On Keeping Ms. Wynne As OLP Leader

This is from an email from Ontario Proud, who may be a PCPO front group:

And it's true.  I cannot see a party led by some coup leader doing better than the current leader. As for recent polls, McGuinty was down 15% back in 2011, which is similar to today's numbers after inflation.  And if politics was the UFC I would say that the OLP is good fighting on their backs. They can find Patrick Brown's weakness, and submit him.

Remember that line from Beowulf : Luck, Often Enough, Will Find A Man If His Courage Holds.

When Green Energy Meets Endangered Species In Ontario

...you get something like this decision from the Environmental Registry, allowing Grand Valley Wind Farms Inc. to build nine wind turbines in the Township of East Luther Grand Valley on Bobolink habitat.  The restrictions seem quite elaborate, and involve "more than mitigation measures or “replacing” what is lost", for example providing and maintaining 12.5 hectares of Prime Bobolink habitat on nearby Grand Valley owned land and timing construction activity to avoid the bird's nesting season.  An idea of the amount of resistance to the project can be gleaned from this passage:

A total of 89 comments were received in response to this Environmental Registry notice. Forty-eight responses were form letters which objected to allowing a private developer to harm species at risk and questioned how such authorizations can be justified under the ESA. The individual comments expressed concern that the focus was on business interests rather than protection of species at risk and urged consideration of alternatives which would not have a negative impact on Bobolink (five responses were duplicates).


Looks like the form letters came from the now defunct Wind Concerns Ontario

MikeHudak/Tim Harris

Ontario News Watch has been gradually expanding beyond simple news aggregation into investigative jurnalism, with occasionally impressive results.  For example, this story:

Directly contrary to what PC leader Tim Hudak's advisors have been saying publicly for two years, a number of former Premier Mike Harris' so-called "Whiz Kids" were involved at the highest levels of the Tim Hudak election campaign, crafting strategy both before and during the fall election, ontarionewswatch.com has confirmed with multiple sources.

Not surprising, of course, but also not confirmed until today.  And if the Hudak campaign seemed to resemble earlier Mike Harris go-rounds in its attempts to exploit wedge issues, there's a reason for that:

Sources also say it was Mr. [Paul] Rhodes, along with campaign aides Chad Rogers and Jason Lietaer, that pushed hard for Mr. Hudak to use the controversial phrase "foreign workers" to describe those who would benefit from the Liberal promise to subsidize the salaries of professional immigrants for a year.

[...]

Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Rogers bragged to colleagues they'd found the "silver bullet" to take down the Liberals, the source said.

But my favoroite bit is this exchange with Whiz kid Leslie Noble, who co-chaired Mr. Harris' 1995 and 1999 campaigns, and who regularly attended Hudak campaign strategy meetings:

 "I don't need to take calls like this on a Sunday fucking night...What kind of a horse-shit story is this?" she asked.

Nice job.

Quick Notes

...on the Ontario Election results.

1) Folks weren't that angry after all.  The opposition here--as opposed to B.C.--to the HST was never more than muted.  That was the first sign to those who were looking.  The cost of Hydro as an election issue?  That always struck me as a bit of a snore.  And Hudak's attempts at wedge politics failed miserably.

2) A week is a long time in politics.  Just eyeballing recent poll numbers,  it looks to me like the NDP peaked about two weeks back.  Part of their decline stemmed from the Liberal attack machine training their guns on their left flank; part is, maybe, that people are moving beyond Jack Layton's passing.

3) While I'm thrilled Rocco Rossi is out, I'm sad that Bernie Farber isn't in.  Good luck in whatever you do with the rest of your life, Bernie.

4) Hudak should stay on as PCPO leader.  I doubt there is any real move to replace him, but if so, leaders usually need at least one campaign before they find their feet as politicians and decide where they want to take their party.  You can't keep swapping front-men after a poor result.  Or, you can, but then you become the Federal Liberals.

MTHIRTY Pulls Down Another Fake Enviro-Blog

MTHIRTY is the marketing firm behind the PWU's (Power Workers Union) social media campaign against the McGuinty Green Energy Act.  Part of this campaign involved creating a number of fake blogs touting the PWU's stance on AGW and sustainable energy.  Yesterday evening, two of these, Enviralment and Envirogy, went down for "maintenance" and have not come back up again.  This morning, Mike De Souza, who authored the original exposé, tells me that a third flog, Environauts, which is also licensed to MTHIRTY, has restricted access to its contents. 

Ontario Progressive Conservatives Go Gay Bashing

The article from Xtra is fairly in-depth. The most interesting bit:

Liberal spokesperson Alicia Johnston says the flyers were distributed in English and Punjabi in a Brampton grocery store...

...which reminds me of this incident from the Toronto mayoral race, in which somebody ran ads on Tamil Radio bashing (gay) candidate George Smitherman.  Clearly, there are some elements of Ontario's South Asian community that will respond to this kind of false material (check out these twitter feeds for just some of the inaccuracies in the flyer), and it looks like Hudak and Co. have decided to target their vote.

Monday Morning Notes

 Junk-mail: this piece of homophobic drivel is circulating in a number of Brampton ridings.  It has been officially sanctioned the the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (note the boilerplate text at the bottom).  It is bullshit: parents are informed at the start of every semester re the "equity topics " that will be covered during the term (see page 14 of this document).  They are not informed in advance of each lesson that, for example, homosexuality will be dealt with during that lesson.

A truly ugly piece of campaign literature.

Meanwhile, Tory MPP Randy Hillier ends this campaign as he began it: in dutch with the law.

Who's Endorsing Rocco Rossi?

...actually, they've gone PCPO down the line, it looks like.  That's JDL-Canada--the guys that made allies of Stephen Lennon, leader of that gang of neo-Nazis, pedophiles, and crack heads that is the English Defense League, who is now looking at slammer time for assault.

PCPO Campaign In A Nutshell

...tearing down stuff they don't like.

More Dirty Business: Who Funds Wind Concerns Ontario, Part II

According to Elections Ontario, if you want to spend over $500 getting word out on your issues during a provincial election, you have to register as a third party advertiser.  We know that Wind Concerns Ontario, the anti-wind-energy group with connections to Climate Change Denialists, has bought billboards:

But they have not, as yet, registered as third party players.

Now, when you register, you have to give certain information that eventually becomes public, including the sources of your funding.  So, if WCO plays the game according to Hoyle, in six months we find out how "grass roots"  they really are. 

So far, though, they don't appear to be living up to their obligations.  Who knows why not?

Gerry Nicholls: Full Metal Wingnut?

All that matters [to David Suzuki] is his almost mystical need to stop climate change, even if that’s an impossible task.

And this perhaps is why Suzuki is endorsing McGuinty. It actually has nothing to do with those giant wind-turbines ( McGuinty’s Mechanical Monsters) which blight the rural landscape.

Suzuki simply realizes that McGuinty is to Ontario’s economy what Arnold Schwarzenegger is to wedding vows.

And by that I mean McGuinty’s policies of high taxes, excessive regulation and massive deficits will ultimately cripple Ontario’s economy.

This will increase Ontario’s poverty and unemployment and economic misery, but on the green bright side it will also result in a lessening of industrial activity which might slightly reduce the province’s greenhouse gas emissions.

This is the future Suzuki is applauding.

OK.  So this appears in the Canada Free Press, so Gerry probably doesn't believe any of this horseshit, he's probably just pandering to the "turbine truthers" in his audience.  But if he does actually think that David Suzuki wants to increase "poverty" and "economic misery" in Ontario, and that's why he's supporting the McGuinty Green Energy legislation...if he actually believes that Mr. Suzuki is evil, in other words, then Gerry Nicholls is a kook.  I truly hope, therefore, that Gerry is being entirely cynical, shovelling boob-bait to the yokels that frequent CFP.  The alternative is frightening to contemplate.

That is all.

Tory Turmoil Up Kanata Way

It didn’t take long for community members to come out swinging at a Carleton-Mississippi Mills all-candidate’s debate on Sept. 19 held by the Kanata Chamber of Commerce and Metroland Media Group at Holy Trinity Catholic High School in Kanata.

In the first question of the evening, Progressive Conservative candidate Jack MacLaren faced Matt Muirhead, a Kanata resident and former executive director of the riding’s provincial Progressive Conservative association.

Calling Tory veteran Norm Sterling’s ousting “wrong”, Muirhead said that he himself has been banned from the party for life and has since become a supporter of Cornell.

Boy, these Ex-Landowners have been nothing but trouble for Mr. Hudak.

Sun Smears Suzuki

 When you read this story about the "controversy" David Suzuki and his foundation have found themselves in for endorsing Dalton McGuinty's Green Energy initiatives, you have to read between the lines.  What's between the lines can be found in a November 2010 blog post by Donna Laframboise, once journalist for the National Post.  It covers a lunch-time meeting between her and Sun Media's Kory Teneycke, in which young Kory tried to convince Donna to return to the business as a T.O. Sun columnist and Sun TV News talking head:

Kory responded to my really, I’m not a television person protestations with assurances that it would be OK. At the beginning, few people would be watching anyway, he insisted. He was sure that, with a bit of practice, I’d do fine.

[Teneycke's]one firm directive was that I should challenge David Suzuki.

Sun media has been planning to target David Suzuki since April of 2010 (when Kory met Donna).  They appear not to have hired a designated Suzuki basher, as per the original plan. But nothing else seems to have changed.

Download This Video!

 WK has dug up the much suppressed video footage of Stephen Harper calling for a "hat trick": Torys at the municipal, federal, and provincial level.  Tim Hudak's gang have been trying to make footage disappear ever since.  Meanwhile, a new Leger poll suggests the hat-trick may be hard to achieve--another dead heat, although this one with the PCPO a few points up.

David Suzuki Confirms That NDP Is No Longer The Party Of Environmentalists

Dear NDPers,

When I was young and growing up in B.C. I used to vote for you people.  Then, Mike Harcourt sold out over Clayoquot Sound, went from being a Green to a hippy kicker as soon as he came into power and had to choose between the unionistas and enviros.  And this NDP preference--for choosing free beer for autoworkers at union meetings over protecting our shared environmental heritage--was confirmed when Carole James vowed to repeal the B.C. carbon tax in 2009,  by Jack Layton in the 2008 federal campaign, and by Andrea Horwath's current campaign for Ontario Premier. 

No wonder Mr. Suzuki can't stomach you anymore.  And, as I say, this isn't being purely partisan. I used to vote NDP.  You have truly disappointed me. It has become evident over time that your enviro wing served the same purpose as the SoCon wing of Canadian Conservative parties.  You gave them sweet words, but when push came to shove it was always the autoworker slamming a six-pack in the parking lot of his plant in Oakville at lunch that won out over the well-being of the noble fox snake.  

So, people talk about the LPoC losing parts of its base, but an equally important historical fact about voting behavior in the past decade is that the NDP has lost about 10% of the national vote that it might harvest to the Green Party and Liberals.  If you ever want to form a government nationally you will have to win that back somehow.  I don't see any evidence that you are even trying.  Andrea Horwath sure isn't.

Complete This Sentence: Bad News For The Ford Regime

is bad news for...

Vote For Hudak, And This Little Fellow Gets It

 Seriously.  Or at least  Carleton-Mississippi Mills Tory candidate Jack MacLaren would allow roads to be built into the provincially endangered species' habitat.  Useful, I think, to remind people of the words of Norm Sterling--the Tory MPP who Mr. MacLaren usurped--when he spoled of the rural Libertarian wing of the PCPO that Mr. MacLaren represents:

"They don't believe in conservation authorities, they don't believe in milk marketing boards, they go so far as to say let's abandon our planning laws in the province of Ontario."

Ontario PCs: For Tim...

...safety comes first.

Torys Tank In T.O.

 ...in this new Forumn Poll.

I'll be away from the computer until this evening, so this may be it for the day.  Meanwhile, team Hudak, straight from telling the good folks of London that he will grow the local economy by killing the Samsung solar parts plant, adjusted his strategy in Windsor by refusing to say how many jobs he would eliminate there in the name of economic growth.

And, oh, the Abacus poll is crap.

Your Daily Hillier: A 2 Hillier Day!

From his Facebook page today:

Seems like Randy hasn't got the ixnay on the mudfolksway message from Hudak Central; as of this morning he was still claiming that the McGuinty No Skills Left Behind tax credit was aimed at foreigners, rather than available to Canadian citizens.

Mind you, fellow Ontario Landowners Associaition alumni Jack MacLaren had an even worse flub up.

Ah well.  Maybe its time to cue it up.