Liberals Need to Go but Not Many Real Options

I had hoped she would be different from Mc-Liar.

Alas, I was oh so wrong...

I was the first to admit that I was glad when former Premier Dalton Mc-Liar "retired" and left office. The thought at the time was we would see some kind of change in Ontario's Provincial political spectrum and things would start to clean up as his replacement would do their best to distance themselves from all the previous adminstrations scandals (ORNGE, Fighting the teachers needlessly on their contract issues, Power Plants being shuffled around, the OLGC mess and subsequent unnecessary firing of the man who fixed many of the issues Paul Godfrey, Refusal to step in and settle the LRT vs. Subway debate in Toronto).

Instead, the only change we have seen so far is the sexual orientation of the new Premier, or in other words, "same ole', same ole'". In fact, I would argue that the current Premier is even worse then Mc-Liar because not only was she part of the team that was behind most, if not ALL the scandals, she is now trying to push most if not all of them back in her closet of skeletons while creating her own public money scandals.

Speaking of which, Ms Wynne was in the news today defending her Government spending $7 million on bonuses and insane pay for 64 executives in charge of setting up and ensuring the 2015 Pan Am Games are on or under budget and all the venues are completed on time. These same executives, who are basically milking the province for asinine expenses and caused the same Fiberal government to force them to adhere to serious and relevant charges instead of the frivolous and needless attempts they have been making to pocket extra cash.

You would think that given all the problems that have finally come to the surface from the now 10 plus years of Fiberal Governments in Ontario, this new Premier would at least TRY to be somewhat different then her predecessor but nope. We have a woman in charge who is doing her best to be just like Mc-Liar in just about every which way possible which means every one should start reaching deep into their pocketbook because the only thing she hasn't done yet is announce a hike in taxes (but given the way she is spending like a drunken sailor as Premier, you just know that it is coming soon).

The biggest problem is our utter lack of a true alternative. We have the NDP and Andrea Horvath who SHOULD be using her role now as the third party in a minority Government to her advantage, forcing the Fiberals to do EXACTLY what she wants with regards to any number of bills and amendments to proposed bills coming to provincial parliament. Instead, we have hardly heard a peep out of her and her image which had been on the rise, has taken a massive hit. If someone in her position of power can't seem to realize that she HAS the power or how to USE that power, then clearly they will not be able to use their power properly if they are ever in that position.

If I were in her position, I would have pushed MY agenda to the forefront instead of sitting on my 

hands like she has for months. Hello Andrea, are you awake over there?

Even though I am bashing her, she is still the better choice out of her, our current un-elected Premier Wynne, and the leader of the PC Party, Tim "who the heck" Hudak. Here is a man who has absolutely no clue what he believes in nor what to do to wrestle the chair of power away from the Fiberals, despite 10 years (!?!?) of horrible public service. Hudak went into the last election on a huge upswing, with some polls showing that not only would he win, but win going away. Then he began to open his mouth and you started to see that he will never be anything more then a contrarian; someone who has no ideas other then the ones that are different then yours. I may have just made up that word but it still seems to fit with him.

Hudak lost a double digit lead when he started to question the role of unions, threathening to break them at any instance when they disagreed with HIS future government. He started to question how our schools are funded by proposing equal funding for all faith schools (sorry to anyone who agrees with this but this should NEVER happen and I will explain shortly). His lead took hit after hit with each campaign stop and debate as it was clear he had no real plan in mind. As much as I think McGuinty was horrible, he was a good politician; he knew what to say to get people to vote for him. He somehow was able to wrangle away a minority government despite the fact he had no business doing so.

None of these 3 have or had a plan on how to make Ontario the top Province in Canada again

Add in Ms Wynne and that makes a frightful foursome...

Back to the faith based schools concept I mentioned earlier. There is absolutely no reason to give each and every faith an equal footing in terms of funding. We have the Catholic board and we have the public board. There is no need for ANY OTHER faith based school board. If people of other faiths were barred from attending catholic schools entirely, then yes, I would say it is unfair and equal funding should be part of the mandate.

The fact is anyone from any faith can attend any Catholic or Public school now while these faith based schools are exclusionary and will not allow people of other faiths to enroll in them and therefore do NOT deserve equal funding. As well, given the fact that we owe our entire school board system to catholic women school teachers teaching in 1 room schools back in the late 1700's (as you can see, I have watched the Canadian Heritage commercials), our history and educational foundation was started by Catholic school teachers reading out of a bible to students so I'm sorry if it bothers some but we have already changed WAY too much for foreigners (in my opinion) and this is one area where we should frankly say "enough is enough!" There, I have said my peace on this topic.

Tim Hudak seems to have forgotten this part of our history as Mc-Liar did before him in his ill-advised final push to force the very people who put him into power (teachers) to accept a new contract that had not been negotiated at all. Education, or the lack thereof, is the single biggest reason why the US is falling and falling and falling into more and more financial and social upheaval. It is the uneducated masses who support the Tea Party in the US. People who can't "read a lick" but know that Barack Obama is a Muslim because Fox News told them so.

 This dilapidated building is what is left of one of the 160 closed schools in Detroit

Elect Tim Hudak, and this could very well be a part of the future of Ontario

The city of Detroit is bankrupt and has been cutting back on everything over the last 40 years starting with their schools. They have closed 160 elementary and high schools in the greater Detroit area which has resulted in thousands of school aged children not getting an education and instead working on the streets for drug dealers and causing general mayhem in starting fires and destroying what is left of their decaying city. A city of over 1.3 million people in the early 1980's is now down to just over 700,000. If Hudak had things his way, we would be right there following in the footsteps of Detroit.

So what does all of this mean? Well boys and girls, it means we are stuck with a corrupt government and 2 inept opposition leaders that are either to gunshy to use the power they have or will make things 1000 times worse if we ever put him into power. Both of the opposition leaders have no real plan on how to turn Ontario back into the once fiscally booming Province it once was and so we are stuck with this malaise which is cast over our entire Provincial political system.

All of this reminds me of a line from the movie "The American President" where Michael J. Fox and Michael Douglas have an exchange regarding leadership which essentially is an explanation of how desperate we as people are for true leadership in our daily lives. Fox (one of his aides) explains to Douglas (the President) that people are so desperate for real leadership that they will crawl across the desert and stop at a mirage and drink the sand thinking it is water. Douglas responds that the people drink the sand because they don't know the difference between real and fake leadership.

A couple of scenes from the American President

Leadership is what we truly need

That is where we are now. We are so desperate for real leadership that we soak up anything that even slightly resembles leadership in the hopes that it may be what we need to turn our city, province and country into what we hope it can become. With the way our 3 current provincial leaders are going, with their me-first attitudes and lack of both forward thinking and creativity, we have to hope that our next true great leader is waiting in the wings.