Quote:
Originally Posted by sunsetmountainland
I hardly think the Ontario voters can be duped again. Like I said before do not underestimate Doug Ford.
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They weren't duped before. They had an option, the option proved itself to be a bumbling mess that didn't deserve their vote, so they retreated to the known evil.
The PCs were winning every time right up until the last minute gaffe, it wasn't the Liberals that did that, it was the PCs. Every time. The Liberals were honest every time, they honestly haven't made any major lies in their campaigns aside from McGuinty promising not to raise taxes (and then raising taxes—in as much as a geared-to-income flat rate premium is a tax) and Wynne promising to balance the books and not balancing them. They've done a few dishonest things and lied about that but as far as their platform goes, they're mostly implementing it. The Hydro One sale was a sneaky move; it wasn't in their election platform, they announced it some time later. But selling Hydro One has been a PC policy since the early 1990s, and it was only possible for the Liberals to do it because the PCs started the process for them.
Tim Hudak, in 2014, promised/threatened to lay off
one hundred thousand civil servants. That would result in an unemployment rate in the province of nearly 10% at the time, and necessitate the payout of hundreds of millions if not billions in severance, while gutting the public service. That's why he lost. That legitimately alarmed people, not just because of what it would do to the government, but because of what it would do to those looking for work. It would have majorly screwed up our economy. You can't lay off 1.1% of a province's workforce and expect things to be OK! It's lunacy!
Quote:
Originally Posted by sunsetmountainland
I think I understand your position but your remarks seem very regional. Most of my comments are for the entire province.
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Northern Ontario is very regional. Toronto is a two hour
flight from my city. It's as far from Thunder Bay as Lloydminster is from Vancouver. Kenora to Toronto is
further than Vancouver to Yorkton, SK. Toronto is urban, we're rural. Policies that get implemented on a province wide basis very often don't work as intended in this region because the geography, economy and demographics are too different from the situation the programs were based on. There are a lot of exemptions for this region to assist with it (we get a lower tax rate—little more than half of the rate across the border in either Manitoba or Quebec—and decent rebates on heating costs, as well as half-price vehicle licensing and fewer environmental regulations for cars) but things like social assistance and housing (policies which are largely unchanged from the previous PC government) are severely dysfunctional and out of touch with the local reality, and the restrictions on what cities are allowed to do in that area makes solving social issues very difficult here compared to BC. While BC and Vancouver have a real strategy to deal with their opioid crisis, in Thunder Bay (which has been dealing with opioid abuse since the early 2000s) the best we've got so far is a handful of private companies (owned by a friend of the former premier and I think Wynne has a stake in the company?) that provide methadone to addicts, but only in quantities that prolong the addiction, not end it. (The revenue is patient based, which cancels out the incentive to actually cure the addictions; if they stop needing the methadone, the money stops flowing in.) And again, this is something that the PCs not only won't deal with, but they'll likely make it worse by cutting the few existing programs we do have. When an addict is arrested (because that's what we do with them) they have two options: detox facility, or hospital. The rehab facility has 12 beds. (That's all—a city of 108,000 with nearly 600 homeless people, and only 12 detox beds). The hospital has 350 beds, but is chronically overcrowded, with patients resting in cordoned off areas of sunrooms and hallways. In Sudbury, which recently had several hospitals replaced by a superhospital with fewer beds, they put one patient in a bathroom for a week.
And I've actually stumbled upon another broken promise: both the provincial Liberals and federal Conservatives promised to fix health care, but it's still significantly flawed. Sure, it's better than the US, but that's a pretty fucking low bar to aim for. Comparing our system to the US is like saying "this is much better than a bicycle!" as you ride a moped on the 401.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
For the NDP the goal is to reach second place. If the NDP overtake the Liberals in polling, almost all Liberals will jump ship to the NDP en masse and boom, NDP government.
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That would be ironic for the PCs. One one hand, Wynne will have been defeated, but on the other hand, Premier Andrea Horwath.
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And we're not going to be getting then anymore starting next year. And the entire time we got them, they were insignificant.
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