Referring to Ontario Liberal Party members as Whigs is not entirely derogatory. There were some very progressive Whigs in their time. The only problem is that their time was in the 1800s. They were the grouping of like-minded lawmakers who became the Liberal Party in Great Britain and the name came into use in Canada.
The Ontario Liberals were created when George Brown of Toronto cobbled together the Clear Grits, a coalition of farmers from Southwestern Ontario, with left-wing Reformers, originally formed by William Lyon Mackenzie to fight Ontario’s Family Compact. From these honourable roots, the Ontario Whigs are determined to stay locked in the ideas of the 19th Century.
Someone asked recently, how can you be liberal when you complain so much about Ontario Premier McGuinty and his government? We did some thinking. We came to the following conclusion:
It is not the harmonized sales tax. That was just bad judgement. And how can you blame the Whigs for accepting federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s $2 billion bribe to do it? Mind you, we have not had enough to say yet about the HST on energy costs!
It is not the ponzi scheme the Whigs are using to pay for renewable energy. That is, at least, an attempt to do something positive.
It is not the bad management decisions on the health file. When Ontario citizens get back the right to choose their own family doctor, we can start to feel a little more comfortable about where things are going in health.
It is not the unconscionable loopholes that allow contributors and third parties to drive a truck through the Ontario election expense rules. Any candidate or third party not spending far too much on the recent campaign was not trying.
What it was, was watching police trample the flowers beds and human rights at Queen’s Park on a rampage during Prime Minister Harper’s G20 events in Toronto. That is something McGuinty and company can never live down. As the province’s lawmakers, they did nothing to help Ontario citizens. That was their disgrace.
Obviously they have no competition but why are the Whigs waging war on us?
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Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry
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