ontario PCs also have an unfortunate tendency to focus on red meat law-and-order issues that frighten away centrist voters and make conservatives seem like heartless monsters. This campaign has seen Hudak promise to put prison inmates in chain gangs and make the sex offender registry publicly available on-line so that communities can take the law into their own hands "to protect their own kids". Good grief - chain gangs and vigilantes? This is a serious political party?

I was all set to vote in protest for the Freedom Party, knowing that it would probably do nothing but split the conservative vote and help the Liberals win another four years with McGuinty at the helm. Then a breath of fresh air blew in this weekend when I sat down with my morning coffee and read this in the National Post: comments from McGuinty and Hudak made in interviews with the paper's editorial board last week. Maybe Hudak gets it after all.

McGuinty: I'm no longer a Boy Scout. I know what it means to put your public muscle behind a strategic initiative like clean energy. It's up to us to decide on an opportunity, and I recognize green energy as a tremendous opportunity... Yeah, I picked a spot. I'm driving for it, hard, in an unrelenting fashion.

Hudak: This is the difference between Dalton McGuinty and I. I don't pick winners and losers. I don't think that I know best where the economy is going and I'll double-down on building a wind turbine, solar panels and casting out jobs elsewhere. I won't give out $230-million contracts to a video-game manufacturer to get a photo-op and try to look modern. I believe we have mechanisms to determine the marketplace: They're called customers. We have tremendous strengths in our province in financial services, technologies, mining, forestry, I believe there is still a future in manufacturing as well. We're not bringing back the jobs that disappeared but I think there can be broadbased job creation. I reject the notion a premier or some big thinker will know where the next jobs are from and put all our eggs in the one basket of a green-energy or affirmative-action program.

Whoa! Did Tim Hudak really say that? Maybe there's hope. Maybe we don't have to put up with another four years of Nanny McGuinty micromanaging the economy while embarking on ridiculously expensive social-engineering projects. Maybe the gross incompetence of the last eight years - Caledonia, the health care "premium", e-Health, Eco-fees, the HST, etc ad nauseam, will be rewarded with a well-deserved thrashing, and Premier McGuinty can retire to write his memoirs and be rewarded with a nice ambassadorship somewhere.

The Ontario PC's failure

Truth is, the Ontario PC Party failed me out of the gate when they said they'd continue to implement the universal daycare plan disguised as *all day kindergarten* -- and pay teacher's wages for the daycare worker's job.That said, I was still hoping to be persuaded to vote in the upcoming election. I won't be voting Liberal, but unless I find a reason to wander over to the polls on October 6,

Where is the Ontario P. C. Party?

Why vote P.C. ? Seriously? Does anyone know? On Thursday, Christina Blizzard said exactly what I've been thinking. How exactly do Tim Hudak and the rest of the invisible Progressive Conservatives, differ from the status quo? Besides standing right along side Dalton, where does the P.C. Party stand?If I want all-day kindergarten, I just won't bother to vote . . . why would I? I'm not voting NDP,