Author: Jon Siemko

We are just entering the dog days of summer, and Staples has not even started airing  their extremely annoying back-to-school commercials. However, over at 308.com Éric has already posted ridings to watch in the upcoming provincial election. The articles totally worth a read for those who are interested. It puts the latest numbers released by Ipsos-Reid earlier this week in context .


 Finally, I believe we live in a poll driven political climate, where political commentators  are almost obliged to analyze every last morsel of data, until we the news consuming public are deluged with polls and predictions. For that reason, I will try to refrain from posting updates on every single poll that comes out of Ontario. 

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Dalton McGuinty gets high marks for going green on the campaign trail, just like another Liberal leader Stéphane Dion. The Problem for the Premier is that more Ontarians are concerned about what’s in their wallet. Then, when power.

From National Post
Yet the Liberals are out on the campaign trail, not only defending the deal but promoting it as a great achievement. Without it, they insist, 16,000 jobs will be lost and billions in investment will leave the province — talking about the figures as if those jobs already exist, and the investments made, when in reality they’re just a projection dreamed up by the Liberals. “The economic impact of killing 16,000 green energy jobs would be like an asteroid hitting the earth,” insisted Liberal candidate Greg Crone on Monday. “It’s a planet killer that will throw Ontario into an economic dark age.”

Nice imagery Greg, but the impact of “killing” jobs that don’t exist is the same as the impact of an asteroid that doesn’t exist: nothing happens. The earth doesn’t incinerate, the province doesn’t plunge into a dark age, people aren’t reduced to foraging for nuts and berries. Mr. Dion tried convincing the country that a similar apocalypse would ensue unless he was elected prime minister so he could implement his Green Shift, which was going to cut income taxes and introduce an environmental nirvana to the country. People didn’t buy it, and we know what happened. No apocalypse, except for the Liberals.

On Monday  Dalton McGuinty  was ducking and weaving questions about his parties position on carbon taxes in Ontario. The Ontario Liberals have a long history of flirting with all ideas green including a tax on carbon.

In fact, some senior Liberals including Cabinet ministers have been some of the more bullish proponents of this policy.  With the sinking popularity of the premiers green agenda, everything seems up for grabs now.