Jason Kenney – who never met a contradiction he couldn’t get his arms around – is now weighing in, as it were, on the Ontario election.  And so he  apparently thinks Tea Party Tim Hudak’s plan to render Ontario into Arizona is a cool idea.

Would that be the same Jason Kenney, perchance, who said these things?

“As you know, they have great challenges in having their foreign degrees and qualifications recognized by the relevant licensing bodies here in Canada. And if they’re not within those categories of those professions, almost all newcomers find themselves stuck in the Canadian experience paradox, as I call it: no Canadian job without Canadian experience; no Canadian experience without a Canadian job.“

“That’s why our government has tripled the federal investment in integration, settlement and language training – programs with free English and French courses for newcomers to Canada.“(Speaking Notes for The Hon. Jason Kenney, PC MP, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism to the 2009 Top Employer Summit “Helping Newcomers to Enter the Workforce”, Toronto, Ontario November 19, 2009)

Jason, how are you ever going to run for Stephen Harper’s job when you’ve contorted yourself into knots?

 

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Yet here we are, the Tories’ gaping lead shrunk like the wool sweater I accidentally put in the dryer. No one is predicting the outcome now.

Why? Neither Hudak nor Horwath have been inspiring. Neither have ambitious platforms. People in Toronto who elected conservative Mayor Rob Ford to “stop the gravy train” are finding out that could mean cutting popular services. But I wouldn’t dare judge a volatile electorate yet…

From the University of Windsor medical and engineering schools, to the casino to the Windsor-Essex Parkway, Duncan, Pupatello and the Liberals have delivered here. We received more money than anywhere else to stimulate the economy during the recession.

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Mark Sutcliffe, quote unquote:

“Hudak also called the program an “affirmative action program for foreign workers” and said the Liberals were telling unemployed Ontarians the government was paying companies to hire “anybody but you,” which is a bit of a stretch considering there are already programs in place that take taxpayers’ money and put it toward training all kinds of different workers, including immigrants and non-immigrants and Hudak himself introduced a bill a year ago that would have paid companies for providing language training for recent immigrants.”

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High profile Ontario Conservative Randy Hillier has built his political career as an outsider fighting against big government, but that may extend beyond policy.

CTV has obtained public documents showing that Hillier and his wife are in a long-running dispute with Canada Revenue Agency over unpaid taxes. The government has placed two liens on his home.

Hillier, who is seeking re-election in Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington, is a politician who is never boring and always blunt.

He staged a two-day sit-in at the provincial legislature in December 2009 over the lack of public hearings on the HST.

Documents from the provincial land registry, which are available to the public, show the government placed two liens on property owned by Hillier and his wife more than a year ago.

One of the liens is $9,017. The other is $5,863.

More here.

 

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It may look friendly. It wasn’t.

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Tune in!

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…and that’s just some of the nice things I say.  Check it out.

I pull out the Tim Hudak flip-flops. This marks the only occasion when Brian smiles at me.

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OTTAWA — A local Conservative is endorsing the Liberal candidate for the provincial election in Carleton-Mississippi Mills, calling the “narrow-minded” politics of Progressive Conservative candidate Jack MacLaren “the wrong choice for the riding.”

Matt Muirhead ran for city council in 2006 and again in 2010. He is a former executive director of the riding’s provincial Progressive Conservative association and the past president of the riding’s federal Conservative association.

Muirhead said Wednesday that MacLaren’s recent “unnecessary ousting” of 33-year veteran and nine-time cabinet minister Norm Sterling showed “a total lack of class and respect.”

The nomination upset highlighted tensions inside the conservative Caucus. Sterling called fellow MPP Randy Hillier and MacLaren “political opportunists” who “want to use the good name of the Progressive Conservative party to push their very narrow and right-wing agenda into the provincial arena.”

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Custom footwear I developed for my Sun News appearances today. And watch out – I’m even co-hosting a show tomorrow morning!

It got very heated on Lilley’s show – I think I may have called Hudak a “goddamned hypocrite” about this.

Check it out if you dare!

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New immigrants to Ontario must wonder how they suddenly went from being valued Canadians, whose skills our economy needs, to being publicly derided as “foreigners.” On day one of a provincial election campaign, no less…

Hoping for political gain, Hudak is happily stirring up tensions by claiming that unemployed Ontarians will be left behind. His party even rushed out a new campaign ad saying that “Ontarians need not apply” under the Liberal plan…

But the controversy that Hudak is stirring up is not about the substance of particular policies. It’s about wedge politics. On Tuesday he claimed that the tax breaks offered by the Liberals would help companies hire “anybody but you.”

That kind of language divides Ontarians into an “us” and a “them.” Creating divisions between struggling, unemployed workers and newer immigrants is dangerous to our long-term social cohesion. In Toronto, half of us were born outside Canada. There is no us versus them. Theyare us. And the faster we get newcomers into good jobs in the workforce and paying higher taxes the better for us all.

There’s a lot on the line during an election and parties often go a bit overboard to score points on their opponents. Hudak’s rhetoric and the PC party’s “Ontarians need not apply” ad go too far. It amounts to a thinly veiled attack on immigrants.

There may be political advantage to be had in this approach; we’ll find out on Oct. 6. But regardless of the outcome, this is the politics of division. It is angry. It is ugly. And it’s not what Ontarians are about.

 

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