This writer was wrong. There, it is admitted. We are the only blog writer in Ontario who has no excuse. We actually thought that Premier McGuinty and his Liberals could hold on to a slim majority in the October 6 election.
But what do we know? Talking to people in different parts of Ontario over the last week, we heard nothing but complaints. Many people with normally strong views admitted that they had not yet made up their minds. They would discuss their leanings and then ask for our views. A few who usually voted Liberal were thinking of voting Green as a protest. They admitted it was a wasted vote but they felt that no party was on their side.
That was the most honest comment we got. People felt that no party was speaking for them. They watch costs climb and know that there is nobody to speak out about it. And they are not concerned about luxuries. They mention the price of bread, a pound of butter, ground beef, lettuce. And have you priced celery lately? People shudder at the price of a litre of gasoline and know that the Harper government will do nothing about the price fixing by the oil companies..
People are mad but have no one they trust. The Conservative attack ads against McGuinty as the ‘Taxman’ made the point but Tim Hudak’s Conservatives did not benefit. Hudak’s team played the bigotry and division cards and divided the province—rural against urban. McGuinty took the north for granted and handed it to Horwath and her NDP team. He is premier of a house divided.
How do you predict the outcome when only half the eligible voters bothered to vote? It came down to who was motivated. People had plenty of opportunity to vote and yet only 600,000 people bothered to vote on the many available days of advance voting. These advance voters were knowledgeable voters a well as those working on the election either for returning offices or for parties.
How did we expect people to vote positively when there was no leadership. McGuinty is a wus and a dull, uninteresting party leader and premier. The only cause he has every championed successfully is all-day kindergarten. He is paying for renewable energy with a ponzi scheme. He is not a liberal but a whig, mired in the 19th Century.
But Tiny Tim Hudak scared nobody. He pandered to the extremists on the right. He should keep the speech writer who did his speech on election night. It was the first honest speech he made.
Andrea Horwath disappointed us. She could have cashed in on the latent Layton sympathy but never got her act together. She produced no clear message. She had pissed off teachers going in to the election, lost the auto workers and then maligned the hospital workers—some unionist! Only the north bought her.
Our late mother-in-law had many little sayings from her childhood. She used to say “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.” And that sums up the Ontario Legislature.
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Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry
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