Rocked by spending scandals and controversy over the harmonized sales taxes, the Liberals are bracing for a potentially tight race in today’s St. Paul’s by-election.
“The biggest enemy of the Liberal Party … is apathy,” a senior Grit insider warned yesterday.
“There is no compelling narrative for Liberal voters to come out (today). There’s no rallying cry.”
Indeed, as voters in the midtown riding go to the polls to elect a replacement for former cabinet minister Michael Bryant, who stepped down in June, the governing party is moving to lower expectations.
“The opposition has made a great deal about the single sales tax – I’d be surprised if it’s not a factor considered by some voters,” said Premier Dalton McGuinty.
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“The biggest enemy of the Liberal Party … is apathy…,”
That’s true for everyone. This is a crap shoot, with little turnout, either side could win.
The Liberal candidate didn’t bother to even show up for some debates. But still many voters say they are “died in the wool …blah blah blah”
The affluent in the riding like the idea of the Kumbayah “save the kids” Liberal Doctor candidate who medicates their guilt for being successful in Canada. There remains the lack of basic economics 101 that would demonstrate that the pie is not finite, that redistributing the pie isn’t the answer, growing the pie is the answer; so that kids in Canada and in Africa have a hopeful future.
But until we move our education system out of its postmodern relativism we aren’t going to get much change in mega cities where many are safely employed in their government jobs and the notion of a highly competitive economy is deemed to be unfair.
Toronto and Ontario have always had a ‘love-hate’ relationship with the provincial Tories. Many Torontonians do not trust the provincial Tories since on Harris’s watch, some Toronto Hospitals were closed; downloading of some provincial responsibilities to Municipalities like Toronto took place and then there was the very unpopular amalgamation of Torontos seven cities and school boards into one.
Lets hope the provincial Tories do better outside of Toronto during the next provincial election or we could be stuck with the very incompetent Premier McGuinty and his terrible policies and tax increases.
My question is: ”How many people voted — THREE?”
I don’t know but Sue Ann has a big horn. Maybe she can help out.