Budget Day

[Parrothead]

The Provincial Liberals will be presenting their budget this afternoon. Most of it has already been leaked. An election is presumed to be coming, as more scandals arise involving the Liberals. Two of the scandals are being investigated by the Provincial Police.

To be fair, most happened under the previous Premier, but his successor has not yet faced a general election and it is about time she did so. Thoughts are she just might pull the plug on the session herself and call for an election after the budget has been presented and before the other parties have a chance to get a non-confidence vote through, defeating the minority gov't.

[Parrothead]

NDP decided they wouldn't support the budget, PC's had already said they wouldn't. Liberal Premier asked the L-G to disslove the legislature. We will have a provincial election June 12th.

[geonuc]

Anything in particular in the Liberal budget people don't like, or is it more inter-party stubbornness?

[The Supreme Canuck]

The Liberals are coming off a scandal (though I'd call it mismanagement or incompetence rather than actual malfeasance), so it's a choice time to challenge them.

As to the other parties, the Progressive Conservatives have basically taken the "If the Liberals say it or do it, it's bad" stance. They said they wouldn't support the budget before they even saw it. And the New Democratic Party is being challenged by the Liberals since the budget that was tabled this week was very progressive and thus encroaches on the NDP's turf. Plus the NDP's leader has been playing political games with the government for months, and the Premier has decided that's enough of that.

And on top of that, this is a minority government that's gotten a bit stale. It was elected three years ago, and that's the usual life of a minority government. Plus the current Premier wasn't leader at the time - she's never faced the electorate as leader. That only flies for so long before the government loses its moral mandate to govern.

That's the situation (as I see it, anyway).

Edit for the benefit of Americans: In Canadian English, the word "tabled" has two meanings. It has the meaning it does in US English ("Let's table that for now" - stop discussing it), and it has the exact opposite meaning ("They tabled a piece of proposed legislation on Tuesday" - begin discussing it). You know which meaning is in use through context.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Just got a phone call from the Tories. They wanted to know who I was voting for. I told them to jump in a lake.

TSC's political shit-list (2014 Ontario Election), current standings:

Liberals: 0
NDP: 0
PC: 1

Lets see where those numbers end up on election day.

[Parrothead]

Had a call from the PC's Saturday afternoon, asking for donations, said "no".

Liberals time for them to go, too many scandals (E-health, Green Energy Act, Ornge, gas plants). Current premier, though she tries to distance herself, she still was part of the gov't that made those decisions. The biggie being scrapping the gas plants to save Liberal seats at a cost of $1.1b, now being paid for on our hydro bills. They have pretty well mismanaged things (granted all parties do, to varying degrees of costs). In some areas they are now left of the NDP.

Current PC leader has problems thinking on his feet and I wish he would stop using the line "laser-like focus" . He wouldn't do good in a popularity contest. PC's get painted as anti-union (they are to an extent). A bunch of unions routinely run anti-PC ads during election campaigns, so Liberals and NDP don't really have to run negative ads, unless against each other.

NDP, I wouldn't vote for.

In all liklihood we will have another minority gov't, only thing voters will decide is, whether it will be Liberal or PC.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Yeah, Grit or Tory minority does seem the likely outcome, here. Could go either way at this point - ThreeHundredEight has the two parties in a dead tie for seat count right now.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Tories just came to the door; wanted to know who I was voting for. I told them it was none of their bloody business who I'm going to vote for.

TSC's political shit-list (2014 Ontario Election), current standings:

Liberals: 0
NDP: 0
PC: 2

[Sigma_Orionis]

PC, as in Progressive Conservatives, in the US that would be an Oxymoron

[The Supreme Canuck]

PC, as in Progressive Conservatives, in the US that would be an Oxymoron

Up here it's just misleading. The name may have applied when they came up with it in the 40s, but Conservative parties across the country have really pulled back on the progressive policies that prompted the name change. I'd say the PCs were a lot more progressive back in the 1950s. They used to be pro-union, for cripes' sake.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I think that's a tendency in most of the western hemisphere. Not only in the US and Canada, but in Europe as well.

For example: During the Cold War, they had an incentive to move to the left, to avoid losing the base to Communist Sympathizing parties (which were all considered to be under the control of the USSR). After the end of the Cold War, they didn't have the incentive anymore.

Why do I think that? well there's the case of Otto von Bismark: Mr. RealPolitik in person, despite the fact that he was as "Conservative" as they come. He set up the first welfare state in the modern world, why?

He was the master of complex politics at home. He created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working class support that might otherwise go to his Socialist enemies.

Bottom Line: The collapse of the USSR made the Right Wing think that they could do no wrong.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Time for an update.

Liberals

I should have mentioned this earlier, but here we are. One of the items in the government's budget - and now its platform - is funding for public transit. Multi-billion dollar funding for public transit. Fine by me... except for the niggling detail that more than half of it goes to the Toronto area. That's $15 billion for Toronto, $14 billion for the entire rest of the province. Why? Because Toronto is where the votes are. Blegh.

Given that Ottawa is undertaking a huge public transit expansion over the next 15 years or so, that's kind of a slap in the face. Taken along with the fact that Toronto always gets the goodies, and the rest of the province is maybe an afterthought to an afterthought, and has been since forever... well. That rankles. There's a reason that the entire rest of the province (and, frankly, country) feel that Torontonians think they're at the centre of the universe. There's some truth to it.

And I say that as someone who lived there for nearly half a decade.

NDP

Not much to say, here... since they aren't saying much. Seriously. They've been pretty absent. I have no idea what they stand for, this time around. The leader hasn't been doing much of anything. Not how this is done. Kind of insulting, frankly.

Tories

The Tories are running on a "We'll create 1 million jobs" platform. They intend to do this by eliminating 100,000 jobs.

No, really.

They want to fire 100,000 provincial employees and eliminate their positions. Interesting fact: there are only 93,000 direct employees of the provincial government. To fire the number of people they want to, they'll need to dip into employees of Crown corporations (corporations fully-owned by the government - the post office is a federal Crown corporation, for example) and the educational system. The leader has come out and said that, yes, he'll fire teachers. That's especially sore since the last time we had a Tory government, they fired a bunch of teachers and fucked the rest over. People didn't like that. But here we are again.

Goody.

And to what end? Well... the province will balance its budget a whole year before it would under a Liberal government. And taxes can be lowered. Which will in turn create a million new jobs because... well. Because. Just shut up, that's why. Trickle down or something.

Oh. It would also represent an elimination of fully 1.4% of the Ontario workforce. Entirely. 1.4% of current workers will be out of a job, and their jobs will vanish. This somehow represents a government creating jobs. Not only is it utterly nonsensical, as far as I'm concerned it's just a thinly-veiled justification to do something motivated by conservative ideology. Taxes bad. Government bad. But, no, it's for jobs. Really. Really, it is.

Colour me unimpressed.

TSC's political shit-list (2014 Ontario Election), current standings:

Liberals: 1
NDP: 1
PC: 3

[Cyborg Girl]

@TSC: I think we need a new word for conservative voters. Something that implies gullibility, rationalization, and doublethink to the point of pure masochism. Like Turtulian's "Credo quia absurdum" as a political worldview.

[The Supreme Canuck]

And they keep racking up the points...

Tories

So Tim Hudak, the PC leader, decided he wanted to make a transit announcement. He wanted to do it on a Toronto subway car. In he goes, with a bunch of aides and cameras. Then the transit police show up. They ask if he has a permit to film on TTC property. He doesn't. They tell him to take a hike until he has one. He argues. They keep enforcing the rules. He leaves.

Problem 1: The Tories didn't follow the rules that apply to everyone. Didn't get a permit, then argued about it.
Problem 2: The fracas held up the entire subway line, since the train didn't move while Mr. Hudak argued. Nice.
Problem 3: The spin. This wasn't about holding up a subway line or failing to follow the rules; no, this was about the transit union trying to silence the Tories. Those underhanded unions... this is their fault! I'm the victim! See, apparently the union let the Premier and leader of the Liberal Party, Kathleen Wynne, do a photo-op on TTC property! It's a double standard! They want to help her but not him! Well... except she got a permit. No mention of that by the Tories.

Yes, really.

Sources, by the way:

National Post (Right-leaning newspaper)
CBC (Centrist/left-leaning public broadcaster)

So, that's one point.

It gets worse, though. What was Hudak trying to announce? Why, his transit plan. If elected, he would upload rail transit to the province (it would cease to be a municipal responsibility and become a provincial one). Personally, I think that's a terrible idea. Cities understand their transit needs best, and I've always been a provincial minimalist - the governments that I think should actually matter are the municipal and federal ones.

And yet, it gets worse. Hudak would do this only in the Toronto area. So his transit solution (which I think is bad, though he thinks it's the way to fix things, which is what's important) would only apply to the GTA. The rest of the province (including here in Ottawa, where we're building a fucking rail transit system) is left out in the cold, again. Moreover, since I'm of the opinion that transit is rightfully a municipal issue, this just further reinforces the idea that the provincial government is really just an extra government for the City of Toronto, and to hell with the rest of us.

All of which means I'm in the weird position of hoping for a smaller provincial government than a Conservative leader does. And in the weird position that I both dislike the transit plan and am terribly irritated that it wouldn't apply here.

Ugh. That's another point. Not doing very well this time, Tories.

NDP

Okay, so I mentioned that Ottawa is spending big on a huge new transit system. And I mentioned that the Tories don't care. Well, neither do the NDP - only the Liberals have come out saying that they're willing to support the project with actual money (and I still have issues with the way they're going about it - see above). But, tepid or not, that's better than the Tories and NDP.

Which means the NDP gets a point, too.

TSC's political shit-list (2014 Ontario Election), current standings:

Liberals: 1
NDP: 2
PC: 5

[The Supreme Canuck]

Oh, and because I always find this fun, here's the CBC's Vote Compass for this election:

Link

I come in as more economically and socially liberal than all of the parties. No surprise.

[Parrothead]

One of the reasons for the expansion money, it is not only for Toronto, but the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) including areas North, East and West of the city. Some of this infrastructure is already being built as Toronto will be hosting the Pan-Am Games, next year.

One big problem with the Liberal budget (platform) is they want to introduce a provincial pension plan, to augment the federal one (as they claim people aren't saving enough for retirement). This plan would be mandatory (with some exceptions) creating another deduction for people and another payroll tax for employers to match contributions. Needless to say, it wouldn't really start making any payouts for about 40 years.

Liberals also don't really want to run on their record, so they are fighting the feds instead, could be risky campaigning. Another business announced last week, it would do no further expansion in the province due to the high costs of energy. Some businesses have shutdown and relocated plants due to soaring energy costs, in the province.

This is turning into one of those, hold your nose and vote for who you think will cause the least damage if they win elections.

Hudak (or his people) did mess up on the transit announcement. Question is did the transit police have to stop the train, they could have avoided the stoppage, by explaining things while enroute to the next stop and evicting them from the train there. Either way it was a mess. One of the things the tories have going for them is bringing in some of the sensible recommendations from the Drummond Report. This report was commissioned by the Liberals a number of years ago and then chose only a couple of ideas, they implemented one of the costliest ideas (funding full day kindergarten), which the report recommending against doing at the time.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Well, look, from where I'm sitting the GTA looks a lot like Toronto proper. The rest of the province needs to be served by the government, too. The fact that only the Liberals have announced they will fund the Ottawa transit plan in any way is a huge sticking point for me with the other parties.

As for the pension plan, I'm in favour. Given demographics, I'll probably never see a cent of CPP or OAS. So this won't pay out for 40 years? Great. That's when I'll need it.

As to energy, well. Interesting article in today's Citizen:

The food-container manufacturer at whose Niagara plant he made the promise, Stanpac, has a factory in Texas, too. Electricity costs are 60 per cent cheaper there, its vice-president said in introducing Hudak. It’s a more attractive place to expand than Ontario is. Hudak fretted about losing business and good jobs to the south.

Texas’s electricity is cheaper. But its electricity system is not a textbook example of greatness.

Its structure is similar to Ontario’s: it has local delivery companies that own the wires and are mostly monopolies, and they’re distinct from the generating companies that make the electricity the wires carry.

Texas’s generating companies are mostly private, which is unlike Ontario. The biggest of them, TXU Energy, with about 1.7 million customers, was taken over in a leveraged buyout in 2007. Loaded up with the billions of dollars in debt its new owners took on to acquire it, TXU’s parent company killed plans to open eight coal-powered generating stations it had expected to construct (it still set out to build three).

Two weeks ago, TXU’s parent filed for bankruptcy protection. Regulators have stepped in to promise Texans their light switches will still work.

It didn’t help TXU to have its coal-based electricity undercut by natural-gas prices that have plunged thanks to fracking, which is huge in Texas. That’s the underlying reason electricity is so cheap there: Texas sits on a vast reserve of shale gas and producers are shattering the ground to siphon it out.

It’s a jurisdiction whose administration of electricity actually makes Ontario’s look good.

There's more to the energy file than mere price, and there's more to the price of energy in this province than government. We aren't sitting on huge natural gas reserves, for one.

That's not to say there aren't problems, just that it isn't as cut-and-dry as the Tories make it out to be.

Fair cop on the Drummond Report, though. And, yeah, I definitely agree that this is a "lesser evil" election. I just don't think we'll agree on who the lesser evil is.

[Sigma_Orionis]

..... I definitely agree that this is a "lesser evil" election. I just don't think we'll agree on who the lesser evil is.

You mean that there ARE elections which are NOT about choosing "the lesser evil"?

How peculiar, the things you learn these days

[FZR1KG]

Which is why I support shooting the greater evil.
If you can't decide, shoot them all and let God sort it out! lol

[The Supreme Canuck]

This morning the Tories came to the door again. The guy explicitly asked who I was voting for.

Now, I don't mind door-to-door campaigning. But I do mind being asked by a political party who I intend to vote for. It's none of their bloody business, and I don't want it going into their files. Told him to go away. That's a point.

Then, not twenty minutes later, the Tories called my house. Asking for me by name (lord knows how they got that, though the Tories at all levels of government are known to have a huge voter database full of information from... somewhere). And again asking who I'm going to vote for. Presumably to enter it into their panopticon system. Told him to cram it, too. That's another point.

I mean... Christ, right? I'm uncomfortable that you have my name to use to target me. I'm not telling you the contents of my head. That's creepy as fuck. I hasten to note that it has only been the Tories contacting me this election, too. I'm singularly unimpressed with it.

Oh, also, having read an interesting article in the local paper recently, I'm going to have to take back what I said about the Drummond Report. Turns out the Tories are picking and choosing, too. But they're trying to make it look like they aren't:

But it’s disingenuous of the Tories to suggest they are implementing the Drummond plan. What they’re doing is picking and choosing the bits they like best. The one about chopping 9,700 “non-teaching positions,” including educational assistants? That’s in the PC plan, as “per Drummond.” (Apparently referencing “Drummond” is supposed to make us unquestioningly accept virtually any cost-cutting measure.)

On the other hand, Hudak simply ignored Drummond’s specific warning not to freeze wages. In fact, the PCs pledge to do just that. Wage freezes are the single biggest line-item savings the party is predicting — $2.15 billion by 2015.

And in vowing to slash 100,000 public-sector jobs, Hudak obviously isn’t adhering to Drummond’s advice to “avoid setting targets for the size of the civil service.”

It’s not that Drummond doesn’t believe in shrinking the number of provincial workers. But for the economist (who’s declining interviews during the election), cuts aren’t the starting point — they’re the natural result of a leaner, re-thought government. And that’s the thing about the Drummond report: it’s a 500-plus page thesis advocating a whole-scale reform of government. It’s heady, complex stuff — not a buffet of cost-cutting options from which a political party can choose to suit its agenda of the day.

Take the 30 per cent tuition grant. The PCs will cut it just like Drummond, they say. While the Drummond report does call for scrapping that grant, it also calls for targeting “more of the assistance to low-income students whose access is most likely to be compromised by financial obstacles.” But there’s no mention of helping poorer students in Hudak’s plan.

Now, you have to give the Tories credit for being upfront about the painful measures they’ll take if elected. That’s more than most political parties would do. But they haven’t been completely honest about exactly what services may be diminished, exactly which jobs will be cut.

If the Grits don't get a free pass, the Tories don't get a free pass.

Anyway. something else, now. The Tories are basing their economic numbers on the work of an American economist, Benjamin Zycher. Or so they say, anyway. Paper says otherwise:

Q How seriously should we take the Tories’ numbers, then?

A Zycher’s projections might be fine on their own, but they can’t reasonably be used to forecast the economy under a Tory government because they aren’t based on the policy proposals the Tories have been making. If Hudak would govern Ontario the way Zycher thinks he should, he isn’t saying so.

Oh, and Zycher? He said this:

Now, let me be blunt: Michelle Obama, the product of lifelong affirmative-action coddling, is an intellectual lightweight who fancies herself a serious thinker. Just read her Princeton senior thesis, an intermittently coherent stream-of-consciousness pile of leftist jargon, campus pseudo-seriousness, and racial-identity babble. Can there be any doubt that the Princeton administrators accepted it only because of her skin colour?

(Emphasis added)

Source: Globe and Mail article

He's also said some frankly appalling things about Muslims, the environment, the poor, and affirmative action. There's also some suggestion he's a 9/11 truther, but the only reference I can see to that is a statement he made on 21 September 2001, so I'll probably give him a pass for that one since not all the information was in at that point.

Still. He sounds like a right shithead. And the Tories have hitched their wagon to him (kind of, as I noted above). All that nonsense is worth another point.

TSC's political shit-list (2014 Ontario Election), current standings:

Liberals: 1
NDP: 2
PC: 8

And, yeah, that looks pretty bad for the Tories. I realize that looks like bias on my part, since I'm no fan of the Conservatives... but I would like to point out that their shit-list score would be half what it is if they hadn't contacted me in my home to collect private information four times. That's really not okay to do, as far as I'm concerned. Had any other party done the same, they'd get a point for it, too.

[brite]

Here in the US... it's all Obama's fault...

[The Supreme Canuck]

There we go: Liberals just came to the door asking who I was going to vote for. Sent them packing. That's a point.

TSC's political shit-list (2014 Ontario Election), current standings:

Liberals: 2
NDP: 2
PC: 8

Edit: Huh. The local Liberal candidate is in the next-door neighbours' backyard right now, having a picture taken with their baby.

[Parrothead]

The moratorium on tv ads has passed. We now will be bombarded with tv ads.

Last Thursday the premier held an event at Walkerton. This was the site of a tragedy that happened during the PC gov't of Mike Harris, 14 years ago. A well got contaminated following a heavy rainfall, water treatment plant workers said nothing for 2 or 3 days. Many people got sick and 7 died. The premier used the anniversary of this event to insinuate that with cuts the PC's are promising, such tragedy could happen again if PC's get elected. She went on to announce $30 million over 10 years in funding to a water safety facility built as a result of the tragedy. She didn't mention that the funding was set at $4m a yr when the facility opened, so basically not mentioning that they are cutting funding by $1m/yr to the facility.

Liberals a few years ago ended the slots at racetracks revenue sharing program. They called it a subsidy. When setup, racetracks were the only areas licenced for gambling. Sharing was set at 80% to the province, 20% to the horse race tracks. After cancelling it, the horse race industry took a bhit, the gov't has since announced funding to keep horse racing alive. Uhm, maybe they shouldn't have cancelled the program to start with. Green Energy Act has been a big boondoggle. Ornge - air ambulance service, setup as "arms length", under criminal investigation after issues over availability of service and deaths possibly caused by not properly being able to fit patients into the helicopters, for treatment, while being transported.

Another issue with the Liberals, going by their budget, in some areas they have moved left of the NDP.

Much of the transit funding has been planned for some time and gone through consultations and environmental studies. When these are built funding comes from the 3 levels of gov't (federal, provincial and municipal), after it has been built maintenance/upkeep falls solely on the municipal gov't for funding. This was done during Harris' gov't, where they downloaded transit to the municipalities and uploaded education to the province.

I don't believe Hudak's numbers. I do believe in cutting the size of the civil service, would be nice if they stated what sectors and how the cuts would be made. If mostly over time, by not replacing retiring workers or getting rid of overlap, not so bad. Harris' gov't did make much needed cuts, but they went too far and too deep. Hudak's cuts would bring the number of provincial public workers down to 2009 levels.

PC's have called 3 times, Liberals once, so far.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Hm. Big swing in the polls the last couple of days. Until recently, the Grits and Tories were in a dead heat. Today? Not so much:



I wonder what happened?

[The Supreme Canuck]

And two little tidbits to demonstrate just how Toronto-centric this whole thing is...

First, last week, the leader of the NDP was stumping in Ottawa. When asked about issues that are relevant to the city and region, she had nothing to say. Just kept parroting the provincial platform rather than anything specific to here. On and on about general things and Toronto-specific things. Didn't even try to make it look otherwise.

That's a point.

Then, today, there was a debate in Northern Ontario to debate their issues. The Liberal and NDP leaders showed up. The Tory leader didn't even bother. At all. Had more important things to do, apparently. The issues of an entire region of the province - one bigger than bloody France, no less - aren't important enough to even consider.

That's a point, too.

TSC's political shit-list (2014 Ontario Election), current standings:

Liberals: 2
NDP: 3
PC: 9