I have to give CBC’s Mike Crawley credit for exposing this Machiavellian move by the Ontario Liberal Government.
If I understand this correctly, the Wynne Liberals quietly created a new government agency to provide home care, and will thereby encourage many PSWs to leave private agencies and become Ontario government employees instead.
These new workers will likely become members of a powerful union (SEIU Healthcare) that has strong Liberal ties and is the key financial backer of Working Ontario Women which is running attack ads against Patrick Brown.
As Crawley points out, the political advantage for the Liberals is not lost on many in the industry:
“This is not about health care, this is about delivering these workers to this union,” said one industry insider who asked not to be identified to avoid potential business repercussions. “Everybody in health care knows that this is what this play is all about.”
So this will buy the union’s favour and they in turn will put out even more attack ads on Patrick Brown.
Wynne is cunning. I’ll give her that. Liberals always put their own party before everyone else’s interests; especially just before an election campaign.
Related:
Poll suggests union attack ads on Brown are taking a toll – Toronto Star
Working Ontario Women: A “pink-washed front group” – Sheila Gunn Reid via EBL News.
Blue Like You2 
When it comes to dirty politics nobody does it better than the Liberals and when they are desperate it’s off the charts.
All Brown and the PC’s, can do is expose them at every turn, trick by trick and hope the electorate wake up and do their homework to see the hand that gives also takes away, there are no free lunches no matter how they wrap it.
What is hard to figure in all this, we have so many in the health care and other professions unhappy with the Wynne government while supporting unions she caves in to. Case in point, she refuses to legislate an end to the college strike and that’s all about votes, not the poor students.
Pass the pot or blood pressure meds!
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These attack ads against Brown need to be traced to the source of the funding. Could we have collusion and worse? Corruption, or is there any such thing anymore? This is serious stuff. it needs to be challenged, it’s beyond criticism of opposing policy, it’s vicious, it’s simply sickening, it’s taking democracy to the lowest level.
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This needs to be given the attention it deserves and call it a wake up call for Ontario voters, it’s abuse of our democratic process, abuse of Patrick Brown and a fit with political sleaze.
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Yes if it isn’t illegal it should be!
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Third party ads like this are restricted 6 months out from the election, but not before then so since writ will be dropped on May 9, 2018, they cannot spend more than 100K on these (thus they cannot run them during prime time as an ad during that time costs more than that). Otherwise the reason they were bombarding the airwaves now is these kick in on November 9th so going forward you shouldn’t see too many more. Hopefully there is no lasting damage from these. The PCs need to hit back though on these. As for polls, the campaign research one is not too far off their past polls and approval ratings of all leaders have fallen. Forum which has a pretty good track record shows a 21 point lead so will be interesting what their next one shows. I do think Brown though needs to do better amongst females, but it seems a gender gap seems to be common nowadays in both Canada and the US (UK not so much) with right wing parties doing better amongst males and left wing amongst females. I also think the college strike could hurt the Liberals amongst younger voters which is the one group they are still strong with.
Warren Kinsella has a good article on this and he knows a fair bit about attack ads. Interestingly enough he points out many of the same people who will be running Wynne’s campaign are the same who ran Paul Martin’s. While he is a Liberal, I find he is quite balanced in his commentary unlike many other Liberals.
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Interesting about Kinsella. He’s a Chretien guy. So not a Martin fan. 😉
So true about what he said though. An attack ad has to be based in fact to resonate.
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An attack ad should be based on fact but that would mean all people are informed, many are not, they just accept what they see on TV especially, not sure many even read the news. The Liberals count on the principle of toss it out and hope a lot of it sticks.
There’s got to be a lot of stupidity going around or we would never have the mess we have in Ontario through repeatedly voting for the Liberals in spite of scandals and lies.
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All good points Liz. Low information voters would just swallow whatever garbage they are served without a second thought.
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Time test.
Had to manually change the time stamp since Standard time kicked in on the weekend so comment times may look a bit strange.
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Hopefully Brown fully exposes this. That being said nothing surprises me with the Wynne government nowadays. I am not surprised of this though, I’ve always known something was fishy with working families coalition and other third party advertisers. If they were going to spend this amount of money they would obviously expect something in return. Hopefully this is widely exposed so Wynne cannot get away with this or heaven forbid people decide to elect Howarth instead.
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On an entirely different issue, PM Trudeau is not here to stand in Remembrance of those who served and died in service to this country. In politics as in life we have priorities and we strive to do what matters most and it isn’t always down to deals or business.
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Not only not here, but bailed out of the meeting he traveled over there for. Regardless of how you feel about TPP, it’s pretty low class to agree to meet with several world leaders, get them to travel to another country, and then just change your mind. If a conservative treated world leaders like that…….
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It’s arrogance of the dumb variety.
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Do we have a movement within the PC party against Brown over the carbon tax?
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I think there is. That being said as long as Trudeau is PM, we really have no choice so best just to make it revenue neutral like it was in BC until recently and use the revenue raised to cut taxes. It’s cheaper than the cap and trade we have and if we raise enough revenue I think we can give rebates to low income individuals while cut taxes enough to make it worthwhile. Unlike in Alberta, we cannot just rely on those who hate Trudeau, we need to pick up some federal Liberal support to win in 2018 so I don’t think threatening to take Trudeau to court will help us. It will only sell well amongst the base who will vote PC anyways, not amongst the swing voters we need to win over. I think Brown understands how difficult it is to win in Ontario as a Conservative so he is trying to be as conservative as he can and still be electable. It’s important we remain united as we can ill afford to lose the next election over divisions and let Wynne get back in.
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I think you may be right, Liz. There are some in the party who are deeply disappointed in Brown’s about-face on issues that won him the leadership in the first place. We’ll soon find out how deeply divided the party really is during the upcoming policy convention. Grassroots members seem to believe they are being ignored and that Brown is moving the party ever leftward. This is an excellent article detailing the slide in popularity among the base. http://www.theinterim.com/features/patrick-brown-nixes-social-conservative-policies/
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Jaime Watt seems to agree with Kinsella that the Liberal attack ad messaging is a bit off (to say the least).
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What a side show our Prime Minister is…he was a big hit in the Philippines, lots of selfies.
If there’s some substance to match we have something worth the money.
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Who and what is behind the cobbled up WOW, supposedly working Ontario women with actors role playing. Seems to be the MO of the Ontario Liberals, hire actors to fake it.
Hopefully the PC’s will get onto this and expose just who is behind it. It’s a sham.
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Q: Who is behind WOW? A: The Service Employees International Union.
Q: What is behind WOW? A: Big money and another way around campaign financing laws.
“A well-financed, new organization called Working Ontario Women (WOW) is set to launch a new ad blitz to prevent a Trumpian outcome of next June’s Ontario election.
Bankrolled by the powerful Service Employees International Union, which has 2 million members in North America and has supported the governing Liberals in the past, WOW will be advertising on television and online in the coming days.” https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/10/12/working-ontario-women-organization-plans-pre-election-ad-blitz.html
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This is legal? How many people will know about this? Is this bordering on meddling in the democratic process using an international union? How much of our money has already been used to pay for this?
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The current polluted political atmosphere, permeating almost every facet of our lives, has me gasping for cleaner air. What brought this on? Years ago, when I first got email, I got on the PM Harper PMO email list because I emailed him a few times. I still receive PMO email, but of course from Trudeau’s PMO. I just got this one, headed: “Prime Minister launches Canada.ca/Results”.
Regulars of this site remember Sandy’s launch of the Conservatives’ Accomplishments list. Many of us contributed to the list, with supporting links. If the Harper PMO was aware of the list, they never saw fit to capitalize on it, proving to the voting public how their government was getting good results. However, it seems the Trudeau PMO sees the merits of doing just that, ergo “Prime Minister launches Canada.ca/Results”. PUKE.
As for the Ontario WOW campaign, why is anyone surprised that an international union would be trying to interfere in a domestic political campaign? Don’t you remember AVAAZ? BTW, AVAAZ is currently involved in the Rohingya crisis, supposedly raising funds to help them. I wonder if Trudeau & Ricken Patel, the AVAAZ head honcho, are buddies.
There are so many revolting things going on in our world, including the allegations of sexual harassment, assault, molestation etc. that it’s difficult to keep an optimistic POV, especially now as we head into the season of “… peace on earth good will to men …”
Maybe watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the umpteenth time will make the eggnog taste as it should.
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I hear you Gabby! Very discouraging times right now.
Yes eggnog and “It’s a Wonderful Life” sounds very inviting indeed.
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I guess I was completely and utterly wrong.in thinking that a government should inform the citizenry about what it has been accomplishing during its mandate. My initial reaction to the Libs’ “Prime Minister launches Canada.ca/Results” was regret that they had somehow copied Sandy’s initiative (Conservative Government Accomplishments), which PM Harper’s PMO did not do.
However, most pundits I’ve heard or read are critical of the Trudeau canada.ca/Results website, mocking it as the Liberals grading themselves, giving themselves a report card, something that should be done by independent bodies/analysts. Some examples (from National Newswatch):
– Andrew Coyne , National Post: “Without meaning to, the Liberals have revealed all their broken promises”
Justin Ling, The Walrus: “The Intolerable Immodesty of Justin Trudeau”
Robyn Urback, CBC: “Trudeau government’s ‘mandate tracker’ is one mighty piece of propaganda”
Campbell Clark, Globe and Mail: “Liberal government’s promise-tracker is a good idea that doesn’t deliver”
John Ivison, National Post: “Liberal government doing an outstanding job, says Liberal government”
Maybe PM Harper’s PMO was right in not attempting to blow its own horn after all — and I was wrong wrong wrong. Did I say I was wrong?
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Ha-ha! Gabby that’s funny. 😉
Well here’s what I think. The party should keep track of the promises and accomplishments on it’s own site; not the Government site. To me that’s using a taxpayer site for the party’s own benefit. And on top of that it’s poorly designed in terms of objectivity and form as many of those columnists you refer to have pointed out.
Or perhaps such a site should be set up and maintained by a group of independent journalists from all sides of the political spectrum. But the current Liberal set-up is a joke.
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You’re right, maybe the party should be the one keeping track. However, would partisan journalists (let’s face it, there are some … even aplenty) differentiate between party vs government tracking? Remember how the Conservatives’ ads about the government’s Action Plan were called propaganda by the opposition & some media? And I’m sorry to say I wouldn’t trust anyone who claims to be an “independent” anything. Everyone’s got an agenda, whether (s)he admits it or not.
On a related vein … it infuriates me to hear the Liberals claim victory on issues / initiatives that the Harper government got rolling, like the Free Trade agreement with the EU (CETA) & the child benefits. They also say they lowered the retirement age back to 65 — as if the age had already been changed to 67. The Conservatives’ plan was to gradually introduce the changes, with full implementation to come in 2023. The Liberals have appropriated major Conservative policies, like the initial FTA, the GST, an others. Shouldn’t the current Conservatives point that out once in a while?
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All good points Gabby. Liberals are shameless. Everything good is because of them; everything bad is Stephen Harper’s fault.
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The vote for me money being tossed out by Wynne and company is making me dizzy!
Gas plant scandals, bribery charges, all flubbed off, it’s a bad scene in Ontario.
I don’t know what constitutes corruption anymore. Now they have concocted “WOW” funded by an international union hired by the Wynne Liberals to go after Brown on the usual tired old issues like abortion and sexuality.
Wonder ow much the actors get paid for doing these political ads? The PC’s should have no trouble getting lots of free opinions if they take to the streets!
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For the next few weeks, my comments will be under my blog name instead of Miles Lunn. I am overseas now so using my mobile instead of desktop which doesn’t allow name changes.
Ontario PC’s just released their minimum wage policy which is to increase it by 25 cents each year until it hits 15 dollars an hour in 2022. This seems quite reasonable and was actually the Liberal’s policy until they tried to out left the NDP based on bad poll numbers. They will atack us for it but hopefully people will see this and many of their other moves as political desperation.
GabbyinQc – I’ve found Trudeau has really made government sites and documents very partisan, far more than Harper ever did despite many accusing him of this. Things like budgets and PM websites should be politically neutral not Liberal party propaganda. That is how it was with past governments of all stripes.
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I wish more media types would recognize that fact … although it seems to be slowly sinking in that Trudeau is not the Superman he claims to be. A cartoon copy of a comic book character, maybe.
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Thanks for letting us know about the reason for the name change, Miles. The filter seemed to be able to handle it which is good. 🙂
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The Wynne Liberals are very active, handing out so much “stuff” it’s hard to keep track.
Our man Brown better take care,think long and hard on alternate policies. Liberals will be setting a few traps to trip him up and they’ll run with it. It only took one issue with Hudak and one issue with John Tory. Being honest isn’t a factor any more, whatever sounds the best on the “what’s in it for me” spectrum.
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Having travelled quite a bit recently, I must say I find people often bring up our PM when abroad whereas no one ever did when Harper was PM or as a matter of fact even with Chretien, Martin, or Mulroney. I preferred it myself having a PM who few beyond our borders knew about and based on how small Canada is, most of the time we can enjoy that luxury unlike say in the US where their president is always known. Many are shocked when I say I dislike him as he seems to be well liked abroad, but my response is he raised my taxes, otherwise he is easy to like if you don’t pay taxes not so much if you do. Sort of like Obama who was far more popular abroad than at home although to be fair I would take Obama over Trudeau any day as Obama was fairly centrist at least relative to Trudeau and he seemed more humble not a celebrity always seeking attention. Interestingly enough beyond Canada, social democratic parties are at an all time low so if anything our leftward swing is out of synch with the vast majority of countries who are swinging rightward.
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Steve Paikin’s most recent blog is on the cozy relationship between public sector unions and Wynne government. This needs to be made clear as this stinks highly of collusion.
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Add the Trudeau Liberals to that warning. Their ‘advisor’ on the NAFTA talks is one Jerry Dias who “has led numerous campaigns including leading Unifor’s effort to help defeat Harper in the 2015 federal election.”
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Thanks for mentioning that Steve Paikin piece, Miles! Wow kudos to Steve for such a balanced and informative article.
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The Phoenix still rises, the cost is going be into the billions. It is a colossal boondoggle. No matter how much the Trudeau crew blame it on the Harper government it will not fly, they chose to go ahead and continue on with it. It’s astounding how they refuse to listen to advice from people in the know.
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Germany’s coalition talks have just fallen apart and they still have no government even though an election was held on September 25th. Many PR supporters say Germany and New Zealand are examples of countries where it works whereas even in those I don’t believe it does. In New Zeland 44 percent voted for the centre-right National Party, 37 percent for Labour Party, and 6 percent Greens so 43 percent for parties on the left while another 6 percent for New Zealand First who are ideologically all over the map. If FTFP was used they would have a National government but instead one man, NZ first leader Winston Peters got to decide the next PM and he choose Labour. I believe voters not parties should chose governments. Hopefully PR remains dead federally and gets defeated in BC, but if it resurfaces it’s important to show several examples that it doesn’t work. As an investor I can say PR would have a strongly negative impact on growth and the lower GDP per capita would be in the thousands meaning you and your family would have less money in a decade due to a bad investment climate. Much like with the anti-pipeline crew, PR advocates seem more concerned about their ideals than actual pragmatism and how it affects Canadians and our standard of living.
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My oh my, Environment Minister McKenna has just added more credibility to her famous “Climate Barbie” moniker. She referred to herself as “Minister in charge of the weather” in a tweet during the Ottawa Santa Claus parade.
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Correction, she referred to herself as “Minister ‘responsible’ for the weather…”
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Would you mind telling us where you saw that? Thanks.
Why?
Because it merits a re-tweet.
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Gabby I didn’t see it, I heard it on Bill Carroll’s radio show,” Morning Rush” CFRA Ottawa this morning.
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OK, thanks.
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Gabby, Spencer Fernando covers Snowflake Barbie here. (Hard to keep up with all the craziness in Liberal Land.)
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“Snowflake Barbie” fits the story perfectly. She might be well advised to do less twittering!
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No kidding! It almost seems as if she’s baiting people with her tweets.
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Miles, I’d be curious to know what it is about our PM that the people you spoke with on your travels like. Is there anything substantive or is it merely his looks and personality?
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I think it is mostly charisma and looks not policy. Otherwise they like his celebrity style. It’s easier to like him though if you don’t have to pay taxes than if you do.
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Looking for reports on Wynne’s town hall meeting last night in Liberal safe Toronto.
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Looking forward to how Andrew Scheer reacts to how the Trudeau crew is dealing with the sixty ISIS fighters returning to Canada. Apparently the plan is to deprogram, reintegrate and keep watch.
We are not in good hands. We elect governments to keep us safe, protect our land first and foremost and all we hear is political baffle gab. As long as they are in our midst they are a threat.
France knows it, Britain knows it. It’s brainless, it’s putting us all in danger, I wouldn’t count on the NDP, they probably agree with this insane plan but our Conservative Opposition needs to step up and yell!
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It is absolutely frightening how incompetent the Trudeau Liberal gov’t is.
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What’s alarming is how few tend to look past the Trudeau charm offensive to see the damage being inflicted upon our country by these supposedly progressive Liberal policies. We’re rapidly following Sweden down the rabbit-hole yet we’re not reading or hearing in the msm about the almost nightly arson or bombing attacks and the multiplying no-go zones in that country. Have we learned nothing from the events in France or Belgium? What will it take for the citizenry to wake up?
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Angus-reid has a poll out on minister performances. Most had low recognition but most slightly positive although Morneau had by far the highest negative and with finance minister being the second most important after the PM, that is not one you want polling low. Unfortunately McKenna scored really well which beats me, but she is really well liked by progressives who unfortunately at the moment outnumber us. I like others here cannot stand her.
As for the ISIS re-integration, my understanding is its a criminal offence to join ISIS so shouldn’t they be arrested and then de-radicalized while in prison and only released after serving their sentence. I am perhaps a bit more liberal than some on anti-terrorism simply due to the fact I am generally wary of bigger government and also don’t want to see an innocent person punished, but I don’t support going soft on those who are convicted of terrorism. Nonetheless I don’t tend to worry a lot about it on a personal level as I know my chances of being killed in a car accident are much higher than terrorist attack. But still those involved if convicted should be punished to the full extent of the law not let off easily.
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We all should be deeply concerned about allowing ISIS fighters back into the country and allowed to go free. There will be more streaming back in and the project to deal with them, keep them under watch will be an almost impossible task and the cost will not be worth it.
High treason should be slapped on them and Canadian passports taken away, they probably carry dual passports., Canadian ones are for convenience. They are not good citizens, never will be.
Trudeau and his toady Goodale have to be living on a different planet, out of touch with reality.
Many, many caring Canadians are still smarting from the Khadr affair. There will be more to follow his example as well, Never thought this we would come to this level of stupidity in Canada.
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The Trudeau government not only hasn’t a clue about how well these deradicalization programs are doing, they have no data on who or where these returnees are. “The new Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence is supposed to be on the front line of this fight. It funds research and programs that “aim to prevent and counter radicalization to violence at the individual level.” But according to a former CSIS officer the focus of the centre appears to be primarily on research with little actual attention on deradicalization efforts. The government has collected no statistics thus far, unlike Quebec which does. Are Trudeau et al just throwing taxpayer money at the problem and crossing their fingers? This deradicalization crap has been tried in France where it was determined that it didn’t work. Whose bright idea was this?
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We are in serious danger with this government’s attitude towards the scourge of humanity and certainly no clue about how to deal with it. France and Britain have finally woken up and we know the problems they have had. We will have to have the same before our government wakes up.
These Dregs of humanity called ISIS fighters have no place in our country but our government is going to coddle them, it’s a waste of time and money, they will not change.
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I have never been more worried about the future of our country than at this moment in time. And there is nothing to suggest things will get better before the next election because the same crew will be in charge.
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From the say it isn’t so department…..Wynne and company have now dreamed up another way to grab money in advance….prepaid hydro….pay before you use meters. How long can we even afford to live in this province? There must be some way to stop the insanity!
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But just think of all the jobs that would be created – people to make the metres, install the metres, service the metres (eg. change the batteries, repair faulty metres), yada, yada, yada. And a whole host of psychologists to say, “There, there, everything’s going to be fine. Please pay the receptionist on your way out. That’ll only be $99. We have a special rate for prepayment metre users who worry about their metre running out during a blizzard or before their next paycheque.” The UK has operated on this prepayment scheme for years. What a farce!
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I think a lot go on the idea Canada is immune because we are nicer than others. We do have an image as being one of the more gentle nations on earth, but I think that only mitigates not eliminates risks. Otherwise we didn’t have a colonial empire like Britain and France did, stayed out of the Iraq War unlike US and UK and don’t have openly racist parties winning seats in parliament (we will if we go to PR so another reason to stick with FTFP) unlike much of Europe. But this just lowers the risk not eliminates. We should take a measured approach that is both tough on the terrorist but also respects civil liberties and not sure Trudeau has found that balance so far.
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Was it Goodale who said “a Canadian, is a Canadian,is a Canadian? These ISIS fighting slugs who are Canadian have Charter rights. Civil liberties should not apply to radicals who go abroad to commit terrorist acts, fight against the country, they committing high treason. We need a brain at the head of this country capable of keeping this country safe.
This is a time we need good Opposition leadership to bring out the incompetency of the government.
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Absolutely they should be charged with treason. I think where the real difficulty is, is with proving someone actually went over to fight ISIS. Certainly sometimes if one takes pictures or leaves online notes, or is known to CSIS you can but otherwise it’s harder than many think. I suspect the CBSA would look at passport stamps and anyone with a Syrian or Iraqi passport stamp without a valid reason for being there would face greater scrutiny, but most fighters know this so most fly into Turkey and then cross the border illegally so they would only have a Turkish passport stamp and considering Turkey is a popular tourist destination (both Air Canada and Turkish Airlines have daily flights to Istanbul for Toronto Pearson) that is where the difficulty is. Off course probably the best red flag is the timeframe and if the stay is unusually long and the person doesn’t have a valid reason like family in Turkey or business there they may want to be examined more closely at the border. Still I think it is important we punish those caught going there to the fullest extent of the law, but proving someone went to fight there is challenging. And as an avid traveller myself I don’t support travel bans to any part of the world, but certainly the CBSA should have every right to question someone in greater length if they go to that part of the world and if there for a valid reason they should have no trouble proving it.
One idea worth trying is asking the Turkish government to notify us of anyone who overstays as a visitor to Turkey as one cannot stay more than 90 days and since most fighters would have likely entered Syria or Iraq illegally so no exit stamp that would mean from the Turkish government’s point of view they overstayed their visa. Usually when at exit controls they see this, they simply add the person’s name to the list of those inadmissable to Turkey but don’t notify us so notification would help so we could further investigate those.
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I am becoming very concerned about how quickly things are going downhill under Trudeau – and he seems oblivious to it all!!
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I am too and he seems like Wynne and his father more like a dipper masquerading as a liberal. Seriously I think Mulcair winning in 2015 would have been better than Trudeau although still bad. Unlike Wynne, I am little less optimistic we can defeat him in 2019. It seems many love a celebrity PM no matter how incompetent. Hopefully we can find a way to get people to look beyond his looks, charisma, and celebrity status and look at his actual policies. While I want the Tories to win in 2019 to be fair I would be happy if Trudeau resigned tomorrow and someone like Marc Garneau took over but know that won’t happen. Even though I find Jagmeet Singh’s proposals more scary, I at least respect him more as he seems genuine in his desire for a better Canada I just disagree with him on how to get there. He doesn’t come across as an arrogant spoiled trust fund boy.
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Yes it’s the arrogance that’s so galling. As well as the incompetence and phoniness.
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BTW here are REAL Liberal results being tracked: LiberalResults.ca
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As a side note I find Canadians at times especially those on the left seem quite spoiled. I am right now in India while enjoying my trip, the poverty is quite shocking and this is real poverty like no clean water, no heating, no toilet, and no sanitation not I cannot afford the latest iPhone or cannot afford a vacation to the caribbean. So my point is we forget just how lucky we are in Canada and those complaining about how hard done the middle class are should remember the Canadian middle class are some of the luckiest people to ever walk this planet. Maybe they cannot live the high life like the rich but compared to most people on earth today and in the past, most would love to be able to live like our middle class does. I remember in 2011 when Chris Alexander was rapped for saying Canada had no poverty, but I can see how after being ambassador to Afghanistan he would think this as what we call poverty is middle class or well to do in most places. Not that I don’t care about the poor, certainly we should do more on homelessness and mental health as well as the horrible conditions on some reserves, but I don’t buy the idea our middle class is truly struggling as Trudeau suggests, at least not in a relative sense. Although his and Wynne’s policies are making things worse not better for the middle class in terms of affordability.
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We are being put in danger by this government. It’s totally brainless to even consider allowing ISIS fighters back into the country let alone thinking they can be de-radicalized. Goodale really can’t tell us how many more there are aor where they are…..we are being duped by incompetents.
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Toronto Star has released a few leaks on the PC platform. Some big points are dropping the bottom rate from 5.05 to 4.5 and dropping the middle rate from 9.15 to 7.1 so this means Ontario will have the lowest tax rate for those making less than 80K. PC’s would have province take over subways to expand in the 905 belt while 1.5 billion more for mental health. Seem ones that would attract attention but hardly controversial. Yes not very conservative, but having watched enough races I suspect conservative ideas will come once they get in and open up the books and claim they were worse than expected. They also hired Kevin Page to do the costing so that provides strong cover as he is seen as fairly credible. Forum shows the PCs now trail Liberals by 2 points in Toronto (this is 416 only not provincewide and Liberals always do better there) but still well ahead amongst the over 45 who usually vote and ahead in North York and Scarborough while tied in Etobicoke. Doing poorly in downtown Toronto as one would expect (it will be the NDP not PC’s who challenge the Liberals there our strength is the suburbs). Innovative research shows the PC’s tend points ahead provincewide while in Alberta Think HQ shows the UCP 24 points ahead tied in the Edmonton CMA but 13 points behind in the city proper (that means in bedroom communities like Leduc, Spruce Grove, Sherwood Park, and St. Albert they are probably ahead) so no bounce from a Kenney win but no decline as many on the left hoped for.
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I’m noticing a lot of Ontario conservatives in my twitter feed are disenchanted with Patrick Brown and are willing to go through another Liberal government to get rid of him! Frankly, I don’t think the economy could sustain it. By next year we will have had 15 years of Liberal government!
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Conservatives are very good at defeating themselves.
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The platform is out now. While quite moderate seems good as asides from political junkies I don’t think most care if a platform is right wing or left wing rather does it help make life easier for them. He does promise a 10 percent tax cut for the lowest bracket and 22.5 percent for middle so I think most conservatives can behind this and he is unlike Trudeau not raising taxes elsewhere to compensate. He will not implement a carbon tax, rather participate in the federal one and refund every dollar to taxpayers which I think is reasonable so those against the carbon tax need to focus on defeating Trudeau not Brown.
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Now Goodale is saying it may be difficult to de-radicalize the ISIS fighters his government are allowing to return to their homes here in Canada. It’s beyond anything we could even imagine from any government we’ve ever had in power.
What is going to become of this country with this incompetent slate of elected politicians whose job it is to keep us safe? They just don’t get it.
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Trudeau is the worst PM ever with out a doubt. I don’t know what to say except perhaps pray?
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I would still say his father was worse, but yeah the two worst PM’s have surnames of Trudeau and I only say his father is worse due to the damage he caused, but Trudeau jr., might beat him if in power for as long, but thankfully in today’s world it’s pretty tough to stay in power that long.
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What the Trudeau,or whoever is running it government, it’s not certain, is doing dealing with the evil ISIS fighters, letting them go free among us, is possibly the most dangerous threat to our safety in our history. We need some urgent action taken but by whom?
How long before this Trudeau incarnate has to enact the war measures act to deal with this most serious threat to all of Canada his government’s profound stupidity has us in a tinderbox.
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I better read over my comments before posting and tidy them up!
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No worries 😉
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As a side note, I was just reading Garth Turner’s blog, you can google it, it is called a greater fool and despite being a Tory turned Liberal he seems to really dislike Trudeau and his economic policies. Mind you when he crossed the floor the Liberals were a centrist economically literate party, not a left wing one that sounds a lot like socialism. Seriously many of Trudeau’s quotes on income inequality could easily be mistaken as one’s from Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn and same with Wynne and being as left wing sounding as Corbyn is not something to be proud of. Unlike Canada, Britain saw his policies in action in the 70s and had a lower GDP per capita than Italy and was the sick man of Europe. We need to move beyond this whole soak the rich and realize you will never get an equal society unless you make everyone equally poor and miserable like Venezuela and Cuba do and Trudeau seems to admire the latter. Instead we need a strong growing economy which will provide the revenue to help those left behind. Otherwise help pull those up at the bottom as Brown is promising not bring those down at the top as Trudeau seems to want.
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