X Marks the Spot

Let me know if this sounds familiar: Dalton McGuinty says he will not raise taxes.

Sounds very much like the 2003 election, doesn't it? In fact, it's what McGuinty is now saying, in the run-up to this October's election.

As you'll remember, McGuinty made the original no-tax-increase promise shortly before being elected Premier and bringing in, in his first budget, a huge tax increase in the form of a health premium.

This time he really means it, though. Reporters even checked behind his back for crossed fingers.

The difference between 2003 and now is that McGuinty is in charge. He knows there's no surprise deficit, as there was when he took over for Ernie Eves in 2003.

Progressive Conservative leader John Tory has said he'll get rid of the health premium over the course of four years if he's elected. It's a smart promise politically but will likely be difficult to implement since it will cost the Province $2.6 billion. That's a big chunk of money to lose.

Bill Casey, MP for Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley in Nova Scotia, has been kicked out of the Conservative Party.

Earlier today, he voted against the government's budget, which, of course, isn't generally appreciated by the prime minister. Casey was, up until a few hours ago, the longest-serving Conservative MP in the House of Commons.

The National Post reported that Casey voted against the budget implementation act "on the grounds (the budget) breaks Mr. Harper's 2006 federal election campaign promise to honour terms of the 2005 Atlantic Accord. The accord excluded 100 per cent of offshore resource revenues in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador from the equalization formula used to redistribute wealth among the provinces."

One assumes, for the time being, Casey will sit as an independent.

That means it's time again to rack up the seat scores in the House of Commons.

We'll start with the numbers that resulted from the January 23 election, and move from there:

Conservatives (124) + Emerson - Turner + Khan - Casey = 124

Liberals (103) - Emerson - Fontana + Pearson - Khan + Turner - Comuzzi = 101

Bloc Quebecois (51) - Sauvageau + Gravel - Thibault = 50

Independents (1) + Turner - Turner + Comuzzi + Thibault + Casey = 4

For background on the other twists that have led to the above moves, visit this old blog post.

The 2007 provincial election campaign has begun.

Dalton McGuinty has prorogued the house three weeks earlier than scheduled, leaving the MPPs to fight their challengers without having to worry about going to the Legislature for government business.

In other news, Dalton is coming to Mississauga later this week, presumably to talk up his record and drop some hints about the platform he'll run on this time around.

Also, John Tory and the Tories will be having their big policy convention this weekend in Toronto, giving some hints about what we can expect from the Progressive Conservatives this autumn.

And the NDP, as is their wont, will go largely unnoticed.

Voting day is October 10. Choose your representatives wisely.

And don't forget we have a referendum that day, too.

To my surprise, The Family Coalition Party (FCP) appears to be more organized than most of the political parties in Mississauga.

They have four candidates already lined up to fight ridings in Mississauga. That's the same number as the Tories, and four more than the NDP have set up for the election (though the NDP do have nomination meetings set up for next week).

According to their website, The FCP is "Ontario's only pro-life, pro-family political party."

As we well know, the other political parties are all anti-family. I think, when John Tory releases his party's policies this weekend, one of his planks will be to disband all families.

The FCP website goes on to state that the party is "the only provincial party that endorses the principles of the preamble to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Canadian Constitution: 'Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law...'"

So, we have a party that is pro-life, pro-family and pro-God. Not sure which version of god, but I have a strange feeling it's the Christian one.

Pro-life is pretty straight forward. No abortion, no assisted suicide.

Pro-family is more open to interpretation. The FCP interpretation seems fairly straight forward. The top link on their website is to an article entitled, "The unintended consequences of women's liberation." They like straight, married people with children, particularly if only the man works outside the home while the woman can keep the home clean and take care of the children. That is their definition of family.

There is a small problem with their webpage, too, other than the dead links and horrid layout. It looks as if someone forgot to tell them election day has moved from Oct. 4 to Oct. 10 because of a Jewish holiday.

Good luck, Family Coalition Party.

Premier Dalton McGuinty was in the office today, and I took the opportunity to ask him, among other things, his stance on the Mixed-member Proportional (MMP) electoral system.

That system of electing our MPPs was proposed by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, which was set up by the preem.

The Assembly decided this MMP system is a more fair way of electing our MPPs than is our current first-past-the-post system.

Dalton, it turns out, isn't saying anything about his preference.

"I'm staying neutral on that," he said. "My commitment was to put (the question) to the people of Ontario...the commitment I made was that I would not sway public opinion."

He has let his caucus talk about it, though, and most of them appear to be coming out against the proposal.

More on that later.

There's going to be a hella party at the Toronto Sheraton this weekend as Ontario Progressive Conservative Party members gather to talk about their plans for the upcoming election.

They met today for some annual brainwashing from their dashing leader and his officers, and tonight, one assumes, they will be drinking into the wee hours of the morning while telling bad jokes about Dalton and Howard.

At the Saturday evening keynote, John Tory is expected to release some planks of his platform. Expect something about funding for religious education to come out of this, maybe announced this weekend, maybe later.

Also, expect drunk Tories to be streaking Queen Street West all through the weekend.

I just finished reading the 53-page platform released this weekend by the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

Good reading.

The problem is, and by no means am I the first to point this out, there's no costing on it.

The only real dollar figures are in savings.

Tory will cut the health tax. That's $2.5 billion.

He will also cut taxes by finding efficiencies.

"Ask yourself if there's room for the Ontario government to become 2% more efficient over the next four years," the platform reads.

I've asked myself, and the answer is, I don't have a clue. How would I? I know everyone thinks they can run the province better than the guy who's running it, but, even if I did believe 2% in efficiencies could be found, what would I be basing that on? Nothing.

Tory thinks those efficiencies can be found.

The platform insists, "With his strong leadership and management skills, John Tory knows how to find $1.5 billion in savings."

Good for him.

So, that's $4 billion total he's found.

There's a lot to deal with in the platform, but here are some highlights that will certainly have people squawking in the run-up to the Oct. 10 election.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS:

Private sector in public health care:
- "As long as universal accessibility is always protected and no one can buy access to better health care in Ontario, we will involve the private sector where there are opportunities to shorten waiting lists and improve access to high-quality, publicly-funded care."

-"Modernize and build new health care facilities through partnerships with communities and the public and private sectors."

Funding for religious education
-"...We are committed to creating an opportunity for non-Catholic, faith-based schools to choose to join our publicly-funded education system the same way Catholic schools have already done."

-To do so, the faith-based schools will need to:
1. Fully incorporate the complete requirements of Ontario's common curriculum, just as in the Catholic system
2. participate in Ontario’s standardized testing program and agree to published results
3. appropriately address teacher credentialing.

Here's the BBC report on Tony Blair's speech at the Reuters HQ from earlier today.

Blair is gone in 15 days, and he used this opportunity to call out reporters and their beast-like ways.

I actually heard part of his speech on CBC Radio One as I was on my way to a school board meeting this evening. I have to say, though I haven't heard the entire speech yet, I do agree with him.

***UPDATE***
You can find the Youtube video of Tony Blair talking about the speech here.

Even if you don't care to see the video, check out the link. 10 Downing Street has its own Youtube site. Pretty Cool.

Here's the text of the speech.

I've spent much of today going through old provincial election returns.

The most interesting thing I learned is that the United Farmers of Ontario Party was once the provincial government, back in 1919.

The premier of that government was Ernest Charles Drury, the namesake of the school for the deaf in Milton.

Drury was our eighth premier, his term lasting from 1919 to 1923, and he oversaw a minority government.

The United Farmers party had 45 of 112 seats.

That year, the Progressive Conservatives had 25 seats, the Liberals had 29, Labour had 11, and Independents had 2.

"Mr. Speaker, the long, tiring, unproductive era of bickering between the provincial and federal governments is over."
- Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, in his 2007 Budget Speech on March 19, 2007.

First, Saskatchewan:
Saskatchewan will sue over equalization: Calvert

Out East:
Atlantic premiers hint of legal fight in accord dispute

Specifically, Newfoundland and Labrador
Williams considers joining Sask. equalization suit

And Prince Edward Island
Equalization formula to cost P.E.I. $196 million

And Nova Scotia
Ottawa will not bully us, MacDonald vows

And now Ontario
McGuinty talks tough on equalization

The Hill Times, a weekly Parliament Hill newspaper, has published its annual list of top parliamentarians in various categories.

Scott Brison won best dressed, as he always does, Brampton-area MP Ruby Dhalla won sexiest female, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper won Best House Orator.

What is most important, though, is that our own Mississauga-Brampton South MP, Navdeep Bains, got top spot for Best Up-and-Comer.

In the past month, two Mississauga representatives have been featured in annual surveys.

You'll remember, of course, that Tim Peterson won two categories in Toronto Sun columnist Christina Blizzard's Queen's Park survey: "most likely to be defeated" and "least improved MPP."

John Tory's Tories released their platform all at once last weekend.

Dalton McGuinty is releasing his one plank at a time.

I've never really been sure of the point of releasing an entire platform at once and early on.

Tory received a couple of days of press for his platform, most of it lukewarm, with the press skipping the less interesting points.

McGuinty, so far, has several days of announcements covered by just about everybody, and there will be more announcements to come.

Stephen Harper's Conservatives did this in the last federal election, giving an announcement per day for much of the campaign.

It appears to be a solid strategy because, unless no one likes your ideas, it gets you in the paper every day promising to do something decent and worthwhile.

The provincial election isn't until Oct. 10, and the official campaign doesn't begin until Sept. 10. This makes one think that a good strategy would be to announce new initiatives for a couple of weeks, then spend the summer at barbecues and festivals shaking hands, then come back in September with big announcements every day or two, with the pre-summer announcements re-announced to pad the schedule and remind voters what you promised earlier in the year.

So, what is Dalton promising this time around?

Early June:
I don't remember it being an official announcement, but he did say he would not raise taxes, but he would not cut them either. It's roughly the same thing he said during the 2003 campaign, before he was elected and introduced an enormous tax hike in the form of the "health premium."

Mid-June:
Environment Minister Laurel Broten announced that she would ask Waste Diversion Ontario to report on an idea to impose an "eco-fee" on electronics. The "fee," which you could call a tax, in the same way a health premium could be called a tax, would be between $5 and $45, depending, one assumes, on what you buy. Waste Diversion Ontario is expected to get back to the government with their thoughts on an "eco-fee" in February, long after the next election. It all makes one wonder why the government would introduce the idea of a new tax a couple of weeks after saying there would be no new taxes, even though they're not going to introduce the new tax until after the next election, if they're elected, and if Waste Diversion Ontario thinks it's a good idea.

June 16:
$11.5 billion over 12 years for 52 new public transit projects. These announcements are always weird, since the government is only in power for four years but announcing things for three terms. Would another government stay true to the announcement? Anyway, for Mississauga, it means more transit on Hwy. 407, quicker transit along the Lakeshore line, and more trips through Mississauga on the Milton line.

June 18:
McGuinty promised that greenhouse gas emissions will be cut to six per cent below 1990 levels by 2014, just two years after the 2012 Kyoto deadline. McGuinty plans to meet the target by closing the four remaining coal-powered plants by 2014. He'll also count on public transit to cut 30 per cent from the overall output, and will offer incentives to municipalities and make cars more efficient.

June 19:
McGuinty will spend $650-million of Ontario's money to lure new investment in environmentally-friendly technologies in the auto sector.

If you're not familiar with the proposal for electoral reform that we'll all be voting for or against on Oct. 10, go here, here, and here to find out more.

The question Ontario voters will be answering was released by the government today.

It is as follows:

Which electoral system should Ontario use to elect members to the
provincial legislature?

The existing electoral system (First-Past-the-Post)

The alternative electoral system proposed by the Citizens' Assembly (Mixed Member Proportional)

The title sounds like the Liberal modus operandi. It's actually referring to the second entry in today's Friday roundup.

***

Weird.

Reading this story about a pilot flying over England and seeing a UFO makes me wonder how different the world would be if we ever found out there is, in fact, life elsewhere.

I fear the result wouldn't be positive.

***

This is the dumbest thing I've ever read.

Left is for walking; right, for standing. Those are the rules. You can't change the rules. How could one possibly stand still on an escalator - people aren't meant to move that slowly.

***

The Canadian government is now legally obligated to create a plan to meet the Kyoto Protocol targets, yet also constitutionally not allowed to meet those targets.

I posted about writer Yann Martel's project earlier this year, when he first got started.

He's sending one book every two weeks to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Martel, a Man Booker Prize winner for his novel Life of Pi, hopes this will help Harper reconsider his decision to cut $12 million from External Affairs for funding for promotion of Canadian artists in foreign countries.

He has now sent six books to the prime minister, and he has received one response, from Harper's assistant.

Susan Ross wrote to Martel, "On behalf of the Prime Minister, I would like to thank you for your recent letter and the copy of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych. We appreciated reading your comments and suggestions regarding the novel."

Personally, I'm holding out hope Harper will read some of the books and respond to Martel with his thoughts. It would make me like Harper a lot more.

One more seat for the Conservatives.

Joe Comuzzi, the Liberal who was kicked out of the Liberal caucus by Stephane Dion for supporting the Conservative budget, is now a Conservative.

The Thunder Bay-Superior North MP was introduced as such today by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The 74-year-old, 19-year House of Commons veteran, has said he won't be running in the next election.

He said he endorsed Harper's budget because it promised cash for a cancer research centre in Thunder Bay.

So, starting with the seat counts after the last election, here is where we now stand:

Conservatives (124) + Emerson - Turner + Khan - Casey + Comuzzi = 125

Liberals (103) - Emerson - Fontana + Pearson - Khan + Turner - Comuzzi = 101

Bloc Quebecois (51) - Sauvageau + Gravel - Thibault = 50

Independents (1) + Turner - Turner + Comuzzi + Thibault + Casey - Comuzzi = 3

Not all the candidates are yet in place in Mississauga, but so far Mississauga South Green Party candidate David Johnston is by far the most interesting.

Johnston, who was born and raised in Mississauga and currently lives in Port Credit, took part last night in the Bistro 1603 all-candidates meeting, and he was the most laid back, the most cordial, and the least partisan.

He even went so far as to say he thinks the Green Party plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions might not be enough.

His non-political life is what makes him the most interesting candidate, though.

First, his father was a civil servant, and worked as Deputy Minister of Labour and Deputy Minister of Culture in the 1970s. He then became the general manager of the National Ballet of Canada. At 78, he's still going strong, working in the arts and culture sector.

Growing up with arts as a positive influence probably had something to do with the Green Party candidate's decision to get into the arts and culture industries, Johnston admits.

He is a literary agent and has worked with writers Paul Quarrington and Richard Wright, and even musician Randy Bachman (when Bachman wrote his memoirs).

He's also a documentary filmmaker who recently spent two years researching monarch butterflies, and following them down to Mexico during their migration. That documentary, currently in the advanced stages of post-production, has been bought by the Documentary Channel in Canada, and will take on the film festival circuit.

With that nearly done, he's begun work on his next film, a doc about "the fifth Beatle." Johnston said, in a telephone interview earlier today, that about 50 people have been credited with being the fifth member of the Fab Four. Johnston plans to track down all that are still alive and interview them.

Beyond his resume, he seems to be a really decent guy who's in the race to make a few points and get people to consider the Green Party in Mississauga.

He also got my fence-sitting posterior back on the pro-MMP side of the electoral reform debate. He thinks Ontarians should support the Mixed-member Proportional system in the Oct. 10 referendum.

When asked last night about proportional representation, he told the small audience he's been disappointed when asking people for their vote.

Many people have told him they agree with what the Green Party stands for but that they don't want to waste their votes on a group that isn't expected to win any seats in the election.

"If there's a better argument for proportional representation," said Johnston, "I haven't heard it."

Indeed. If people want to vote for the Green Party, or any other party, they should not fear that their vote will be a waste. They should know it means something, and makes a difference.

It's Canada Day on Sunday.

The country is 140 years old.

Enjoy it. Celebrate the country. Support the Canada Under-20 soccer team, which starts playing this weekend.

Drink a beer. Light a firework. Sing the national anthem.

And learn about the country.

The Dominion Institute's annual survey showed that only 58 per cent of Canadians know the first two lines of the national anthem. Only 8 per cent know that Queen Elizabeth II is our head of state. Only 32 per cent knew that Canada has 10 provinces and three territories.

Strangely, immigrants tended to answer the questions correctly more frequently than Canadian-born respondents to the survey.

So, enjoy the weekend, and beef up on your knowledge of your homeland.