06/30/04
I am from Ontario Peter and I voted Liberal. Reason why is Stephen Harper's Conservatives are not the new Conservatives, but the old right wing alliance with a new name. Regardless of what Harper says they are anything but moderate. In fact I think they are very extreme right from the views expressed by Harper and his back benchers.
I know Albertans are upset the Liberals beat out the Alliance again, but the question you have to ask is why was Stephen Harper not appealing to Ontarians. Stephen Harper was singing the same old song Mean Mike Harris sang when he was in power. In fact when he came to Ontario on his campaign, he praised Mike Harris for the job he had done. That was the stupidest thing he could have said here. Mean Mike was elected on the platform of the "common sense revolution". Where the government cut and gutted every social program and sold off parts of profitable crown corporations to down size government expences and to make Ontario a better place to live. Similar to how Ralph Klein got into power. The problem is Ontario wasn't a better place to live after Harris and Eves came to power.
Harris gutted everything saying it was for our better future and he gave alot of tax cuts to big corporations and the top 10% of society. He also got alot of people killed or sick in Walkerton when he gutted provincial water testing facilities. Harris realizing he has blood on his hands steps down and in comes Earnie Eaves. Eaves goes and privatizes parts of our electricity saying it will create a more competitive market and cheaper prices. Electricity prices skyrocketed. Eaves capped the electricity of consumers at 4 cents per kilowatt hour saying the province would pay the difference with a 550 million dollar slush fund 3 months later. Also he passed a bill at the same time stating power companies could not cut power off to single moms during the the cold winter months until spring. Eaves did this because he was going to call a provincial election in the following fall. Fall comes around, and reports come out that we are now a billion in the hole because electricity prices have skyrocketed after deregulation and that 550 million fund wasn't nearly enough.
Consequently reports arise that Eaves's ministers got 20 thousand dollar vacations to Europe before they deregulated electricity from Energy companies just before they passed deregulation in Ontario. Eaves appointed his own ethics minister who said nothing wrong had been done and those ministers just resigned and that was the end of it. Eaves said he would not commission an inquest or any other public inquiry on the issue.
Harris and Eaves and his conservatives lost the fall election to Dalton Mcguinty a Liberal. Now Dalton broke an election promise and raised taxes and health care premiums. People were very upset at this. But Dalton raised taxes because Harris, Eaves and their common sense revolution left us bleeding 6 billion a year in deficit. He also appointed party cronies to ceo's and heads of crown corporations. The Ontario Hydro exec had an expense account. She put 6 fitness club memberships on it as well as limosine costs to bring her kids to and from school as well as a severance package in the millions. Harris took a crown corporation of Ontario Hydro which had a monopoly and ran it down so much that it will bleed half a billion over the next 2 years.Now he tried to fix it by bringing in a dream team of nuclear specialists from the states and paid them over 40 million. They got paid and didn't fix anything.
Also Eaves realized he was bleeding a deficit in the billions and didn't tell anyone. He just tried to sell off more crown corporations to cover it up. He tried selling off our provincially owned LLCBO (liquor and alcohol board of Ontario) to his Bay Street buddies who made donations to his party. Just before the provincial election he tried to rail road through 4 private hospitals so he could get their campaign donations. This was stopped by court action.
Now you ask why we Ontarians didn't vote for Harper? We listened to his election platform which sounded vaguely familiar to Mr. Harris and looked at what Ralph Klein was doing in Alberta.
The New Conservatives did well in the first few weeks because people were angry at the Sponsorship scandal and Dalton Mcguinty for raising taxes. But as the election wore on we realized this is not the progressive conservatives of old who were more moderate but the Canadian Alliance who are very extreme right. The first blunder that caught everyone's attention, Ralph Klein on the 6 o'clock news saying he was gonna introduce new health care reforms 2 days after the election saying they were going to violate the Canadian Health Act. The Second Blunder was Harpers tax cuts which he was shouting left and right. His tax cut gives 3000-6000 for people making $100,000 to$200,000 dollars a year and $0 for people making $30,000 and under. Third and fourth blunder Harpers stance on abortion, and bilingualism. Harper says he won't change health care but in the debate he says why should we care if health care is administered privately or publicly as long as the service is good. Fifth Blunder another Alliance candiate Wright who is the Conservative's Justice Minister. He shows up on the 6'oclock news the Friday before the election in a film he made a year ago saying "the hell with the courts, if they come to conclusions that are contrary to our right wing views we will just shoot it down with the Non-withstanding clause."
A big issue in Toronto is the same as other big cities. Funding for infrastructure to improve big cities. Harper's response to Mayor Miller asking about his stance on funding for cities? " Cities are just a small special interest group, I am more concerned about funding to farmers and rurual areas."
Now the Liberals are crooks, but the Harris conservatives made the Liberals look like choir boys. Also the conservative candidates running in Toronto were the same Harris conservatives who put us 6 billion in deficit a year, killed people in Walkerton, and deregulated our electricity. The same guys Harper praised when he came through Ontario. And the Harris conservatives were supposed to be the moderate branch of the right wing. Harper didn't address any important issues to Ontarians. He just bashed Martin, McGuinty and talked about how great Harris is.
You see we Ontarians saw Harper as a Liar, and also as a extreme right wing candidate who would kill health care, give tax cuts that benefit the top 10% of the population, legislate morality, spend 7 billion on military to send Canadians into future conflicts that the US decided was good for them.
The last knock against Harper, is that he would be a yes man for Bush. The United States are our friends and neighbors, but the last thing we need is a guy that is a lap dog selling out our interests regardless of if it would be good or bad for us for a campaign donation as Prime Minister.
Kiyoto and the environment was another issue which Harper goes against the grain on.
Finally Harper would have not been good for Ontario. Alot of his ideas and funding cuts would have hurt Ontario economically. His stance on funding for cities is just an example. We would have had one Ontario cabinet minister from Ontario also looking out for our interests. The rest would have been from the Alberta and the west.
Also Harpers anti-Quebec stance doesn't fly in the east. To us French Canadians are just Canadians like the rest of us. Harper tries to divide and alienate Canadians and pits them against each other. Thats why the Conservatives had poor showings in Atlantic Canada and Quebec. He insults them on national television.
These are the reasons why Ontario didn't vote for the Agressive Conservatives who are not main stream. There vision of Canada would have encouraged intolerance, legislated morality, taken away our constitutional rights, imposed right wing views on us, killed health care, given tax cuts to the top 10% and screwed the rest. He would have also spent billions on weapons systems and sent us into any conflict the US wanted. Harper would have also weakened Canada by taking away central federal powers. Harper would have also put us back into deficit spending like Brian Mulroney. When Mulroney came to power our national debt was around 100 billion. When Mulroney left he put our national debt at over 500 billion and left us with a 70 billion dollar deficit a year.
Everyone was upset at sponsorship scandal. But the last 11 years under Liberal government hasn't been bad for Canada. The economy has been good, employment and interest rates have been low, and Martin has cut our deficit from the Mulroney years in half to about 44 billion a year. Deficit spending is one reason why our dollar is so weak against the other world currencies. In 1970 our dollar was higher than the US dollar. Now its 75% of its value.
If you want reasons for why the conservatives lost, just look to Ralph Klein and Wright who were alliance members and now go under the new name of Conservative. They did the most harm to Harper. Ontarians and the rest of Canadians thank them actually. At least Klein and Wright were honest. The same can't be said for Harper.
This wasn't meant to offend Alberta or any westerners or anyone who voted conservative. Peter asked why Ontario went Liberal and I gave him some background and reasons why Ontarians didn't like Harper.
POLITICS IS LIKE SEX, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT YOURSELF.
