October 20, 2003
No political party is immune from acting silly, as witnessed recently by Ontario PC leader Ernie Eves and his merry band of juveniles, who couldn’t quite resist sending emails to the media that called Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty "an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet". Geesh, just because someone is from another planet is no reason to get so mean. Ernie too had his silly moments when, after the election, he said that he had known that voters had wanted a change in government for the last two and one half years. This came just a couple of days after slick Ernie loudly proclaimed that he was going to win the October 2 election. Silly, silly, Ernie.
But the NDP takes silliness, pettiness and hypocrisy to higher levels than other political parties do as witnessed by the following. First there is NDP Toronto councillor, Olivia Chow, also known as Mrs. Jack Layton. Chow is against the Toronto Island Airport because the land can be put to better use, providing more green spaces and cheap housing for her trendy NDP friends. When engine trouble forced a light plane into Lake Ontario near the airport, resulting in no injuries to the pilot or his 15-year-old daughter, the missus said that the incident shows that it’s just too dangerous to have an airport on the island. Complete and utter nonsense but Ndippers like Olivia will say anything no matter how absurd in an attempt to support their cause. The fact that the airport was located on the island did not cause the plane to lose power. Would Chow have preferred that the plane had come down on a strip mall in Malton while attempting to land at Pearson International? Dumb, dumb, Olivia.
And speaking of the airport on the island, NDP Toronto councillor David Miller is the only mayoral candidate that opposes the plan, already endorsed by Toronto Council, to build a fixed link to the island. To highlight his platform, Miller brought Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in from the United Sates. Kennedy lamented how jets will eventually come to the airport no matter what is being said now. Junior also purported to tell Torontonians how they should run their city.
During the time that Kennedy was in Toronto, a poll that was released showed that David Miller came from out of nowhere to a solid second place in the race for mayor. Yet there wasn’t a peep from anyone in the party that has anti-Americanism as one of its main platforms. The NDP oppose all things American including investments and culture. Bobby Junior is not just an American but a member of a family that serves as a symbol of America and what is stands for. Where were the anti-American NDPers while Kennedy was here preaching to Torontonians? Where was Svend Robinson, who brags about booing Ronald Reagan when Reagan addressed Parliament and who threatened to boo George W. Bush when it looked like he would visit Ottawa? Where were the cries of "sovereignty, sovereignty" that is the rally cry of the NDP? There was nothing but complete silence. The reality is that the NDP would put their collectivist arms around George W. Bush while whistling Dixie if they thought it would help their cause. One rule for them and one rule for everyone else.
More silliness arose from Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton. After his party did worse than predicted in the October 2 election, Hampton begged premier designate Dalton McGuinty to lower the requirement to get party status from 8 seats to 7--the latter number being ironically, the same number of seats that the NDP obtained. Had the number of Tory seats been reduced to 7, a real possibility if it had been a longer campaign, would Hampton have demanded a reduction? No way. Howard implies that a reduction of required seats is all about "fairness", one of the NDP’s favourite words. But it’s all about money. If he can’t get party status according to the rules, the rules just have to be changed. More silliness.
Hampton also did a lot of moaning and whining about the fact that the system was against him because it’s first-past-the-post and not based upon proportionate representation. Perhaps changing the voting system to proportionate representation should be debated in Ontario. But Boo-Hooey Hampton’s whining about it right after the election results were counted was another example of the party’s silliness. The NDP certainly wasn’t fighting for proportionate representation back in 1990 when the NDP formed a majority government after garnering just 37.5 per cent of the popular vote.
If nothing else, the New Democrats are good for a laugh.