Ontario Opposition Leader Timmy Hudak has a new career in mind. He wants to be a carnival illusionist. In an op-ed opinion page article yesterday in the Toronto Star, he was proposing a Million Jobs Act. This act, as he describes it, would be a masterful illusion in the category of Houdini’s greatest stunts.
In keeping with the huckster’s patter—and very bad mathematics, Timmy tells us he can pay down our provincial debt, freeze government salaries, train workers and free companies from government regulations—while reducing their corporate taxes. Somehow, this combination of actions is supposed to create a million jobs for Ontario’s half million unemployed. Timmy seems to have a problem connecting his solutions to the results he wants.
Maybe he has never seen the musical The Music Man. The huckster in that musical knew how to sell an illusion. And it is probably only a small jump from 76 Trombones to a million jobs. The lesson for Timmy in this is that the music man was building an image for the suckers. While the reality was that he was just selling the paraphernalia, he talked only about the band that was the promise. It is what we used to call selling the sizzle, not the steak.
Timmy needs to find the sizzle. His mentor, former Conservative Premier Mike Harris, sold his Common Sense Revolution until the voters realized he never had any. Timmy needs to learn how to build a mental picture of this supposed nirvana that he is promising Ontario families. Frankly there is no gravy train for Timmy to try to end at Queen’s park. That train has already left the station.
What Ontario needs from its leaders is leadership. It seems we have all had it up to the eyebrows with hearing what political leaders such as Wynne, Hudak and Horwath do not like—besides each other. Between the federal Conservatives’ anti-Ontario bias, the manufacturing jobs lost and the incompetence of these three, Ontario voters are in a seemingly hopeless situation.
Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa is our last chance. He can still bring in a budget that makes sense. He can button up the BS about the deficit and bring out a job creating budget. He can sell the Liquor Control Board and use that capital to start the ball rolling on great projects such as the Ring of Fire and the high-speed rail corridor from Windsor to Quebec City. That takes vision. That takes leadership.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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