09.19.2011 04:06 PM

Interesting column in Ottawa Citizen

…about which there will be no comment!

This time the Liberals set a bear trap for Tim Hudak’s Tories. The Grits had been badly trailing the PCs when the Liberals were putting the finishing touches on their platform. So Premier Dalton McGuinty and friends slipped the $12-million tax-credit program for hiring new Canadians into the Liberal manifesto to see if the right wing of the PCs would bite on this ethnically charged issue, according to inside Grit sources. They did.

Using the term “foreigners” has alienated the new Canadian vote and outraged the soft middle which Hudak had to capture to win a majority. The polls dramatically turned as the “foreigner” issue grew. While Hudak has now put the question on the back burner, the radical right of the Tories, namely eastern Ontario candidate Randy Hillier, is stilling screaming “foreigner.” That’s killing Tory chances of swinging Toronto area ridings with their large new Canadian makeup.

 

10 Comments

  1. McGuinty is Toast says:

    Right from the paper that you work for:

    http://www.torontosun.com/2011/09/14/most-oppose-liberal-immigration-tax-credit-poll

    ————————————–
    More than _60% of Ontario residents oppose_ Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty’s proposed tax credit for immigrants, according to a new poll.

    Almost half of Ontarians — 47% — indicated they were unaware of the Liberal immigration tax credit, according to the online survey by Abacus Data.

    However, 62% of respondents said they strongly or somewhat oppose the Liberal plan to give businesses a $10,000 tax credit for hiring a highly skilled newcomer…
    ————————————–

    The more you attack Hudak on this, the more votes he’ll get. Many ‘old’ Canadians living in Ontario who have a hard time finding work will resent your party when you accuse Hudak of being racist–because they agree with Hudak on this. By calling him racist, you call those Ontarians (those who don’t have the privilege of getting a $10,000 advantage when looking for a job) racist as well.

    And as for the Ontario NDP trying to “win this one for Jack”, they would be STUPID not to use such a strategy. In fact, Jack would all be in favor of his name being used. Crying indignation that the NDP is not fighting fair by using Layton’s legacy just shows that you’re worried that such a strategy is successful.

    • Warren says:

      Look, everyone! Objective advice from someone whose REAL NAME is “McGuinty Is Toast”!

    • Attack! says:

      Yeah, and fully half the people being counted IN that poll hadn’t even HEARD of the issue before being given a one line intro. to it (referring to it as applying to “newcomers,” not “new Canadian citizens,” and w/o explaining that it only applies to about 1,000 professionals like engineers, a year, who’ve come here with years of education & experience & just need a bit of help to get fully accredited to become more productive tax-payers here), IN the actual poll (and an online one, at that).

      Oddly enough, this was by the same polling firm that had discarded the results from about half its respondents regarding vote intentions, just a day earlier, because supposedly they weren’t certain enough, yet and Abacus didn’t want to muddy the waters.

      • Scott Tribe says:

        I know Warren works for Sun Media, so I’m not going to go overboard on this, but this polling firm they were using for those particular polls (Abacus) is run by David Coletto, who wrote his thesis paper at the Univ of Calgary with Tom Flanagan, who I’m sure you all know. It also decided to use a never before used “rank your vote preference from 1-10” (and an online panel to boot) which got the Tories a 9 point lead. I would have liked to have seen them run a concurrent traditional phone poll (and do so if they continue to poll the provincial race) just to compare and to see what is more accurate at the end of the election.

        You’ll all note Sunmedia quoted a Leger Marketing poll today (a more established firm) that gave it another neck and neck race.

      • JStanton says:

        Listen, this is a terrific polling firm. Now that we have a majority government, things can finally be done right! When we need polling results to tell us what policies to pursue, these guys really deliver. Take the long-gun registry, for example. Western farmers told us that, not only were we safer without it, but we would save $150 billion per year. That’s $200 billion we could use to fight Alqaeda terrorists in Iraq!

        The other example is Immigrants in Ontario. Without this firm, we would never have known that engineers from Asia were taking jobs away from hard working Canadians at home depot. Now we know that we have to cut back on immigrants from the brown countries. It will also save us $600 trillion, so now we can buy 10000 of those short-haul fighter jets to fight terrorists in, cripes, what’s that place in Africa… no, Australivia… what’s that place called again?

        .

  2. Harith says:

    Good job trolling the Tories. 🙂

  3. patrick deberg says:

    McGuinty is Toast?

    Blackjack? Blackjack McLarnen ? Is that you? Back off immigrants this land is my land!!

  4. Joel R says:

    This is hilarious. I can’t believe the PC strategists didn’t see this as a trap!

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