Perhaps NDP leader Andrea Horwath will be, for forcing an unnecessary Ontario election, if the results of a new Forum Research Poll hold throughout the campaign.
The survey of 1,845 people across Ontario, conducted on Friday and Saturday, yielded the following reuslts:
- 48 per cent of respondents approved of the budget. Thirty-two per cent disapproved, and 20 per cent didn’t know.
- 68 per cent approved of the income tax hike for wealthier Ontarians, with just 24 per cent disapproving and 8 per cent with no opinion.
- 39 per cent think Sousa’s spending plan will be bad for the economy while 21 per cent think it will be good, another 21 per cent feel it will have no effect and 19 per cent were unsure.
President Lorne Bozinoff says extrapolating the polling results would see the Liberals winning 49 seats in the 107-member legislature, the Conservatives taking 45, and the NDP holding 13.
Currently, the distribution is 48 Grit MPPs, including Speaker Dave Levac, 37 Tories, 21 New Democrats, and one vacancy.
In other words, the projection gives us another minority government, less seats for the NDP, and an election tab north of $80 million.
Thanks, Andrea, for nothing. Your vanity project does not seem very popular.
While I realize that the politics of Ontario is likely not a riveting subject for those living in other jurisdictions, I nonetheless offer this brief post on the election that has been called here for June 12. Given that the Wynne government presented a budget that by anyone's standards would be deemed progressive, the decision of NDP leader Andrea Horwath to 'pull the plug' on this minority government seems wrong and entirely self-serving.
A woman who has proven to be a grave disappointment as her party's leader, Horwath, given to pandering for power at the expense of principle, is voting against a budget that I daresay, based on her performance these past few years, she would be too craven to bring in were she heading the government.
As pointed out by The Star's Thomas Walkom, Wynne has promised to invest heavily in public transit. More important, she has proposed the country’s first serious retirement income scheme since the Canada Pension Plan was brought in almost half a century ago.
Should voters look to the Progressive Conservatives, Tim Hudak has made it clear that if his party wins, he will kill Wynne’s proposed Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, pull back on ambitious infrastructure proposals, and make life miserable for unionized workers.
Like Jack Layton, whose NDP helped bring down the Paul Martin Liberals, thereby paving the way for the Harper regime, will Horwath's decision prove just as fateful for the people of Ontario?
If so, the NDP, if it is to have any possibility of future rehabilitation, will need to find new and principled leadership as soon as possible.
The contrast couldn't be more striking. As announced by federal Fiance Minister Joe Oliver the other day, Ottawa is well on its way to posting a $9 billion surplus, but Canadians shouldn’t expect any massive new spending programs. Instead, he plans to reduce taxes once the deficit is eliminated in the 2015-16 budget, likely next winter.
On the other hand, the Ontario government, under Premier Wynne, proposes a host of new spending and moderate tax increases under the budget it brought down yesterday.
Progressive measures include raising the wages of home care workers, more money for infrastructure, welfare hikes, new health benefits for children and a plan to hire at-risk youth in provincially funded infrastructure projects.
Perhaps the boldest proposal is an Ontario Pension Plan that will, years down the road, alleviate a good deal of the poverty faced by retirees who currently don't have company pension plans, it is the same model that the Harper regime rejected as "too risky for our fragile economy."
Two competing visions of the role of government; the federal one, which appeals to the selfishness that resides in all of us, and a provincial one which, albeit an election budget, appeals to our better natures.
Which one will prevail? Who knows? But now might be a good time to watch the following TVO podcast, taken from Alex's Blog, in which Alex Himelfarb talks with Steve Paikin about why taxes should not be considered a four-letter word:
If we care a scintilla about privacy or any measure of aversion to government snooping into our private business, we damn well should be. As I wrote in yesterday's post, the Harper regime and its complicit agencies, intoxicated with power, have been requesting (sans warrants) and receiving data on us from the major telecoms and social media sites.
Now word comes that these Judases are being paid for their obsequious compliance by our tax dollars:
Canadian taxpayers are footing the bill for government agencies to buy their private data from telecom companies without their knowledge.
According to parliamentary documents, government agencies pay between $1 and $3 for access to user data from telecom, Internet and social media companies.
Figures released Tuesday by Canada’s privacy watchdog indicate authorities requested that access from nine companies more than 1.19 million times a year, meaning authorities spend in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars to quietly access Canadians’ personal data.
Read that again. The telecoms et al. are not only betraying us, but they are also being paid through our taxes for that betrayal.
Compounding that sell-out is the fact that these companies are refusing the Privacy Commissioner's request for more information about this foul practice, which Thomas Mulcair yesterday described as an abomination:
Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, told reporters Wednesday evening that companies are unsure how to comply with the federal privacy commissioner’s request that telecoms publicly report how often they co-operate with law enforcement and government agencies.
But Bibic refused to say how common that co-operation is, or how often information is handed over to authorities without judicial oversight.
Such truculent arrogance surely indicates the abject contempt in which they hold us, their customers.
Exactly what could the government do with the data these companies are so blithely turning over?
According to a report from the privacy commissioner, “basic subscriber information” can be used to paint a picture of online activities, including browsing history, membership with organizations, physical locations visited, online services used by the subscriber.
“This information can be sensitive in nature in that it can be used to determine a person’s leanings, with whom they associate, and where they travel, among other things,” the report reads. “What’s more, each of these pieces of information can be used to uncover further information about an individual.”
Of course, defenders of such state intrusion will doubtlessly rely on that old saw, "If you have nothing to hide, why would you worry?
Without question, the time for such innocent and naive proclamations is long past.
UPDATE: Click here if you want to see how the regime and its enablers are 'spinning' this scandal.
All of that, as the article makes clear, is merely the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Unfortunately, the regime's penchant for keeping information concealed does not extend to Canadian citizens' right to privacy; here it is becoming increasing apparent that government wants to know far more about us than is either seemly or proper in a putatively democratic country.
Government agencies are asking telecoms and social media companies to turn over Canadians’ user data at “jaw-dropping” rates, with nearly 1.2 million requests in 2011 alone.
Which government and law enforcement agencies are requesting the data from the companies remains shrouded in secrecy. And the companies themselves are refusing to disclose further details, according to Canada’s privacy watchdog.
And the most worrisome aspect of this invasion is that most of these are requests, i.e., unaccompanied by warrants. Compounding the matter is that when data is turned over, the telecoms do not inform their customers:
The companies [Bell Rogers, Telus et al] say they don’t inform their customers when their information is turned over to authorities, meaning the vast majority of those customers would have no knowledge of the transaction.
Beyond that, they will not comment further, refusing requests from the Privacy Commissioner to tell her how many times they have handed over private data to the government without a warrant.
That same cone of silence seems to be enveloping the government:
The Department of Public Safety declined an interview request by the Star. Industry Minister James Moore, whose department is responsible for the telecom sector, refused to comment on the story when asked by reporters in the House of Commons.
Unfortunately, there is much worse to come:
Michael Geist, one of Canada’s leading Internet privacy experts .... warns that legislation currently before Parliament will actually expand the number of organizations that can ask telecoms and social media companies to voluntarily hand over their customers’ information, and protect those companies from civil or criminal lawsuits.
“It is a structure that allows for the massive disclosure of personal information with no court oversight whatsoever,” Geist said.
Anyone who is not disturbed by these revelations clearly places far too little value on their privacy and accords far too much faith in the benevolence of a government that has consistently proven itself inimical to the best interests of those it 'serves.'
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