Ontario Liberal Party – mackaycartoons

Wednesday June 11, 2014

June 10, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 11, 2014

Don’t like ballot choice? ‘None of the Above’ an option for Ontario voters

Ontario voters fed up with the offerings of the mainstream political parties may feel sorely tempted to vote for none of the above come election day — and one party is well placed to capitalize on the sentiment.

Registered for the June 12th election is the None of the Above Party of Ontario — or NOTA — whose main plank is to press for elected politicians not bound by party control along with recall and term limits.

“Almost nobody knows we even exist and as soon as people do, they’re sending emails for lawn signs,” said leader Greg Vezina, a founding candidate for the federal Green party in 1983.

“I’ve only got candidates in eight ridings but I’ve got requests for lawn signs from Thunder Bay to Ottawa.”

Half of voters don’t bother to cast ballots while the other half want something different, said Vezina, who is running west of Toronto.

If voters find him NOTA good choice, they do have plenty of other options among the 20 registered parties.

They include Canadians Choice, Family Coalition and the Ontario Moderate party, along with John Turmel’s Pauper Party of Ontario.

For Turmel, who is in the Guinness World Book of Records for running and losing in more elections than anyone else, this will be the 80th election in which he’s been a candidate.

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“This is my third hat trick,” Turmel said proudly.

“Back in ’80 and ’82, I managed to pull off running in federal, municipal and provincial elections simultaneously.”

If elected premier, Turmel said, his first act would be to decommission nuclear power stations, which he calls the “biggest threat to all our lives.”

Besides adding some spice or even frivolity to the serious business of democracy, fringe parties, which collectively picked up about 54,000 votes in 2011, often press issues the main parties aren’t discussing.

For example, the Equal Parenting Party’s two candidates are adamant changes are needed to reform family law, which they say tends to favour mothers over fathers.

“If you want to divorce and you have children, it will be a 50-50 deal as far as time spent with, and money spent on children goes,” the party says on its website.

“This forces a mother to bargain and gives a father something to bargain with.”

Another party fishing for votes is the Vegan Environmental Party, which bills itself as “the voice for animal rights” with a platform focused on animals, the environment and social justice. (Source: CTV News)

Saturday, May 31, 2014

May 30, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, May 31, 2014

Parties float different fixes for ailing Ontario economy

Like medical students huddled over a patient, the leaders of Ontario’s three major political parties are diagnosing different diseases and prescribing wildly different treatments for the province’s ailing economy.

At the heart of each prescription is the belief Ontario’s economy is in trouble because of a lack of decent jobs — full-time positions with a living wage and benefits — the kind of jobs that support families and build communities.

If the plans agree on the problem and the needed solution, they differ wildly of how to get the economy back into shape.

Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, for example, calls for a $2.5-billion Jobs and Prosperity Fund to be used to entice business investment in the province.

Conservative challenger Tim Hudak has his Million Jobs Plan — creating an average of 125,000 jobs a year for eight years, starting with the firing of 100,000 civil servants and cutting corporate taxes by 30 per cent.

Then there’s NDP Leader Andrea Horwath’s Job Creator’s Tax Credit and small business tax rate cut.

In its package of election priorities, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce lays out the broad outlines of the province’s economic malaise. The business lobby group points to soaring government debt, sluggish economic growth, persistently high unemployment, a perceived need for public sector wage restraint while maintaining vital public services, a perceived need to let the private sector fulfil more public needs, and a need to both control energy prices and to press the federal government to close the estimated $11-billion gap between what Ontarians pay in federal taxes and what they receive in federal spending and transfers.

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McMaster University economist Peter Graefe finds “a lot of wishful thinking” in each of the three proposals.

He said the planks calling for lower electricity rates and less regulation might help economic development by drawing investment from firms for which those factors are important. However, he cautions, “Experience shows that lower taxes and looser regulation by themselves don’t necessarily lead to jobs. Significant investment isn’t going to be heavily swayed by this.”

Jobs could just as easily be attracted by showing a commitment to public services and infrastructure.

The real issue for Ontario’s economy, he says, is low productivity.

“There’s really nothing in any of these plans that will push us in the direction we need to go,” he said. “The real weaknesses in the Ontario economy haven’t been addressed. There isn’t much imagination in these platforms, just a lot of motherhood and apple pie statements.”

Bill Scarth, also of McMaster’s economics department, knocks the Liberal platform for its proposal to slow the rate at which the provincial deficit is to be eliminated and questions the assumed rate of growth that supports the Liberal and NDP packages.

“Postponing deficit reduction is a very dangerous plan,” he said, warning that many in the business community will see the delay as a warning sign of future tax hikes.

“To meet the Liberal targets for deficit reduction is going to require some pretty draconian cuts.”

At the same time, he worries the Hudak plan is too severe and could push the economy back into a recession.

“Hudak goes too far the other way,” he said. “We’re still in a very fragile part of the recovery.” (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Saturday, March 29, 2014

March 29, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, March 29, 2014

Wynne distances herself from McGuinty in wake of new allegations

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne struggled to distance herself Thursday from her predecessor Dalton McGuinty, amid explosive police allegations that his chief of staff may have committed a breach of trust in the ongoing gas plants scandal.

Provincial police allege in unsealed court documents that they believe David Livingston gave an outside tech expert — the boyfriend of a senior staffer — access to 24 computers in the premier’s office.

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According to the documents, Livingston sought high-level access to the computers to “wipe clean the hard drives” after McGuinty resigned amid controversy over the costly cancellation of two gas plants.

It’s alleged that during the transition period to Wynne’s administration, Livingston arranged for his executive assistant
Wendy Wai to have special access to desktops in the premier’s office, even though she had little knowledge of computers.

Police believe Peter Faist, who wasn’t a government employee, was the person who actually accessed the 24 computers using Wai’s administrative privileges, including Miller’s, Livingston’s and other staffers.

Faist, who police believe is the partner of former deputy chief of staff Laura Miller, was never officially hired by the government and did not undergo the required security screening, the documents say.

According to two staffers in the premier’s office, Faist accessed their computers a few days before Wynne was sworn in, saying he was getting them ready for the next government, police say.

The staffers said they couldn’t log into their computers after Faist left and called IT staff, who said it was clear that system files had been deleted, police allege. (Source: Toronto Star)

Saturday, October 12, 2012

October 11, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, October 12, 2012

Here lies the wreckage of Dalton McGuinty’s self-serving gas plant decisions

In contemplating the disastrous consequences of the Ontario government’s two arbitrary gas plant closures, it does well to remember the performance put on by then-premier Dalton McGuinty before his abrupt resignation.

Never hesitant to play the Boy Scout, the premier prorogued the legislature rather than face questions about the gas plants, and then piously sought to blame the opposition for his troubles.

“I prorogued because the place was becoming overheated,” Mr. McGuinty insisted, citing a “spurious, phoney” suggestion that his energy minister had been in contempt of the legislature for failing to produce documents related to the scandal.

“Rather than do the people’s business, they allowed themselves to be consumed by that phoney contempt,” McGuinty said. In a CBC interview he declared that he’d acted to prevent further “shenanigans” by opposition parties that were “wasting time” in trying to get to the bottom of the scandal, rather than following his preferred agenda.

“I’ve tried to lead a progressive, activist government. I think government is a wonderful tool, but you’ve got to pick the damn thing up and you’ve got to work with it,” he said.

Oh brother. The words stick in the craw, never more so than in the wake of Tuesday’s revelations — finally, and against all Liberal efforts — that the ultimate bill for Mr. McGuinty’s own gas plant shenanigans will likely top $1 billion. Particularly galling is the finding of Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk that Mr. McGuinty’s government could have avoided much of the cost of cancelling the Oakville plant, but instead put party prospects and advice from political advisors ahead of the public interest and the provincial purse. (Source: National Post)

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

October 9, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Cost of killing Oakville gas plant: $675 million to $815 million

Ontario’s auditor general says the cost of the Liberals’ decision to cancel a planned gas plant in Oakville will be at least $675 million, far above the $40 million the government originally claimed.

Auditor general Bonnie Lysyk also warns the cost could rise another $140 million for gas deliveries to the new site of the generating station near Kingston.

Lysyk also says the cost of killing the Oakville project is “significantly more than may have been necessary” because of a number of what she calls “questionable decisions” by the premier’s office.

The auditor’s report puts the total cost of scrapping the Oakville gas plant and another in neighbouring Mississauga at a minimum of $950 million, and it could reach almost $1.1 billion.

The opposition parties call the cancellations an expensive Liberal seat saver program for the 2011 election, when the governing party was reduced to a minority but kept all five ridings near the gas plants.

Premier Kathleen Wynne has apologized for the way the Liberals cancelled the gas plants, and said she too disagreed with the way the energy projects were handled.

The auditor found the premier’s office promised to compensate the developer, TransCanada Energy, for the full financial value of the contract, even though she believes the province could have gotten out of the deal at a much lower or even no cost if it simply waited.

“Given Oakville’s strong opposition to the plant, it may well have been possible for the (Ontario Power Authority) to wait it out, with no penalty and at no cost,” said Lysyk. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

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