In Toronto on Sundays, only two newspapers publish an edition, The Toronto Sun and The Toronto Star. They’re usually among the most widely read of any editions either paper publishes during the week. And, as this is the last Sunday edition before Ontario chooses a premier and government on Thursday, both papers are using their Sunday soapboxes to push their favoured candidate.
Here’s how they look. Continue reading Press review: The Sun versus The Star on the final Sunday before Ontario votes
Here, then, are some aggregate numbers on the Liberal record in office so far as jobs go. Choose which one you like to make your preferred political point: Continue reading Ahead of Ontario election, The final tale of the tape on job numbers
Watch that ad (above). It’s from Joni Ernst as she was campaigning in the Republican primary in Iowa for the right to be on the ticket in November in Iowa’s senate election. Turns out, Ernst’s experience with castrating hogs was good enough for Iowa voters who gave her a runaway victory earlier this week.
But she’s not in the U.S. Senate yet (and in fact, Iowa has never sent a woman to the U.S. Senate). First, she’s got to beat the Democrat, Bruce Braley. Braley is not a hog farmer. He’s a “populist” trial lawyer. Within hours of Ernst’s primary win, Braley’s team had an attack ad out aimed at Ernst’s claim that she knows how to cut the “Washington pork”. Here it is … Continue reading Down on the Farm: GOP, Dems duel in Iowa over cutting the pork
A few days ago, the Ontario Provincial Police Association released a couple of controversial ads in which it urged Ontarians to vote for anybody but Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak and, at the same time, tried to claim it was not endorsing either party.
Today, OPPA head Jim Christie was asked about these ads and the fact that the OPPA has donated thousands of dollars to the Ontario Liberal Party over the years, an apparently controversial move within the police union.. He said: “We’ve made it clear we have no issue with PC party just an issue with Hudak and where he plans to take future of membership. We donate to all political parties. I think over time we’ve actually donated more money to [Progressive] Conservatives. it’s normal and part of our political activity.”
I’m not so sure about that last part. Going to Elections Ontario political contributions table and looking up the contributions to each of the three main parties for the last five years, one finds that not a penny of OPPA made it into supposedly union-friendly NDP coffers and that while the PCs got some OPPA cash a few years ago, they got nothing in 2012 and 2013 and none so far in 2013. In fact, since 2011, the only political party that has received OPPA cash is the Ontario Liberals. Here’s the tale of the tape derived from Elections Ontario:
| OLP | PCPO | NDP | |
| 2014 | $- | $- | $- |
| 2013 | $7,400 | $- | $- |
| 2012 | $7,650 | $- | $- |
| 2011 | $13,600 | $13,640 | $- |
| 2010 | $5,200 | $4,455 | $- |
| Total | $33,850 | $18,095 | $- |
If the OPPA did, as Christie claim, give more the PCs or even give one penny to the NDP it must have been 2009 or earlier …
This is the latest ad from the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. They call it “Truth”. But in fact, it features their leader saying at least one thing that is demonstrably and unequivocally untrue and one other statement that is unlikely to be true. Let’s break it down by looking at two key claims Hudak makes early in this ad. (I’m assuming by now, you’ve watched the ad)
Nope. Sorry. That’s not the truth. Continue reading The whoppers in Tim Hudak's "Truth" ad
Two new ads out this afternoon for consideration by those eligible to cast a ballot in the June 12 Ontario election. One is from the Liberals and a week after economists first raised questions about the math in Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s “Million Jobs Plan” hits Hudak about his math. The other ad (below) is from the Ontario NDP. The NDP takes shots at both the Liberals and the PCs and encourages voters to “switch” to Andrea: Continue reading New Ontario election ads: Hudak's math and Andrea's switchers
A long but rewarding read from E.J. Dionne [first published in the journal Democracy but re-published by The Atlantic on the intellectual state-of-the-nation of U.S. conservatives. Notable from Canadian eyes in this sense: The “reformicons” Dionne described as “heretics” in the U.S. Republican movement — people like like David Frum, Bruce Bartlett and Ross Douthat — appear to be advocating for a conservativism in the U.S. that, to my eyes, rather resembles the conservatism of the Conservative Party of Canada. And so, just as the Conservative Party of Canada may serve as a possible inspiration for the Republicans, so too could today’s Republican Party serve as a king of warning for Canadian Conservatives should it fail lower- and middle-income households [a recent report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer noted that under the Harper government’s tax cuts have helped “Low and middle income earners [benefit] more, in relative terms, than higher income earners.”) have been and be seen as ignoring the problem of economic inequality in our society.
Some excerpts from the Dionne piece: Continue reading Article: Are U.S. Reform Conservatives Serious? (and why Canadian conservatives should care)
The current exhibition at the Karsh-Masson Gallery at City of Ottawa features an exhibit by Palestinian-born artist Rehab Nazzal. The exhibit has been strongly condemned by Rafael Barak, Israel’s Ambassador to Canada. [An article at MuslimLink profiles Nazzal and the exhibition] Here is the press release issued this morning by the Embassy of Israel:
Exhibit at Ottawa City Hall Glorifies Terror
Ottawa, Canada – May 23, 2014: An exhibit at Ottawa’s City Hall Karsh-Masson Art Gallery reflects a culture of hate and incitement that contradicts the values of Canada as a guardian of peace and champion against terror. Although the exhibit claims to present “portraits of lost artists, activists, writers and leaders,” this deceitful description is cover for what is a “who’s who” of international terrorists: suicide bombers, masterminds of massacres, terrorist operatives and the hijackers of planes, buses, and schools. Many of those glorified are individuals connected to organizations that appear on Canada’s official list of terrorist entities. Continue reading Israel ambassador says Ottawa City Hall art show "glorifies terror"
This weekend in Ottawa is “Ottawa Race Weekend”. Tens of thousands from the national capital region and around the world will put on a pair of shorts and run around a variety of tracks as fast as they can. On Saturday, thousands will run a lovely 10K route that goes from Ottawa City Hall, down the Rideau Canal to Dow’s Lake and back. On Sunday, the half-marathon and marathon are run. Both courses are terrific. The marathon course takes you right by 24 Sussex, the Governor General’s Residence, the Museum of Civilization, er, Canadian Museum of History, and has great views of Parliament Hill.
I’ve done the 10K event before but this weekend, for the first time in this event, I’m running in the half-marathon. [Course map] I’ve run this distance — a half-marathon is about 21 kilometres — three times in my life, one of which was in another race event (that’s me finishing that event, the 9-Run-Run last fall, above), but I’ve always run it before with an attitude of “just finishing means you’re a winner.” This time, though, I want to be faster than I’ve ever been. (My fastest is 1 hour and 57 minutes over this distance.)
Continue reading Running to the beat: My Ottawa Race Weekend playlist for a PB
Today on the Ontario campaign trail, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak was indicting the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne for letting 300,000 manufacturing jobs disappear on their watch. Now, while I was critical of Hudak and the PCs earlier this week for vastly overstating the number of “out of work” Ontarians, Hudak is pretty much spot-on with this latest number. Since October, 2003, when McGuinty took the reigns for the first time, Ontario has, in fact, seen 314,500 manufacturing jobs disappear. That’s what Statistics Canada says.
I was curious which industrial sectors fared worst or better during the Liberal reign and so I crunched the numbers from Statscan for three time periods: Since the McGuinty liberals first won office in October 2003; since the last Ontario election in Oct 2011 (the McGuinty/Wynne years) and the last 12 months. The most recent month for which data is available is April 2014. Continue reading The Liberal record on job creation by industrial sector
