Queen's Park Politics

[1overcosc]

bornagainbiker, Ontario isn't broke or bankrupt. Fiscally we're still healthy. I've explained this earlier in this thread, using facts & numbers... although as a PC voter I imagine you don't care much for doing the math right.

Yes, the budget needs balancing, but its far from Ontario's most urgent issue right now. As long as we see a steady drop in the deficit starting in 2015 and hit balance by the early 2020s, we're good. Wynne's approach to the deficit will actually work better than Hudak's. Hudak wants to immediately slash and burn which hurts the economy, plus cut taxes, both of which reduce revenue. Wynne plans to boost spending short term to stimulate & strengthen underfunded ministries/programs, then follow up with several years of spending freezes until revenue growth eats away deficit. That, interestingly enough, is the same approach the federal government just successfully used to balance the largest deficit in Canadian history.

[SteelTown]

Andrea's claim she'll cut ER wait time by adding more nurses doesn't make any sense.

What is needed is more BEDS for emergency departments. It'll make no sense to have say 2 nurses per bed, it won't make any difference to the waiting list.

[lrt's friend]

I truly am shocked at considering their record and lookiing with an unbiased view, how anyone can suggest Ms Wynne and Party.
The Gravy train is going to run out of gas very soon and even aall the money spent on attack ads will not or guarantee the deals made as the money won't be there and even the Liberals will have to play hard ball.
Pain she is acoming, just a matter of time.

I am having a hard time considering the PCs simply because I lived through the Harris years. In many respects, we are still trying to recover from that time when we stopped investing in public infrastructure and institutions. Hudak is very much like Harris and was in his cabinet. Although, certain aspects of the common-sense revolution were a success, at least as much was a dismal failure that damaged our cities, schools and hospitals. The reason why so many of us will not switch because of the Liberal record is because we do not want to repeat the dark period of the Harris years.

Also, we talk about the need for pain, but at the same time we are talking about tax cuts. We are already the lowest taxed province in the country and our health care will soon be the most poorly funded in the country. How can we justify further tax cuts, which will inevitably damage our public institutions? The idea of massive belt tightening in order to fund tax cuts is very much aligned with the Tea Party movement in the United States.

It is the ideology behind Hudaks campaign that makes it impossible for me to vote for him. As I pointed out to the conservative campaign workers who stopped at my home on the weekend, where is the 'progressive' in the Progressive Conservatives?

There is no doubt that some belt tightening is needed, but I believe there is a less dramatic way to accomplish this rather than the slash and burn approach that the PCs are advocating. They can say that front line services will not suffer but I find this not believable. Inevitably, the fast cutbacks being advocated will affect front line workers. Those positions will be the easiest to cut and they will be.

And behind all of this, is Hudak's opinion about 'Right to Work' which we know means 'Right to Work for Less'. This may not be part of the campaign platform however this mentality will affect certain policies in the future. When we talk about privatizing Go Buses, and part or all of the LCBO, what do you think will happen? Inevitably, jobs will be replaced with something with lower pay and lower benefits. This is the trend in society and it is disturbing. My mother's childhood friend was able to comfortably live in a single family home with a department store retail job for many years. Now, you cannot possibly live independently (and forget about comfortably) with most retail jobs unless you are willing to work multiple jobs. Hudak is part of the attack on the middle class and he is supportive of trickle down economic theories that have proven not to work and generally do not create well paid jobs. Generally, what happens instead is money is funnelled increasingly to the small proportion of the population that has capital.

Yes, there is a need for some cutbacks to balance the budget, but we also have to remember that investing in public infrastructure is needed and will create good jobs.

The Liberals deserve to be punished for their record but the PC agenda is so right wing, that it is not appealing to many middle of the road moderate voters.

[MolsonExport]

all over the bottom of my screen:

via Imgflip Meme Maker

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by flar

Insanity: voting PC again after what Mike Harris did. Hudak is the same but possibly even worse.

This. Bornagainbiking neglected to list all the ill events of the Harris years. Hudak comes out swinging with plans to shrink public services drastically; never mind the expanding population. Back to the old "Pay for it later" and "Pass the buck" ideologies.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

bornagainbiker, Ontario isn't broke or bankrupt. Fiscally we're still healthy. I've explained this earlier in this thread, using facts & numbers... although as a PC voter I imagine you don't care much for doing the math right.

Who cares about math when you can throw around folksy slogans?

[bornagainbiking]

We go on and on about Mike Harris.
What about Bob Rae and his stellar performance or Dalton/Wynne.
We vote governments out never in. They are partially disfunctional.
Just the current regime ain"t too good at math and treat us like kids.

[lrt's friend]

Harris closed hospitals and filled in subways and generally brought transit progress to a halt, and downloaded tons of costs to the cities. At least Dalton worked on improving health care, and hospitals and started to invest in rapid transit again. And Harris just cut 13,000 jobs. Need I say more?

[vid]

Originally Posted by bornagainbiking

We go on and on about Mike Harris.
What about Bob Rae and his stellar performance or Dalton/Wynne.
We vote governments out never in. They are partially disfunctional.
Just the current regime ain"t too good at math and treat us like kids.

We vote governments out by voting for someone else. But currently, the PCs and NDP are still, 11 and 19 years after the ends of their respective terms of government, considered toxic to Ontarians, so we continue to vote for the current evil.

Think about it: Ontarians consider what Bob Rae and Mike Harris to have done to this province to be so bad, that all of the scandals and corruption the Liberal government has been involved in for the past decade still isn't enough for us to go back to the other two parties.

If the Liberals win, and it looks like they will, it won't be because they're good government. It will be because Ontarians consider the PC and NDP alternatives to be even worse.

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by SteelTown

Andrea's claim she'll cut ER wait time by adding more nurses doesn't make any sense.

What is needed is more BEDS for emergency departments. It'll make no sense to have say 2 nurses per bed, it won't make any difference to the waiting list.

Yes, based on personal experience at a couple of emergency departments (N.Y. General and Sunnybrook) over the last 3-4 years, there is not a nursing shortage. I think beds are also an issue, but there are not enough doctors in emergency departments, especially after-hours. Twice in recent years, family members and I have walked out after having waited many hours to be seen by a doctor.
It seems there are no, or too few, doctors dedicated to the emergency departments in off-hours. Rather, they wander down from other hospital departments when they get a chance. This leads to unacceptably long wait times. One time a couple of years ago we witnessed, and were part of, a near uprising at N.Y.G., when everyone in the Orange Zone had waited unacceptably long to be treated, even though there were plenty of nurses and everyone had been triaged and had an initial nurse check. People were incredulous over the wait and overcrowding, but we ended up just leaving, as, luckily, the emergency (my sister's acutely painful headache) had subsided.

[Doady]

The real reason wait times are so long is because the system is publicly funded. If the hospitals were privately funded and operated, wait times wouldn't be a problem.

[1overcosc]

Yes... because 30% of the population wouldn't be able to afford to go the hospital anymore! Is that what you want, for us to become like America where 40 million people have no health coverage, where people die of perfectly treatable diseases simply because they can't afford it? I know an American whose mother died of breast cancer, because she was between jobs and thus had no work coverage, and couldn't afford treatments. Land of the free my ass... Under no circumstances can we EVER let that happen here...

[1overcosc]

Remember Kimberly Rogers everybody? The woman who Mike Harris murdered.

STOP HUDAK.

[eternallyme]

This has to be the nastiest campaign ever. No wonder voter turnout could be less than 40%.

If Hudak goes, who should be the next PC leader?

[waterloowarrior]

Private health care doesn't mean the American system... plenty of developed countries with better health care systems have private insurance and operation. 35% of France's hospital beds are private for instance. Private operation and insurance also are already a big part of our system.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Doady

The real reason wait times are so long is because the system is publicly funded. If the hospitals were privately funded and operated, wait times wouldn't be a problem.

This is one of the most obtuse things I've read today. I hope you're being sarcastic.

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Remember Kimberly Rogers everybody? The woman who Mike Harris murdered.

STOP HUDAK.

He didn't literally murder her, it was his government's policies that resulted in her ending her life. And while an inquest was done after her death to propose policies that might help prevent a repeat incident, the Liberals still haven't enacted many of the inquest's proposals. They've gone as far as pegging allowances to the cost of living, but they used a lower baseline than they should have.

I was growing up on welfare at the time, under both the PC and Liberal governments, there was no difference between the two. Ontario Works and ODSP are still structured the same, people are still falling through cracks or faltering. If the purpose of OW is the help people find work, it's failing miserably. People with ODSP are living in abject poverty with little to no assistance. I asked for more help with my mom than just third party management of her finances and was told that that is simply something that is not done, nor will it ever be done.

That's the other really shocking thing about this Liberal government: They really changed many of Harris' reforms during the "Common Sense Revolution". It wasn't until near the 2011 election that they finally started talking about uploading some of the responsibilities that got downloaded in the 1990s. So really, why bother re-instating the PC government when the Liberals have basically kept us going down the same, albeit slightly higher now, path?

The welfare system needed reform, but what was done to it wasn't helpful, and no one is proposing anything better.

Originally Posted by eternallyme

This has to be the nastiest campaign ever. No wonder voter turnout could be less than 40%.

If Hudak goes, who should be the next PC leader?

Hopefully it will be someone who is actually capable of leading a government.

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

Private health care doesn't mean the American system... plenty of developed countries with better health care systems have private insurance and operation. 35% of France's hospital beds are private for instance. Private operation and insurance also are already a big part of our system.

Thunder Bay only has one emergency room. Will private health insurance result in the creation of another hospital? Who will pay for that other, private insurance hospital? Or will there be a separate waiting room and a special triage for private insurance holders?

It costs more to add hospital beds than it does nurses, that's the issue. But do you know what also costs more money? Private health insurance. And do you know who will pay for that premium health insurance? Higher income earners, who could simply pay a slightly higher tax rate to help cover the costs of adding more beds. But if we only have one hospital, how exactly does private insurance help them, without putting those who rely only on OHIP at a disadvantage?

[1overcosc]

The failure of the Liberal government to properly correct Harris' slashing-and-burning of the social assistance system is one of the reasons why I'm far from a loyal supporter of that party.

The 2014 budget does include a healthy dose of measures to improve socioeconomic justice in the province. Andrea Horwath's rejection of the budget, along with her decision to trumpet auto insurance cuts and hydro rebates for the rich instead of desperately needed ODSP/OW money is one of the reasons why I can't stand that <<insert curse word here>>.

Ultimately, I think Kathleen Wynne will bring attention to this massively neglected issue. She's a lot more into social justice and equity than McGuinty was--McGuinty was essentially a business liberal, Wynne is a true social liberal.

The "Common Sense Revolution" 2.0, though, absolutely cannot happen. Even if I hated Wynne I would still vote Liberal simply to block it.

[Gresto]

^I echo those sentiments. I normally vote NDP provincially (Green federally), but Horwath has been disastrous for the party. Meanwhile, Hudak's RCs would set us back 50 years.

[SteelTown]

Poll: Liberals take lead over Tories

Kathleen Wynne's Liberals lead Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives as Thursday's election goes down to the wire, a new poll suggests.

The Forum Research survey conducted Monday found the Liberals at 42 per cent, the Conservatives at 35 per cent and Andrea Horwath's New Democrats at 19 per cent. Mike Schreiner's Greens were at 3 per cent.

http://www.thespec.com/news-story/45...d-over-tories/

[eternallyme]

It is like the Liberals are practically unbeatable...despite all the scandals and the bad economic news...it does help the opposition is pathetic though.

It just means young people will be moving to Alberta for work at an even faster pace...