There is little doubt the Liberal government, in power since 2003 under the leadership of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, is corrupt. It seems their highest priorities are to provide money and jobs to their Liberal friends and to retain power. The Liberals’ green energy policy that resulted in windmills dotting the rural landscape have resulted in soaring hydro rates that has been devastating to low and fixed income residents as well as manufacturing businesses. Some businesses packed up and moved to other jurisdictions resulting in job losses. But their friends were paid handsomely for their green efforts.
In addition to taxing and spending in true liberal fashion, the Libs have been embroiled in a series of scandals that seem to never end; eHealth, Ornge and most notably the gas plant scandals.
During the 2011 election campaign, the Liberal government cancelled the construction of two gas plants. The reason? Both plants were located in Liberal-held ridings, constituents were unhappy about the construction, and the Liberals were concerned they might lose those ridings so they decided to stop building them where they were. The cost to the taxpayers of Ontario for this decision, later admitted to be a political decision by the party itself, has been estimated at $1.1 billion.
Instead of being thrown out for squandering tax dollars, the Liberals were rewarded on Thursday by the voters with a majority government after being in a minority position since 2011. Although the odd riding may change hands as a result of recounts, when the ballots were tallied the Liberals went from 53 seats to 58. The NDP gained four seats while the Progressive Conservatives came out as the big losers. The PCs ended up with 28 seats, down nine from the previous sitting of the legislature.
The PCs under Hudak campaigned on two major issues; creating one million jobs and reducing the province’s public sector by 100,000 workers. While the one million jobs program drew some laughter about crazy math, what really did the PCs in was the plan to put 100,000 people out of work.
Hudak did not properly explain why reducing the provincial civil service by 100,000 jobs was necessary. This gave the impression that he thought it would be fun to save money by throwing people out of work. No one, even conservatives who are portrayed as uncaring, want to see people who are gainfully employed lose their jobs and encounter the responding difficulties.
Hudak’s lack of a proper explanation gave ammunition to the unions, including for the first time a police association, to run ads saying people will be harmed if not killed outright if the PCs come to power. Teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers would lose their jobs putting everyone in the province at risk.
Of course tens of thousands of jobs could be eliminated through attrition and the elimination of a lot of bloated managerial positions. But this wasn’t explained either.
The lack of properly explaining the PC’s policies resulted in sound economic management being trumped waste, scandal and corruption.
There are differences between liberalism and conservatism besides the obvious distinction between the two philosophies. It is doubtful anyone running the PC campaign knows what these differences are or the outcome of the election would have been different.
If you want to get non-conservative voters to vote for the PCs you have to explain conservative principles to them. Liberalism on the other hand does not have to be taught or explained. People are inundated with liberalism from a young age in the schools. Liberal propaganda spews from the left-wing media, movies and television and the only thing you can learn about conservatism from these sources is that conservatives are mean. Like former Prime Minister Paul Martin put it, Liberal values are Canadian values and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to them in un-Canadian.
Unlike liberalism, people cannot learn conservatism through osmosis. They either have to be taught conservative principles by family members or friends or mentors or else take the initiative to learn about it from books, articles or listening to U.S. talk radio.
On the other hand, people don’t have to know anything to vote for a liberal politician. It is sufficient if what the politician says “sounds good.” If a government is spending billions of dollars on solar and wind energy in order to save the planet from climate change, that sounds good. If more billions are going to be spent on education and health care, that sounds good too. No thinking involved. Long term consequences to the economy are irrelevant.
In order to understand and adopt conservative principles, people have to have at least a basic knowledge of economics. If the civil service in Ontario is reduced, less money will be spent by the government, the deficits will decline, and more money will be available to pay down the debt, allowing the province to use the money saved on interest payments for social programs.
This coupled with tax breaks to lower the cost of conducting a business will end up with more productivity and improve the economy.
You also have to be able to appreciate the distinction between the public sector and the private sector. The public sector does not create wealth. Only by wealth creation can the economy grow, resulting in more successful businesses and more jobs leading to more money taken in from taxes for the government to further pay down the debt and provide services.
You don’t have to know or care about economics to support liberalism. It’s enough if the politicians promise to give you something for nothing. To those who think the primary function of a government is to provide for them, deficits and debt are meaningless. For example, if students are told they will pay less in tuition under a Liberal government, that’s all they need to vote Liberal.
This lack of economic knowledge resulted in many Ontarians accepting Wynne’s view of the economy that more civil service jobs means more people working and therefore more people with money to purchase goods and services and the economy will grow. This “sounds good” and will work in the short term. But as the late Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with his is eventually you run out of other peoples’ money and everything collapses.
Conservatism has to be explained before traditional non-conservatives will vote for a conservative political party and Hudak failed miserably at this.
After the projected results were announced shortly after the polls closed, Hudak announced he will not lead his party in another election. He failed miserably to demonstrate why non conservatives, fed up with Liberal corruption, should vote for his party. Perhaps Timmy would do better selling double doubles at Timmy’s.
