Howie Hampton

October 11, 2007 – Ontario Election Review


And now a little cartoon round-up of the 2007 Provincial election. My apologies if you can’t stand reading around hypertext.

I think McGuinty had this election in bag even before the campaign started. In my books the Green Party dropped several notches back into wingnut territory when their own holiday pledge… but anyway…

The people of Ontario have decided (by hypnosis?), or at least half of the province’s eligible voters did, and it’ll be 4 more years of Liberal government, with Dalton McGuinty at the helm.

Voters also decided to nix the electoral reform referendum question Mixed Member Proportional either out of ignorance, or confusion, or just because it plain wasn’t palatable.

I can’t say that I’m happy or sad over the reality… perhaps blas is the best word to describe how I feel over the election results. In terms of cartooning, the next four years of Dalton McGuinty should be as bountiful as the last four. In my mind the vote was not an endorsement of the McGuinty Liberals but a rejection of John Tory’s lame brain idea to introduce public funding for religious schools when there was no popular demand for such a thing in the first place. It only hijacked the campaign and overshadowed many more issues that deserved better discussion. Much damage could have been inflicted on the McGuinty Liberals by the PC’s by reminding voters of all the broken promises and dubious issuing of government grants from a secret slush fund. Hardly anything was brought up during the campaign regarding the ongoing mess between the Province and natives over the standoff at Caledonia. Even Howie Hampton’s attempt to remind voters of the $22,000 payraise didn’t stick to the Liberals.

Despite trying to appeal to voters as a renewed moderate party faith based funding of schools did the PC’s in. John Tory’s back tracking on the issue a week ago only made a mockery of the PC’s official election slogan for the campaign, “Leadership Matters“. By this past Thankgiving weekend, it was pretty clear that John Tory had become the turkey about to be carved. I think John Tory is a very smart man. He is a man of a lot of political backroom experience having served as a mandarin for Bill Davis and Brian Mulroney. He’s got great crudentials in law, business, and charitable organizations. On one hand he has what it takes to be a great premier, on the other he has a disasterous track record of defeat, such as losing this election, losing the Toronto Mayoral election against David Miller, and heading the horrible campaign of the federal PC’s in 1993 which resulted in a near wipe out of seats in the House of Commons. You’d think he’d learn by now but even in defeat the guy just doesn’t know when to quit:

September 14, 2007


A cartoon I drew in the summer leading up to the 2007 election campaign.

Progressive Conservative leader John Tory was the first party leader to pay a visit to the Hamilton Spectator during the current election campaign now going on in the province. I’ve been looking forward to hearing what he had to tell us as it was his first meeting. Both Dalton McGuinty and Howie Hampton have each made several visits in the course of the last year.

Here’s a video summary of what Mr. Tory had to say to us.

Did you get all that? That Mr. Tory’s is quite the yakker, and it’s a wonder he has the ability to take in any air between all the sentences. I took the last available seat at the table in the little board room to hear what he had to say. It turned out to be almost directly across the table from where he was seated. Usually when I attend these things I like to situate myself a little ways from the q & a between the guest/handlers and the assembled journalists. But I was kinda stuck in a spot reminiscent of my school days when pencil sketching was impossible and complete attention towards the lecturer, or feigned attention, (as was the case through most of my Math classes) was the order of the session. John Tory came across as a know-it-all high school teacher, with the appearance of a well coiffed game show host, and the somewhat pompous airs of an Emperor who has yet to acquire a Kingdom to rule over.

On the other hand, this is Mr. Tory’s first election as PC leader and I’m getting the sense that while voters are slowly being introduced to his vision and style of leadership he’s also learning the ropes as he goes. One thing quite apparent is that a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense. The faith-based school funding issue is one of them. The initial reaction is to call his idea crazy. However, for the mere fact that we already fund Roman Catholic schools, for historical reasons which are probably irreversible, I’m convinced that religious schools probably should be publicly funded for fairness purposes. If it standardizes benchmarks across all schools, including faith based institutions then it can only serve to benefit Ontario’s entire educational system.

I just don’t know why the Tories have made this the big issue of the campaign. Unless, it’s part of a larger strategy by the PC’s to somehow use their faith-based school funding proposal to show how they’re not the old party of the Harris era. How will the PC’s stance affect the traditional mixed faith base of the Liberal Party? Will the PC’s rather strange embracing of faith-based funding convince voters that they’re at the very least decisive and upfront as a contrast to the flip flopping promise breaking Liberals? Tory could very well give McGuinty a good whacking in next week’s televised debate.

It’ll take a lot more yakking by John Tory to beat the Liberals this election round, I suspect.

Thursday June 3, 1999

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 3, 1999

Hold Your Nose if You Must – But Go Vote

Why bother? It has been a campaign of soundbites. Weeks of doubletalk, namecalling, diversion and trivia. Instead of rising above the din of negative rhetoric, the party leaders more often seemed to be competing in a game of How Low Can You Go. Candidates of all stripes, locally and provincially, were scarcely better as they ducked all candidate meetings in favour of shallow photo opportunities. Thanks to bad organization, voters today can expect lineups and delays. We’ve been lied to, and treated like fools. Who can blame frustrated, weary voters for wondering: Why bother?

Of course, the answer is: We have to. It matters. Avoiding the polling station isn’t an option. Much as we feel assaulted and corrupted by opportunistic and cynical politicians, by too many glib pollsters, by media pitchmen and special interests, one unalterable truth remains: Voting is probably the most important thing we’ll do today.

Consider the words of John Kenneth Galbraith: “When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against themselves. It’s a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.” The act of casting our ballot is the best way we have of taking back the democratic process; of seizing it from the spin doctors and power brokers more attuned to ideology and self-interest than to public service.

“Who will govern the governors?” Thomas Jefferson asked, then answered: “There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government.” By voting today, we invoke a contract with the people we elect. We empower them to represent us fairly and constructively. By not voting, we defer and opt out of our collective responsibility. Some, thoroughly disenchanted and disenfranchised by the political process, will argue not voting is a form of political action unto itself. But it’s not. It is nothing. Declining the ballot, as proposed by an author on today’s Forum page, may be marginally better in that it requires concrete action and expresses, to a point, the “none of the above” philosophy many have adopted. But in our view, declining the ballot still amounts to opting out. The stakes are too high for that.

This is our chance to express ourselves on the record of the incumbents. We can endorse or renounce on any basis we choose. We can base our decision on the relative adequacy of a local MPP, or we can hold our nose and vote for the least objectionable alternative. If nothing else, we can consider our ballot the permit that justifies and validates future complaints and criticism of the party in government.

H.G. Wells describes the election as “Democracy’s ceremonial, its feast, its great function …” Diminished and reduced as this campaign has been, that characterization still holds true. And if all else fails, and you just can’t summon a positive reason for that trek to the polling station, a constructive negative will do. Consider the words of American critic and pundit George Jean Nathan, who years ago wrote: “Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.” Amen to that. (Source: Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

 

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