taxastrophe

Well it appears the mayor of our fair city, the honourable Mr Miller, won his battle to raise taxes in Toronto. He got both the license tax for cars and the tax on the sale of houses through. The house tax is just plain stupid -- in times of economic slowdowns with reduced new housing starts Mr Miller is going to see reduced tax revenues -- I understand he was loathe to raise property taxes, which by the way he is going to do anyway, but doubling the land transfer tax -- talk about stupid. I understand there may be an arguement that even in a recessio there will be a minimum number of house sales -- however I am pretty sure that is not what their budgets are based on. As for the car tax, just wait till all those cars are registered to addresses outside of Toronto. By the way has the province agreed to administer either of these taxes?

Mr Miller and the other sycophants on city council are a short sighted bunch -- they want the other levels of government to bail them out (I appreciate the argument) but refused to go after the parties during the last election, guess Mr Miller was a little busy at all those green city meetings.

John Tory -- Redux

Well in the postmortem on the election Mr Tory has come to the realization that the religious schools proposal was not a smart idea -- well who knew. To compound this he now realises that he needed to listen to those amoung his team that were telling him to back off on this earlier in the campaign -- again who knew.

Had a chat with a Tory insider and they revealed that Tory has a hard time letting go of that back room role -- where you can push an issue, only to have it over ruled by a more street savvy politician. I guess he misses the advice, guidance, decision making for lack of a better description, of the Bill Davis's of the world. I think John has learned its a little tougher out there then he expected, and lets face it I don't think he expected the McGuinty liberals to play to the racist anti-muslim undercurrent in Ontario. But all is fair in love and war and the Liberals capitalised on the anti-Muslim vote -- and got themselves a majority with the support of 21% of the eligible voters. Ain't democracy grand.

51% of eligible voters voted

Frankly I am disgusted -- what good is having a democracy if you refuse to participate? To put this into context the Ontario Liberals got 71 seats based on the votes 21% of eligible voters. This means that one in five Ontarion's felt that the Liberal vision of Ontario was the correct one -- I won't make assumptions about those who chose not to vote.

I am not going to dispute the legitimacy of the Ontario Liberals right to rule -- they won the election based on the rules we have. I disagree with McGuinty that campaigns that call politicians liars, promise breakers et al would convince people not to vote. I mean lets get serious any party that has the Liberal war machine, namely Warren Kinsella and his ilk, behind it -- is going to run negative campaigns. And lets face it negative campaign work.

The disenfranchisement of the voter has to much more than that -- politicians are politicians, some are reptilian in nature others are saints -- most are in between -- they have been like this for centuries, and the public has been aware of it. Why are people refusing to vote? Would love to see some polling on this -- I am assuming it is a lack of a decisive vision for the future -- lets face it most of the policy initiatives across all parties came out of the same photocopier. The futility of voting when people feel nothing substantive is going to change.

The political parties and media also does a piss poor job in educating the voter on the need to vote -- the need to be part of the discussion -- it rather is seen as a closed club, fraught with insiders, full of scandals and graft and frankly from the media pretty poor reporting.

I personally think papers like the Toronto Star further exacerbate the problem with less than ethical reporting -- one sided and inflammatory headlines, bullying people into questioning their convictions and further alienating and marginalizing people who do not fit their narrow view of an idealized Ontarion and thereby increasing apathy and a sense of futility.

But then of course I could be wrong.

Congratulations to the Ontario Liberals

In a sweeping victory the Liberals have maintained a 35 seat majority with a 42% of the vote. A very hearty congratulations to the Liberals and their campaign -- not to take anything away from them Tory basically handed them the election with a series of missteps and gaffe's -- the largest being the religious school funding.

It will be interesting to see how the Liberals handle the Catholic School funding issue -- not that they will extend to other faiths in the short run -- but they will probably face increased level of scrutiny on the Catholic School funding -- with every silly religion decision made by Catholic Trustees being put on the front page of the newspapers. I would expect we can expect silence from the Liberals on this issue for now -- not sure that will make the issue go away.

The NDP increased their popular vote -- not sure what that will bring, as the Liberals are able to push through or not do whatever they want. I think the PC's and the NDP are going to take on the oppose everything role in the media for the next four years -- and frankly their ability to hold the Liberals to account will be severely muted.

In the mean time we can expect the Status Quo -- as Ontarion's voted for the liberal platform of change -- which was unremarkable -- and steeped in the Status Quo.

Who did I vote for -- and I did vote, I went with the party that most closely matced my liberal social policy/conservative fiscal beliefs -- let you figure that one out.

Ontario -- don't let others speak for you

Please take the time to vote -- and please don't just vote for the sake of it -- make an educated decision.

"At Catholic schools we learn about God – but public schools worship a different God."

I don't think anything else needs to be said -- stop funding religious education -- stop funding catholic schools.

Competition: News headlines

As we wind down this less then exiting campaign -- we have had some interesting headlines in newspapers, none of which really seemed to capture the issue at hand. I think it is time to come up with some headlines that capture the spirit of the 2007 provincial campaign:

Couple to ponder:

Tory: Tears of a clown.
Policy, we don't need no stinkin policy

Scandal in Sarnia -- yes its true

Apparently a P3 (I know not politically correct to use P3) hospital in Sarnia is going to cost approximately 250% of the original estimated price. The original cost was suppose to be $140 million and now it is hovering around $319 million. Not sure who broke the story NDP or PC's -- came right after Furious George Smitherman had visited the riding and guaranteed this not to be the case.

What is not reported is whether the $319 million price tag is for essentially the same project as the $140 million price tag -- been there seen scope creep like crazy -- but then of course we would not have had the headline -- and some reporter would have had to do some investigating. Sounds like work eh. Now the fact the locals will have to raise an additional $30 million because of this is reprehensible -- who ever approved the new figure should pay the cost -- George sounds like it is yours.

What I do find interesting though on the Toronto Star's on line edition the story played prominently yesterday and attributed the story to the NDP -- the story no longer seems to exist on their servers -- looks like a case of pre-election censorship going on.

Howard -- Its the message stupid!

To Ontario's media representatives present:

Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton: "We've become the child poverty capital of Canada -- don't any of you people (reporters) care? Don't you care that there are seniors living in soiled diapers? Don't you care about that? I'm asking you, 'What do you care about?' That's what I know people care about. These are real issues."

Howard, piece of advice, they would report on other issues if everyone had not kept pandering to the bigotry and racial bias in Ontario and if you had something substantive to say.

Liked the quote from a senior (paraphrased) -- he has trouble voting for the liar or the idiot but wants Hampton to tell him what his platform is instead of just attacking people.

A vote for Liberals is a Vote for bigotry

Thought I would put out a provocative headline and then like most of the news media report on some non event. The title has some truth to it around the baser prejudices the liberals are playing to on the religious school funding issues. The liberals are going to win, and frankly they should, they have run an uncontroversial campaign with few missteps. They have allowed Tory to self destruct, and they did not have to wait to long. Howard -- well he has unfortunately been irrelevant -- too bad -- lost me on the tax the rich crap.

While I am rambling how about the following headlines:

1. A vote for McGuinty is a vote for the pope!
2. Its time we elected a papist -- Vote Liberal
3. Hate homosexuals, abortion, want your kids not to use birth control -- vote Liberal

MMP -- referendum time for a choice

The whole referendum on the current First Past the Post or Mixed Member Proportional issue has been very poorly dealt with by Elections Ontario -- it has been too little too late with very little public education or debate about it. The whole strategy appears to be to be to not get this initiative approved. That being said the proposed modified system seems to be a political compromise -- and really quite confusing.

The vote needs 60% of Ontarion's to vote (of those who actually vote) in favour of the change for the MMP to be effective for the next election -- four years hence. Just want to make sure everyone understands it is not for this election.

There have been a fair amount of editorials (the Toronto Star in particular)who have railed against this new system -- they feel it is a step backward for democracy and raise the specter of a "Star Chamber" type of government where the will of the public is undercut by non elected party insiders. By the way the Tor Star editorial was factually wrong on a number of counts -- but they are the Star so that would be par for the course.

I really think they need to grow up. The current system of forced compliance to party vote is far more damaging to democracy then MMP would be. Right now a MPP cannot vote against party position in the house without the threat of discipline, the MPP cannot effectively represent their riding -- and from what I have seen the Caucus and decision making is ultimately controlled by a small number of individuals, most of whom are not elected. In addition parties with 5% to 10% of the popular vote and their constituencies are being shut out of the legislature.

I personally think the first past the post system is flawed -- too many seats awarded on a small number of votes. As it is currently designed one seat may be worth 10,000 votes while others are worth 300,000 -- not really fair. In addition being able to have a majority government without the requirement of a majority of the votes is kind of counter intuitive. The current system also marginalizes the smaller parties influence on the government of the day -- NDP, Greens, and the Family Coalition Party come to mind -- a party with 10% of the popular vote may have no seat in the legislature -- that is shutting out a fair amount of the population from the democratic process.

Will I vote for MMP yes -- do I think it will pass no, so why -- well hopefully a large percentage of Ontarion's will vote yes to the referendum -- so in the next election, four years hence, we may actually have another referendum with a properly designed and communicated proposal for electoral reform.

PC's -- Slip Sliding Away

In what appears to be a last desperate attempt to appeal to a larger block of undecided voters Tory has backed away from his moral high ground on the Religious schools issue. Tory as I indicated yesterday is now saying that he will put this policy initiative up to a free vote -- the initiative will be modeled by former premier Bill Davis (the guy who gave public money to to the Catholic Schools. The moral high ground was that of fairness and quelling the terms of the UN criticism of Ontario. Guess the high ground gets pretty lonely sometimes.

McGuinty characterised this strategy as as divisive and that it would take up three years of the legislatures time unnecessarily. Not sure I agree with that, I think any debate where we look at current funding, and the integration of new and existing Canadians into the public school system is of value. The current system is divisive by its very nature, we need to do more to remove barriers to a quality education for all of Ontario's children.

And now for something completely different

Hope you like chocolat :-)

Tory embraces democracy (sort of)

Tory announced that if elected that he would allow a free vote on religious school funding in the legislature -- this is apparently to quell the divisions with in his own party and to appeal to the broader voter base. I would hope they would include the vote on whether to stop funding the Catholic Schools in Ontario in that free vote -- I somehow doubt that.

McGuinty replied to this announcement somewhat cynically, and Hampton wants the issue off the table so we can talk about real stuff.

The continuation of funding of the Catholic Schools at the expense of the other religions is pure unbridled bigotry and racism -- don't want those Madrassas set up in Ontario churning out terrorists. Now if they were to take a look at the policies of the Catholic church they may want to revise their stance on funding it -- institutionalised homophobia, unfettered sexism, protection of peadophiles, centuries of crimes against humanity including the recent native schools debacle .. need I continue.

The only real answer is to stop funding all religious schools in Ontario, politically this may not be palatable but at least I am honest.

The Ontario PC's

This Globe and Mail Cartoon really struck home for me. Apparently Tory is now starting to rethink his position on Religious schools -- don't think it will help.