Recent attack ads against Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak seem to have found their target, with Dalton McGuinty’s governing Liberals closing the gap between the two provincial parties, a new Nanos Research poll shows…

The negative ads launched by both the Conservatives and the Liberals have narrowed the race but it is too early to predict longer-term trends, pollster Nik Nanos cautioned.

The Liberal surge is explained by the proximity of their attack-ad campaign, Mr. Nanos said.

Mr. McGuinty…fought back last month by launching his own negative campaigning initiative, unveiling ads that said Mr. Hudak treated voters like “dolts” and “chumps.”

Support for the Liberals rose from 34 per cent in May to 37.6 per cent in the latest Nanos poll, conducted last week for the Globe and Mail and CTV.

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CTV / Nanos poll, broadcast on CTV Toronto @ 6pm:

PC – 42.1
OLP – 37.6
NDP – 16.2

1000 voters, Aug 10-12th

What’s it mean?

It means we Ontario Liberals have to work even harder, to earn the support of working Ontario families.

And we will!

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(EDITOR’S WARNING: If you are a federal Conservative, this column may make you faint. You are advised to immediately locate the smelling salts and lay down on the couch before proceeding any further.)

Yes, folks, it’s true: I am about to say something nice about Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Me, the resident Bolshevik at Sun Media. Me, the guy who never met a Conservative he didn’t like.

Here goes: Over the past few days, in which economic turmoil has left quite a few of us feeling exceedingly nervous, Jim Flaherty has been doing a not-bad job. A good job, even.

There, I said it.

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The Star broke a story yesterday that a front group calling itself People For A Better Ontario has been created to oppose the Ontario Liberals of Dalton McGuinty. The group is vehemently anti-abortion. anti-gay and anti-separation of church and state.

And they support Tim Hudak because he shares their vision for Ontario – anti-choice, anti-equality, anti-fairness.

What I found most interesting in the Star story is that a leader of the shadowy group is far right extremist Tristan Emmanuel. That Tim Hudak would seek the assistance of Emmanuel should concern everyone. Here’s a few reasons why, courtesy of a work colleague:

• Toronto Sun, March 31, 2009 – MPP Randy Hillier officially joined the race for leader of the Ontario PC Party yesterday with a pledge to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission and outlaw mandatory union membership…Hillier’s spokesman is Tristan Emmanuel, a political and religious activist who has organized protests against same-sex marriage.
• Toronto Star, May 15, 2009 – The federal Conservatives are crying foul against their provincial cousins in Ontario for alleged misuse of the national party’s membership list…The missive was sent to Andrew Boddington, Tristan Emmanuel, Mark Spiro and Paul Sutherland, senior campaign officials with candidates and MPPs Christine Elliott (Whitby-Oshawa), Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington), Tim Hudak (Niagara West-Glanbrook) and Frank Klees (Newmarket-Aurora), respectively.
• Wikipedia – Emmanuel was a candidate for the socially conservative Family Coalition Party in the Lincoln electoral division in the 1995 Ontario provincial election. He was quoted as saying, “It’s time to have a principled party that understands there’s a higher power than the government, a power we believe is God.”
• Wikipedia – Emmanuel ran against prominent federal politician Sheila Copps in a 1996 by-election as a candidate of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada. He argued that Canada’s Young Offenders Act should be abolished and corporal punishment reintroduced to schools, and was quoted as saying, “If an eleven-year-old murders someone, I think his life should be taken.”
• Wikipedia – In April 2003, he organized a “Canadians for Bush” rally in Queenston Heights, Ontario, to support the American invasion of Iraq. The rally was attended by several prominent federal and provincial politicians, including Stockwell Day and provincial cabinet ministers Jim Flaherty and Tim Hudak.
• Wikipedia – [The release quoted] excerpts from several of Emmanuel’s writings, asserting that he had described gay men as “sexual deviants” and Islam as “as far from peace, as hell is from heaven” in separate articles written in 2002.
• Wikipedia – Emmanuel campaigned against the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Canada in 2005, organizing several rallies across the country, including one outside Parliament Hill in Ottawa and another at Queen’s Park outside the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
• Wikipedia – In a 2005 interview with the Hamilton Spectator, Emmanuel described homosexuality as “a choice,” said that he regarded it as “the wrong choice, a bad choice,” and further argued that “the state shouldn’t sanction wrong choices.”

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Following that Ipsos poll showing his party losing whatever lead they had – principally, I’m told, because of voter concerns about a “hidden agenda” on abortion and a Conservative cabal running all three levels of government – Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak has come off his vacation early, and hastily scheduled a presser for a Friday afternoon.

Cutting short a holiday? Friday afternoon press conferences? It’s all consistent with what we’ve been hearing: the tall foreheads in the Hudak-Hillier PCs are panicked that they peaked too soon, and that abortion and the Harper-Hudak-Ford Trifecta stuff is hurting them, big time.

Have a great press conference, Tim! We’re rooting for your continued weaselly leadership!

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From a  quick-witted Ontario Liberal staffer, about this:

TORONTO – Andrea Horwath wants a little elbow room for cyclists.

“We think that that’s a simple measure that if there’s a cyclist on the road, it’s incumbent on the motorized vehicle to stay away by a metre from that cyclist,” the New Democratic Party Leader said Thursday.

“So if that means that you have slow down and wait until you can safely be a metre away from the cyclist, then that’s what you need to do,” she said. “We have to get serious about making sure that people can safely ride bicycles in this province.”

Horwath said if elected on Oct. 6, her party would change the Highway Traffic Act so that motorists would be fined for crowding out two-wheeled traffic.

But how police would enforce such a rule on packed and narrow roads wasn’t entirely clear.

Personally, I’m not quite sure how this one is going to go down in Timmins or Bancroft.

But one Lib staffer had the best line of the Summer:

“The Ontario NDP want motorists to move far to the left – and voters, too.  But they won’t!”

 

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I’m thumbing this on the new Berry 9900. Got it for myself for my birthday.

Here’s your wk.com review, gratis:

1. It’s the lightest and thinnest Berry yet.
2. The screen is bigger and sharper.
3. The OS is, as advertised, much faster.
4. The touch-screen feature is awesome. Easy to adjust to.
5. I don’t like the track pad, but the touch screen makes that irrelevant.

Bottom line? Will it save RIM? Beats me.

Is it worth getting? Yes.

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Do you really want the same Conservative cabal running everything?

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…or that abortion “isn’t an issue,” or Harper’s “hat trick” speech was no biggie, what do you say now?

In a flash sample poll conducted last weekend on 400 decided voters, Ipsos Reid found that the gap between Hudak and McGuinty continues to narrow. Of those polled, 38% say they would vote for Hudak and the Conservatives if an election were held tomorrow, while 36% would stick with McGuinty and the Liberals.

And:

Those surveyed also believed McGuinty only fared better than Hudak in one leadership quality: someone who has a hidden agenda. The premier garnered 46% in this area, while Hudak came in at 35%, Horwath at 14% and Schriener at six per cent.

This was a large improvement for McGuinty who dropped 10 points in this poll compared to when the same question was asked last year, according to Ipsos Reid.

My, my. If you don’t mind, I think I will continue to pay attention to Tim Hudak’s dishonesty on reproductive choice – and on his desire to have the same political party run the GTA, the country as well as the province.

My, my.

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Dear PMO:

So, does this rule apply to your Prime Minister, who came to Toronto a few days ago to call for a Conservative Party “hat trick” – so that the same Conservative cabal is running Canada, Canada’s largest city, and Ontario, too? Does the rule apply to him, as he tries to influence the outcome of the Ontario election?

Sincerely,

Warren

P.S. Here’s the “Conservative political dynasty” video evidence you tried to scrub from the Internet, PMO, in case you need reminding – you know, the “hat trick” stuff.

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