Tory Redux

Author: Jon Siemko

  • Teacher Union Enters Partisan Politics

    From National Post


    Call it what you will. For the 33% of union delegates that voted against the measure, it’s a compulsory political donation to a cause that they might not personally support. Further, it cannot be assumed that those teachers who choose to serve as conference delegates are reflective of the rank-and-file teachers they represent. This might be defensible if teachers’ membership in the union was voluntary. It isn’t. Those who wish to pursue the high calling of educating the province’s youth are in effect being forced to subsidize a political campaign if they wish to remain in their profession.


    Funny Mr. Ryan has no problem almost copying verbatim the Ontario Liberal party line. Even going as far to use similar rhetoric as prominent Ontario Cabinet ministers. This election the Conservative grassroots more than ever have to dispel the myths and misperceptions spread by  Liberal friendly third parties.

  • Hudak is Not Campaigning Against Teachers

    Let’s set the record straight before the partisan shots start flying this fall.

    From  Toronto Star

    Hudak says he comes from a family of teachers and had support for classroom education ingrained in him at the dinner table growing up.

    He says some teachers have been emailing and calling the opposition party to say they don’t support their union’s decision to campaign against him.

    Hudak wants teachers to judge him on the PC campaign platform, which has yet to be released, and predicts they’ll be impressed.

  • Note Of Clarification

    I am following up on a post I did last week on CBCs bias and Peter Loewen. Apparently some key facts of his political history were left out in the piece done on his involvement with vote compass. Sandy from crux of the matter has the rest of the story.


    From  crux of the matter


    While CompassVote may indeed be biased, that is not the point of this post. Rather, what is the point is that Peter Loewen has nothing to do with it if it is.


    First, Loewen was NOT the Compass Poll creator. In fact, he wasn’t even on its development team. Yet, the headline on this Toronto Sun column by Brian Lilley states that Loewen was the “creator” of the poll and Lilley writes in his second sentence that Loewen was one of key people behind the development of the poll. As Loewen will explain himself in the e-mails to follow, he will simply be involved in analyzing and publishing the results after the election is over.  


    Second, Loewen was not actually on the Ignatieff leadership team in 2006. Rather, for the most part all he did was carry out some research with Daniel Rubenson on the effects of communicating leadership candidate messaging via direct mail — hardly the stuff of partisanship.


    Moreover, as University of Calgary professor, and former advisor to Stephen Harper, Tom Flanagan explains in his e-mails, Loewen also worked on the Stephen Harper leadership team in 2004 doing pretty much the same kind of thing as he did for Ignatieff,  as well as for Bill Black in the 2005-06 Nova Scotia PC leadership campaign. In addition, Loewen was a housemate of Pierre Poilievre‘s during university. So, the man is hardly a political partisan.