lot of backpedalling and spinning happened today at Queens Park over Minister Glen Murray’s controversial bigoted tweets and apology. The Liberal government was in full damage control mode trying to seem above the fray in a very sticky situation. The Social media uproar started when Minister Murray re-tweeted this message, “Ford, Hudak and Harper — the trifecta of Republican-style, right wing ignorance and bigotry” on his twitter account. The statement should be beyond the pale of public discourse for a Minister of the Crown. In fact, a young MPP said as much, in a statement in 1992, “When you serve as a minister of the Crown, special standards apply.” “That young idealistic MPP who believed in a higher bar for ministers at the time was none other than the premier Dalton McGuinty. Now with time and the advantages of governing this might have a softening effect on your moral compass, however; this should not affect the standards that each MPP is held to at Queens Park.
Back to Minister Murray, he made a bad situation worse by issuing an apology that insinuated the PC party is not open to all, and perhaps homophobic bigots were running smear campaigns. Sadly this is not the first time that Minister Murray has used targeted language to marginalize Ontarians that don’t agree with him. He had public misgivings about some Ontarians and the opposition to the new sex education curriculum. “ many smaller communities outside Toronto pushed back against the curriculum, demanding more consultation with parents.
It’s a very big province, and some people have more concerns about those things than you or I would,” Murray tells Neale. “But we do believe it’s a very important document” It’s a classic political tactic of telegraphing your message to targeted groups during this and his message yesterday is subtly giving the impression that the political opposition in the province would turn back the clock on many initiatives that he holds dear to his heart. Don’t be surprised to hear phrases if you hear words like Ontario might become a smaller province if the Ontario PC Party is elected. On one hand the reason why the conservative movement succeeds when it does is because it doesn’t play games with different groups in society. Instead, conservatives craft a general message that will appeal to a broad base of the population.
There are no cliques or special clubs inherent as in the Liberal way of doing things. There is just a significant swath of Ontarians who are yearning for a better and brighter future for the Province. This is just another example of liberals exhausting their welcome and resorting to personal attacks instead of putting forward sound policy.
