Minority

Wednesday May 22, 2013

Wednesday May 22, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 22, 2013

NDP will support Ontario Liberal budget

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says the party will support the ruling Liberals’ budget, avoiding a spring election.

Horwath made the comment Tuesday while speaking at a news conference at Queen’s Park. She said although the NDP did not get everything it wanted, it was enough to offer its support to the Liberal Party.

“We are prepared to support this budget within a process that ensures the financial accountability office legislation is passed into law early this fall,” Horwath said. “We will pass this budget based on the commitments this government has made and we will remain vigilant to ensure their promises are kept.”
On Friday, Premier Kathleen Wynne agreed to the NDP’s call for an independent financial accountability officer and new accountability measures in the health-care system.

Earlier this month, Horwath demanded that a financial accountability office be created to keep tabs on government spending. She has continually referred to Ornge, eHealth Ontario and the two cancelled gas plants as the type of scandals that can be avoided with an accountability office.

“People are upset that their hard-earned dollars have been wasted in the past by the Liberals,” said Horwath during a May 8 news conference.

Wynne also agreed to lowering auto insurance premiums, but did not agree to cancel plans for new high occupancy toll lanes or what the NDP has dubbed “Lexus lanes.” The premier also stopped short of the New Democrats’ demand to give the ombudsman oversight of hospitals. (Source: CBC News)

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Thursday, May 16, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, May 16, 2013

Examining the B.C. election outcome

No New Democrat anywhere in the country can afford to brush off Tuesday’s upset defeat in British Columbia. That starts with those who toil at Queen’s Park and on Parliament Hill.

Ontario’s Andrea Horwath and Thomas Mulcair really needed British Columbians to lead by example by handing the reins of their province to the NDP.

B.C. leader Adrian Dix’s campaign was supposed to provide the template for Howarth and Mulcair’s own bids for government. Once in power, it was hoped that he would showcase the NDP’s ability to manage a major provincial economy.

Like his Ontario and federal counterparts, Dix had spent the pre-writ period smoothing the edges of his party and it seemed that it would pay off.

Few NDP leaders have ever entered an election campaign with as big a lead as Dix had when the B.C. writ was dropped last month. His strategy borrowed heavily from Jack Layton’s 2011 recipe.

As an aside, it makes matters worse for the New Democrats that the masterminds in charge of the B.C. campaign were the same people who had earned bragging rights by bringing the party to the major role of official opposition in the House of Commons in the last federal election.

Instead of mapping out a safe path to power for 21st-century New-Democrats, Layton’s former chief-strategist Brian Topp and his acolytes ended up highlighting the daunting roadblocks that stand in their way.

Like Layton in 2011, Dix spent the campaign on the high road. There he was exposed to relentless Liberal attacks on the economic competence of his party. (Source: The Record)
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Thursday September 6, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday September 6, 2012

NDP hope to block Liberals from getting majority

Premier Dalton McGuinty’s bid to win the majority government he was denied last October will be decided by the voters of Kitchener-Waterloo in one of two provincial byelections Thursday that could dramatically alter Ontario’s political landscape.

“I don’t know of a parallel situation in Ontario’s history…where one byelection could make the difference between a majority and a minority government,” said Barry Kay, a political-science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The governing Liberals are expected to easily win the other byelection in Vaughan, retaining the seat vacated by Greg Sorbara, the veteran cabinet minister and strategist who quit to devote more time to his other job as chair of the party’s re-election campaign.

After falling just one seat short of a majority in the Oct. 6 general election, McGuinty engineered the Kitchener-Waterloo byelection by convincing veteran Progressive Conservative Elizabeth Witmer to give up the seat she’d held for 22 years to take on a $188,000-a-year job as chair of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

“It’s always a little bit easier when you have a majority to act on a mandate, whether you’re trying to introduce a budget or move ahead with a ‘Putting Students First’ act,” McGuinty said this week.

Voters in Kitchener-Waterloo appear to have been turned off by McGuinty’s attempts to get a majority, said Kay.

“I thought that would play better than it has,” he said. “I think they are disinclined to give the party a majority. It’s not just a neutral factor. I think it’s a negative factor.” (Source: CTV News) 

 

Tuesday April 17, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Tuesday April 17, 2012

NDP Leader Horwath would rather negotiate on budget than force election

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she’d still rather try to negotiate with the Liberal government than force another election.

Horwath told the party’s Hamilton convention she knows some people want her to reject the budget if the Liberals won’t make changes, even if it means defeating the minority Liberals and forcing an election.

She says the NDP has made it clear that it wants a freeze on welfare rates lifted and a new surtax on incomes over 500-thousand dollars – and she says the ball is now in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s court.

The Liberals say the New Democrats are under heavy union pressure to force an expensive and unnecessary election.

But while some union leaders like Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan are pushing for an election over the public sector wage freeze, others are urging Horwath to keep talking with the Liberals.

Federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair will address the Ontario delegates before their convention wraps up today. (Source: Globe & Mail) 

 

Thursday April 5, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday April 5, 2012

NDP isn’t drawing a line in the budgetary sand

For a fleeting moment earlier this week, it appeared Andrea Horwath had finally set a make-or-break condition for supporting Dwight Duncan’s budget.

With Tuesday’s call to apply an extra tax to anyone making more than $500,000 per year, the Ontario NDP Leader served up the kind of attention-grabber from which it’s difficult to back away – and that, if rejected by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals, could make for an NDP-friendly wedge issue during a provincial election.

And yet, no sooner had Ms. Horwath gone public with her demand than she was once again reminding journalists that she has no intention of drawing “lines in the sand.” The implication was that she’ll be satisfied if the Liberals instead grant a few other, less showy concessions from the list of requests she’s slowly rolling out.

It was the latest signal that, against the advice of some of the more hawkish members of her party, Ms. Horwath is determined to play the long game.

If she were primarily concerned with the here and now, Ms. Horwath would be leaning toward helping Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives bring down Mr. McGuinty’s minority government.

Doing so would carry less risk for the NDP than for the Tories, who are still going through a behind-the-scenes shakeup that has them a long way from election readiness, and have struggled to convincingly explain why they’d force an election over a right-leaning budget. By contrast, the New Democrats could rely on the same campaign team they did a few months ago, and make a coherent case against austerity measures – from social-assistance freezes to the shutdown of northern transit services – that run contrary to their policies and principles. (Source: Globe & Mail)