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Protest inside Queen's Park forces temporary recess
The cowards in the Legislature abstained on the budget vote, in a calculated move designed to ensure that it passed. No doubt they will try to use their "abstention" to absolve themselves of responsibility, but it won't wash.
When it came to the rights of public sector workers to bargain collectively, the NDP abstained.
When it came to privatizing Ontario Northland Railway, the NDP abstained.
When it came to taking $220 million from the education budget, the NDP abstained.
When it came to cutting funds for long-term care facilities, the NDP abstained.
When it came to making workers pay more for their pension plans, the NDP abstained.
When it came to cutting funds for culture, the NDP abstained.
When it came to freezing welfare rates, the NDP abstained.
When it came to cutting the Aboriginal Affairs budget, the NDP abstained.
When it came to cutting the Environment Ministry budget, the NDP abstained.
When it came to continuing the absurdly low corporate income tax rate, the health care premiums, and the 8% provincial sales tax, the NDP abstained.
When it came to expanding PPP's and privatized delivery of government services, the NDP abstained.
When it came to leaving Ontario as the only province without an active home energy retrofit incentive program, the NDP abstained.
When it came to closing schools while maintaining a costly and redundant separate school system, the NDP abstained.
When it came to keeping university operating funds increases below the rate of inflation, the NDP abstained.
I remember when babblers mocked Dion, Ignatieff and the "cowards" in the Liberal Party for refusing to pull the plug on the Harper govt...
Bay Street wanted Ontarians to spend another $100 million on games of chance for the sake of winning a phony majority for four years.
And the NDP wouldn't let them. The NDP wouldn't spin our WorstPastthePost wheel of fortune rigged in Bay Street's favour.
Too bad so sad!
For anyone wondering what the results would have been, lo' and behold the ghost of an Ontario election seven months ago. Record low voter turnout 49.2%
I'm surprised Andrea folded after getting so little in return for NDP support. What a wimp.
Wrong. Bay Street supports the Liberal austerity program. They wanted the NDP to support it, and the NDP happily obliged.
No more phony majority for Ontario. Now we have a genuine Liberal-NDP majority government.
Well I guess 57.1% of the voters decided there wasn't much to vote for. And looking at this budget, I guess they were right.
Sorry that should have been 49.2%.
Not everyone does the choosing in Ontario. We would still have been gambling on the same fickle 22-25 percent or so of the electorate doing the choosing, and those voters are not all that fond of the NDP.
Personally I think it would have been irresponsible of the NDP to gamble away a Hudaks in official opposition hand dealt just seven months ago for Hudak neoliberals steering the ship sooner than later. The poor and unemployed can't afford to have another bunch of Harrisite radicals lowering austerity on them.
The poor and unemployed may be counting on the NDP to represent them in Toronto, but they should also be able to rely on the NDP to know when to hold the cards they have in hand. It's not much of a hand, we know, but it's still better than a Hudak Royal Flush in this game of bullshit poker FPTP style.
Remember Kimberly Rogers, Lewis Wheelan and other victims of neoliberal ideology in late 1990s Ontario.
You don't think Andrea could have held out for more, Fidel? Doesn't sound like confidence in her negotiating abilities.
I think there will be more opportunities for negotiations next budget. Andrea is in the game. We all have a hand in the game now whereas we wouldn't with Hudak in firm control for another four years. There would be no negotiations in that scenario. It would be Hudak's and Bay Street's way or the highway like it or lump it. And there would be more lumps than not.
And let's not forget the Chretien Liberals with their phoniest of majorities in the 1990s. Their first colonial administrative task in 1994 was to sign Mulroney's expanded NAFTA deal with corporate America "as is". No party has topped that monumental betrayal of Canadians since.
Methinks very few of you have ever been in any kind of negotiation. You can never get everything you want. I've been on the union team in a number of negotiating rounds, you have to give to get. Living in this fantasy world that you just scream loud enough and suddenly the whole world revolves around your wants is only in movies. I have mixed feelings about this deal, but in the end I think the ONDP got about as much as could reasonably be expected, and probably more than that, in what is really the first half of the first period of the game.
ha ha ha - well the provincial orange team did support Andrea with a solidarity of vote - well non-vote & all absteined. Now I never would advocate for that because I so did not approve of the fed libs when they kept the HarperCons alive by abstening all the time but let's see how this unfolds. They now get to "debate" this budget, so one could say that it's not over until it's over.
Wow, can't believe how bitter many of you are. Horwath saved childcare spaces and got the Liberals to shelve their plan to freeze social assistance rates. And she got them to introduce a new surtax, and built public support for this. Clearly it's still a Liberal budget, and clearly does not come close to being an NDP budget. But, she did successfully exert influence as the opposition to make some changes to it. I think it was a job well done.
abstain; To hold oneself back from something regarded as improper or unhealthy
They propped-up the Harpers so many times I lost count at 50. I think the Libs set some kind of world record for being a mirror image of the party they were hired to oppose.
Libs 'n Tories bff.
Because austerity is a bitter pill to swallow. Even more so when its forced on you by supposed allies.
Apparently they didn't get enough of Harris and Flaherty - they want to gamble against another four years of that lucid dream for the poor and unemployed in Puerto Ontario. Big time gamblers. Hey, it's not their welfare benefits or ODSP on the line. Let's kiss the dice and throw them away on some ridiculous game of chance, they demand. I'm glad Andrea's playing this hand and not some other people.
Um, actually it is.
One imagines what it would be like playing poker against the NDP leader: “I’m all in. Unless you are also all in, in which case I am out.”
Ah! But you've not described all of the risk shouldered by the poor in Ontario with your snap election for short-term political gain, which is unlikely to go to the NDP given the election results of just 7 months ago.
Perhaps one of the big time gamblers here will explain to unemployed workers, those on ODSP and tens of thousands on welfare rolls what the very neoliberal Changebook is all about if not a social and economic dead end for Puerto Ontariario.
Ontario Liberal Budget Passes Crucial Vote, Avoiding Another Election
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/liberal-government-budget-expect...
"By working with the NDP we have made a strong budget even stronger." Dalton McGuinty
OFL Says Majority of Ontarians Support Calling an Election
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/politics/archives/2012/03/20120331-...
"If an election were called tomorrow, the party with the most to gain is Andrea Horwath and the NDP,"
And now the Ontario NDP has a golden opportunity to break that shameful record of non-opposition. How many votes do you suppose there will be in the Legislature between now and October 2015? And in how many of those votes do you think the NDP will be siding with the Conservatives?
Well that makes you and Tim Hudak who are pushing for another $100 million dollar election 7 months after the last one.
The NDP will never come close to looking like either of the Bay Street proxy parties.
I voted for Hampton's NDP and electoral reform.
And I voted for Horwath's NDP last October, too.
I don't know about any of you who previously claimed to have boycotted elections for a lack of real choices, but one WorstPastthePost vote every four years is enough for me. Why get excited about it now? Delayed reaction?
McGuinty agrees to NDP’s tax-the-rich Ontario budget demand
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/mcguinty-agrees-to-ndps-tax...
Your criticisms are dead on, but what should we expect from a political party that has some measure of popular support? Their mandate is to gain and maintain political power, and the NDP, under the auspices of being left and progressive, do just that. They aren't, and will never be, what we want in a governing party, and are only marginally less classist and divorced from reality than the Libs.
If the Left -- or what's left of the Left -- could form a viable alternative to the NDP I'd support them in a heartbeat. But we continue to eat our young, allow exterior influences to divide us, nitpick when we should coalesce.
Not advocating a cessation of criticism, just being realistic.
That they should listen to the people.
They only did it once in Ontario - and under the guise of "maintaining political power", they viciously attacked the very people who had given them that power. They then entered the richly-deserved wilderness for a generation. You'd think they'd try to do things differently now.
The question is, on what basis should we "coalesce"? On the basis of uniting to achieve two or three fundamental social and economic aims? Or on the basis of trying to win an election, no matter what it takes? If we do the latter, why would the Bob Rae / Gary Doer / Lorne Calvert / Darrell Dexter experiences not be repeated?
Your "being realistic" conclusion is unclear. You say you're not calling for a cessation of criticism. What, then, are you calling for exactly? And what do you mean by "nitpicking"?
Unionist, being realistic is just seeing things as they are. For me, it doesn't have any impact on what I'm passionate about, how I feel about the direction our governments, our worlds are going. But at some point passion and ideology need to interface with the realpolitik.
And nitpicking? 30 years in the social justice/left/progressive sector have given me ample opportunity to see how we rip each other apart over minor ideological differences when we should just suck it up and work towards change. I'm not suggesting that anyone should detach themselves from what they feel is most important, I'm just saying that when you're on the side that should be winning but isn't, you need to find the common ground and work toward making it a reality.
And here's what you were voting for, whether you knew it or not. I guess you're OK with that. I suspect a lot of others who voted NDP, however, will be disappointed with our new Liberal-NDP Majority Government™.
I agree, as a general statement, but I didn't see any hint of minor ideological differences in the threads about how progressive folks should approach the Ontario budget. They are big picture issues which are at stake. For example, I was very supportive of Jack Layton's agreement to prop up the Paul Martin government in exchange for some very major budgetary concessions in 2005. Were you?
Well, I agree. That's why I supported, 100%, the December 2008 coalition, which many here did not. I saw it as a rather thrilling and unique opportunity for people to get together, for wildly different reasons and from grossly different perspectives, to overthrow the Harper regime in a way that Canadian history had never yet seen. Even though I don't care for the policies of any of the three parties involved very much, I supported their unity for that purpose. Did you? Just curious.