zang
Senior Member
I took it to mean "Toronto" the famous election-bogeyman of elections past, much as "downtown elites" apparently applied to anywhere that wasn't Etobicoke or Scarborough.
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- Thread starter W. K. Lis
- Start date
afransen
Senior Member
Del Duca seems a bit feckless and motivated by personal aggrandizement. Not good qualities in a leader. I have no idea what he would do--he has not articulated any clear policy direction other than 'please vote for me'.
zang
Senior Member
If people cared about fecklessness and personal aggrandizement, we'd probably not have had Ford as premier.
JasonParis
Moderator
The NDP plan is arguably better than the Liberal's gimmicks. I'm surprised they didn't match the GO co-fare in the 416. Also, it would be nice to see them clearly state that the won't alter any of Ford's Big Four.
Richard White
Senior Member
Honestly, I think Doug Ford will obtain another majority in June.
Del Duca is a relative unknown outside the Liberals and I get the sense he has little to no plan. He is a great orator, and knows how to do a media availability but that is about it. Realistically, he is pulling the platform out of his ass and it shows.
Think about it, $1 transit fares are not realistic and would be a black hole in terms of revenue. Then you have building $10 million dollars worth of schools by cancelling the 413. He is pandering to the masses with no real plan.
Andrea Horwath is following the NDP Playbook to the letter and it won't help her chances any. They are already beating the drum of how Doug Ford is bad and the NDP is good with no real plan or platform.
As a NDP voter since I was 18, I am not sure who I will vote for this year. I am 34 and I want a party who will make life better and unfortunately I am growing tired of the NDPs lack of a meaningful platform in the past few elections.
Back to my original point, the left is so full of lackluster candidates that there will likely be many disenfranchised voters who will either not vote or not vote for their regular parties. That in my opinion will cause a PC majority.
One saving grace in all this, is that this will likely be Andreas last election as NDP leader. After 13 years, I get the sense her goose is cooked. She has been given more than a few chances and I think the winds of change are blowing. If she cannot win this election given everything, I can see her being turfed. The problem is, there are no viable candidates within the NDP and have not been since Howard Hampton.
Del Duca is a relative unknown outside the Liberals and I get the sense he has little to no plan. He is a great orator, and knows how to do a media availability but that is about it. Realistically, he is pulling the platform out of his ass and it shows.
Think about it, $1 transit fares are not realistic and would be a black hole in terms of revenue. Then you have building $10 million dollars worth of schools by cancelling the 413. He is pandering to the masses with no real plan.
Andrea Horwath is following the NDP Playbook to the letter and it won't help her chances any. They are already beating the drum of how Doug Ford is bad and the NDP is good with no real plan or platform.
As a NDP voter since I was 18, I am not sure who I will vote for this year. I am 34 and I want a party who will make life better and unfortunately I am growing tired of the NDPs lack of a meaningful platform in the past few elections.
Back to my original point, the left is so full of lackluster candidates that there will likely be many disenfranchised voters who will either not vote or not vote for their regular parties. That in my opinion will cause a PC majority.
One saving grace in all this, is that this will likely be Andreas last election as NDP leader. After 13 years, I get the sense her goose is cooked. She has been given more than a few chances and I think the winds of change are blowing. If she cannot win this election given everything, I can see her being turfed. The problem is, there are no viable candidates within the NDP and have not been since Howard Hampton.
zang
Senior Member
Preface: I'm not a Liberal voter. Never have been and probably never will be. Kudos to them this time however, for daring to swing centre-left rather than a continuation of a decades-long lean to the right.
Yeah, it may seem like a gimmick, but affordability is one of the big issues in this election, and saving people a lot of money while simultaneously reducing other problems is targeting both big picture issues/costs and offering a short-term gain. This should be a panacea for the "fiscal conservatives", if it didn't fly in the face of dogmatic party allegiance.
Buck-a-beer was a gimmick. It was unsustainable from the start, and only promoted more drinking (which has zero net benefit for the province).
The only gimmick however I see with Buck-a-Ride is that costs riders anything at all. There are now hundreds (and growing) of cities in North America and the world now offering free public transit (especially smaller towns where public transit is far less efficient). Even Winnipeg and Calgary have fare-free zones or lines. Ontario's per-capita GDP is nearly double that of the next province, and accounts for about 40% of the country. What makes us so hard done by that we couldn't do that as well?
How are they not realistic? If the net balance is tens of thousands of cars off the road, the long-term savings could be dramatic. Not just environmentally, but road-maintenance, fewer accidents, a potential for less stress-related health issues or the general economic benefit of fewer traffic jams. Traffic jams alone cost the province at least $6B a year for the GTA, and if you believe the Ontario Trucking Association, cost upwards of $166B annually for the whole province. The Liberals have costed the Buck-a-Ride plan at $1.1B/year after 2023. It's hard not to see benefit or realism in this.
Yeah, it may seem like a gimmick, but affordability is one of the big issues in this election, and saving people a lot of money while simultaneously reducing other problems is targeting both big picture issues/costs and offering a short-term gain. This should be a panacea for the "fiscal conservatives", if it didn't fly in the face of dogmatic party allegiance.
Buck-a-beer was a gimmick. It was unsustainable from the start, and only promoted more drinking (which has zero net benefit for the province).
The only gimmick however I see with Buck-a-Ride is that costs riders anything at all. There are now hundreds (and growing) of cities in North America and the world now offering free public transit (especially smaller towns where public transit is far less efficient). Even Winnipeg and Calgary have fare-free zones or lines. Ontario's per-capita GDP is nearly double that of the next province, and accounts for about 40% of the country. What makes us so hard done by that we couldn't do that as well?
We actually need more schools. We don't need more induced demand that comes with more highways.
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Northern Light
Superstar
Plausible.
When did this happen?
Fixed that for you.
The NDP has a full platform. 188 pages worth to be precise. You can read it here: https://www.ontariondp.ca/sites/def..._booklet_bilingual_final_26apr_compressed.pdf
See above. You are free to like/dislike the platform but to describe 188 pages worth as meaningless is to reveal that you didn't read it.
Northern Light
Superstar
Details of the NDP's dental care promise are out, via CBC:
From the above:
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From the above:
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I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea of Del Duca being a great orator
Richard White
Senior Member
lol. I was referring to the multitude of press conferences he held as Transport Minister.. The man blew more hot air than any good balloon could handle.
John_Dee
Active Member
Being a windbag isn't the same as being a great orator, though.
adma
Superstar
Honestly, what's the big deal about Andrea Horwath calling it a day if this effort doesn't pan out? She's actually given it a shockingly good run, given all the stacked-deck obstacles in place--the lingering third-party stigma, lingering negative memories of the Rae years, a major media infrastructure hard-wired t/w a strict Lib/Con "viable party of government" binary w/the NDP nothing more than that vote-wasting nuisance around the edges. And if 2018 proves to have been ceiling, it's less due to her own demerits than to, again, said media infrastructure not being able to get their heads around the NDP taking up that official opposition space which ought "rightfully" to belong to the Libs, plus Premier Ford's own gaslighting "I won, you lost, so there, nyaaah" manner of governance not giving her oxygen. And honestly, if to you, NDP "viability" is all about Premiership and Government, then at virtually any time prior to the 2018 surprise you would have been a bit on the pie-in-the-sky side in lending them your support. Even if she loses ground, she'll still likely leave the party in a far better place than it was in when she assumed leadership.
Yet I don't know--there's this perspective that seems to constantly want to accentuate the negative when it comes to Horwath's supposedly "failed" leadership. Even re the 2018 Orange wave, it's like "yeah, but she still lost". And of course, it'd seem like this wall of overwrought "Andrea the loser" judgment is virtually exclusively male...
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Rufus8
Active Member
Horwath is a good opposition leader, she is head and shoulders above any other opposition leader I have seen in Canada, opposition is just as important as "winning" an election. It is necessary to have alternative views in parliament. It is too bad that an election has been reduced to pandering, I was educated to believe politics was about governance, not self-interest. It is the parties who have fostered this narrow outlook. I don't have kids or own property or drive - so technically I am invisible, but my vote is not dependent on my needs it's based on the future of our society. It is not for politicians to tell schools, hospitals, cities or transit authorities what to do in their day-to-day business, the province is there for oversight, not micro-management.
This is why I think Toronto needs to be a city state, with Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario each their own self-governing systems. The old province doesn't work, Toronto takes too much attention/resources, there is terrible poverty, housing and transit issues outside of the urban areas that are just as destructive as downtown ghettos, it just doesn't attract the media (and some places are hard to get to!).
Remember Ford talking about how he was going to change auto insurance rates? Apparently neither do drivers in the burbs, too shocked by gas prices and so grateful for the pittance refund (*cough*bribe) dear dougie!
kamira51
Active Member
It seems the Liberals are really pushing for education investments but I feel it doesn't address the internal problems, by problems I mean they should absolutely redo the entire education system in Ontario, it needs to be redone from scratch.
Start by combining the all the different religious school boards under one roof. Del Ducas education investments do nothing for me.
Start by combining the all the different religious school boards under one roof. Del Ducas education investments do nothing for me.
generalcanada
Senior Member
thats litterally political suicide. theres a christian base in ontario who would litterally never vote for that.