He must be joking. Toronto Star writer Martin Regg Cohn tells us that there is some sort of contest going on for the votes of the Sub-Continent Diaspora in Ontario. If Opposition Leader Patrick Brown and Premier Kathleen Wynn are really in this contest, it seems like a foolish expense for a larger portion of less than four per cent of the voters in Ontario. While former federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney thinks the Conservatives discovered ethnic voters in Canada, the truth is that all major parties have strong roots in the major New Canadian communities.
Looking back over the past 50 years, the Toronto base of the Liberal Party kept in touch with the ethnic media, analyzed readership and viewers in the various ethnic groups and helped candidates communicate with substantive groups in their electoral districts. As early as possible in each election we would arrange a meeting with the ethnic media for the party leader and made sure that candidates met the people from ethnic media with concentrations of that ethnic group in their riding.
Even today, Patrick Brown has no deep connections with the Hindu, Sikh or Muslim communities from the Sub-Continent. His relationship with Indian President Narendra Modi goes back to when the fundamentalist Hindi Modi was chief minister in Gujarat (an industrialized Indian state with almost twice the population of Canada). And for the Star’s Regg Cohn to oversimplify the extremely complex religious infighting in India to say that Modi has been rehabilitated is like saying the Pope will be welcomed as the new chief rabbi of Jerusalem.
Brown bought the Progressive Conservative Party leadership in Ontario by the simple expedient of hiring organizers from the Sikh and Hindi temples in Ontario and having them go out and sign up members of the party. The feedback from the Sub-continent émigrés was that payment of the party’s ten dollar fee was optional.
It was obvious to any knowledgeable political apparatchik who was not born yesterday that Brown used the immigrants to win the position at the lowest ebb in membership for the Conservatives in Ontario. These are hardly going to be active supporters.
And for Regg Cohn to appear to be so gullible as to be impressed by Brown’s accomplishments is a bit frightening. Brown hardly made a brilliant move in finding out about Wynne’s planned trade mission to India and getting ahead of her with a few of his caucus members. India has the largest population of any democracy in the world and it is an immense market. If Ontario was not sending trade missions, the voters should be asking why not. Wynne will also get her few moments of fame in India.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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