PC Party

Wednesday May 9, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 9, 2018

Wynne, Horwath take aim at Ford in first debate ahead of Ontario election

Doug Ford was the main target in the first debate ahead of Ontario’s provincial election, with his rivals suggesting Monday that the Progressive Conservative leader, who is leading in the polls, would slash jobs and shrink services if elected premier.

Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath spent much of their time warning about what a Tory government would bring, while Ford hammered home his key messages of finding “efficiencies” and “respecting the taxpayers.”

The race officially begins Wednesday, but the debate set the stage for the campaign and provided the leaders of the three major parties an opportunity to test drive their slogans.

January 15, 2014

When both Horwath and Wynne used their questions during a leader-to-leader portion to ask Ford exactly what he would cut, the Tory leader repeated his key phrases.

“The other Conservative leaders, Mr. (Tim) Hudak, Mr. (Mike) Harris — they were very upfront about what their cuts are going to look like,” Horwath told Ford.

“Why don’t you have the guts to tell people what your cuts are going to look like? What is in store for the people of Ontario?”

Ford didn’t provide specifics, though he has promised to cut four per cent from the budget.

“I’m going to make sure we run a government that respects the taxpayers,” Ford said during his closing remarks. “You know me. I’m for the little guy.”

Horwath repeated that voters “don’t have to choose between bad and worse,” several times stepping back when Wynne and Ford began to spar, attempting to set herself apart from them.

Wynne said the election features “some pretty stark choices,” between what she calls her plan for care and Ford’s plan for cuts.(Source: CP24) 

 

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Thursday May 3, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 3, 2018

Ford reverses course on Greenbelt development, says he’ll maintain protected area

Public backlash prompted Doug Ford to backtrack Tuesday on an election promise to allow housing development in a protected green space around the Toronto region, with the Progressive Conservative leader saying he’s going to listen to those who want the area preserved.

A Tory government would maintain the Greenbelt in its entirety and enshrine that pledge in the party’s soon-to-be-released platform, Ford announced in a statement issued a day after saying he’d open the region to some construction to ease the housing crisis in the Greater Toronto Area.

“I looked at it as making sure we have more affordable housing,” Ford said of his initial position. “The people have spoken. I’m going to listen to them, they don’t want me to touch the Greenbelt, we won’t touch the Greenbelt.”

The Greenbelt — the world’s largest permanently protected green space –is a 7,200-square-kilometre area that borders the Greater Golden Horseshoe region around Lake Ontario. It was protected from urban development by legislation in 2005.

Ford’s flip-flop came less than a week before the official start of the provincial election campaign and hours after Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne called his Greenbelt-development pledge “wrongheaded”.

“If you open up the Greenbelt and make it into a Swiss cheese map you never get that back,” Wynne said earlier on Tuesday. “You never get that water protection back. You never get that agricultural land protection back.”

Wynne had acknowledged that some areas around the border of the Greenbelt have changed since it was established over a decade ago, but that was part of the original plan for the region, she said. (Source: CTV) 

 

Tuesday March 13, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 13, 2018

Christine Elliott concedes to Ontario PC Leader Doug Ford

Christine Elliott is conceding defeat to Doug Ford, congratulating the new Ontario Progressive Conservative leader and promising to run for the party in the June provincial election.

Her move brings to an end the extended drama of the party’s tumultuous leadership race, triggered six weeks ago by the sudden resignation of Patrick Brown amid allegations of sexual misconduct.  

Elliott initially disputed the results announced late Saturday, alleging “serious irregularities” in the voting. The party declared Ford the winner by a margin of just one percentage point.

But in a statement issued Sunday night, Elliott struck a conciliatory tone.

“Our team took the last twenty-four hours to review the results of an election that was incredibly close,” she said in the statement. “After completing my review, I am confident in the results. I extend my congratulations to Doug Ford on a hard-fought campaign.”

As CBC News reported first, Elliott initiated a meeting with Ford on Sunday afternoon. The pair met for “several hours,” according to a senior official on the Elliott campaign.

While the official said the campaign team believes they have a good case to dispute the result, the only recourse would be to go to court, and that is not something Elliott or her team want to do with the party facing an election on June 7.  

“Christine is choosing not to challenge this,” said the official. “Christine and the team were unanimous that this was the right way forward. The name of the game is unifying the party.”

“Ontario needs a Progressive Conservative government to finally defeat Kathleen Wynne,” Elliott said in her statement. “I look forward to running as a candidate.” (Source: CBC News) 

 

Doug Ford: Ontario’s Premier-in-Waiting

Sunday March 11, 2018

He’s the new leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in Ontario. He is the outsider candidate against the party establishment (or ‘elites’ as he calls them), he’s against carbon taxes, against regulation, the current sex-ed curriculum, and of recent, he’s questioning access to abortion. Throw in a checkered past, courting of evangelicals, the support of a populist movement, a bellicose style, and placed against a left-of-centre woman heading a tired government that has ruled for 15 years and, well… the parallels to a certain situation to Canada’s south takes on such banal proportions.

It’s hard to understand how a party smarting from lost elections due to killer issues like faith-based school funding and massive cuts to the civil service has put its faith into a machine that could very well make the common sense revolution look like a gentle frolic through a Spring meadow.

After all the delicate redefining and reshaping of a political party humbled by consecutive losses, it looked as if the PCs were well on their way to being the true centrist option for Ontario voters with its glossy People’s Guarantee platform. Patrick Brown had gone through a chameleon-like ideological conversion therapy from a virtual unknown anti abortion right winger to a rolled up loosened tied leader who might be confused for having the middle name ‘Dalton‘. But then the palace coup ended it all for the presumptive centrist Premier and his name became history.

As the snark (which I intend to contribute to) inevitably grows against his movement toward election day, observers need to recall that the “it can’t happen here” attitude preceded the unimagined result in the U.S. two Novembers ago.

Kathleen Wynne, for all her level headed smarts, finds herself at the point in Ontario’s history where the pendulum is naturally due to swing to the right, especially given the fact she’s governed less as a McGuinty centrist and more like an NDP Premier. The historic yinyang of Confederation which finds a political party installed at Queen’s Park to counter whomever’s in charge in Ottawa is destined for a re-alignment. People are tired of her, and her party, and the record level polls showing consistent unpopularity certainly back that statement up.

As the centre left, wobbly as it is at Queen’s Park, but firmly in control of the levers of power in Ottawa serve up well meaning measures that are very appealing to liberals, like gender based budget analysis, progressive trade, cannabis legalization, carbon taxes, reconciliation, and countless gestures to marginalized Canadians and wannabe citizens, there is a counter movement seething on the sidelines foaming at the mouth, wanting to slow, and indeed, reverse the course of government.

Doug Ford, for all his flaws (i.e.: his drug dealing past), clownish demeanour, and rabid following of the right, can thank part of his rise as a counter to the flawed, clown-like leader of Canada (think Namaste hands and Indian wedding costumes), Justin Trudeau, with his own rabid following on the left.

While Christine Elliott puts up challenges in the background against a faulty leadership election process which desired a centrist party going into June’s election, it’s clear there won’t be a place for moderate voters to position themselves. The long ago days of bland management of the province seem, sadly, behind us. 

Doug Ford Cartoon refresher

May 31, 2013
May 24, 2013
January 23, 2014
October 30, 2014
February 1, 2018
February 14, 2018
February 15, 2018
February 21, 2018
March 2, 2018
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Thursday March 8, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 8, 2018

Doug Ford raises abortion issue in effort to woo social conservatives: expert

March 2, 2018

One of the four candidates competing to lead Ontario’s Opposition raised questions about access to abortion this week, resurrecting a political hot potato while stopping short of promising to reopen debate on the issue.

Doug Ford’s statements that he would not personally revive the abortion debate but would allow those in his caucus to bring forward legislation on any matter important to them appears to be a “Hail Mary” move aimed at wooing the party’s socially conservative members as the leadership race comes to a close this weekend, a political analyst said.

February 21, 2018

“This is a top-down leader and for him, on this issue, to be signalling that, hey, it’s ok by him for any of his caucus members to be where they want to be on the map on this one tells me that this is a retail politics vote-getting move, pure and simple,” said Myer Siemiatycki, a professor of politics at Toronto’s Ryerson University.

“If he really believed it, he would say this is what he’s going to deliver, and the fact that he’s not prepared to say that says to me it’s about appealing to a base and portion of the (Progressive) Conservative party that nobody else has, on this issue, spoken to.”

February 1, 2018

In interviews with various media outlets this week, Ford suggested that as party leader he would welcome having members of his caucus table legislation that would require parental permission for abortions sought by minors.

He clarified his position Tuesday, saying that while he personally believes in “the sanctity of life,” he would follow in the footsteps of the federal Conservatives by not rekindling debate on the issue.

“That being said, I will allow MPPs to draft, bring forward, and debate any legislation that is important to them,” Ford said in a statement.

“The Liberals have set a dangerous and narrow-minded precedent both federally and provincially. I will never put members of my party in a position where they will have to compromise or deny their personal beliefs. I will never muzzle members of our caucus.”

While the right for patients to give or refuse consent is laid out in law, there are currently no provisions regarding parental notification, according to Ontario’s medical regulator. (Source: CTV News) 

 

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