The third party advertising in Ontario has already gone too far. Now the Conservatives are proving it is a sham. And it is hardly to their credit. A new group, calling itself “Working Canadians” has emerged to counter the so called “Working Families.” Neither group is particularly subtle in letting people know where they stand.
In 2011, Working Families ran scathing television advertising in opposition to the provincial Conservatives. Its ads ridiculed Conservative Leader Tim Hudak—which is hardly a difficult task. What was wrong was that the ads should have said: ‘On behalf of the Ontario Liberal Party.’ It would have been stating the obvious but it would also have meant that the McGuinty Liberals would have been responsible for the expense.
Now we are to see and hear advertising for the Conservatives for which they do not claim responsibility. The new Working Canadians group is being fronted by Catherine Swift chair of the right-wing Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Swift says the only organization behind this new group is the somewhat secretive Merit Canada that lobbies against unions in the construction industry.
Of course, Ms. Swift insists that the new Working Canadians is non-partisan. Her concern in all of this is that she believes paying for public servants such as teachers, nurses and police officers is the reason for what she calls a “structural deficit” in Ontario. She fails to say what the alternative to paying these civil servants might be.
It is reported that she is concerned about Ontario going bankrupt in the same way as Greece or Detroit. Despite her post-graduate degree in economics from an Ontario university, Ms. Swift failed to explain why Ontario might need to declare bankruptcy. It seems that Ms. Swift is of the opinion that “the average taxpayer does not have a clue about this.”
Nobody seems to be surprised that the Ontario Conservatives intend to make right-to-work legislation a mainstay of their next Ontario election campaign. They are already warming up by calling Ontario Public Sector union heads “union elites.” Ontario Conservative politicians might not be aware that a basic tenet of unionism is that everyone is equal. There are not supposed to be any union elites.
But while it makes the upcoming election more interesting, something really has to be done about third party advertising. It should be illegal as it interferes with the proper conduct of the election, allows people to hide behind false fronts and attempts to convince people of information that might also be false.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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