Maybe Patrick Brown forgot to ask. It has been clear that Premier Kathleen Wynne has been playing the job by ear for the past four years. It is just that the former do-nothing back bencher from the Harper government wants Wynne’s job. The Globe and Mail tells us that Brown is a pragmatist on steroids and the Toronto Star’s Rick Salutin thinks he is merely returning to the zeitgeist of the Bill Davis era in Ontario.
As very few of us understand Rick Salutin, we have to go along with the Globe and Mail on this one. The only problem is that the Globe points out that some of the Conservative promises are more liberal than anything the Ontario Liberals are offering. Maybe Brown’s model is the Trudeau government in Ottawa.
All we know here in Patrick Brown’s electoral district is that the putz will say anything to get elected.
The only thing I regret is that the Conservatives must have read my criticisms of Kathleen Wynne’s Cap and Trade system. They are absolutely right to get behind the federal carbon tax. While it must be causing apoplexy in some Toronto board rooms, the carbon tax is the most open way to force people to help save this planet.
But nobody ever suggested that the carbon tax should fund personal income tax cuts. A proper carbon tax is designed to be revenue neutral and only a Libertarian would see it as a chance for tax cuts.
If any among us has had time to study all 147 promises in that Conservative work of fiction, they must be wondering where the cuts are hiding. You can hardly move that much revenue to popular promises without cutting the hell out of some critical programs. You have to figure that doctors’ incomes will be the only safe zone in the health care budget. (With the help of Brown’s campaign manager, Walied Soliman, greed won control of the Ontario Medical Association this past year.)
While the men in suits that seemed to dominate the Conservative gathering were applauding the new Patrick Brown, there was a feeling of déjà vu to the events. It felt like a piece meal plucking of a goody from here and a goody from there. Yes, Brown had a new haircut but it was the same schmuck we have known for years, reading the teleprompter.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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