187 Search Results for wynne

So, the good people of Thornhill and Niagara vote today.  Here are my predictions, and I expect all of you to mock me if (when) I am shown to be wrong.

1. Thornhill: Seriously? Harper was in Israel when this by-election was called.  Canadian Jews are conservative.  Hudak will keep it, Wynne will be second (but not close) and the NDP will only be kept alive by endangered species protection laws.
2. Niagara Falls: This one’s the big one.  It was an Ontario Liberal seat for a long, long time.  The Wynne Liberals are going to finish in a distant third place, however, and the NDP are going to win it – and it’s right next door to Tim Hudak’s home riding, too.  For both Wynne and Hudak, an NDP victory will represent humiliation on a historic scale.  For Horwath, it means she’s a lot closer to being Premier of Ontario.

If I’m right – and of course, I am – it means a Spring election.  Niagara Falls will give Horwath what she needs to stare down  Sid Ryan and his ilk, who cravenly want to prop up Wynne as long as possible.

Who will win the election? The Ontario NDP, methinks.  That’s been my view for months, and all that has happened in the past year has reinforced that view.

 

Comments (23)

The rule I have always followed is this: in any letter or email, the message being conveyed is always contained in the second-to-last paragraph. The first part is just throat-clearing and the end part is just sign-off.

So, too stories about polling, it seems. The way I read it, the Star has finally figured out it look’s like a horse’s ass pimping all those Forum “Research” polls – the accuracy of which are discussed here and here – and they’re now hedging their bets. Thus, the second-to-last paragraph:

“Like most polling firms, Forum uses a proprietary weighting formula, which has been shared with the Star, to more accurately reflect the broader electorate. Raw data from this poll will be housed in the Political Science Data Library at the University of Toronto.”

So, if you want to see how wildly they’re off this time, you’d better start your trek through the snow to U of T, you hear?

Anyway. After talking to various pollsters and politicos, your Free Warren Poll™ is this:

• The Wynne Liberals are in third place in North, Southwestern Ontario and Eastern Ontario, and have been for some time;
• The chances of the Hudak PCs losing Thornhill, when the Libs bizarrely called the by-election at the same Stephen Harper was in Israel,  are somewhere between slim and none;
• The Board are doing to the Ontario Liberals what they did ten years ago to the federal Liberals;
• The Hudak PCs, like the Wynne Liberals, are now both attacking the Horwath NDP in paid and earned, which tells you all you need to know; and
• The Wynne Liberal pollster has told cabinet that all they can now hope to hold is fortress Toronto, but they can hold onto government, if they pick up a few GTA seats – which is more on crack that Rob Ford is.

This Free Warren Poll™ is completely 100 per cent accurate, 20 times out of 20.  You’re welcome.

 

 

Comments (9)

If you were at the sold-out Jean Chretien tribute on Tuesday night, as we were, you would have heard Kathleen Wynne speak – even though she wasn’t on the program to do so.

Meanwhile, Paul Martin – who was in the program – surprised some folks by not being there.

I’m sure it had nothing to do with this, which came the very next day.

It may all be one great big coincidence. I’m sure it is.

 

 

Comments (1)

As in, everything he touches turns to garbage.

This Toronto Star typist gets one big thing wrong, here: Ryan is no friend of Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, or many NDP partisans. I’m a Liberal, and I know that much. (A round-up of the last exchange Sidney and I had, in that regard, is here.)

Ryan’s sole objective is to get labour to support the coming budget: that’s all he cares about.  Other, more sensible, labour leaders have a bigger concern – keeping the Ontario PC anti-labour policies from ever being implemented.

That may be achieved by supporting Kathleen Wynne.  Or, that may be achieved by supporting Andrea Horwath.  My hunch, as I’ve written previously, is they’ll take the latter route – not Sid Ryan’s.

 

 

Comments (1)

Like, how in the name of God is this in any way news? It would be news if Wynne, Hudak et al. were agreeing to meet with Mayor Crackhead, wouldn’t it? Not the reverse. Weird.

Comments (12)

Hi Warren,

How are you?
i hope good.

* If posting to your blog would help get the phone numbers i need, please don’t include my or my parents names or address in your blog post.

My parents are still without power, in toronto. they are 85 years old.
They have been staying in different homes of their kids for the last week.

All of their children are concerned about the stress they are under.

A city tree had a limb come down on their hydro line.

Multiple tickets have been reported to hydro about this.

Hydro will give no information as to when their line will be fixed or where they are in the cue. Hydro said they DO NOT prioritize people based on any vulnerabilities they might have, and as well, the front line hydro person had no idea how hydro
chooses who’s line they will fix next.

This is horrible emergency planning. Hydro needs to fully assess their emergency planning to make sure a better emergency system is in place.

Warren, Do you know how i can find the cell phone numbers of Kathleen Wynne, Norm Kelly, Rob Ford, Hydro Ceo Anthony Haines, Hydro safety person – Ave Lethbridge, or
their assistants or media relations people?

Or a phone number for the right person at hydro to get this sorted out right away. the 416 542 8000 number and related dynamic is useless.

My brothers and sisters and I are very concerned about my parents health and well being, since they cannot go home and have no idea when they will be able to return.

I want to make sure Hydro sends out a truck as soon as possible to fix their line, and get at least a rough ETA as to when this is likely to happen.

thanks for your consideration about this, WK,

MUCH APPRECIATED!

josh X

416 922 XXXX

Comments (7)

And the great Christmas 2013 blackout continues.

As you guys know, I am kind of obsessed with the confluence of disasters and politics. Of such things are political careers made and unmade, I like to say.

Deputy Toronto Mayor Norm Kelly undid his when he decided to jet off to Florida, mid-calamity. Doesn’t matter what the reason was: he is now forever marked by that quick trip.

Mayor Crackhead hasn’t been hurt by any of it, conversely, because he’s stuck around. It’s the Giuliani Effect™, you might say: you can be saying and doing precisely nothing substantive, but if you’re on the news every day, offering soothing platitudes, it can’t hurt. Ford also benefits from rather low expectations: when you’re a crack-smoking, drunk-driving lying sack of garbage, you can only go up, you know?

Kathleen Wynne? Jury is still out. Nobody does emote better. But, as folks start to get angrier, will they get angry at her? Hard to say.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have been in the cold and dark for a week, now. There’s going to be Hell to pay, by the time this thing is done.

What’s your take?

Comments (23)

Wynne has this incongruity I like: she smiles a lot and is friendly, but she is absolutely brutal when fat-cats start getting reckless with taxpayer-subsidized expense accounts.  It’s like a bureaucratic Game of Thrones, and she’s the one swinging the axe. Voters like that.

It’s not necessarily a theme to carry her through an entire election campaign, but it’s better than what she’s got right now.

 

Comments (1)

Political courage, someone once said, is not political suicide.

Noble sentiment, I guess, but it’s also worth knowing that the author of the statement was Arnold Schwarzenegger (not Camus, who provided the inspiration for this post’s title).  Arnold, of course, would subsequently go on to commit political suicide.

I thought of The Arnold’s little maxim, this morning, as I read Adrian Morrow’s bit in the Globe:

“Kathleen Wynne will fight the next election over a promise to raise taxes to build transit, staking her premiership on the belief voters will accept short-term pain to finally break the gridlock crippling Southern Ontario.

The move, which the Premier acknowledged is a risky one, would allow her to solve one of the province’s largest and most persistent problems, as well as form the basis for a strong legacy.“

Telling Ontarians “vote for me so I can raise your taxes” doesn’t seem, on the surface, to be a sure-fire winning strategy.  The last guy to do similarly was Stephane Dion.  Here’s what I wrote about his Green Shift before, during and after the 2008 election:

“Stephane Dion was a decent, good man, but he possessed one critical flaw: For anglophones, he was too hard to understand. When proposing a “green shift” that would see gas prices go up — during a summer when voters were already paying nearly $1.50 a litre — that failure to communicate would prove fatal.

Meanwhile, his attempt to forge a coalition government with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe looked like a gaggle of losers trying to overturn the election result of 2008. The damage to the Liberal brand would be significant.“

Wynne is a great communicator, and she isn’t (yet) proposing a coalition with anyone.  But, per Stein, a tax is a tax is a tax.  It’s not a “revenue tool” – it’s a tax.

If that is indeed the Ontario Liberal ballot question, they will get a few editorials praising them for their courage (like Dion did).  But they will still lose (like Dion did).

Tim Hudak is against every and any taxes, because he is against government.  Voters haven’t taken him seriously, to date, and I don’t expect them to in the future.  I’ve met him once or twice, and find him to be a nice fellow.  But, on TV, he turns into the GOP talking points bot.  He won’t win.

Andrea Horwath, meanwhile, has been campaigning for a while, and her focus is pocketbook stuff.  She’s a New Democrat in the Roy Romanow tradition: balanced budgets where feasible, centrist policy, and no new taxes.  That’s what she’ll say in the election, too: we think you pay enough.  Transit is a problem, but a party that wastes billions at Ornge and OPG shouldn’t come to taxpayers, hand out, demanding billions more.

It’s good to be principled and honest and forthright.  But your principles don’t mean much when you are the third party in the legislature.

If today’s Globe story is true, that – I fear – is where the politically-courageous Ontario Liberals are heading.

 

Comments (24)

Dear Chief Blair:

Other folks want to canonize you as a saint. I’ve never felt that way, for various reasons.

Another reason: your guys had the goods on Rob Ford six ways to Sunday. Schedule One narcotic use and possession (as he’s admitted); extortion (threatening the power of his office to get back the cell phone with drug connections on it); participation in a criminal organization (the new offence created, ironically enough, by his pal Stephen Harper).

As others have said, correctly, if a poor non-white kid had been implicated in just one of the above-noted crimes, they’d still be in jail.

But Rob Ford? Again: you had him, and you let him go.  Why is that?

When Toronto gets a new mayor – and if you’re still around, which I increasingly tend to doubt – get ready for some tough questions, Chief.  There’ll be plenty of them.

Sincerely,

Warren Kinsella, LL.B

P.S. The questions will be directed at the Crown Attorney’s Office, too.  They’ve been as negligent as you, perhaps more so.  Kathleen Wynne’s maladroit Attorney-General will need to answer for that, I think.

Comments (6)