Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

[Jasmine18]

And yes the APE won you were right at that.

Well I just get annoyed people think some massive wave of sexist homophobic cavemen come swinging from the wild forest of Ontario to beat Wynne.

When a lot of the people that hated on Wynne are people who voted NDP or for Trudeau that i Knew personally.

 

[zang]

I think people, in general, want the government to be just efficient in general. In the 80's till about the recession people assumed big business was more efficient than Govt. That thinking has changed to they all are inefficient now.

Regardless of one's opinion that govt should be like a business or a grand socialist entity, for govt to work well for the benefit of all, it needs to be efficient.

People don't truly care if government were efficient. We aren't a nation of armchair comptrollers. What people truly want is to have more money, and they've been told by tax-cutting parties that efficiency will get them more money. But if people paid zero tax, the government were completely self-sufficient and we kept all of our current social services, the calls for "government efficiency" crowd would disappear.

That's all aside from audits almost always proving that government runs pretty efficiently to begin with.

So, instead of fighting to have wages lifted to a living wage at the minimum, and higher levels of taxation on obscenely large salaries and profits, people have been hoodwinked into believing that "efficiency" is the only road to having more money in their pocket.

More money in the hands of lower income groups almost immediately returns to the economy in food, rent, and everyday basics.
More money in the hands of middle income groups almost immediately returns to the economy in the form of entertainment, restaurants, a new tv and other middle class "luxuries".
More money in the hands of the upper income groups is removed from the general economy and immediately goes into savings or finding ways of making more money for themselves.

Crying for "government efficiency" is just another way to promote trickle-down economics.

 

[Jasmine18]

People don't truly care if government were efficient. We aren't a nation of armchair comptrollers. What people truly want is to have more money, and they've been told by tax-cutting parties that efficiency will get them more money. But if people paid zero tax, the government were completely self-sufficient and we kept all of our current social services, the calls for "government efficiency" crowd would disappear.

That's all aside from audits almost always proving that government runs pretty efficiently to begin with.

So, instead of fighting to have wages lifted to a living wage at the minimum, and higher levels of taxation on obscenely large salaries and profits, people have been hoodwinked into believing that "efficiency" is the only road to having more money in their pocket.

More money in the hands of lower income groups almost immediately returns to the economy in food, rent, and everyday basics.
More money in the hands of middle income groups almost immediately returns to the economy in the form of entertainment, restaurants, a new tv and other middle class "luxuries".
More money in the hands of the upper income groups is removed from the general economy and immediately goes into savings or finding ways of making more money for themselves.

Crying for "government efficiency" is just another way to promote trickle-down economics.

Yes I really liked how disabled people get 986 dollars a month and get audited like crazy like my uncle but a 15-year teenager at home living with his parents made 2k a month on CERB and was having a blast like my cousin.

I think there are many valid reasons for people wanting govt to be more efficient and using resources where they needed most and that caring about those things does not mean you are a neoconservative.

Even if you want grand programs, they will largely fail if they are not efficient.

Government resources are finite and the progressive call for "the 1% to pay for it all" never pans out when pushed in practise and usually, tax hikes are pushed on to the middle classes as they cant escape with their wealth to another country when govt really needs money.

 

[Northern Light]

People don't truly care if government were efficient. We aren't a nation of armchair comptrollers. What people truly want is to have more money, and they've been told by tax-cutting parties that efficiency will get them more money. But if people paid zero tax, the government were completely self-sufficient and we kept all of our current social services, the calls for "government efficiency" crowd would disappear.

That's all aside from audits almost always proving that government runs pretty efficiently to begin with.

So, instead of fighting to have wages lifted to a living wage at the minimum, and higher levels of taxation on obscenely large salaries and profits, people have been hoodwinked into believing that "efficiency" is the only road to having more money in their pocket.

More money in the hands of lower income groups almost immediately returns to the economy in food, rent, and everyday basics.
More money in the hands of middle income groups almost immediately returns to the economy in the form of entertainment, restaurants, a new tv and other middle class "luxuries".
More money in the hands of the upper income groups is removed from the general economy and immediately goes into savings or finding ways of making more money for themselves.

Crying for "government efficiency" is just another way to promote trickle-down economics.

In fairness; I support higher taxes, higher corporate taxes, higher personal taxes (mostly by way of eliminating a myriad of deductions and credits), and higher sales taxes too.

I support Universal Pharmacare, Universal Dentalcare, Lower tuitions, better quality public services, more flexible and generous social assistance, a higher minimum wage and greater paid vacation.

But I still support more efficiency and indeed I am entirely convinced there is lots to be found; though certainly nowhere near enough to pay for everyone of those things listed above.

But I am not fooled by right-wing politicians who claim to be in favour of efficiency, as you rightly point out, that's not really what they deliver. They avoid the real efficiencies in favour simply starving programs of money they need, for the most part.

I supported axing 'Drive Clean' as it no longer made any ecological difference; and was therefore largely a welfare program for Canadian Tire and like test performers.

But that is the only material efficiency we've seen under Ford.

What should be looked at is:

Merging the public and separate school systems AND abolishing school boards, as has been done in Quebec. That is real efficiency that would save no less than 1.5B per year.

Cutting a myriad of business support/loan programs/corporate welfare programs (not all of them, but most) in favour of lifting the cost of 'benefits' off employers books by having pharmacare and dentalcare.

Savings there at least 900M gross.

There are other concrete areas for savings, that aren't just cheap-skating. I think we could reasonably find no less than 4B provincially.

That said, the commitment should be made to reinvest every penny saved, AND raise taxes so we can raise the standard of living for everyone, and most especially lower income earners and the vulnerable.

 

[Jasmine18]

Well if we axed the CBC we could build 10km of subway line across Canada a year

 

[Northern Light]

Yes I really liked how disabled people get 986 dollars a month and get audited like crazy like my uncle but a 15-year teenager at home living with his parents made 2k a month on CERB and was having a blast like my cousin.

I think there are many valid reasons for people wanting govt to be more efficient and using resources where they needed most and that caring about those things does not mean you are a neoconservative.

Even if you want grand programs, they will largely fail if they are not efficient.

Government resources are finite and the progressive call for "the 1% to pay for it all" never pans out when pushed in practise and usually, tax hikes are pushed on to the middle classes as they cant escape with their wealth to another country when govt really needs money.

The first part of your example is good; the second not so much.

ODSP and OW both provide wholly inadequate sums and attach far to many strings, creating more bureaucracy while failing to meaningfully assist those who need it most.

But CERB was a necessary, short-term move in order to get money to people with minimal bureaucracy.

If you had opted to tie the amount to earnings, you would have paperwork from your employer, and then had to give it to the government who have to review and process it etc.

All that would have completely overwhelmed a system facing literally millions of applications.

They needed something that could be done essentially by computer, without oversight, or minimal oversight by people.

Otherwise it would have taken months to get people a cheque.

CERB is being discontinued in the near future, as it should be as the economy returns to normal.

 

[Northern Light]

Well if we axed the CBC we could build 10km of subway line across Canada a year

CBC's subsidy is ~1B per year. If you can get 10km out of subway out of that, you're hired. I don't own a construction/engineering firm, yet. But when I let people know about your patented new process for 100M per KM subways; in exchange for getting access to your patents, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to claim 20% of the firm of my choice!

 

[Jasmine18]

CBC's subsidy is ~1B per year. If you can get 10km out of subway out of that, you're hired. I don't own a construction/engineering firm, yet. But when I let people know about your patented new process for 100M per KM subways; in exchange for getting access to your patents, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to claim 20% of the firm of my choice!

My plan is DWARVES?

I thought the CBC gets 2billion a year

The first part of your example is good; the second not so much.

ODSP and OW both provide wholly inadequate sums and attach far to many strings, creating more bureaucracy while failing to meaningfully assist those who need it most.

But CERB was a necessary, short-term move in order to get money to people with minimal bureaucracy.

If you had opted to tie the amount to earnings, you would have paperwork from your employer, and then had to give it to the government who have to review and process it etc.

All that would have completely overwhelmed a system facing literally millions of applications.

They needed something that could be done essentially by computer, without oversight, or minimal oversight by people.

Otherwise it would have taken months to get people a cheque.

CERB is being discontinued in the near future, as it should be as the economy returns to normal.

However, I think a lot of people working are getting very annoyed at people getting Cerb who should not get it but a lot of people who had hours cut in half got zero help.

(if they made between 1 to 2k a month)

 

[zang]

When a lot of the people that hated on Wynne are people who voted NDP or for Trudeau that i Knew personally.

Repeat after me: Anecdote is not proof.
But, also you're assuming that NDP/Liberal voters also can't be homophobic or misogynist.

I've never voted Liberal, but even I felt bad for the woman for the sheer bigotry shown to her. And it's not my imagination:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/kathleen-wynne-twitter-abuse-1.3949657

Is homophobia what’s sinking Kathleen Wynne? | Xtra Magazine

As Ontario appears poised to deliver an historic defeat to its first queer premier on June 7 — some polls have Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals losing every seat in

www.dailyxtra.com

Kathleen Wynne: How homophobia, misogyny & race played a role in the Ontario election

This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.…

nationalpost.com

Homophobia part of ‘motivating drive’ in Ontario sex-ed protests, Wynne says

Many of those at Tuesday’s protest said the government was introducing ideas like same-sex relationships and masturbation too early for some kids

www.theglobeandmail.com

TVO Today | Current Affairs Journalism, Documentaries and Podcasts

www.tvo.org

So, okay, "left-wing Media" may have it against conservatives (note: NatPo, G&M are in that list, but okay), so lets use memes. Memes are shared by average people, and reflect their own thoughts/feelings. So by their very nature they point to the thoughts/feelings of the constituency in general.

Kathleen Wynne memes
Doug Ford memes

Please, compare the number of images of each that make fun of gender, appearance or sexual orientation. I'll wait.

 

[zang]

Yes I really liked how disabled people get 986 dollars a month and get audited like crazy like my uncle but a 15-year teenager at home living with his parents made 2k a month on CERB and was having a blast like my cousin.

That has nothing to do with efficiency. CERB is a national program. Disability is handled by the province. It's in their freaking NAMES (Canadian Emergency Response Benefit / Ontario Disability Support Program).

I think there are many valid reasons for people wanting govt to be more efficient and using resources where they needed most and that caring about those things does not mean you are a neoconservative.

Those touting "efficiency" are never about directing money to where it's needed most (see Doug Ford, Mike Harris, both of whom ran on making government "efficient").

Doug Ford threw millions at horse racing and land developers, but cut money towards the disabled and students. That's not efficiency in anything other than mockery.

Even if you want grand programs, they will largely fail if they are not efficient.

Like the billions spent on military? The military isn't exactly efficient.

If we were to follow "efficiency" rules on the military that conservatives expect on every other program, we'd have about three bases, one general and all equipment assigned to multiple soldiers.

Government resources are finite and the progressive call for "the 1% to pay for it all" never pans out when pushed in practise and usually, tax hikes are pushed on to the middle classes as they cant escape with their wealth to another country when govt really needs money.

What the bloody hell are you talking about? The times of greatest income equality, infrastructure creation and upward mobility were the 50's and 60's, post WWII and the Great Depression, when we did exactly that.

 

[Jasmine18]

That has nothing to do with efficiency. CERB is a national program. Disability is handled by the province. It's in their freaking NAMES (Canadian Emergency Response Benefit / Ontario Disability Support Program).


Those touting "efficiency" are never about directing money to where it's needed most (see Doug Ford, Mike Harris, both of whom ran on making government "efficient").

Doug Ford threw millions at horse racing and land developers, but cut money towards the disabled and students. That's not efficiency in anything other than mockery.



Like the billions spent on military? The military isn't exactly efficient.

If we were to follow "efficiency" rules on the military that conservatives expect on every other program, we'd have about three bases, one general and all equipment assigned to multiple soldiers.



What the bloody hell are you talking about? The times of greatest income equality, infrastructure creation and upward mobility were the 50's and 60's, post WWII and the Great Depression, when we did exactly that.

The world is different from the 1950s and 1960s.

If you want to push taxes on the rich especially corporations it would have to be across the major economies at once.

 

[Jasmine18]

Repeat after me: Anecdote is not proof.
But, also you're assuming that NDP/Liberal voters also can't be homophobic or misogynist.

I've never voted Liberal, but even I felt bad for the woman for the sheer bigotry shown to her. And it's not my imagination:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/kathleen-wynne-twitter-abuse-1.3949657

Is homophobia what’s sinking Kathleen Wynne? | Xtra Magazine

As Ontario appears poised to deliver an historic defeat to its first queer premier on June 7 — some polls have Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals losing every seat in

www.dailyxtra.com

Kathleen Wynne: How homophobia, misogyny & race played a role in the Ontario election

This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.…

nationalpost.com

Homophobia part of ‘motivating drive’ in Ontario sex-ed protests, Wynne says

Many of those at Tuesday’s protest said the government was introducing ideas like same-sex relationships and masturbation too early for some kids

www.theglobeandmail.com

TVO Today | Current Affairs Journalism, Documentaries and Podcasts

www.tvo.org

So, okay, "left-wing Media" may have it against conservatives (note: NatPo, G&M are in that list, but okay), so lets use memes. Memes are shared by average people, and reflect their own thoughts/feelings. So by their very nature they point to the thoughts/feelings of the constituency in general.

Kathleen Wynne memes
Doug Ford memes

Please, compare the number of images of each that make fun of gender, appearance or sexual orientation. I'll wait.

Thing is she won in 2014 handily against a less polarizing person like Hudak...

so this argument holds zero credibility. People who hate Wynne due to sexism and homophobic reasons already did in 2014.

In the meantime, she became one of the most disliked Premiers...did 80% of the population suddenly become homophobic?


I think to me the actual answer was that she was just personally very unlikeable. Her style was very unapologetic and steadfast in her beliefs, sort of was a Canadian Hillary Clinton.

I do agree sexism played a part for sure but she lost support from females too.

She had ZERO self-awareness, she had no idea or accepted the fact she was unpopular till near the end of the election. She felt that is was like yourself, just fringe sexist homophobic elements but she generally was very disliked.

I think sometimes mood comes over society, just what it was I think.

 

[zang]

Merging the public and separate school systems AND abolishing school boards, as has been done in Quebec. That is real efficiency that would save no less than 1.5B per year.

There is nothing "efficient" about the school system in Quebec. There are separate English/French school boards; they basically mimic the original Protestant/Catholic systems.

While I agree we should scrap the separate school system, it's primarily because:
a) it supports one religion over others
b) our school systems get money based on the previous years' enrolment. Meaning that every year, the catholic system (with shrinking annual enrolment) ends up with more money per student than the general system (with growing enrolment).

Cutting a myriad of business support/loan programs/corporate welfare programs (not all of them, but most) in favour of lifting the cost of 'benefits' off employers books by having pharmacare and dentalcare.

Savings there at least 900M gross.

Sounds great on paper, but most loans are given to small business. Does Pharma/dental care help someone set up a 2-3 person business in an under-serviced Northern Ontario town that wouldn't be able to afford to offer dental/drug plan anyway? Without the loans, many business wouldn't exist, period. They exist to create employment, keep employment, or generally add value to economy.

Now, I agree we need dental/drug, but supporting businesses isn't a bad thing. The bad part of it is giving a company with millions in assets loan forgiveness, while tracking down the small business owner for every penny of a defaulted venture loan. Or handing major corporations with anti-government/taxation stances billions in tax enticements to have them move a headquarters into the area (see: the great 2019 Amazon HQ2 rush).

There are other concrete areas for savings, that aren't just cheap-skating. I think we could reasonably find no less than 4B provincially.
That said, the commitment should be made to reinvest every penny saved, AND raise taxes so we can raise the standard of living for everyone, and most especially lower income earners and the vulnerable.

But it's not "efficiency" then, as so many programs are underfunded. It's just calling the dealer out on the fixed shell game.

 

[zang]

Thing is she won in 2014

Oooh, sick burn. (Still waiting on the number of sexist/homophobic memes you counted, btw.)

Except, after the first Black President left office and the USA was poised to vote in the first female president, the never-voters came out in force to vote in the most misogynist, racist president in recent history. See how the pendulum went from progressive to regressive?

Also, winning barely 1/3rd of the popular vote in 2014 isn't exactly proof positive that Wynne was by any means popular then.

 

[W. K. Lis]

The electoral game: What would Ontario results look like under a different voting system?

From link.

In each riding, the candidate who wins the highest number of votes wins the seat, even if they don't have more than 50 per cent support. That's why defeated premier Kathleen Wynne won her riding of Don Valley West with only 39 per cent of the ballots. And it's why the PCs gained a majority at Queen's Park with considerably less than half the votes.

"As soon as you explain this to anybody, they are outraged. They are as outraged as if in the House you were to pass a bill and only 40 per cent of the House was enough," said Réal Lavergne of Fair Vote Canada, a group campaigning for a more proportional voting system. "And that's essentially what's happening here."

Since Doug Ford's PCs won roughly 40 per cent of the popular vote in last week's Ontario election, they would get 51 of the 124 seats in the legislature — short of the 63 needed to form a majority government.

Under the same system, the Ontario Liberals would have obtained three times more seats, while the NDP's numbers would have remained the same. Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner, elected in the riding of Guelph, would have gotten a whole posse to join him at Queen's Park too, since 4.6 per cent of the popular vote equals roughly six seats.

If Ontarians voted under mixed-member proportional representation, voters would cast two ballots: one for a local MPP to represent their riding, and one for the party of their choice. In some cases, that second ballot can also be cast for a regional candidate.

Most of the seats in the legislature would be held by locally elected MPPs. But a significant chunk of other seats — as much as a third of the legislature — would be used to "top up" some parties to better reflect the popular vote. In last week's election, where the Liberals got 20 per cent of the vote but six per cent of the seats, they would have received a top-up of 16 seats, using a common type of MMP.

New Zealand, Germany and Scotland have versions of this system.

Parallel voting, also known as mixed-member majoritarian, was also considered in 2004. It's how Japanese, South Korean, Taiwanese and now Italian voters elect their governments.

Voters elect a percentage of members in the legislature using the first-past-the-post system, and another portion is elected by pure proportional representation.

If Ontarians voted using a parallel system with one-third of the seats being proportional, they would still have a majority Conservative government with 68 seats, along with 40 seats for the NDP. The Liberals would score nearly twice as many seats though, and the Greens would have a caucus of three MPPs.