Ontario Election
 

Okay, cautiously bringing up this topic because I am genuinely interested to hear some thoughts.

I've basically landed on "all options are crap, but which is the least crap" as far as this election goes, so I would be very interesting in hearing some thoughts across the board.

Play nice.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Tbh relieved I'm not yet eligible to vote, however much of a cop out that may be. Find the 'yah boo sucks' element of politics pretty dispiriting, and really wish I could be sure I haven't taken all my opinions from the attack ads. That being said, with 3 kids in public schools I would find it impossible to vote for the cuts.

Re: Ontario Election
 

I'm in exactly the same dilemma.
this is the first election I'm eligible to vote in.
I have very strong views that I SHOULD vote.
However I've paid very little interest in local politics for years as I knew that i couldn't vote.
Now I'm not really sure what I'm going to do

Re: Ontario Election
 

How about:

a) Research the policies of the candidates
b) Vote for those you agree with, or don't vote at all

:D

Re: Ontario Election
 

Try playing with this link... http://www.cbc.ca/elections/ontariov...14/votecompass ... it's not too bad as these things go.

Otherwise just ask me. :)

Re: Ontario Election
 

LOLOL that vote compass has NOT helped me. Hahahaha.

Not listing the parties specifically, but the percentages with how they lined up for me:

Non-weighted:
57%
55%
53%
49%

Weighted:
56%
55%
51%
48%

Parties in the same order in both results.

So that hasn't particularly helped. LOL. Interesting exercise, though.

What to do...

Re: Ontario Election
 

HMM , food for thought
Similar position to Schnooks.

Non weighted and weighted , close but in same order .
OK Novo , who should I vote for ;)?

Re: Ontario Election
 

Tried it too and got similarly close results. When you go through the comparisons at the end this is probably because for the majority of the questions there isn't much difference between the different parties, excepting the odd outlier.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Get off the bleeding fence!

Re: Ontario Election
 

I did the vote compass thing - for interest more than anything else, as I'm not yet a citizen. I was comforted to see how closely my gut-feel voting "intention" lined up with where the tool put me - my dot was almost on top of the party's dot.

I'm still very surprised that Oakville is a liberal-held riding, given its reputation as a hotbed of smug middle-class suburbanites, who one might have assumed would be a happy hunting ground for Hudak's PC folks. It's certainly one of their target constituencies, though their candidate's a bit of a nonentity, a former London-based merchant banker. Our incumbent MPP seems properly engaged with the local community and is actually also quite a nice bloke, for a politician - I've met him a few times through organizations I'm involved with. I suspect he'll be back in on June 12, though it'll be a tighter race than 2011.

Strangely, considering the amount of news acreage it's gathering across the province, the "Gas Plant Scandal" really isn't an issue in the riding itself. Perhaps at least in part because all three major parties' candidates last time around campaigned on the promise that they'd support cancellation/relocation. And the local electorate remembers that, even if Hudak and Horwath have conveniently forgotten.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Actually, in your riding your vote might actually count. Your existing MPP is NDP but she only beat the LIB by a slim margin last time. A PC vote is pointless where you live (well, its pointless everywhere but they only get ~10% down there).

So you should consider voting LIB if you want to reduce the chance of left-of-centre vote splitting allowing Hudak to sneak in.

Re: Ontario Election
 

I need to loom at who backs what airport wise and if anyone is remotely interested that neither of the streetcars i use to get to work have been running for 2 years now.
Spadina south of king is now 18 months past its original completion date

Re: Ontario Election
 

I haven't met Kevin Flynn yet, but have heard very nice things about him. I did get a Christmas card from him this year too! :P My parents have met him and they said he's lovely. And I know he's been quite involved in the Deerfield/Saw-Whet discussions, which is one of my own local bones of contention.

I don't knowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww..........

Re: Ontario Election
 

Err, neither of those are provincial issues really.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Ah fudge it , I've got my elections mixed up. City is in October isn't it ?

:scarper::scarper::scarper:

Re: Ontario Election
 

Can't vote so basically an interested bystander. I've been following along as I'm quite interested in politics. Ideologically speaking I'd be closest to the NDP on most things. A couple of the "comparison" tests, unsurprisingly, said the same.

My wife can vote. Conservative last time...she's already voted Green this time. Maybe I'm turning her to the left. Heard of quite a few others who've already gone for the Green Party here in Guelph. Be interesting to see if the bloke makes a good run at it or if it stays Liberal-as-usual.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Interesting switch from PC to the Greens. I'd probably vote green too if the Liberal incumbent in RH was safe, but he's not. He needs every vote he can get to fend off the Lunatics.

Re: Ontario Election
 

According to that I should vote Green but I'll vote
Liberal. One, the Liberal MPP helped us with OHIP and two, a vote for anyone else risks letting the PC mob in.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Quite. There you have it. Anything but the trifecta of horror (Ford, Hudak and Harper). We have someone even worse than Ford running for Mayor in Richmond Hill, a certain Carmen Pieriero. Nasty piece of work he is.

Re: Ontario Election
 

You're just upset because you can't vote UKIP

Re: Ontario Election
 

My intention is to vote for the people who want to spend the most on public transport.

Need the old citizenship first however.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Yeah, no!!

Re: Ontario Election
 

She isn't the "i've always voted for this party" sort. Which is good I guess. Have to pick who you think is best regardless of the party sometimes.It seems this Mike Schreiner bloke in Guelph is pretty well liked and there seems to be stories floating around about how Sandals (MPP) and Farbridge (mayor) have been gaming the system and doing deals behind closed doors. They're both Liberals.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Actually this raises an interesting point. I wonder what fraction of voters (under the Westminster system) vote one way or another because of an informed choice about their local candidates compared to the number who vote because of an informed preference for the party's policy and/or the qualities of the leaders of said parties.

Of course I realize that the number who vote as a result of uninformed prejudices dwarfs both groups.

Re: Ontario Election
 

The Gas plant billion dollar cover up/lies/scandal still looms over their heads for me, also the "don't release how crap Ornge is doing, until the day after the lection" oh dear too late it's been leaked. Also so into drive clean shite and public Transit and not coming over as a car lovin lady IMO. (sorry James)

I'm still Mr. Undecided. Although I likes this persons promotional name. Posted before I know but still funny to me.

Re: Ontario Election
 

You sound like you should vote for the Ontario Misogynist Congestion Party.

Re: Ontario Election
 

2 reasons

1.I live in ma car

and

2.it's all about me (I will vote for anyone who can reduce gas to 99c and scrap public transit) except for the GO train on match day of course

Re: Ontario Election
 

I was reading about this earlier:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/06...n_5461428.html

To be honest, I don't like any of them much. They all seem to put a huge amount of energy into slagging each other off and telling you what you want to hear, and very little energy into showing how they'll achieve it and why they themselves are not crap. I know that's universal to an extent, but that doesn't make it helpful, and it does seem worse here.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Get 3 quarters and toss them. Odd one out loses the vote. Then toss the one quarter to decide on who to vote for. Honestly if I lived in Ontario Id vote for the less of the 3 evils if I decided to vote at all.
Which party makes sense if any and would be more likely to meet your own personal needs?

Re: Ontario Election
 

I was between PC and Liberal but closer to PC. The liberals have had their day and in all honesty I may vote Green as the PC is a shoo in where I live and it would be a wasted vote.

The Green Party have been quite adament that there would only be one school board and that is something I feel very strongly about. If the Catholic parents want their own school board they can fund it themselves...then we'll see how strongly they are committed to the catholic school board cause.

Re: Ontario Election
 

The staged photo ops that the big 3 orchestrate every day make 'reality' tv look spontaneous. It really is an odious industry.

Re: Ontario Election
 

The merchant banker thing does not come as a surprise. When I lived there, the major was a Brummie and the guy who ran the town's water supply was from Yorkshire.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Honestly, this is where the multiple representation vote thing that was on the cards 5-6 years ago could be interesting. I have no qualms about voting for Kevin Flynn in Oakville, he's been great for the riding and is a good guy. Since I'm still undecided about what I'm going to do on Thursday, it would have been nice to have the option to vote for Flynn independent of what party I decide to go for in the end. Sigh.

Last week I thought I was leaning one way, but after some chats this weekend I'm reconsidering... again...

Re: Ontario Election
 

They haven't forgotten, they had just planned to do it differently than the Liberals did.

There were clauses in the contracts that would have allowed them to cancel the plants without undue financial penalties, or damned near no penalties at all (ie. if X% of the building hasn't been approved by such-and-such a date then the contracts expire, etc., etc.). That is what the NDP and Conservatives were promising to do - to let the contracts die/expire. But the Liberals, because they were desperate to save themselves a couple of seats in that election, ignored those provisions in the contracts and barreled on full steam ahead by cancelling the plants immediately. In doing so, they incurred massive financial penalties that wouldn't have been incurred had they simply taken their time as the other parties were promising to do. So the issue isn't that it was done but, rather, how it was done.

And how it was done leads directly into why it was done - to save a couple of Liberal seats. Then there was their destruction of evidence, their allowing non-government employees into the Premier's to wipe computers clean (a staffer's boyfriend...seriously?), their obfuscation when asked to produce documents relating to the decision, their lies, the very limited scope that they allowed for the inquiry into the scandal, their control of the committee conducting that inquiry, and their complete unwillingness to take responsibility and own up to what they did.

Re: Ontario Election
 

How anyone can vote for a Liberal candidate after everything that party has done while in power is beyond me. The half of them should be in bloody jail, not the Legislature.

Re: Ontario Election
 

They did up until the '80s (and there were Catholic schools everywhere) at which point they were finally given something that had been guaranteed to them in the Constitution.

Re: Ontario Election
 

...on balance they've done pretty well.

Re: Ontario Election
 

Oh really? Let's leave aside their multiple scandals, boondoggles, police investigations, corruption, etc. and just look at the basic facts:

Harris resigns 2001...
Unemployment 6.6
Ontario debt 123.1billion.
Ontario budget surplus 400 million.
Net debt to GDP 29.1
Equalization status - 'have'

McGuinty resigns 2012...
Unemployment 7.9
Ontario debt 237.6 billion
Ontario budget deficit 14.4 million
Net debt to GDP 36.9
Equalization status - 'have not'



I'd love to hear how you think that, on balance, they have done pretty well. How bad do they have to be for you to think they have done poorly :confused:

Re: Ontario Election
 

I honestly think it is time to move on from something that was granted back in 1867? and from what I understand that constitutional right was only for Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan and the 3 territories. Society, especially in urban canada, is a lot more diverse than catholic and non-catholic.

...where I live there are 4 school boards (english public, english catholic, french public, french catholic) each with their own fiefdoms, bureaucracies, playgrounds, gymnasiums, unions, school bus routes.

Re: Ontario Election
 

They were ready to readopt Keynsian interventionist policies after the bank sector collapse in 2008.

The increased debt is only a problem for the raving right and the increased unemployment is a direct result of the contraction in the manufacturing sector caused by the US recession and the insistence of the Federal government in propping up big oil.

Oh, and talking of power plants, they've fulfilled their promise to close the coal plants while decreasing Ontario's electricity consumption through energy conservation measures.

They've invested significantly in education (something you don't seem to have benefited from).