It’s election time again in the province of Ontario. The three parties have been slavering at the thought of finally getting to sling mud and rhetoric at each other once more, under the guise of convincing the electorate that only one of them is truly fit to govern, while the others are criminally incompetent. Same old schtick, different year. Or maybe not…
Ontario doesn’t need to spend more money on finger-pointing and name- calling. This province has been the driving force of Canada, but mismanagement and negligence have only exacerbated growing problems: crumbling infrastructures in major cities, the billion-dollar gas plant debacle, declines in support for health care and education. The arithmetic of politics scares me. I’ve never been able to rationalize how job cuts and spending cuts will actually create more jobs and economic prosperity. I don’t think I’ve actually seen this equation successfully play out anywhere.The truth is, whatever happens here, for better or worse, directly impacts the rest of the country.
What Ontario desperately needs is a party with a real leader at the helm. However, not one of the major parties currently running offers that. I’m sorry, but Kathleen Wynne, Andrea Horwath, and Tim Hudak are not leadership contenders. None of these individuals inspires confidence in me. What do they inspire? Let’s do a quick run-down.
Kathleen Wynne, LIberal Party: she got the dirty end of the stick when she inherited the party and its hidden secrets from Dalton “I’m running now before I get caught” McGinty. Really. When someone cuts and runs as fast as Dalton did, you have to know something awful is going to hit that proverbial fan. And it did. Scandals to the tune of billions of tax-payers dollars. And cover-ups: remember that tech who was the boyfriend of somebody wiping incriminating data from the hard drives, and Kathleen didn’t know. Sorry, but Kathleen’s a big girl. She walked into this with her eyes open. And yes, her party is still responsible for the mess her predecessor made. That’s how I see it. That’s how the electorate sees it. That’s how Kathleen needs to see it. She can’t play the “I didn’t do it” card and expect that to absolve her from the sins of the past. The Ontario Liberals need to pull a “Phoenix rising from the ashes” in order to move on. Raze the existing party. Start completely fresh. And put a dynamic, appealing, proven-results leader at the helm. Ideally, someone who takes over the party, remakes it and convinces us by action, not words. We need to see that strength and fight in order to believe again. Kathleen is not delivering.
Andrea Horwath NDP: She’s sincere, committed, comes across as nice. But when you are at the helm of the underdog party, nice is not enough. You need to be bigger, bolder and constantly challenging the other two parties. That’s what Jack Layton did so well. He nipped at the heels of the Liberals and Conservatives, actively pointing out their failings with accurate details. And then offering up recommendations.That’s why people believed in the NDP. As they did with Bob Rae. Like Jack, he had vision and great ideas. To lead this party, you have to be better than the leaders of the other two parties: smarter, braver, stronger, and unquestionably trustworthy. Because the NDP is the party that keeps the other guys in line. There was a brief shining moment when I thought the NDP could pull a dark horse coming straight up the middle, but then Andrea had to do damage control for her party. Given that, Andrea comes across only as satisfactory. That might run the party but it won’t be enough to govern the province.
TIm Hudak PC: Be afraid. Be very afraid. There was something about him I did not like from the beginning, and then when he announced all the cuts he was making to the public sector, I knew why. He is like the second coming of Mike Harris. We all remember Mike. Cut to the bone and then cut some more. And people in Hudak’s party don’t even like him. Apparently, he’s a little tyrannical. But this is the man promising to create a million jobs. Evidently he’s a magician and not a mathematician. I’m not surprised. Tory party sleight of hand is just how they’ve always done things. Being trust-worthy is not something I could ever accuse them of.
So where does that leave Ontario? What each leader offers to bring to the table and what they’ll actually serve up will be very different. I can only hope for someone who doesn’t make things worse than they already are. I hate when the choice has to be the lesser of three evils.
Issues and Intersections 