Ontario Elections

Because we all care.

Here's the thread to discuss the campaign. Also don't forget, the vote is on October 6.

I don't think the Tories realize that:

A: Ontarians are very willing to pay tax, and

B: The Liberals have done a damn good job. In June more jobs were created in Ontario then the entirety of North America combined.

Can I ask what exactly the opposition between these two are?

Liberals: The governing party, largely unopposed until recently, when Toronto elected a conservative ayor and the federal Conservatives won a majority.

The Conservatives: Essientially screaming teh TAXMAN without a real paltform.

The NDP: Just chilling, haven't seen TV ads.

Well the run-down is like this:

Liberals/Tories/NDP have fairly similar spending plans.

Liberals want to keep taxes roughly the same, and have some minor promises about improving efficiency and what not.

Tories want to cut about 8 different kinds of taxes across the board from sales tax, to income tax to corporate taxes... and that this will somehow solve our massive deficit and declining industry problems. Oh they were also going to roll back smart-metering for electricity (pay different rates at different times for hydro). And the best quote "graffiti threatens the safety of our communities". He also called the last Tory premier (Earnie Eaves) a pinko commie. Hehehe.

NDP are promising to improve healthcare a lot, cut down wait list times and implement some new kind of local-decision making thing for healthcare (I don't know much about it). They're also planning to increase corporate tax rates to pay for reducing the current deficit.

Greens are doing something... I haven't seen their platform yet.

edited 19th Sep '11 6:19:31 PM by breadloaf

What industry problems?

Looking at the Tories I'm hoping that the extreme rightism here isn't starting to affect your guys. <_< But still, none of that sounds particularly bad to me. Is it a big to do there? Or are most people just "meh, whatever"?

Probably going to vote NDP this election. Liberals don't have any legs to stand on so they're of no use to us and the greens will never win. Conservative is out of the question, obviously, so that doesn't leave many options.

@ Erock

Well I would say that car manufacturing and steel production are not likely long-term industries in the current environment. We should be working toward switching to production of new technology (like solar panels and so on). Hamilton is in a weird situation right now ever since Stelco was given up on by the provincial/federal government and US Steel is trying to burn money to kill the union.

As close to a long term goal would be Mc Guinty's green energy program. I don't know what NDP is offering in that regard. Tories just want to cut some taxes as their solution.

I'm curious to see what you mean by the Liberals having no legs.

I guess so. Really, that's a rather minor issue.

I guess the question is, is there a candidate good enough to replace Mc Guinty? He's mostly been riding on the fact that everyone else sucks really horribly, so his very quiet rule has been largely uncontested. Not that he's abused his power or anything so, there isn't much to attack him on either.

Well that was close.

Probably Liberal majority, but by a very small margin.

edited 6th Oct '11 7:22:03 PM by Erock

Yay, another five years of Father Knows Best, instead of Tea Party! Rejoice!

You don't like Dalton?

Also, someone on Sun News was floating the idea that Dalton might move up to federal politics. I am on for this.

54-37-16 is the estimate right now. Holy shit this is close.

worked ze polls again. NDP won by a big margin at our little voting station with the liberals trailing.

God damn I hate when anyone ays our economy is failing here.

It's great! More jobs were created here then the rest of NA combined? What does that say?

This is a epic election though, it's sooo close.

Well this is Canada, when were you supposed to LIKE politicians? You just vote for the guy you hate the least.

To be fair, he's not that bad and I do like that he listens to technically-skilled people and he's willing to retract bad legislation. Those two qualities make me vote for him more than anything else. Of course, Hudak being like a combo of "The Rent is Too Damn High" and "Tea Party" makes him completely unpalatable to me and likely to most other fence-voters... other than die-hard tory fans. The NDP was actually a very reasonable platform as well but for my riding, I preferred the Liberal candidate over the NDP one. The Greens were quite fascinating, I hadn't really looked much into the Ontario version before but man are they conservative :P

Greens? Conservative? Wtf?

And I actually like Dalton. He's done a good job and I like the smoothness.

Funny, one guy (on Sun, I like their coverage better) made a point that Dalton used Harper's "stable majority" line.

edited 6th Oct '11 7:42:04 PM by Erock

Yeah, that irked me :P That is so not a reason to run on.

The qualities I like the most about him are usually the ones that most people cite as being the reason they don't vote for him.

• He listens to technical experts instead of pure public polls
• He is willing to retract retarded legislation

Those are good points.

And, if Ontario politics don't need bilingualism... I'm registering for the Liberal party soon.

Everything requires bilingual, it's part of the constitution. But you've a lot of time before party politics allows you the opportunity to become a candidate for MP. Also, I just think its makes you less electable should there be francophones in your area.

edited 6th Oct '11 7:48:56 PM by breadloaf

No, only the federal requires it. After Trudeau. I think.

And I know, but I should get involved soon anyways, next provincial election I can vote.

edited 6th Oct '11 7:53:09 PM by Erock

Oh so it's just gov services that are bilingual not the candidates?

I would think so. Part of a project in history was about bilingualism. Trudaeu's government introduced the requirement for bilingualism.

It's probably different in New Brunswick, though.

Well I remember Nunavut being english and at least also the inuit language.

53 Liberal/37 Tory/17 NDP