Well, friends, after talking to some of you, I realize that most of you in fact have no idea what this election is about. I don’t blame you – the media has done a poor job of covering actual policy as opposed to politics. Other than the faith-based schools debate, hardly anything has been covered.
Before you vote - and please vote – I’m going to try my best to inform anybody reading this of any critical issues they should know about. I admit that I have a slight Liberal bias, but only after a lot of logical thinking. I have tried my best in this particular article (I don’t usually do that) to convey facts rather than opinion. However, you will need to note my leanings before considering my points.
To better understand the premise of this election, you should know that in 2003, the Liberals defeated the Conservatives by a large majority victory, essentially ending the Mike Harris-Ernie Eves era often referred to as the “Common Sense Revolution” because of Harris’ early campaign slogans.
(Note – the following is a brief history lesson – if you know this, skip it)
Why did the Conservatives fall? In part, it was because after more than a decade at the helm, they began to mismanage things. Selling off public property, privatizing many provincial institutions, and delegating provincial responsibilities to the cities all began to add up. The Conservatives’ lack of foresight led to escalated debts – in 2003, the Conservative government ran a massive $5.6 billion deficit.
This of course begs the question – why where the Conservatives in power at all? Well, they were greatly aided by the Liberals of the 90’s. After Bob Rae’s NDP government fell, voters chose to swing to the political right, to give the Conservatives a mandate – to fix the fiscal mess that Rae left Ontario.
The conservatives did pretty well, up to a point. But why weren’t the Liberals elected? Well, to put it bluntly – they sucked. The Liberals ran a terrible campaign against the Conservatives – three times – before they finally got their act together (and even then, not completely). The Liberals finally won in 2003, after it came to light that the government was in a dire financial crisis. Dalton McGuinty, who promised pretty much everything he could possibly promise in an election campaign, managed to convince voters that he wasn’t completely incompetent, and wound up with the Province’s top job.
Naturally, Dalton’s Liberals couldn’t deliver on all their promises, which included shutting down all Coal power plants by ‘07, giving more support to autistic children, freezing tuition fees, and not raising taxes. It is this point that the Conservatives and the NDP’s are trying to tell you. Dalton McGuinty is a liar who broke his promises. Certainly, by any count, McGuinty has broken a great deal of promises, but at least he’s been able to admit it publicly.
If John Tory wasn’t such an incompetent politician (see previous post), he probably would have fought this election entirely on McGuinty’s broken promises. In essence, the 2007 election is about whether you trust Dalton’s Liberals enough to give them more time with Ontario. The facts are, since 2003, the Liberals managed to eradicate a $5.6 billion deficit (albeit having to heave a ‘medical premium’ to do it), improve schools (lowering class sizes, increase funding to secondary and postsecondary schools), lower hospital wait times, closing some Coal power plants, and putting in a greenbelt protection plan. Sure, they had to lie and break some promises to do it, but that’s what politics is about anyway.
This election is about whether you think the Liberals have done a good enough job, and whether they are proposing a good enough plan for the future. Last time around, they were excused from promising too much, because they were new to government. Being the incumbents this time around, they have no excuse. So how do their platforms stack up?
Well, I won’t get into the fine details of them, for that - try here. What you need to know is that the Liberals are offering less than they did last time – because they finally realized they need to plan realistically so that they won’t break any promises. Their focus is to reduce hospital wait times, attack poverty (increasing minimum wages gradually to $10.25), and getting greener power. The big question for them is whether or not they will abuse the electorate’s trust this time around.
The Conservatives have decided that Mike Harris was a radical after all, and are walking away from all his policies of the 90’s (those that included moving of provincial responsibilities to cities, privatizing health care, and shrinking government branches). However, they haven’t made much noise about their own platform lately – they’ve been busy shooting themselves in the foot with the faith-based schools debate and running negative attack ads on Dalton.
The NDP’s are as usual, lagging behind in the campaign. The NDP’s are probably the most principled party, fighting consistently for the underpriviledged. They have a very aggressive stance on poverty, and demand a minimum wage raise to $10 as soon as they are elected. Their plans are far more aggressive than the Liberals’ – although it seems that they are talking like the Liberals of 2003 – promises, but forgetting about the means to pay for them.
What will you vote? That’s up to you – that’s the whole point of democracy. If you DO have questions, post a comment below. I’ll try to help.
Comments (4)
Time’s a-runnin’ thin! Any ideas/suggestions/comments on the referendum?
On the referendum (my opinion):
Essentially this hybrid of proportional and party representation gives more power to the parties themselves. This works on two levels.
Firstly, the lists of who takes the seats won by the popular vote, that is the vote as a whole rather than as a winner or loser in each riding, is in the hands of the party. What that means is that if the Liberals get 60% of the seats and only 40% of the popular vote that people who win seats in ridings as normal will have the majority of the votes in that riding, the people who take the MMP seats will be chosen by the Liberals. The Liberals get to put in power people who were not specifically voted for, based on the popular vote of what people did vote for. These people may not be representative of the ideals of the 40% that voted Liberal but they are who the Liberals want to give seats to. This can (I think) even be people that lost in their own ridings, because they are on the party list. So that means that someone who did not win a riding, can still get power because they are high on the Liberal list.
This could have a negative impact on the minority issue within politics in general. In today’s politics we see very few women, and very few cultural groups of nationalities represented. In the interest of getting the most seats, parities will invariably use this as a tool to offer seats to those people. Asians, Persians, women, etc. will be given seats as apposed to earning them. This will introduce them to politics and give them power, but on the flip side, they will be given less chance to earn it on their own. Essentially, minorities will not be voted for, but instead given seats to mask the fact that minorities are severely disadvantaged when it comes to politics and winning ridings.
Secondly, having MMP will give enormous amounts of power to parties like the Green Party and the Communist Party of Canada. Each party that earns over a certain % of the popular vote will earn seats. These seats that would have previously been given to the Liberals, PCs, and NDPs will eat into the power of these three. This means that the smaller parties that have even 1% of the seats will have power because their votes are important in minority gov’ts which will be extremely hard to avoid due to the division of power created by MMP. As an example (using MMP):
PC: 48% of the seats
Liberals: 32% of the seats
NDP: 15% of the seats
Other: 6% of the seats
in this scenario, the Liberals and NDP who are natural political bedfellows will combine to have 47% of the vote. That means that on any given vote or policy making process, the power rests 100% with the 6% since neither group can pass anything without the votes of that 6%. The idea of MMP is to avoid 60% of the seats/power being representative of 40% of the population. Moving to this scenario of 100% power to 6% of the popular vote is I think a step in the wrong direction. It will mean that parties like the Green Party, who will likely have at least 3% of the power in a situation like the one above will have that 100%. They have the power to black mail either group by saying “If we vote for this, you have to vote for X.” Essentially allowing them to pass policies that only represent the opinion of 3% of the population. Now the other parties can either go along with this or the leading party can opt to not allow themselves to be blackmailed which will result in the ruling party to lose a vote and become defunct, resulting in another election. So we either have continued blackmail by extremely unrepresentative parties or 7 or 8 elections over a 10 year period where nothing is accomplished because no one ever has enough power to get anything done.
Thats what I have to say. I will be voting NO.
Chris Wheeler
Edit: Other: 5% of the seats
I CAN’T DO MATH! YAY SOCIAL SCIENCES!
Re: Referendum
There has yet to be a convincing argument for adding further layers of bureaucracy to an already burgeoning democratic system. In fact, the only real advantage I see (aside from the fluffy, flabby arguments of ‘improving democracy’) is that more bureaucracy means less power in any one person’s hands.
However, I believe that the current levels of corruption in the government are tolerable. Corruption is a fact of life, and I think any further attempts to reduce corruption by diluting power will have a net negative effect on the world as a whole. Of course, I haven’t crunched the numbers so I don’t know for sure.
So yeah. The referendum makes no sense.
Voting no.
As an aside, why do people fall for baseless arguments like ‘it will make for a better democracy’? As much as I hate to say it, credible statements are important. How will it improve democracy? Financially? Socially? In what measurable quantities/qualities? People prefer seem to prefer chugging the first bromide shoved in their face to actually thinking about stuff on their own.
Bromides are toxic, people! Watch what you drink.