It may just be my contrarian nature but I will vote for the Ontario PCs, Vic Fedeli being our local candidate. Not that I needed much persuasion but the advertising by people who seem to have a vested interest in the Liberal party’s way of doing government certainly sealed my vote.
How anyone in good conscience could vote for the same government that has so mismanaged and misused our tax dollars is beyond me, but I suspect from reports and interviews of the people in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area, they want more of the same. Of course, given their track record, the people in Toronto will likely re-elect Rob Ford if he doesn’t implode before October.
A decisive factor for me was the ad by the OPPA. While individual officers are certainly entitled to be politically involved as a citizen, it is quite another thing to have their uniformed brotherhood tell us how to vote. Perhaps they have a sense of obligation after their most favourable wage settlement under the Liberals but at some point they ought to remember that they serve for the public good. That public good comes with a price tag that includes accountable government that provides for our health, education, and the opportunity to find employment so we can sustain ourselves, as well as our security. That price tag cannot be met by running the province billions of dollars into debt. The OPPA could have kept their threatening ‘do not vote Conservative’ to within their union halls or wherever they meet and then cast their votes accordingly.
Other unions have issues with previous Harris Conservative government and even the NDP of Bob Rae Days and I can understand why they shudder at the thought of having a Hudak government holding the reins. My guess is that we will end up with another minority government so even with the conservatives in office, their 100,000 job cuts to the civil service will be watered down to perhaps a mere 10,000 by attrition. Likewise, their million new jobs may turn out to be only half a million new jobs but that is still an improvement over what the other two main parties are promising. Not that I believe any politician’s promise.
The truth to be told, if I were able to directly elect a new Premier, I would put Mike Schreiner in the captain’s chair. He at least has the courage to address the elephant in the room, that school board issue that everyone agrees is costing us billions but is afraid to say or doing anything about. Other parts of the Green Party platform seem to make some sense as well so perhaps by the time we turf out the next government we will have a fourth party to seriously consider. I just wish they could come up with a different name. Green is over used.
While I am not encouraging you to vote for any one party, I do hope you will vote. And before you vote, educate yourself on the issues. Take all the campaign promises with a handful of salt. Hold your nose if you must, but please vote.
