It was twenty years ago today...

I couldn't believe it at the time. There was a party down at the union hall.

It took Floyd Laughren a year just to figure out what a mess Petersen's Liberals saddled Ontario with financially. Liberals announced an "unforseen" budget deficit of $2-$3 billion dollars just a week or so before the election. Then Mulroney did a Diefenbaker of things and witheld $4 billion in transfer payments from NDP Ontario. Mulroney's policy-induced recession lingered across Canada. The NDP spent money in Northern Ontario for safe drinking water projects, social housing, and saved a number of Northern steel and wood industries from bankruptcy. The NDP made inroads in the North where our two old line parties have continued policies for abandonment since Mike Harris.

Ontario's growth rate was best in the country by 1994. Laughren had the province back on track for balanced budgets by turn of the decade. Then Harris' uncommon nonsense revolution began in 1995. They borrowed another $35 billion from foreign sources at high interest rates to finance tax cuts for rich friends of the conservative party. The NDP did the best they could under the circumstances with a top-down neoliberal framework emanating from Ottawa since Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien. Today they are all Bob Rae clones with ballooning budget deficits and hundreds of thousands thrown out of work since 2003. Three recessions in three decades. It's broken.

Hey, and don't forget the double digit interest rates imposed on Canada by the Feds, that didn't help the NDP, but in the last 2 years of the NDP they were still well on their way to balancing the budget, and  had they had another term (or less)  the budget would have been balanced ... then Harris took over and in his 8 years left Ontario with a hidden $5.6B deficit even though he downloaded just about everything possible to the cities .... oh, and who could forget the hundreds of millions Harris gave to his friends at  Accenture, or more commonly known as Arthur Andersen (of accounting fraud fame) to put in a $180M welfare detecting computer system and charged  us $400+M for it, which ended up costing us more than it saved ... and what galls me the most is that we still have some of those asshat criminal Harris hacks  in power in Ottawa screwing over Canada to this day.

I was working in Scarborough West in a poll.  When we arrived at the Campaign Headquarters, I asked some guy in in the front doorway how we were doing.  He said in an inebriated voice, "Of course ya know we're winning. Wouldn't be here, unless ya knew."

I was too stunned  to think of a good answer. 

Go ahead skdadl -- right after I say that 20 years ago today, we were in our living room in downtown Halifax with a group of friends including Alexa McDonough who was then leader of the Nova Scotia NDP.  It was almost unbelievable and we were so excited.  I still remember the feeling and remember Alexa's exhilaration.  She talked to Bob later that evening.

no, Skdadl, I can't get all sentimental about our Swiss boarding school golden boy either; with his first order of business a trip to Wall Street to secure Ontario's credit rating.

I had just moved to Montreal to go to school, but returned home for the weekend to vote in my first-ever election.  I was at Pink Floyd's victory party. 

It's been downhill since then.

I remember the night. I was rather young and my parents had just bought me 'The Land Before Time' to watch that night. We didn't end up watching that movie. They had me watch the news and then sent me off to bed because some of their friends were coming over.

Deme el socialismo en una provincia, o deme la muerte. -  los Neo-Librano loco ideologo