Ontario’s Recent Election
The Province of Ontario, in Canada, held an election on Wednesday October 10th, 2007 to see who would form the next Provincial Government. The Liberals had been in power. Much went wrong in the last four years under the Liberal Government of Premier Dalton McGuinty. It looked to me like he’d be a sure bet to lose.
Ontario is a province with a long history of mainly conservative governments. So I thought that the pendulum might just be due to swing back to the right.
Well, it didn’t. Not only were the Liberals re-elected but easily with a great majority. Dalton McGuinty somehow managed to hold his position of Premiere of Ontario for another term. Something that a Provincial Liberal Leader has not done in many many years.
After all the focus on the all the broken promises of McGuinty’s first term as Ontario’s Premiere I can’t figure out how he managed to win this election. Or wait, did he win it? Or did Conservative Party leader, John Tory, just totally lose it?
Tory, along with many attack ads aimed at McGuinty’s broken promises, decided it would make sense, for some unknown reason that maybe only he understands, to campaign in support of public funding of religious schools. Well, Ontarians weren’t going to have any of that. It has been a long-accepted reality in Ontario that public schools are funded through the taxpayers. But those who pay taxes currently for public schools, the majority of those people, anyway, absolutely do not want to pay more taxes, taxes that would then go to the funding of schools that are considered private by the very nature of their not being public. These schools are not for everyone. They are based upon one’s religion.
Many believe that McGuinty’s Liberals prevailed more because Tory’s ideas resulted in him shooting himself squarely in the foot. This election, in many ways was more lost by Conservative leader John Tory, that it was won by Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty.
I wonder if McGuinty’s record in his first four years as Ontario’s Premiere visa vis all his broken promises is what we have to look forward to for another four years?
Here’s hoping that McGuinty and his colleagues re-think the turn-about they delivered to those who have autism in our province and who need more funding for more research and services. Wake up on that one, at least, McGuinty.
Could he and his colleagues have learned something about that during the election campaign. I don’t know. Time will tell.
It’s troubling to think you can govern this wonderful province the way the Liberals did for four years and then get re-elected. I don’t see how they will actually learn from their mistakes when essentially they have been rewarded for them. And my skepticism is that of a liberal. So my questions and concerns are not partisan or about any agenda. I am just so surprised at the way this election turned out.
Has it come the point where the differences in our Provincial Parties are really not all that different that we just settle for more of what was not a very satisifying same?
It was troubling to me this year, as in many other elections, to see such low voter turn out. It was around only 50% or so of those eligible to vote that actually voted. So we continue to see our lives influenced by a government that wins a majority of the vote but of a vote that isn’t really a majority at all.
© A.J. Mahari
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
