NDP

Monday August 27, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday August 27, 2018

Jagmeet Singh, Missing in Action

Jagmeet Singh to announce run for Parliament (story from 3 weeks ago)

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh will announce Wednesday he’s running for the Burnaby South seat in the House of Commons, CTV News has confirmed.

Singh won the federal NDP leadership last fall but isn’t a member of Parliament. Reports indicated he would run to replace New Democrat MP Kennedy Stewart, who has resigned his seat to run in Vancouver’s mayoral race.

Singh has an event in Burnaby, B.C. Tomorrow.

“I know he’s looking at it very closely,” Stewart said in an interview with CTVNews.ca

“I did approach Jagmeet suggesting that it might be good for him to run in Burnaby South. What’s been very positive is when I mention it to people in Burnaby, is how excited they got,” he said.

Stewart said Singh understands the city and knows the NDP supporters there.

Singh sat in the Ontario Legislature before his federal leadership run, representing the Toronto area riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton. He held the seat from 2011 to 2017 and served as deputy leader of the Ontario NDP.

Stewart said he’s not concerned that Singh isn’t from the riding and noted former NDP leader Tommy Douglas, who had been premier of Saskatchewan, served in the riding after leaving Saskatchewan politics. (CTV News) 

 

Thursday June 7, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 7, 2018

Ontario’s choices are bad. But one is less bad than the others

To say Ontario’s election has been strange doesn’t capture the half of it. Just four months before the vote, the leading party had to dump its leader in a sexual misconduct scandal. The Liberals are so unpopular they’ve already conceded defeat. The next government will be formed by one of two parties that haven’t won an election since the past century. Ontario could be the first province to send millions of voters to the polls, all holding their noses.

June 3, 1999

The choice is between the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats. Both are running on platforms that don’t add up. Neither will be able to keep its promises. Each appeals to specific voter groups with fixed beliefs that pit one part of the province against the other. The question isn’t which is the best of a bad lot? It’s which will do the least damage to the province, hurt fewer people, and have the least harmful impact over the long term?

Of the two, the PCs have the biggest leadership problem. It’s unlikely any premier has ever been less qualified than Doug Ford. He appears to barely understand how government operates, has only the shallowest grasp of major issues, gives every indication of being badly out of his depth and shows no interest in learning. His approach to campaigning is to shout slogans and talk over challengers. He’s a poor debater, a bad speaker and has trouble explaining himself.

October 28, 2014

His “platform” is a collection of odd offerings with no apparent linkage. He’ll cut taxes, return “buck-a-beer,” be kinder to small business and put slots back at the racetrack. Perhaps his oddest promise is a pledge to cut gasoline taxes by 10 cents a litre, which, by past experience, might last a few weeks before the oil companies make up the gap and prices return to previous levels. He promised a costed platform, but didn’t provide it. His pledge to find $6 billion in “efficiencies” without firing anyone is unconvincing at best. If he actually tries to follow through on his promises, the swollen debt will get worse, not better.

October 10, 2007

The NDP’s Andrea Horwath is more experienced, more polished and more coherent. But that may not be an advantage. As her party erased the PC lead, it became clear that beneath her pleasant exterior lies a hard-edged ideologue devoted to left-wing dogma and with a distinct distrust of the private sector. Her daycare plan stresses that “public child-care dollars should go to not-for-profit and public providers,” because public funds “shouldn’t pad the profits of private companies.”

January 23, 2006

Why in heaven not? Free enterprise built Canada into a prosperous place. We trust private companies to produce and supply the food we eat. Is food not as important as daycare? Are farmers to be distrusted? Horwath’s rigid creed sees any attempt to make a living outside government auspices as suspicious. Her plan to control rents would eliminate the one means landlords have of keeping up with cost increases. By adding to the long list of limits that already restrict landlords, the NDP would ensure the slow deterioration of rental stock as landlords decline to spend money on maintenance they are unable to recoup. Availability would dry up as developers refuse to build structures certain to lose money. Those who have apartments would be able to stay indefinitely, provided they don’t mind peeling walls and smelly halls, but new arrivals would be out of luck. Too bad for you, young people. (Continued: National Post) 

 

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Thursday May 24, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 24, 2018

Almost half of NDP voters just want to stop Liberals, Tories from winning: Ipsos poll

According to recent data from an Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News, 46 per cent of NDP voters intend to vote for the party to stop the Liberals or the Ontario Progressive Conservatives from winning.

“All eyes are on Andrea Horwath right now because her support is the most tenuous,” said Ipsos’ Sean Simpson. “There’ll be more scrutiny paid to Ms. Horwath during the campaign.”

Sixty-four per cent of Ontarians responded that they’re voting for a particular party because they prefer it over all the others, though Ipsos’ Darrell Bricker commented that the number of voters casting ballots to strategically oust another party is “extremely high” during this election.

Simpson agrees that these figures show a large portion of the population “voting against something rather than voting for something.”

A slim majority of NDP voters, 54 per cent, claimed to be voting for the party because they prefer the party. Among PC voters, 64 per cent of respondents said they’re voting for the party because they prefer it over the others, while 36 per cent want to stop another party from winning.

Liberal voters on the other hand, while still maintaining the lowest support, have the highest percentage of voters (at 74 per cent) supporting them because they genuinely like their policies, while 26 per cent want to stop another party from forming a government. (Source: Global News) 

 

Thursday May 17, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 18, 2018

Sound bytes and witch hunts won’t quell hydro anger

According to Environment Canada, the odds of getting hit by lightning are lower than one in a million. 

April 17, 2015

Unless you’re the Kathleen Wynne Liberals. In that case, you get zapped pretty much any time the subject of hydro comes up in Ontario. It doesn’t matter whether the specifics are big or small, the subject is a lightning rod for Ontarians’ anger and discontent, both with hydro rates and with the Liberals.

It happened again this week, with predictable results. But let’s try to drill down a bit to get past the rhetoric and sound bytes.

CBC was first to report that, back in January, Hydro One board members voted to boost their own compensation. After that boost, those part-time jobs pay $185,000. And at the time of the board decision, Hydro One’s share price was falling. 

April 14, 2018

Predictably, outraged followed from all the usual players. Doug Ford waxed apoplectic, promising to fire the bums and the CEO as well. Andrea Horwath reminded Ontarians, again, that we wouldn’t be in this position if the power utility was still under completely public control. And Kathleen Wynne, still smoking from the lighting strike, also condemned the raise while saying her government has already planned a review of utility governance including compensation.

All this sound and fury? It masks a difficult truth. Not one of the three parties has a believable, viable plan to really do what Ontarians want — to reduce electricity rates substantially and over the long term. 

Consider: Horwath’s NDP promise to cut hydro rates 30 per cent. They will “end the oversupply of power” and “aggressively” renegotiate contracts. You don’t need to be an expert to recognize this is pretty loose talk. Cutting rates that much would probably mean selling power for less than it costs to make. How will that help?

The numbers problem

The NDP also promises to buy back the part of Hydro One the Liberals sold to the private sector. That sounds like bringing back the good old days, but open your wallet first. Those shares have been appreciating in value. They will cost a lot of money. The government would need to use dividends it gets from the privatization to buy back the privatized share. Not only would be expensive, but it would take years, according to credible industry experts. 

Doug Ford’s hydro solution is even less realistic. So he fires Hydro One executives and the board. (It’s not even clear he could do this since it is not a public company at this point.) What then? He’ll need a new board and a new CEO. That means his cronies and will replace the Liberal ones there now. Will they work for nothing? Hydro One CEO Mayo Schmidt’s salary sounds ridiculously high at over $6 million, but his wage and that of all the board is a drop in the financial bucket overall. 

June 4, 2015

Beyond firing the CEO and board, and paying hefty severance penalties to do so, Ford has no plan for hydro. He is simply beating a convenient scapegoat, but he doesn’t have a better idea. And keep in mind it was Ford’s party that began the privatization of power under Mike Harris. 

The Wynne Liberals? Sadly or not, it doesn’t matter because no one is listening to them. 

Simplistic solutions won’t get the job done, and making Hydro One public again is a massive and expensive undertaking. No one in this election is being straight with voters, that much is clear. (Source: Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

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Thursday May 10, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 10, 2018

Killing Discovery Math

The Ontario Progressive Conservative party’s plan to scrap the province’s mathematics curriculum isn’t the answer to declining test scores among elementary school-aged children, a Toronto educator says.

September 3, 2013

“This is a very nuanced conversation and I think it gets really heated,” said Vanessa Vakharia, founder and CEO of The Math Guru, a math and science tutoring service based uptown, on Wednesday morning.

“I think it’s really easy to want to point to one thing and to place blame,” she continued, referencing PC Leader Doug Ford’s opposition to what is often called “discovery math.”

The concept, which places an emphasis on experimentation and problem solving rather than rote learning, is at the core of Ontario’s curriculum. It has come under increasing scrutiny as standardized test scores in math have steadily declined in Ontario in the last decade.

In a campaign speech on Tuesday, Ford said a PC government would develop a curriculum focused on “getting back to basics” in the areas of reading, writing and math.

“Kids used to learn math by doing things like memorizing a multiplication table, and it worked. Kathleen Wynne scrapped that. Instead, our kids are left with experimental discovery math,” he said. (Source: CBC) 

 

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