by adam K. anderson,
February 5, 2005
"Public Power" was the slogan from the Ontario NDP's provincial election campaign of 2003. It was also the name of their then new website announced with great fanfare.
The NDP switched from using their www.ontariondp.com site to www.publicpower.ca in the hopes of attracting more than their paltry average of 200 web visitors a day.
If they had first floated a trial balloon over their brainstormed slogan, they would have known it was destined to sink like a lead balloon. Instead, they had to weather the election maelstom that saw them sink down to only eight seats in the Ontario legislature, one less than what is needed to be recognized as an official party. They even had to whine their way to get the government to change the threshold to give them party status at Queen's Park.
While the New Democratic Party's concept of "Public Power" was a variation of "power to the people", with the issue of privatization of Ontario hydro electricity system in the news on an almost daily basis, most people assumed the slogan and the socialists' site was only about reversing the deregulation of energy in Ontario.
Now without any announcements the NDP have quietly switched back to their old web domain name www.ontariondp.com
With other internet domains they have, or are using, to confuse internet surfers as to which one to go to, such as www.ondp.ca and www.ontariondp.on.ca, it is clear they know as little about getting visitors to their website as they do about attracting new members and voters to their political party.
To be fair, the Liberal Party of Ontario created their own one-time site for the election under their slogan of "choose change" with the site www.choosechange.ca, which now, to their embarassment, forwards to the Virtual City Casino.
Only the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party used their main site for the purpose of the 2003 election, changing only the slogan to "The Road ahead". But then, they had their own previous learning experience with using www.mikeharrispc.com and after dropping that with Premier Harris' retirement, the site name was bought up by someone wanting to use it to sell Viagra.
all three provincial parties have a long way to go in understanding and utilizing the Internet properly, and to its fullest.
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