October 6, 2003
A red river raged through the Province of Ontario on Election Night last week, leaving a majority Dalton McGuinty Liberal Government in its wake.
The Liberals, with 46.5 percent of the popular vote, hold 72 seats. The conservatives, with 34.6 percent of the popular vote, hold only 24.
The only good news for small-c conservatives in the Province of Ontario is that the New Democratic Party (NDP), with only seven seats, is destined to lose its party status when power changes hands at Queen’s Park.
Because of that, there was no dancing on the streets like there was when Ontario voted in its first socialist government in 1990. Radical left-wing groups like OCAP (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty), teacher union leaders and Communist Party member trustees from the local school board were mourning the second election defeat of union leader Sid Ryan, who went down in the General Motors Town of Oshawa.
The Commonsense Revolution, which lasted eight years under the Tories and saw the economy of Ontario outpacing the country, the United States and the rest of the world, is over.
It’s a new day in Ontario, but repercussions from the end of the revolution on October 2, 2003 will inevitably leech out to the international arena.
Canada’s economic engine province has not had a Liberal government in office at the same time that the Liberals were running a federal administration from Ottawa since way back in 1937.
With no formal agreement inked between a battered federal PC party and a Western-ruling Canadian Alliance Party, in Canada, there is no viable opposition and Prime-Minister-in-Waiting Paul Martin takes control of the federal Liberal leadership on Nov. 18.
In Toronto, which faces a municipal election eight days before Martin takes over, Liberal Barbara Hall is leading the polls--even though she’s currently under investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police because of alleged contraventions of the Ontario Municipal Elections Act by the Friends of Barbara Hall group.
Hall and her husband Max Beck were gleeful attendees at Liberal headquarters on election night.
If you happen to call the Megacity of Toronto home, there is little, if any respite coming from Liberal red.
If October 2 did anything, it underscores how vital it now is to keep Toronto from a lib-left mayor.
On the day the provincial election was called, the Conservatives held 56 seats in the provincial legislature, the Liberals 36 and the NDP nine. There was one independent and one vacant seat.
"Ernie took us down," was the mantra on election night. Premier Ernie Eves had distanced himself from revolution architect Mike Harris, and was neither fish nor fowl--some what Liberal-like out on the election hustings.
For Ontario, the sea change will be fast, but not necessarily painless.
The high-octane McGuinty regime has already promised that its first 100 days in office will be key.
At the international level, little will change when the Province of Ontario raises corporate taxes back to where they were in 2001--a move expected to cause business about $550-million a year.
Even Ontarians won’t feel the pinch of a deficit analysts estimate as high as $4-billion, as McGuinty says he likely won’t implement some of his more costly pledges on the election hustings until the end of his four-year mandate.
Nor will Hall’s socialist agenda, should she make it to the mayor’s chair, touch the residents of Detroit or Miami.
But the policies of Paul Martin will someday reach out to affect the governments and peoples of other countries.
UN poster boy Maurice Strong, currently on a $1 million taxpayer-paid "circumpolar" junket with Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, socialist, Ontario ex-premier Bob Rae and other noted Canadians, is expected to join the Prime Minister’s Office as a senior advisor.
Liberals both provincially and federally lean heavily on polls. In Ontario, Toronto Star readers were informed daily how the Liberals were leading the polls and destined to win. Ditto for the ongoing Toronto mayoral race.
Pollster John Wright, Ipsos-Reid vice-president, dismissed suggestions the Liberal combination in Ontario and Ottawa could boost the chances for the Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance to make inroads in the next federal election--even if they were to join forces.
"Our polls have shown Martin would win even if the Tories and the Alliance merged because Paul Martin represents at heart a fiscal right-of-centre position that is conservative enough to meet the needs of both right-wing parties," Wright said.
Not even the most naïve among us would believe that Martin’s right-of-centre position when it comes to fiscal matters makes for a right-wing prime minister.
While Ontarians find their moorings in the raging red river, a bold, new, pro-United Nations, environment-first government in Ottawa will soon supercede provincial matters.
Watch out world, a new Canada is about to make its global debut.
And just to think you thought Canuckland was bland.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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