Ontario General Election 2014

NorthReport wrote:

The Liberals seem to oftens run a fear-based campaign as opposed to one full of change and hope.

I don't believe in voting out of fear, I believe in voting for the party which best represents my interests.

According to Ipsos-Reid, the NDP are gaining fast on the Liberals, now with only a small three point gap beteeen them. The NDP has the momentum, and may well pull even, or surpass the Liberals soon, so if folks are really so concerned about Hudak, doesn't it make sense to support the one party that can stop him, the Andrea horwath-led NDP? 

josh wrote:

terrytowel wrote:

Sineed wrote:

Okay, so Hudak has just lost the election.

Thank you, Tim Hudak! I mean that.

If people are scared of those cuts, is it possible he is hoping for vote splitting between the Liberals and the NDP, so his party can come up the middle?

That's precisely what he's hoping. Although since both he and Howarth both like talking about "job creators" there may be some confusion. The man is a clear and present danger. I hope the voters won't let him succeed with this strategy.

Leave it to a blogger in Niagara to discern the subtle distinctions between what Hudak means when he says "job creator" and whe Horwath means when she says "job creator", the distinction seems to be lost on the sophisticated urban liberal intelligentsia:

Ontario Voters Have A Choice Between Rewarding Real Job Creators Or – As Hudak Would Have Us Do – Offering More Across-The-Board Tax Cuts To His Corporate Friends

Quote:

Contrast that with Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak, calling for across the board, corporate tax cuts and simply calling all corporations “job creators.” All corporations in Ontario are “job creators,” according to Hudak, so give them all a tax cut – as if he is telling us that a bunny is going to be showing up at our door this Easter, delivering painted eggs to all. 

This is the kind of trickle down garbage that Hudak’s old master, the former Tory premier from the 1990s, tried retreading from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – like just give the upper one per cent more tax cuts and they might throw us a few more jobs. …. Somebody who didn’t believe this crap at the time said. mink  coats don’t shed,’ but here is Hudak still trying to con us into thinking that they do.

I know it's complicated Josh, but there you go. And maybe's its because of that ability to communicate a clear anti-Conservative message, the NDP are actually keeping the Tories "out" of places like Niagara, where the NDP won the last byelection, as Rosario Marchese points out.

Oh, and I think the NDP "jobs" plan sucks. But that doesn't mean that I think Andrea is hiding Milton Freidman books in her "Das Kapital" dust jackets.

Having the leader herself in the attack ad is unwise, and will probably come back to bite the Liberals in the ass.

terrytowel wrote:

New attack ad against Andrea Horwath claiming she said no to child care, she said no to transit and she said no to social programs in the Liberal budget.

See link to view the new 'attack' ad for yourself.

It is voiced by Wynne.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RVg4YJVX_lE

I'm Kathleen Wynne and I stand behind this message!

Really!

Ontarians prefer more action as opposed to a bunch of promises that will never be keep.

The Liberals had 11 years in government to do all these wonderful things but didn't.

For example, if the Liberals were sincere about the pension plan, why didn't the Liberals support it 4 years ago when they had the chance?

You gain more credibility when you walk the talk.

Link

terrytowel wrote:

I'm Kathleen Wynne and I stand behind this message!

My hunch is this kind of thinking is resonating with a lot of voters.

What’s she running from? On the real issues facing Ontario, Kathleen Wynne’s silence is deafening

Jagmeet Singh! If you ever get a chance to meet him or hear him speak - do it. He's really impressive.

You raise and interesting point about Trinity Spadina. Marchese was almost knocked of by Sara Thomson in the last election there and only won by 1500 votes. I thought I would check into who is runing there for the Liberals, because I was looking at for their web site, and it is down.

http://trinityspadina.ridingassociation.org/

Fallout from the embroglio with the federal association?

I don't think that is going to work.

Election Predictor shows there are 37 seats too close to call.

http://www.electionprediction.org/2013_on/index.php

Aristotleded24 wrote:

mark_alfred wrote:

Fundraising shows that the Liberals are the favourite of this election.  link  They have almost twice the amount of the PCs, and over four times the amount of the NDP.  The Liberal's main source of donations is corporations.

Sounds like it's time for Horwath to follow Gary Doer's lead and ban corporate and union donations to political parties in Ontario.

Are you serious? I was blissfully unaware that Ontario allowed corporate donations.

They were banned in Québec in René Lévesque's first term in 1977.

Unionist wrote:

Are you serious? I was blissfully unaware that Ontario allowed corporate donations.

You missed my previous post, which makes it worth repeating:

Unlike Jean Chretien's actually-progressive election finance reform, Ontario Liberals never banned corporate donations. In Ontario, corporations are still paying the shot. A corporation can give over $33,000 to Ontario parties and candidates this year.

For Ontario elections, corporations can donate, up to $9,975 to a central party in any year and an additional $9,975 for each campaign period. In addition, eligible contributors can contribute up to $6,650 annually to riding associations of any one party, but no more than $1,330 annually to a single association. Similarly, $6,650 can be contributed to candidates of any one party, with a limit of no more than $1,330 to a single candidate. That makes $33,250.

The writ was not issued until Wednesday, giving the bagmen five days to collect pre-writ donations, before the start of the campaign period, doubling the effective limits.

Pass it on.

Please stop with the nonsense, as the polling BS meter is rising again.

Milton Chan, the owner of Election Predictor  is a Liberal

terrytowel wrote:

Election Predictor shows there are 37 seats too close to call.

http://www.electionprediction.org/2013_on/index.php

According to the Toronto Star 24/7: Liberal = wonderful and everything else = very, very bad. 

terrytowel wrote:

According to the Toronto Star the Liberals hope to steal Burlington, Halton and Kitchener-Conestoga from the PC and Toronto’s Davenport and Trinity-Spadina from the NDP.

While the PC hope to take back Niagara Falls, London West which they narrowly lost to the NDP. Plus Kitchener Centre from the Liberals and and Kitchener-Waterloo from the NDP. As well as make gains in Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville and Brampton to guarantee them a majority government.

The NDP hopes to capture Brampton-Springdale, York West, York South-Weston and London North-Centre from the Libs, They also hope to make gains in southwestern Ontario.

Really!  

Quote:

As of Sunday morning, an Ontario Liberal Party spokesman said Uppal was still running in the riding.

- from the cbc website above

Don't agree with everything in the article buy.........

Campaign without a clue

Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne and local Toronto candidates at the construction site of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line on May 6, 2014. (Antonella Artuso/QMI Agency)

How can we expect good government from politicians so clueless about themselves? I mean, take Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. Please.

She seems quite pleasant. But she exhibits an eerie lack of self-awareness.

Consider that she chose to kick off her re-election campaign in the old riding of disgraced former Premier Dalton McGuinty. She knew enough to make sure he wasn’t there and did not, when she dared speak his name aloud, appear with a flash and a bang. But she said, “What better place to get started” than a riding “known for a rich history of leaders we can all be proud of.”

Oh, you mean the guy who lied about not raising taxes, whether they were taxes, and whether he’d run deficits, ripped a Tory plan to fund religious schools when his wife taught in the separate Catholic system and he personally had endorsed a separate Jewish system, reversed himself on funding intensive autism treatment for older kids, public-private partnerships for hospitals and abortion and just generally lied a lot before vanishing like an incriminating e-mail after wasting a billion dollars cancelling power plants to save Liberal seats.

You’re seriously proud of that? Or did you somehow not notice it even though you were there the whole ti

http://www.thesudburystar.com/2014/05/10/campaign-without-a-clue

That is Lisa MacLeod riding. If she were to go on vacation for the entire campaign, she would still win.

From rabble's Activist Toolkit:

Quote:

Oppressive language is any wors that uses an identity or identifier belonging to a particular group (class, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and others) in a negative way.

Terrytowel, I see no evidence of this in North Report's post. His language refers only to the Liberal party and does not use the candidate's ethnic or racial identity in any way, negative or otherwise. You may not like his attitude toward Liberal candidates, but you cannot call people on the use of oppressive language where none is used. In fact, the only person to reference identity is you. The fact that you and the candidate are both Asian is a statement of fact. If North Report had turned the candidate's Asian identity into a negative, then that would most certainly be oppressive. He is, in fact, using the fact that the candidate is Liberal as a negative. That is clear in his language.

ETA being a member of the Liberal Party is not an identity, it's a choice.

Please explain how the word corral is a negative reference to Asian Canadians? North Report's phrasing references "Gunfight at the OK Corral". As far as I know, there were no people of Asian origin involved in that much-mythologized gunfight. Because oppressive language is so pervasive, it is important that we be very clear about how words can be oppressive.

Unionist wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

Don't agree with everything in the article buy.........

Campaign without a clue

 

Quoting, approvingly, big sections of an article by a neoliberal ultra-right-wing Hudak fan - a jerk who reviles Wynne as being, in his words, "well left of Andrea Horwath" - is a strong sign, I think, of how difficult it has become to defend the capitulationist Liberal policies of the Ontario NDP. And it's not the first time babblers have cited Conservative critics to attack Wynne. Surely you can do better?

Why not when supposedly left-wing pundits here are arguing that opposition to P3s, sale of public assets, outsourcing of labour contracts, and being for reconstituting Ontario Hydro and the promotion of increased corporate taxes is neo-liberalism.

Maybe reliance on this kind of silly commentary would be uncessary if the "left" hadn't already stepped through the looking glass.

Rebecca West wrote:

 

Please explain how the word corral is a negative reference to Asian Canadians? North Report's phrasing references "Gunfight at the OK Corral". As far as I know, there were no people of Asian origin involved in that much-mythologized gunfight. Because oppressive language is so pervasive, it is important that we be very clear about how words can be oppressive.

When he used the word 'Corral' it is likened it to an Asian Buffet, like The Golden Corral. So when you use the word 'Corral' with Asians, some would think of these all you can eat Asian buffets. Maybe I'm too sensetive, but I felt I owed you an explanation as to why I felt offended.

Unionist wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

My hunch is this kind of thinking is resonating with a lot of voters.

What’s she running from? On the real issues facing Ontario, Kathleen Wynne’s silence is deafening

 

This was another example of quoting neoliberal Hudak-lovers to attack Wynne. It lines up well with Horwath's campaign themes of attacking "corruption", "waste", overspending, etc.

If voters need bombast on these issues, why would they choose the Hudak lookalike rather than the real thing? And leave the field open to Liberal liars to promote progressive-sounding policies??

I am glad that you have moved over from the "most progressive budget in years" camp to the "Liberal liars" promoting "progressive-sounding policies" camp, which is a much more reasonable appraisal of the situation.

Tonight on TVO The Agenda will be a debate on Ring of Fire, a chromite deposit in Ontario's North is said to be worth billions of dollars.

MPP from all three provincial parties, along with a Green Party canddiate, will be part of the debate.

Each party will present their platform, in respect to the handling of Ring of Fire.

Liberals not as well organized