With the next Provincial election on October 6th, 2011, the political parties that make up the landscape in Ontario are already campaigning. The Liberals have seen their numbers drop like a rock from the high 40's just prior to the HST to the low 30's as of November 21st, 2010. The PC's have seen their numbers grow over the past several months and they now enjoy a 9-10 point lead over the Liberals. The NDP are in the 20's and the Greens are around 7-9%.
So what do these numbers really mean? Well if an election was held today the Liberals would be tossed from office so fast that they would not have time to clean out their offices. Tim Hudak the leader of the PC's would be Premier of Ontario. Now my Conservative friends don't get excited as we all know that today is not election day, and one should never under estimate the Provincial Liberals. Remember they control the purse strings, and mark my words, we will be seeing a lot of hand outs before we head to the polls next October.
The Liberals campaign machine has not even started to gear up and I would suspect that they will start to define Tim Hudak as a Mike Harris clone, and for those of you who don't know who Mike Harris is, well he was the Premier of Ontario from 1995 to 2001, and was one of the most hated Premiers in Ontario because of his cuts to services like health care and education. He also downloaded most of the Provincial services to our cities and towns. He was not a well liked person, and Tim Hudak was part of the Harris team all those years ago.
In the 2007 Provincial Election the Liberals took one part of the PC's platform and defined then leader John Tory as being anti-education, and against the public and catholic school systems because he wanted to fund faith based schools with public money. Because of this one issue the Liberals won the election with a bigger majority than they had after the 2003 election.
Today we have seen the PC's run television ad's attacking the Liberals as being against hard working Ontario families for the HST, higher energy costs, Eco fees, the 1 billion wasted on eHealth, and scandal, after scandal. If you ask me the PC's should have waited to run the ad's as they ran them during the municipal elections and while it might have helped local candidates who are on the right, I don't think it will help the PC's in the long run as people forget. They should have saved their money until the new year to start attacking the Liberals.
So in late 2010 we can see where the late 2011 election is heading. You will have the PC's attacking the Liberals about everything that's wrong in Ontario and how a PC government will make things better. You have the Liberals defining Tim Hudak as a Mike Harris clone and if you elect Tim Hudak as Premier you better hold on to your hats as he is even more far right than Mike Harris ever was. You will have the NDP saying that they are the only true party who will look out for the best interests of the average family in Ontario. The NDP is a far left socialist party mainly backed by the unions in Ontario. The NDP has also had a kick at the can from 1990 to 1995 under the leadership of Bob Rae who's now an MP with the Liberal Party in Ottawa. The NDP nearly bankrupt Ontario in the early 1990's by running up major deficits and leaving Ontario with the biggest debt in the Provinces history.
We can't forget the Green Party who don't have any seats at Queens Park, but they have grown from a fringe party to a party during election time receives about 10-12% of the vote. When you hear people talk about the Green Party they think it's a party of "Tree Huggers", and this is far from the truth as they will have a solid platform going into the 2011 election which will focus on all aspects of government. Will the Green Party form the next government in 2011? Don't think so, but they should elect anywhere from 1-4 MPP's. The Greens won't play dirty politics like the PC's and the Liberals will do, they will focus on their platform and how to make life better for all residents in Ontario.
So in closing I'm really looking forward to what will be an interesting 2011 with a Provincial election in October and most likely a Federal election in March or April. Let the games begin!!
No comments:
Post a Comment