After the train wreck that was last week for the Ontario Liberals, the Liberals thought they'd let the Young Liberals do the talking since the seniors weren't doing so well. So the YL are disseminating some YouTube fodder.
If this is the level of analysis carried on by the Young Liberals, I guess it's just as well since the Liberal Party may not survive long enough for these imbecilic hacks to take over. A few remarks on the NDP spoof.
Basic logic: saying that Northern Ontario gained 17000 jobs does not negate that 42000 mostly good jobs were lost. Howard Hampton is not wrong in making that claim.
More importantly, it is vital in this discussion to look at the kind of jobs lost and jobs gained. Dalton's been running around telling anyone who'll listen that there's been a net gain of jobs in Ontario. However, the trend is the elimination of decent paying and secure jobs which provide hard working Ontarians with pensions and health benefits which are increasingly being replaced by precarious, temporary, minimum wage and dead end employment without benefits or a pension.
Telling miners, steel workers, workers in the manufacturing sectors not to worry since they can always, with some retraining, go work at Tim Horton's is not something to be proud of (no offence intended to Tim Horton's, but if I were on the way towards what I thought was a decent retirement and suddenly all of that was pulled out from under me, the prospect of precarious employment would be little consolation).
Fact is in 8 days McGuinty gave himself a $40000 Christmas bonus. No consultation, no debate. Fact is all NDP MPP's are donating their pay raises to their communities, where the money should have gone in the first place. No money, nor any will quite frankly, for instantly improving the lives of 1.2 million Ontarians by raising their minimum wages, but lots of money for stockpiling cricket supplies and lots of will for currying favour from immigrant groups.
There's no way this government would overfund an organization by almost 10 times what it was seeking unless it was clear that this organization would somehow remain beholden to it.
Howard Hampton puts forward a new Due North plan, which includes strategies for dealing with resource revenues staying put in the communities where they are generated, and the YL's rebuttal is that Bob Rae's government cut funding from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund. What does one possibly have to do with the other?
Again, at which point, if any will this government see itself as responsible and accountable. It is at the end of a full mandate during which it enjoyed a hefty majority to enable it to implement whatever it sees fit, and all this government continues to do is blame previous governments for McGuinty's broken promises and for this government's inaction.
I also worry that as this Liberal government goes down, it will not do so quietly and we are going to see a repeat of their desperation tactics, which means more negative campaigning and smearing of candidates. I can only hope I'm wrong.
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Update:
Speaking of Northern Ontario, here's one Liberal seat that is seriously in jeopardy.
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