In his over 30 years of public service Sen. Bob Runciman has never shied away from telling it the way it is.

From St. Thomas Times-Journal

After eight years of broken promises, higher taxes, record deficits, and a decline to have-not status, it was startling to many Ontarians to see two recent polls showing Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals still have a reasonable chance of re-election Oct. 6.
They’re trailing Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives, but not by much, according to both Nanos Research and Ipsos Reid.
But, it’s not so surprising when one considers the built-in advantage provided to McGuinty by his powerful friends in the union movement.
He’ll be able, in effect, to outspend the Tories and the NDP by a wide margin because of the involvement of the union-funded Liberal-friendly group, the Working Families Coalition, which will spend an estimated $5-7 million to demonize Hudak and the Tories.
And that’s aside from the $3 million the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association is raising from a special levy on its members to campaign against the Conservatives.
For Hudak’s Tories and Andrea Horwath’s NDP, trying to compete with that kind of money, when limited yourself by Elections Ontario spending rules, is like running a 100- yard dash where your competitor starts at the 50-yard line.

This is an insightful profile of Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak. You really get a sense that his family has been and continues to be central to his life. Both in public and in private. However I disagree with the title and some of the professors assertions at the end.

From  Canadian Press

Ask Hudak who he is, and he’ll describe himself as a high-school jock who grew up in the Niagara border town of Fort Erie with his younger sister Tricia, the grandchildren of immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia.
Senior aide Carrie Kormos, who grew up on the same street as Hudak, describes the neighbourhood as typically middle-class, where every kid played some kind of sport and would gather for pick-up games of road hockey or hikes in the woods. She often saw Hudak shooting hoops in the front driveway.
Hudak was athletic and made the high-school teams, but he was also very smart, said a source who knew Hudak in his youth.
“One of the smartest guys in the school, actually,” the source said. “Always did well in school, never got in any trouble…Most people would have described him as a good student more than they described him a great athlete, to be honest.”
His academic acumen may have had something to do with his parents, who were both teachers and community volunteers. His father Pat, a retired Catholic school principal, plays on a seniors’ football team in Buffalo that went to the U.S. national championship. His mother Anne Marie, a former physical education and special needs teacher, was a tennis player and three-time town councillor.
But it wasn’t until university that he realized his political leanings were more right than left. It was the late 1980s — an “epic time” for the conservative movement, with Ronald Regan in the White House and Margaret Thatcher ruling Britain. Hudak still counts Regan as one of his idols.

 

The Ontario PCs are committed to running a transparent campaign, just like they are equally committed to bringing accountability back to government and getting rid of the secret backroom deals of Dalton McGuinty. For original Chris Morley letter [click here]

Response to Chris Morley

The new Ontario PC ad campaign emphasizes how a politicians words can come back to haunt him.

As well I think this hits the perfect pitch for those small business owners, parents of children going off to college, and hard-working Ontarians tired of the liberals high tax agenda.