Well, there you have it folks.  The Liberals elected to a third term as the government in Ontario (congratulations Dalton McGuinty for another well run campaign).  The Liberals lost 19 seats in the process and now have a technical majority with 53 seats out of 107.  It’s a technical majority because they will elect a speaker from the opposition to make it 53-53 on the floor and in cases of tie votes, the speaker will vote for the government.  I think everybody lost.
But neither the seat loss nor the size …

I don’t know how today’s provincial election will turn out.  The polls seem contrary to my intuition, not that my intuition is very reliable.  I read the numbers of the different polls then I drive through the neighbourhoods and talk to people and what I see and hear don’t reconcile.  In Ottawa ridings, except for Ottawa Centre, there are more PC personal lawn signs than other party signs (maybe Liberals are embarrassed to display signs).  And this is true in some surprising ridings.
In Ottawa South, there are plenty of Jason …

There were two polls released over the weekend that showed an interesting side of Ontario voters.  The first was a Sun Media/Leger Marketing poll that showed 2/3 of Ontarians don’t trust Dalton McGuinty to hold the line on taxes.  They believe that under a McGuinty government, taxes will probably go up.  The second is a Nanos Research poll that shows the Liberal party and the PC party are tied for the October 6th election.  The only conclusion I can come up with to explain the two polls is that Ontario …

There is no wiggle room to break a promise made in the last municipal election.  Mayor Jim Watson made a promise to Ottawa taxpayers that if he was elected mayor, he would not raise property taxes more than 2.5% in any year of his tenure.  In fact, after winning the election, in his first speech to City Council as mayor, he reminded us “In my campaign I pledged that I would hold the line on property tax increases to no more than 2.5% a year.”  Then, one of council’s first …

There was no knockout punch by any leader in last night’s Ontario leaders’ debate but PC leader, Tim Hudak, did not have to land one in order to come out on top. He just had to look sane and to look like a capable, credible alternative to Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty and by that standard, Hudak won the debate.
Hudak answered questions using by using facts already laid out in Changebook and had antidotes as examples in many cases. By sticking to his party script, he articulated that a …

With the election a mere 17 days away, the provincial Progressive Conservative party has not yet plainly defined the ballot question: Are you happy with the programs and policies of Dalton McGuinty and the governing Liberals with the full understanding that if re-elected you will pay more in taxes and fees to support these policies or do you want to stop the growth in the tax burden on you and make government prioritize and spend more smartly?
Simply put, do you want to vote to pay more taxes to keep growing …

Mayor Jim Watson is right to prod the PC Leader Tim Hudak about honouring the commitment that the current premier has made to Ottawa and other cities.  Ottawa is banking on the costs of certain services being uploaded to the province.  If some future costs are not offset by provincial dollars, it would mean having to make cuts somewhere in the city budget or raising property taxes. An Ottawa Sun article (City, Grits to Hudak: Will Tories upload costs?) puts the facts out on the table from the city’s point …

Over the weekend, I attended the provincial Progressive Conservative convention in Toronto with Tim Hudak and his team.  It was an eye opening and exciting event.  For someone who immigrated to the PC party in 2004, I have to admit, this convention was the first one where I felt like I wasn’t an outsider.
For those of us who perceive the party as anything but mainly white folk, older maybe and male, I can testify that this is no longer the case. The convention was full of many people with heritage …

The upcoming October 6, 2011 provincial election provides the clearest and simplest choice for Ontario voters.  Do they want more financial pressures and more taxes from a Dalton McGuinty government or do they want relief and less taxes from a Tim Hudak government?  Any other discussion as the Liberals will try to have is a sidebar and a distraction from this point.
It was almost laughable to listen to Bob Chiarelli suggest at the Randall Denley nomination launch that the Hudak team is being purposely vague on its stance on the …

The title of the book by Randall Denely, The Perfect Candidate, would lead one to believe that Denley himself has always had a secret dream to be such a candidate for public office but “perfect” might be over the top.
So if not the perfect candidate, he is at least the star candidate for the PC party in the Ottawa-Carleton region.  In what is a surprise announcement to most – although I heard that Sun columnist Sue Sherring had tweeted of this potential announcement some weeks back (kudos Sue) – Randall …