Politics in Ontario

In less than a year the voters in the Province of Ontario will head to the polls to elect their local MPP's. As a former MPP candidate I know all to well that the election campaign does not begin when the writ is dropped, which is usually about 35 days before voting day, but it starts as soon as you are the nominated candidate.

The 4 major political parties in Ontario are the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, NDP, and The Green Party. The Liberals are the current government in power having defeated the PC's in the 2003 election. Prior to the 2003 election the PC's were in power from 1995 until their defeat in 2003. From 1990 to 1995 the NDP were in power having defeated the Liberals in 1990. The Green Party has no sitting members at Queens Park, but have grown from a fringe party who used to get 1-2% of the vote to a party that's polling anywhere between 9-14% not far behind the NDP.


For most of the 20th century Ontario was ruled by the Progressive Conservatives with the Liberals coming to power less than a handful of times. The first time the NDP formed a government was in 1990 under the leadership of Bob Rae who now sits as a Federal Liberal in Ottawa.

The October 2011 election is going to be one for the books. Ontario is facing a 19 billion dollar deficit as a result of the world wide recession, and overspending by the various Ministries that make up the government. Ontario for the most part does not have a revenue problem, but a spending problem. For example the political spin doctors blame the Liberals for blowing 1 billion on eHealth, but that's not true. eHealth was started by the previous PC government which wasted about 250 million before they were booted out of office in 2003.


People in Ontario have experienced living under Liberal, PC, and NDP rule, and it's time for a change. The Liberals blame the PC's, the PC's blame the NDP, and the NDP, blame the Liberals. As you can see this circle has continued for the past 20 plus years. Now the voters of Ontario have a choice. They can vote in the same old and tired policies of the 3 political parties I've mentioned above, or they can vote for a true change and start to elect Green MPP's to Queens Park.

Some, if not most people view the Green Party as a bunch of tree huggers, which is far from the truth. The Ontario Green Party has grown to focus on the real issues facing the people of Ontario like taxation, high energy costs, health care, education, and the environment. Take our energy costs for example, there's no reason to increase what we pay for energy as our grid is currently operating way below capacity. Yet the Provincial Liberals seem to think that we need these smart meters to control our energy use. This to me is another tax grab by the Liberals, and the PC's would be the same but go about it in a different way.

In my riding of Simcoe-Grey, they have always elected a PC's since confederation to Queens Park. However the leader of the Ontario Green Party has decided to run in this riding because of a number of factors. First it's considered a rural riding, and the Green Party made amazing gains in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound in the 2007 election gathering over 35% of the vote coming in a close second to the PC candidate. I've bene getting the impression that our current PC, MPP, Jim Wilson is a bit scared of having the leader of a Provincial party running against him. Since his election in 1990 he's not really faced any major challenge, including myself in 2007. Wilson has already started a soft campaign as he's has advertising on a few local website in the riding, and has held the first ever telephone town hall meeting.

I think he feels that he will have a fight on his hands, and it won't be from the Liberals, or NDP, but from the Greens and their leader. For the first time a political party can and will match the PC's dollar for dollar in campaign spending, staff, and exposure.

Yes, 2011 is going to be a very interesting year for politics in Ontario, so sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.