Ingersoll? Sure, you have to take the show on the road to try it out, but who would choose Ingersoll? Most of the seven presumptive heirs to Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty have never been to Ingersoll before. Some will never return. They will fall by the wayside.
But because it sounds rural (it is actually far enough east of London, Ontario not to be amalgamated with London) some of the seven contenders will introduce their rural platforms. MPP Eric Hoskins, the doctor from downtown Toronto, is already playing at his rural roots and waving his plan to restore the family farm to its former glory.
Some might question the rural roots of MPP Harinder Takhar, former government services minister, but he will also be proud to show you the rural aspects of his plan to overcome Ontario’s deficit. Someone has convinced Harinder that the deficit is a problem and so he promises to fix it faster than anyone else.
The presumptive den mother for this gaggle of former cabinet ministers is MPP Kathleen Wynne from Don Valley West. She has asked that all her fellow contenders play nice at these debates. It appears she has sold more memberships than any of her competitors in this race and has some fairly powerful friends among the non-elected ex-officio delegates to the January convention.
The one contender who probably has no intention to play nice is former MPP Sandra Pupatello from Windsor. Why would she? There is nothing in it for her to hide her strengths. She got out of the McGuinty cabinet before it crashed and burned. She has to smear five of her competitors with the errors of the past year, sell her strengths of being from outside the Toronto region and then make a direct appeal for the right-wing vote.
Pupatello’s only competitor without the stigma of membership in the hard-luck Liberal cabinet of the past few years is Toronto’s Gerard Kennedy. As Kennedy is also the only contender with left-wing credentials, Pupatello has to single him out for special treatment. That is an honour he might not appreciate.
The debate today is not important enough to interrupt television’s Saturday sports schedules but it will be on the Internet. Depending on how well your computer system connection handles streaming video, you might enjoy watching.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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