Who to vote for in the Ontario election?

Great Debates
1

To all the Dopers out there from Ontario: help! Who should I vote for in the provincial election?

I will start of by explaining. I consider it my civic duty to vote, mainly because I firmly believe that if you don’t vote, you can’t complain, and I really like to complain. However, in this election, I find myself faced with an incumbent who gives me the creeps (Eves), and shallow opportunist (McGuinty), and the NDP (need I say more?).

All three parties have engaged in vague promise-making (I know, how is that different from any other year?), and there has been as much mud-slinging as actual debate of the issues. I do not want to cast a negative vote, but I just don’t trust Eves, he comes across as inept and creepy. I have never liked McGuinty, he is a bandwagon politician who plays the emotion card too much. And it will have to be a colder day in Hell than Ottawa in January for me to ever vote for the joke that is the NDP. So what do I do?

I have posted this in GD because I would like to see some real debate on the merits of any party. I have tried to learn what I can, but all I have seen is negative campaigning (“here’s why the other guy is bad”) and vague promises. Whoever has a viewpoint, please chime in.

2

You’ve pretty much eliminated all the options right there, haven’t you?

As we all do, you need to hold your nose and make a choice. If they are all equally repugnant to you, than vote Green or something that won’t be a ‘wasted’ vote but will set your conscience at rest.

If one party is more repugnant than the others, choose the candidate in your riding that will be most likely to beat that one.

My own opinion: it is time to be rid of the Tories. They have proven so callous, sleazy, mean-spirited, and anti-democratic that I can’t see how anyone other than comfortably-off people with no compassion could support them. I’m kind of reluctant to get into specific issues since I’m certain you can’t avoid hearing about them in the paper every day. But I’ll name a few that really stand out.

The school board thing:

Make it illegal for a school board to pass a budget with a deficit. Then cut so much of their funding that they can’t run the programs they need to.
So, at budget time, the school board looks like the bad guy for closing libraries and firing teachers and cancelling after-school programs.
And when the school board refuses to do it, spend a whole lot of money - not on schools, but on the salary of a bureaucrat who knows far less than the trustees about running a school board.

That’s just disgusting. It’s even more disgusting the way they represent the issue as “Unions vs Students” - could it be possible that teachers and students have the same interests? Nope, teachers are money-grubbing and lazy. Right. The students win when you cut funding to the schools and the teachers unions.

Amalgamation:

Come up with a policy that will profoundly affect the structure of the biggest city in the country. Ignore criticisms from nearly everyone involved, including a huge proportion of the populace. Press ahead with it. Refuse to pay for it. For good measure, “download” a bunch of costs onto them, and don’t offer to help them raise funds. In the face of overwhelming evidence, don’t ever admit there was a mistake. Finally, when running for re-election, strongly imply that you don’t really plan on winning any seats in the city.

Hydro:

Make a mess of things. (Here I’m not suggesting that anyone else would have made less of a mess of things: Hydro is pretty fucked up, as evidenced by the blackout.) When it is apparent that a mess has been made, cap the price of electricity (this is the unforgivable part) at a price that is subsidized by the taxpayer. This is a good idea because it means that (a) consumers have no incentive to conserve and (b) providers have no incentive to build new sources, since they can’t charge users more than the capped price.

Now, again, I’m not saying that anyone else would have done this better. And I know that you asked specifically for positive campaigning. A few comments:

Campaign promises mean very little to me. Listening to all of their platforms on “the environment,” for example, had me laughing until tears streamed down my cheeks. I don’t have reason to believe any of them. I do, however, have particular reasons not to believe the Tories (ie “If you really meant that, you would have done it already / not caused the problem in the first place.”)

Also, if democracy means anything at all, it means being able to say “We gave you a chance to do a good job, and you haven’t. Now it’s someone else’s turn.”

3

Thanks cowgirl. Everything you said is part of my reason for not wanting to vote for the Tories, who I usually support. I find myself becoming more and more central every day. Anyone care to “debunk” the Liberals?

4

I’ve always voted Liberal but this election is pretty weak for both sides. The Tory “negative” champane is pissing me off while the Lib’s are talking out of their ass when it comes to promises (but then again, who doesn’t?).

Liberal in my mind is the lesser of 2 evils.

NDP? What’s that? :smiley:

5

There is absolutely no way in hell , that the NDP is gonna get into power again, for the next half of this current generation. However you are not specifically voting for Eves , Dalton, or Howie, but your local mpp who may be the party you want , but a total sleeze or incompetent, or he may be NDP , but the best person your gonna get to represent you.

Myself I am gonna vote tory again ( I want Mikey back, but would rather see him in ottawa unscrewing that particular political wasteland) .

But for your particular set of questions

Get into the candidate or incumbents face ,and ask hard questions.

If incumbent , check out their voting and attendance records.

Have a set of questions that you want ansewered according to what you may be looking at in the future , ie public insurance , more regulated gasoline prices etc.

Declan

6

cowgirl forgot about the double cohort mess(understandable, it was really under-reported in the media)

Tories decide to cut grade 13 to bring Ontario in line with the rest of North America. Fine, it was a good idea. Tories sets the curriculum, and gets it to the teachers by the end of August. Teachers start teaching in September. Understandably, they have had no time to plan what they’re teaching and thus by the end of the semester/year, everything’s a mess and teachers must hurry to finish the course. Students don’t learn important concepts, or have it crammed into their heads, but don’t understand it. Tories repeat this for four years in a row. Completely ridiculous situation caused by poor planning on the part of the Tories. If they had set the curriculums a year in advance, or at least by the beginning of the summer, then the teachers would have been much better prepared. And before you scream “cite?”, I was a new curriculum student in the double cohort, so I know all about it.