Since I started writing a blog back in 2005 I have been railing against the Liberals who have been in power for almost 15 years now. But that all changed last night.
It was my fellow Blogging Tory buddy Alberta Aardvark who reminded me how long this battle has taken:
Back in the glory days of Blogging Tories he would support and console me during the McGuinty era while he sat in strong, conservative Alberta. So now the colours have changed for both of us but I firmly believe Alberta will be blue once again after the next election.
The once mighty Ontario Liberal Party has been reduced to a mere rump of 7 seats which means they lose official party status. Kathleen Wynne will have to wear that humiliation.
The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario has ended up with 76 seats which is a very decent majority. Actually it’s quite remarkable when you consider what chaos the party was in just a few short months ago during the Patrick Brown debacle. Doug Ford wasn’t my first choice as party leader but it has all worked out for the best in the end. My ultimate fear was a NDP-Liberal coalition so this majority PC outcome is such a relief! The NDP as official opposition is manageable, and could even garner more conservative support as Ontarians see what a radical crew they truly are.
And now we have strong conservative presence in Ontario to stand up to Justin Trudeau’s ruinous policies. Let’s work together to spread this Blue Wave right across Canada!
Blue Like You2 
I think I posted this here before, but I hope this is one of the new governments first priorities.
http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/lawrence-solomon-how-doug-ford-can-end-ontarios-suffering-from-expensive-electricity-instantly
Get rid of these terrible contracts, which according to Lawrence Solomon can be done legally and without penalty. I believe it should be done as early as possible so anyone it angers will have time to get over it in 4 years, plus hopefully we will see immediate positive results.
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Not that it matters Joanne, but it appears your blog isn’t on daylight savings time, either that or I got out of bed an hour early this morning.
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Ha-ha! Thanks Greg. I’ll have to look into that.
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Test.
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I agree that despite my reservations of Doug Ford its a great day for Ontario. One nice thing about Ontario is usually you get balance is often when you have one party in power at Ottawa, Queens Park goes the other way. Unfortunately in BC, it seems the NDP is always in power when the Liberals are so we don’t get that alteration. Still watching the NDP/Greens, I think you might see a similar thing to what you saw in Ontario where they won big in the city proper, but many of the suburbs that helped put them over the top flip back to the BC Liberals.
I will do a wrap up blog shortly, but a few thoughts. There are two Ontarios, the urban core which went heavily NDP and a few Liberals and then the suburbs and rural areas which went heavily PC resulting in the result we got. Although I am a small c conservative, perhaps I am little too downtown centric as I’ve lived most of my life in the urban cores. Clearly people like Ford may drive those in the urban cores nuts, but he is able to connect in the suburbs and rural areas and I think this should be a huge wake up call to progressives, you win by focusing on pocket book issues, not various social justice causes. The kind of policies that sell well in the Annex don’t in the 905 or rural Ontario. In fact in many ways, I think suburban and rural Ontario gave the big middle finger to the downtown elites telling them they are tired of their arrogant out of touch lecturing and policies.
As for whether we should have chosen Christine Elliott or not. I think vote wise, we probably would have cracked the 45% mark with her, but seat wise, which is what ultimately matters I think she would have only won us another five seats (Wynne’s being one of them) thus at the end of the day where it mattered Ford worked just fine. After all running up bigger margins in wealthy suburbs like Mississauga-Lakeshore, Oakville, and Burlington won’t make a difference in seat count. And neither does getting 30% instead of 15% in the downtown core, which is where I think the difference would have been with Elliott.
As for polls and predictions. Actually if you look at the last minute polls released on June 6th they weren’t too far off suggesting there was a late break towards the PCs. My theory is many anti-Ford PCs like myself were in the undecided column most of the campaign, but when push came to shove, the threat of an NDP government pushed them back to the PCs. It also looks like in Southwestern Ontario for the most part, the NDP was not competitive in many ridings the media suggested. Otherwise all that happened was they ran up massive margins in London and Windsor thus making them look competitive, but seat wise we held every single seat we had going in, whereas the NDP actually lost one in the North (Greg Rickford picked up Kenora-Rainy River) while in Oshawa and Essex we came surprisingly close and I think if we had poured more resources into those two we could have flipped them. In your neck of the woods, I think you saw my theme above as the two central city ones went NDP, but the three suburban ones went PC not NDP as many predicted. As much as I hate to say this, Kitchener Centre is very much your urban elite riding whereas the other three are more your populist suburban comparable to the 905 belt whereas yours is more like Toronto-St. Paul’s which used to go PC back in the day, but is now swung leftward.
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Transition team named: https://twitter.com/ChrisAReynolds/status/1005103570000150528
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That’s a VERY strong team IMO. Good choices.
Also, if you want to get a really good sense of what happened in Ontario tune in to The Agenda tonight at 8pm to watch Advanced Symbolics in action. You will not be disappointed and the need to poll speculations will not be necessary because Polly proved the most accurate of them all.
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Including Baird. Hey wait, I thought we were all homophobes?
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Ford is going to go over the books line by line, hold onto your hats!
I think too many people have been hurting, struggling to keep the wolf from the door with the high cost of absolutely everything we need to survive day to day. No one ever comes out to explain when union members get higher and higher wages we all pay more.
My faith in the Ontario electorate has gone way up from yesterday at this time, it should have happened four years ago.
How about Hurricane Hazel McCallion, at her age I’ll give her an A for just attending political events!
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I disagree with your assertion that numbers and seats would have increased with Christine as leader, Miles. There wouldn’t have been the great distinction needed to pull Ontario out of its torpor. As I stated last night Doug Ford is the right man at the right time. There was a confluence of events and people when such was pivotal. People just aren’t buying into the tricks or the standard rhetoric any more. It’s not about gender or the new feminism. It’s not about buying people with their own money. It’s now about pulling back from the brink and getting our house, our priorities and our finances in order. And that means making hard decisions, very hard decisions. It means re-establishing the importance of the traditional family structure and Doug Ford has that in spades. He is a family man above all else. I’ll leave it at that for now.
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First of all with Elliott I said votes not seats. Asides from maybe defeating Wynne, I think the vote count would be higher with Elliott but not seat count. Otherwise Ford was very efficient in turning votes into seats and at the end of the day seats not votes is what matters and Ford delivered there big time.
As for feminism, I actually think this was more a backlash against the downtown urban elites on a whole wack of issues. Many of them have their heads stuck up their butts so far they don’t understand what people beyond walking distance think. Warren Kinsella although a liberal is one of the few who does understand the suburbs and rural and he quickly all along warned this would happen. I actually think this was less right vs. Left and more populist vs. Elitist with urban cores voting for elitism and elsewhere populism.
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Latest MSM Doug Ford. Received “only 40%”
How soon they forget Trudeau “Only received 39.5%”
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Actually Doug Ford received “40.5%” latest report
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Awesome!!
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Doug Ford struck a chord and there is a reason for that. We were losing more than our money with an arrogant agenda driven government many people felt it was out of control on the green front and social engineering beyond any government’s mandate.
We made the right choice much to the chagrin of the MSM who will treat Ford the same as the boors in the US are treating Trump. Trump was the right choice for the US as well. He is playing the media like a fiddle and they’re dancing to his tune.
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You’re right, it was certainly populist vs. elitist and populists are all about traditional family values and men being men. We don’t give a damn about the elite way of thinking and doing. We don’t aspire to have purple hair or all the rest of that malarkey. We’re quite content to let ‘you be you’ as long as we are not forced to change who we are at heart. That’s basically the way rural voters think and behave. It really is as simple as that. We have lives to live but not, as the saying goes, ‘in quiet desperation’. We just want the elitists to realize that. Ontario spoke. Now let’s see who listened.
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Oh, and P.S. Take that, LeadNow!
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Right on!!
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Doug Ford, cool, calm and collected, is hitting the ground running. Here is Premier Ford’s first press conference. https://www.therebel.media/doug_ford_s_first_press_conference_as_ontario_progressive_conservative_premier_elect
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Sorry for the multiple comments and links, Joanne, but this is another must watch video to prepare us for what’s about to come at us from the media. Joe Warmington is, perhaps, the one person in the media who understands the Fords. This is his take on the sh*t storm ahead. https://www.therebel.media/joe_warmington_ford_s_win_says_more_about_media_than_voters
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This election showed the media the people themselves can decide without media running interference. It happened in the US election, they didn’t learn anything from that but this is another example for them to get it into their thick skulls, they, or the unions, cannot tell us how to vote.
It will do no good for them to continue to treat Ford with disrespect or digging up dirt as he does the job we elected him to do. The backfire factor will prevail, Horwath and Wynne just had to comment on the Ford family issue that arose three days before the election. It showed how low they can go and the advantage went to Ford big time. He handled it well.
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Actually a few unions endorsed Ford. Off course public sector ones asides from police (Ottawa Police association endorsed Ford) will always favour left wing parties, but some private sector ones in the resource sector are starting to endorse centre-right parties (we had this in BC last year with the Ironworkers while Steelworkers in Sault Ste. Marie endorsed Ford) as left is generally anti-development which means no jobs in those sectors. Mind you I would rather unions and corporations remain neutral and let each individual make up their own mind.
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June 29th is the date Ford officially becomes premier. With a strong capable team from all the different regions of Ontario representing the diversity, I look forward to seeing who is in the cabinet. Unlike the NDP who would have a tough time finding 10 capable of being cabinet ministers, PC’s have a surplus of well qualified people. I think focusing on the team at the end was a smart move as clearly people liked Horwath personally more than Ford, but when it comes to who has the better team and better policies, PC’s win hands down.
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Justin’s left eyebrow starts to slip. Major wardrobe malfunction! https://twitter.com/davidd_dds/status/1004941879136391169
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Ha, saw that on Twitter just a while ago. It’s a perfect synopsis in one moment of his entire personality, ‘gravitas’ on the world stage, and seriousness as a leader in general.
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I mean this guy can’t even chose a competent make up artist, let alone a finance minister, trade negotiator, or minister of the environment.
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Poor Justin, you’d think he would ensure his make-up people are Liberals, LOL.
On another note, has anyone noticed how often Trump refers to Trudeau a “Justin” rather than Prime Minister Trudeau? It’s certainly conveys a message.
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I think most of us have known from the time that Trump became POTUS that he patronized the Little Potato. It worked because now that the Little Potato has backup from all his grandiose, echo chamber G7 think-alikes he believes he can say what he really thinks with impunity. If that doesn’t show Trudeau’s globalist intentions I don’t want to know what will.
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When the whole world is laughing at you, I think it’s time for a resignation…..maybe a walk in the sand instead of the snow. Liberals still have time to pick a new leader before the 2019 election.
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Wow everyone knows that Trump is willing to trade one trade problem for another.
Trudeau does not understand it is Trudeau’s way or the highway. Just look at the abortion issue you must agree with abortion to be a Liberal. This is not a P M of Canada this is a man only concerned with himself
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Not only is he our PM he is our Virtue Signaller-in-chief.
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Congratulations , it is wonderful to see common sense return to Ontario.
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Yes indeed!!
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Looking at the results. This seemed like a big backlash against your downtown type left wing elites. It seems considering how differently the downtown cores voted than elsewhere many are living in bubbles. Interesting thing I noticed in most cities in Southern Ontario (Northern Ontario is a whole different ballgame) is areas with a single bus ride, biking, or walking distance went heavily NDP. But once you went more than 30 minutes beyond the downtown core, it was solidly PC. So it seems a theme you are seeing in US and Europe of core vs. hinterland came to Ontario. Your thoughts on that? Those in the core seem to think they represent everywhere not just their immediate surroundings and this was a backlash against it which I believe they rightfully deservedm
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Because the inhabitants of large cities far outnumber those of us who live in the hinterlands they seem to feel our needs don’t matter as much as theirs. We have our parklands and greenbelts that surround us, we have no use for additional bus routes or subway lines and we don’t crave access to the latest hip clothing boutiques/shoppes. We may be considered unsophisticated, uncultured and maybe a little backward, if we’re considered at all. I think population density plays an enormous role i.e. the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I don’t think it was a backlash as much as it was asserting our differing beliefs in how we live our lives and in how we should be able to rein in governments that want to be all things to all people and use our money to do it.
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Wow, just wow!
Doug Ford
Verified account @fordnation
7h7 hours ago
Our government will take action to ensure that events like Al Quds Day, which calls for the killing of an entire civilian population in Israel, are no longer part of the landscape in Ontario.
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Here are three tidbits that will drive the left nuts and if you believe their rhetoric would never happen.
25 of 76 PC MPP’s are female
13 are millennials of which 7 of those are female
19 are visible minorities
So it looks like the Ford Nation is not a bunch of old white males, rather represents Ontario in its full diversity. And was done with no quotas, simply people who believed in the conservative cause and were most qualified. So the left’s talking about how conservatism only appeals to rich old white males is thoroughly debunked. It has supporters amongst every group with in Ontario.
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I think this new PC government is going to do a great job! The starting point will be to do that forensic audit of the books and see what they actually have to work with.
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Can’t wait! It’s about time IMO!
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maybe the groups that “should” be voting for the “progressive” parties have the same beefs as us “angry white males” and are sick of being condescended to, patronized to, and are tired of the self-righteous, sanctimonious, only government can solve anything drivel from the alt-left
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Fully agree and that is why I think Ford did well amongst many different groups. I was just pointing this out that the Ford Nation is not the stereotype the left wants to make it out to be.
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