Last night, Olivia Chow unveiled two new radio ads in her campaign to win the job of Mayor of Toronto. The two ads are “attack ads” and they go after the incumbent, Rob Ford. As far as attack ads go, they’re pretty slick and may make you chuckle. Listen to them here: Continue reading Fair to launch attack ads at an opponent who's in re-hab? Chow thinks so
As an Ontario Progressive Conservative, Steve Clark is about safe as safe can be in his Eastern Ontario riding of Leeds-Grenville, but how does he – and other Ontario Tories — make more ridings more Tory-friendly? For Clark, the first step is going to the riding next door, Kingston and the Islands, and asking voters there why they don’t like his party.
The final day of the campaign in the 41st Ontario general election gets going early for all three major party leaders. Continue reading The final campaign day in Ontario: Liberals go hard after Toronto New Democrats
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
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 …
Last week, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said that any Liberal candidate who is not already a sitting MP must be pro-choice. This week, Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, sent Trudeau the following letter, a copy of which was distributed to the Parliamentary Press Gallery:
Mr. Justin Trudeau, MP
Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada
House of Commons, OttawaMay 14, 2014
Dear Mr. Trudeau,I am deeply concerned about your decision that citizens who, in conscience, seek to assure the protection of the most vulnerable among us are not acceptable as candidates in your party. Continue reading Cardinal to Trudeau: Be "the king's good servant, but God's first"
State Senator Dale Schultz was a rare Republican who voted against the bill, saying the party was “fiddling with mechanics rather than ideas.”
“Making it more difficult for people to vote is not a good sign for a party that wants to attract more people,” he said.
The New York Times today has a long read about how U.S. conservatives– the Republican Party — is changing election laws in several states.
Read it here: New G.O.P. Bid to Limit Voting in Swing States – NYTimes.com.
Democrats argue the whole point of the changes is to make it more difficult for the type of people who tend to voter Democrat — lower-income Americans and Black Americans — to actually vote. Continue reading In the U.S., conservatives tighten election laws — in the name of efficiency
Christine Innes planned to seek the Liberal nomination in Trinity-Spadina. She was the Liberal candidate in the last two general elections, losing both times to Olivia Chow. With Chow’s resignation yesterday, Innes fired up her campaign to win the Liberal nomination for a third time. But she was told by e-mail today that she would not be allowed to run, that leader Justin Trudeau would not sign her nomination papers. Why? The Ontario campaign chair told CP that was because Innes’ husband, Tony Ianno, himself a former Trinity-Spadina MP, had engaged in “intimidation and bullying” of other Toronto Liberals.
Innes released a statement of reaction to that decision: Continue reading Full text of Innes statement, reaction to Trudeau spiking her campaign
We start on February 6, where Butt rises in the House of Commons during Question Period to say he has personally witnessed what amounts to serious election fraud (my emphasis):
Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a bit about this vouching system again. I know the minister represents an urban city. I am from a semi-urban area of Mississauga, where there are many high-rise apartment buildings. On mail delivery day when the voter cards are delivered to community mailboxes in apartment buildings, many of them are discarded in the garbage can or the blue box. I have actually witnessed other people picking up the voter cards, going to the campaign office of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals, who then walk into voting stations with friends who vouch for them with no ID.
Then, a couple of hours later, also in the House of Commons, Butt rises again to say (my emphasis again): Continue reading Conservative MP Brad Butt: Makin' it up in the House of Commons
For years, the federal Conservatives have dominated federal fundraising, often raising more money in any quarter than all other parties combined — sometimes twice as much as all other parties combined. Ask a Conservative and they will tell you that without that fundraising advantage, we would be celebrating Paul Martin’s 10th years as PM next summer.
But that fundraising advantage is in jeopardy. Continue reading Tories feel the heat from Liberals on fundraising
