The True North Times
  • Ineligible for the Supreme Court
  • It's Dynamite!
  • Exporting Beaver Hides to the Metropol since 1608
  • The only thing that Andrew Coyne DOESN'T hate
  • Yet to be castrated by Margaret Wente
  • Winnipeg? There?
  • First to podcast with Wilfrid Laurier
  • For the sophisticated hoser
  • Now with 60 minute hours!
  • Peter Mansbridge’s bathroom reading material

The Ontario Liberal party has released a new campaign ad in the week of the Ontario election, and this one is truly breathtaking. Really, how absurd it is will take your breath away.

The video opens with a black and white shot of Tim Hudak looking confused. That’s followed by pictures of sad hospital workers tending to a patient, concerned firefighters, children crammed into a classroom, a child waiting for a doctor, and sad old folks looking onwards. A sad cold woman speaks over the shots, about how Hudak will destroy every aspect on Ontario.

Back to the photo of Hudak. “On Thursday, a split vote will only help Hudak’s chances.”

Suddenly, colour video of Kathleen Wynne reading to children crammed in a classroom. The voice-over: “Polls show that only Kathleen Wynne can stop him now.” A shot of Wynne clapping. “Please consider voting for your local Liberal candidate.”

“This message authorized by the Ontario Liberal Party.”

Sound too callous to believe?

 

 

This is kind of what we have come to expect from Kathleen Wynne. She published an op-ed in the Toronto Star called “A Vote for Horwath is a Vote for Hudak,” advancing exactly the argument you think she’s advancing: ‘vote for me even if you hate me.’

I suppose what Wynne hopes is that all NDP loyalists get collectieve amnesia and forget that Hudak is not winning a majority this election. And that with a razor thin minority, Hudak’s Million Jobs Plan, the thing that truly makes their blood boil, won’t get passed.

Really, in a never-before-seen election strategy in Canada, Kathleen Wynne is straight up telling people to vote strategically. Don’t vote for who you really want to represent you, she says. Vote for me, because I may be slightly less bad than the one you don’t want to represent you. Even if I’ m your third choice, that’s better than electing your first or second choice as leader, right?

To take it even further, she hopes that Ontario Dippers forget that she led Ontario un-elected for almost 20 months without ever calling an election, and that she would have led the government for longer had Horwath not voted against the budget. Rejecting Wynne’s budget need not have been a vote against the budget, but the NDP would say it was a vote against corrupt officials who couldn’t be trusted to implement it properly.

An ideal scenario for the NDP would be 25% of the vote (or more!), a sizable number of seats, and a greater voice in government affairs. Instead, Ekos Polling shows the NDP ready for their worst performance since 1999, and relegated to borderline irrelevance. What an excellent scenario for the Liberals: with just them and the Conservatives in the race, they’ll be able to safely continue to fester in the corruption they have made commonplace in Ontario, without fear of any credible threat from the left. After all, the NDP would have no mandate.

Polls show the Liberals within range of a minority, but I hope for Wynne’s sake that her internal polls have her lower. At least then we could understand that this ad is just a cheap ploy for power, rather than a cheap ploy for more power. But for someone who claims to be so committed to the people of Ontario, it just seems shameless for her to write “this article isn’t for everyone” in her op-ed in the Toronto Star. Maybe Wynne’s Ontario isn’t for everyone either.