eXXon posted:

Say no to PP...Ps!

Ikantski posted:

Ikantski posted:

... the Liberals are locked into defending the most expensive budget we've seen in decades while our debt to gdp ratio is higher than it's ever been. Maybe she is a political mastermind?

Ikantski posted:

As a PC, I would gladly take Horwath over Wynne at this point. An NDP budget would probably similar, less infrastructure and corporate subsidies but at least it would be based on their party's values instead of pandering for votes. The NDP fear of nuclear power usually scares me but I'm not sure what her platform is on that.

I'm curious why you think the Liberals would actually deliver on their promises to NDP this year when they didn't deliver on a single one last year?

Ikantski posted:

That's a lot of spin to put on Hudak not wanting to talk about Rob Ford on budget day.

quote:

Galloway: “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything from Kathleen Wynne about privatizing the TTC, though.”

Horwath: “You do need to look at what their plan is.”

Galloway: “We have.”

PK loving SUBBAN posted:

I think if they're serious about this, Horwath has to give better answers than 'privatize the TTC' when she's really talking about public private partnerships. But I guess they can't explain a P3 in a soundbite?

Meanwhile Hudak is acting like this election is a gimme and not even trying to grow his base.

I'm starting to think Liberal majority.

e: A lot of time to campaign left, however.

eXXon posted:

The news that Metrolinx would seek a private operator for the LRT came out in 2012, and it certainly is partial privatization of new Toronto transit. It's certainly not privatizing existing services, which it sounds like Horwath was implying quite deliberately.

Ikantski posted:

Why did that bug you?

Twiin posted:

Everyone uses NationBuilder. They're the standard if you're looking to do good work with data and don't actually plan to employ any data scientists. It's like saying we're exporting jobs because you use Salesforce or Oracle instead of rolling your own made-in-canada solution.

BattleMaster posted:

I'm an upper year nuclear engineering student and I'd be guaranteed a job for life if Hudak makes good on his nuclear promises. There are very low graduation numbers on nuclear engineers as it is so pretty much anyone who makes it to graduation would be needed somewhere.

But he's so goddamn terrible everywhere else that I refuse to throw everyone else under the bus just for my own sake. Plus I'd make that list of "bureaucrats" making over 100k within a couple years of graduation that he hates so much

Heavy neutrino posted:

gently caress politics. What is it about it that turns otherwise sensible people into goddamn clowns?

edit Kafka esq. please make this the OP picture for the OLP.

Lobok posted:

Well, Wynne seems to enjoy Quicke's with female farmers so you might want to look elsewhere.

sotary posted:

Yo, not to look like an NDP hack, but it seems like Horwath is saying she'd put in an extra $200 million

sotary posted:

I do find it funny these days how only the NDP federally and provincially so often get quizzed about funding, and financial issues in general.

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

This is really it for me. Yea the libs might have backed out on their promises, but that would be infinitely better than a PC government.

colonel_korn posted:

So Hudak is taking a play out of Grover Norquist's book now, loving

(In fairness it does say "without seeking explicit approval of the voters of Ontario" -- as if anyone will ever vote to raise taxes on themselves).

The article posted:

Horwath is reaching outside the NDP’s traditional base, and listening, too. When small business owners, mom-and-pop shops, told Horwath they couldn’t afford a jump in the minimum wage in one go, she listened, proposing a compromise, but is attacked for not being progressive enough.

geese posted:

30 seats is the absolute maximum. We would have to keep almost all our incumbents and win almost every one of our targets for that to happen. I can think of about a dozen potential gains off the top of my head, but that would require a monumental swing over the next week.

No way the Tories are going to win a majority unless there's some serious vote splitting and they come up in the middle in SW Ontario.

geese posted:

I think if Andrea supported that budget, we would all be hosed next year. Strong stable PC majority.

tagesschau posted:

All of the ones in the 416? Rejecting the budget is not really good for your typical NDP supporter in Toronto, especially when calling an election gives the NDP no chance of being able to present its own budget, and risks a Hudak majority to boot, no matter how much you try to spin it as "making sense."

geese posted:

I just don't trust the Liberals to implement any of the good stuff in a meaningful way before the scheduled election in 2015, and by then it would be too late. I'm convinced 100% that Tim Hudak would win a majority next year. Kathleen Wynne would not be able to point to a single significant accomplishment in 2015, even if we supported the budget. Wynne put Andrea in a really tough spot and Andrea is taking a gamble.

My very early prediction since we're a week out is 44/39/23 Liberal/PC/NDP. Currently it's 48/37/21. Some shuffling around here and there but mostly the status quo.

Dallan Invictus posted:

Thus, consumer demand "creates jobs", not the protean whims of the rich that must be appeased like volcano gods.

Ikantski posted:

This is an argument that your party is merely incompetent but it lets me know that your definition of "lovely spending" includes hiring your chief of staff's boyfriend to delete all emails surrounding the lovely spending and then have your premier prorogue parliament and resign hours before committee hearings into his lovely spending were going to start.

Ikantski posted:

CBC missed a golden opportunity to label the blue people "job creators" on the NDP and PC bits.


First of all, we aren't in a big hurry to expand our infrastructure. Our electricity usage has remained constant around 140 TW per year since 2009 and has been decreasing since before 2005. We generate way more than we need currently. Every hour in 2014, we've exported an average of 1933 MW or the equivalent of the 26 turbines at Niagara Falls. A lot of the time, water simply gets diverted around the turbines.

We could buy clean hydro from Quebec when we need it, run our dams at full capacity, stop sole sourcing lucrative FIT contracts to Liberal insiders and cancel all unfinalized FIT contracts for electricity we don't need.

Edit: That's my horrible PC opinion. The Liberal opinion is that by increasing electricity prices, they've encouraged us to conserve and therefore it's been a success. We celebrate with the "Wear a sweater" day in February. Not a joke. The NDP stance is that the green energy is awesome but it's too expensive so they're going to give us a 7% cut while still raising the overall rate another 42%.

Edit2: The irony was that Feb 5 was a particularly windy day. We exported 29384 MW of power on wear a sweater day which would cost us $2.9m at $0.10 a kWh, sold it for around $500k.

Rutibex posted:

Considering the election is over I don't think there really is a topic any more.

Pinterest Mom posted:

They didn't form government, but it's hard to say that the ONDP strategy didn't work at some level. They've expanded out into areas where they haven't had strength before, and lost in areas where they'll be able to mount challenges again in four years. They've expanded the playing field for themselves and made it easier to win the next election. They lost the balance of power, but it's not their fault the PCs shat their pants. If the ONDP wanted to become a rural/small city populist party, mission accomplished.