What? You have never heard of Ontario’s Trillium Party? Just think of founding a new party like the creation of a fine wine. First you have to plant the vines. It is a lengthy process before you need a bottling plant.
While the Trillium leadership—a guy named Bob Yaciuk (and no, I don’t know how to pronounce it)—might deny this: you can think of the Trillium Party as a cross between angry conservatives and aspiring libertarians.
Whether MPP Jack MacLaren is a libertarian or not is irrelevant but he certainly is an annoyed Conservative. It was a tight race to see if he could quit the Ontario Conservatives before they turfed him from the party, He lost and the Tories turfed him.
The Tories threw MacLaren out of their caucus at Queen’s Park because he was constantly embarrassing them (And it is tough to embarrass that caucus!). He is described as what we refer to politically as a loose cannon. No amount of sensitivity training seems to get this guy to think about what he says in public. In an electoral district with large numbers of federal government employees, he is a narrow-minded critic of bilingualism. He is also an outspoken misogynist and can embarrass both men and women.
There was no complaint about him two years ago when he was on the Patrick Brown team for the Ontario party leadership. MacLaren is an old and respected name in that part of Ontario and he was one of the two MPPs from the Ontario caucus supporting the then social conservative Brown. Along with MacLaren, Brown got the support of the extremist Ontario Landowners’ Association.
It was the Ottawa Citizen that confirmed what MacLaren’s website contained testimonials from “satisfied constituents” that did not exist. This is not that uncommon a practice but you have to really be annoyed with a politician before you dig into such things. Knowing many voters in Kanata-Carleton electoral district, it will be great fun to watch what happens there next June.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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