The Ontario Liberals are running a nasty campaign, using news releases to smear the Tories and NDP a couple of times every day.
It's childish. It avoids the real issues and challenges facing the province.
For example, there has been no frank admission that Ontario will need to stop running deficits of hundreds of millions a year. There has been no frank discussion about the abysmal state of health care for the elderly, with waiting lists of up to four years for the best nursing homes. Nobody wants to even think of putting a loved one into some of the province's worst nursing homes. And why are they allowed to be so bad?
The politicians are tripping over themselves declaring support for supply management and for "risk management" programs, which are really cost-of-production subsidies that will some day lead to countervailing duties that will cut off exports. None of the parties will talk about disciplining supply management's excesses, such as plans to ban inter-provincial trade in chicken and the price cap on dairy quota that stymies innovation and efficiency gains. None of them has made any mention of the documents in court records indicating the industry is rife with collusion, price-fixing and misrepresenting undergrades as Grade A eggs; none has even ventured so far as offering a public inquiry.
Given the politics and promises of the Tories and Liberals, I think the best we can hope for is a minority government so that either one of these parties will need to negotiate with the NDP. That way the public might actually get a chance to influence politics in this province.
Who knows but we might even be allowed to spray our lawns for dandelions and chinch bugs.
