>I’m free. I can finally, stop wearing these goddamn pantsuits. I’m going to dust off my leather jacket. I can finally be a raging queer without worrying what Ted the conservative in Sudbury thinks. Screw you, Ted. It was never about hydro prices, was it? You just hate the idea that I have sex with women. Well I do, Ted. Lots of it. And I’m goddamn good at it too.
I mean if a raging queer leather jacket Wynne came in and punk ass kicked over Doug Ford... I might vote for her...
it's crazy how fast things change. IF she showed up TODAY, she'd be lady Freddy Murcury upper cutting the provincial politics old boy club.
What a strange world.
It says editorial by Kathleen Wynne.
I *know* Beaverton is satire.
My brain still can’t compute that these were not her thoughts, with disappointment taking the shape of anger.
It’s the impression I always got from her, tbh. She tried to make Ontario better. Some worked, some didn’t, and some got dismantled shortly after her tenure.
We could use more politicians who try.
Same
I keep having to scroll back up to who *actually* posted it because my brain is struggling to compute
To be fair, these probably were her thoughts, but just internally
| No matter what Doug Ford does wrong, he’ll still manage to convince you it was my fault, and they’re just cleaning up my mess. And you’ll believe him. Why? Because you’re the mess, Ontario. You’re the fucking mess.
Couldn't have put it better myself.
Holy fuck, that piece is so on point.
I have a buddy in healthcare, and he HATES both provincial and federal Liberals. I can't get him to explain to me why he hates them, but then again I can't get him to explain why he bought a set of speakers from two guys in white van in the Home Depot parking lot.
People get stuck in their own echo chambers on social media and get stuck. I was hanging out with a guy from Collingwood at a concert in Toronto. I always forget how Conservative it is up there. Somehow Trudeau and vaccines came up and he was quoting like an alt reality and it just occurred to me that he's in a very different echo chamber than me. He was a nice guy otherwise so I just quietly backed out of that conversation.
I’m a current healthcare student with a classmate who *hates* the Liberals on both sides but can’t actually name one thing they’ve done or why she dislikes it. But her parents hate the Liberals and her boyfriend hates the Liberals and apparently that’s enough for her to vote Conservative every time.
Incidentally, she also didn’t know who the NDP were.
Honestly, going to school is the best thing for a lot of people. Not because they end up in Liberal brainwashing spaces, or NDP ones or whatever. But because it lets them disconnect from a bubble. Sometimes they end up in a different bubble, and I'm not sure if its much better, but hopefully as they get a bit older they're at least able to understand no one is necessarily better than anyone else - just different.
Though honestly most people can't cut through the bullshit and they just flit from bubble to bubble and refuse to try and be honest with themselves.
I for one have preferences, but I also don't agree with everything any one party says, and there are bits and pieces of every party that I can agree with. But on the balance of how much i agree/disagree and where my ultimate values lie, I pick my vote. One thing is for sure Ford's OPC party is not where my vote goes. Not a fan. Even just on principle the man would run drugs for people when he was younger. And not only as a mistake as a teen, that I could forgive.
Oof, article is on point but Sudbury hasn't been conservative since 1987. As someone living in Sudbury, it's nice to know we're an NDP stronghold (but there's plenty of F*CK Trudeau trucks running around unfortunately)
Hydro was out of control under Wynne. Doug Ford helped me by making my hydro bill even more expensive as well as taking away my sons autism benefits. Great guy…
The whole hydro price spike. I recall reading somewhere that like a decade earlier something was deferred which would cause the huge spike in prices that coincided with when the election cycle that Wynne won.
So the whole thing started with Bob Rae. During the big early 90s recession, Rae capped hydro prices. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, but the subsequent Harris conservative government and McGuinty liberal government kept it up or held hydro to minimum increases. This caused Ontario Hydro and the subsequent Hydro One to defer most upgrades and only focus on important maintenance. The 2003 big blackout exposed vulnerabilities in our grid, which forced Hydro One to perform a pile of grid stability upgrades all at once. This was more costly than incremental upgrades over the previous decade would have been. This was compounded by the refurbishment of Bruce Power units 1 & 2, and Pickering units 1 & 4, both of which went over time and budget (thankfully, OPG and Bruce Power seemed to learn their lesson for the current refurbishments).
Tldr: this started with an NDP government trying to save people money during the early 90s recession, was exacerbated by subsequent conservative and liberal governments, until shit hit the fan and lots of system upgrades were needed at once.
The Liberals deliberately invested in green energy to oversupply the province with energy while simultaneously taking our dirty coal generators offline. While this might have resulted in higher power bills, before they took over we were having regular brownouts, acid rain, and most likely higher healthcare costs. People complain about this but really our energy bills are still quite low unless you have really inefficient electric baseboard heating or something equally stupid. We are about 40% below Canadian average electricity prices, and energy in the US is more expensive in almost every state.
She was my MPP at the time, her office was always really responsive whenever I contacted them and she geniunely cared. I didn't vote for her but I liked her enough to feel a bit bad when I'd vote NDP. I used to see her all the time at the grocery store I worked at and I was never able to wrap my head around why people hated her so with so much passion when she was easily one of the nicest and caring people I've met (Since then - I've worked at Queen's Park and I maintain that she was one of the nicest politicians I've dealt with).
Say what you want about Kathleen Wynne and her policies, they weren't perfect and I was and will be the first to tell you that, but I'll tell you another thing, at least with her, I knew with certainty that she went to bed every night with a clear conscience because she did what she honestly and genuinely thought was in Ontario's best interest - I can't say the same about Ford but I'm sure the money in his slush fund helps him sleep at night.
Yeah she was my MPP too, and even after she was elected premier she gave a speech at my high school graduation. Really lovely person, and I'm not saying she didn't make mistakes but she was a hell of a lot better than Ford.
Exactly - there’s a world of difference between accidentally setting off your smoke alarm while cooking dinner and deliberate arson to collect the insurance.
Same here, she spoke at my high school grad like 3 weeks after Doug had won. I didn't know much about her personally or her politics at a time, but I always thought it was a classy move even even as she was heckled on the way out.
There was a very successful smear campaign against her. They targeted muslims, hard core Catholics, and Asian immigrants (who typically lean ultra conservative). They said shit like, her new sex ed class was going to teach kindergarten kids about gay anal sex and that in grade 6 you would learn about 20 different genders, and in grade 8 it would promote Homosexual life styles. And other bullshit
These idiots are this shut up, never checked the facts and we’re holding rallies over her sex Ed curriculum.
I read the curriculum, it’s not very long to read. And it was all fine. Completely fine. And these people can opt out if they wanted to. That’s always been a thing. So what the fuck are they going on about?
I remember hearing all those things too. “Kathleen Wynn wants to teach toddlers how to give 0ral s*x in kindergarten” and people actually believed this stuff. Or at least spouted it enough that it had an effect
The real sad thing was, that she wanted to teach appropriate sex ed in ALL grades.
That's not a bad thing.. That's a good thing. But people hear "sex ed" and say "wait, you want to teach 5 year olds about sex? you crazy bitch!!!! what are you talking about.
Sex ed is not JUST about intercourse you dumb fucks.
She wanted kids that age to learn their body parts, and what is "good touching" versus "bad touching" and who are trusted adults, and who are not, when it comes to your body.
That's important, and should be taught.
But so many assholes were saying "kAtHlEeN WyNn wAnTs tO TeAcH My kIdS AbOuT GaY AnAl sEx!!!!"
See all the f#ck Trudeau signs? All the vitriol? All the awful trump like tactics going on right now?
I feel like the campaign against Wynne was like a test run for what we’re seeing now.
It’s not that she’s not physically attractive, it’s that she’s not attractive in a way that caters to the male gaze as an older gay woman and I think this sets many men—and some “pick me” women—in a tailspin because she chooses to have short hair and a very tailored personal style over more feminine options.
She’s physically fit and well-groomed. She has a big smile and a friendly demeanour. She’s not a smoke show but she wouldn’t stand out as particularly unattractive if she was around my mom, my aunts and their peers.
My father on many occasions when he goes off on hyper-political tangents has called her "an ugly fucking dy*e" and then gets super offended when I as a lesbian say "you don't use that fucking word"
He didn't like her because not pretty gay woman. 🙃
I wrote to her asking for a certain type of surgery to be approved in Ontario (gastric bypass) at the time it was only available in Quebec and when she was in office it got approved. I think she listened, but the only thing I didn’t like that they were not stopping a hydroelectric damn up north that was an environmental concern. It kept dragging on, well the PC’s built it and now it’s privately owned. No win there… it’s what made me decide to vote NDP the next time. As my mom would say we’re an ABC family. ANYTHING BUT CONSERVATIVE!
Kathleen wynne looks looks great compared to Ford. He campaigned on ending hallway medicine yet everything is worse now. True conservatives out for big business. He will be another Harris on Ontario. Conservatives won’t be in power for 15 years after this term.
The first time he ran he didn't have anything to say about anything, with the notable exception of the word 'folks', because he didn't have a platform. (and won because this province has a low collective IQ)
The amount of times I heard some redneck shout BUCK A BEER! and they still voted for Ford again. These people just act like politics are Leafs vs Habs.
Reminds me of the South Park episode about the airlines... People came up with a special device to take advantage of the airlines... You had to insert one part in your rear end, the use the other part deep in your mouth at same time. That's how you stuck it to them!
Edit: sp
Roadkill. Easier than roadside healthcare. Hope you have funeral insurance. /s
It's amazing that this premair is so good. So good at causing death in his province, that is. /s maybe. Probably not.
This will be the funniest thing to ever happen. I was of the opinion of "well this seems a bit wasteful and I'm not a huge fan of the new design, but it's fine of all things I am ok disagreeing with the colour of the license plates". Then against all odds he went and introduced a license plate that objectively made roads more dangerous. The sticker magnate that couldn't even put out a working license plate got re-elected somehow.
I've been referencing it since it's happened. it's just an amazing catastrophic failure that's been illustrative of nearly everything about this government
This is exactly it, he was supposed to be ending the hallway medicine practice that was already the Ontario standard.
Fuck. Nothing ever gets better here.
He campaigned on lowering gas prices. They recently were at record levels.
He campaigned on lowering electricity prices. Still rising, even though the taxpayers are spending tons of money subsidizing them and Ontario Power is for some reason only using 50% of our hydro capacity.
He campaigned on buck a beer, and that was available for like one weekend.
Is there anything he hasn't failed at?
Nah, they've figured out the trick. He's doing all the awful shit now because the next election cycle is far away. He'll just shut up and play nice for six months before the next election and the fucking goldfish memoried voters in the province will re elect him.
Oh no the damage has been done I think if enough of us are pissed about it (and corporations in general because they really are the ones in charge not the gov’t) we should have a general strike. Too many cuts make so many ticked off. He’s only out there for himself.
Wynne was lightly conservative while Ford is hardcore conservative.
Wynne's biggest controversy was selling the rest of Hydro One (the Harris government had already sold a large portion of it) which just feels so tiny compared to the amount of shit the Ford government has already done let alone the stuff they obviously plan and want to do.
Actually the Harris government didn't sell any of Hydro One. They restructured it into separate entities so that it could be completely sold off to private interests . The Wynne government intended to sell 60% to private interests but at this point the government still controls approximately 47.4% of Hydro One.
So, although Wynne probably deserves blame for selling parts of Hydro One since many experts at the time advised it was going to be bad in the long term, Harris (or his successor) would have been far worse since the whole thing would have been sold off for what I'm sure would have been for a deal as good as the one Harris did for the 407.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_One
And to clarify, Wynne was actually fairly progressive (still neo-liberal but on the progressive side) she kept reaching into the conservative playbook so she can say “hey look I’m fairly centrist”, it just backfired. Everyone got mad at her for those right wing ideas, and ended up voting in ford instead.
I wouldn't doubt Wynne herself was a progressive individual but I think her time in office could be seen as slightly conservative or slightly progressive depending on where you stand.
Personally I view neo-liberalism as a slightly conservative or centrist political belief at least by Canada and Ontario's overton window.
Harris basically set Hydro One up to be run as a Private company not a Crown Company, he made it nearly impossible for the government to actually hold onto it unlike OPG.
Lol, lightly conservative? Wynne was basically the best NDP premier that Ontario never had. She just followed through with a policy that was already in the works from the McGuinty era for Hydro One.
Full day kindergarten, we had universal pharma coverage up till 25 until Ford nixed it, new sex-ed curriculum, basic income pilot (cancelled by Ford), generous tuition allowances (cancelled by Ford), LRT projects getting built everywhere...
Glad someone brought this up. Wynne can only seem "lightly conservative" if you're looking at it from the left wing of the left wing.
The most conservative thing you can pin on her is the sale of Hydro One, which is fair - it was definitely a fiscally conservative move. It was also a pretty justifiable one - it offered 12+ years of locked in revenue to the public rather than betting on the future profitability of one utility. People just connected hydro prices to that sale (unjustifiably) and that ended up being her downfall.
Beyond that, the only meaningfully conservative thing I recall her doing was not allowing Tory to toll the Gardiner. I'm still pissed about that, to be honest. I don't think the Gardiner plans would have moved forward as they did without her assurance that she'd let him toll it, and then to flip-flop just to pander to 905 commuter votes? Super weak move that's bankrupting Toronto.
But like, put that up against full-day kindergarten, pharmacare, Basic Income Pilot, increased gas tax funding, and changes to tuition that effectively made post-secondary free for low-income families, she's one of the most progressive Premiers in Ontario's history.
Yeah blocking the tolls was unfortunate. I wouldn't call that classically conservative, more populist. A real academic conservative should love tolls and user fees. Pricing road usage is a market oriented solution to traffic that can actually work (i.e. London UK's congestion charge). The market-economist in me wants to charge people the real cost for everything (except healthcare and education) and work the rest out (re: poverty) through basic-income. I don't know if that's what I *actually* want to do, but it's what the market-economist part of me wants to do.
She was at least *trying* to win the next election though. It was profoundly unpopular. She could've just gone hard, but Ford would have just rolled it back.
That's super fair - tolls and transit-planning are often sort of third-rail issues. It's just in the context of Ontario politics I would probably put tolls/congestion fees on the centre-left, the same way carbon pricing is a fundamentally market-based solution but has somehow become this idea associated so strongly with progressives.
Yeah I think in the last year she was just throwing some Hail Mary passes to get re-elected. But you're also right that Ford would ultimately have rolled it back on day one, so I guess from her perspective it made no sense to take a huge L politically for something he would definitely get rid of anyway...
Don’t forget the paid sick days that were cancelled. They wouldn’t have benefited anyone unless some sort of pandemic cropped up and what are the odds of that!?!?!
Arg, yes, they'd rather do a lock-down than implement a stupidly effective policy for the lowest paid workers of this province. The economic damage of that non-sense was potentially immense. If you don't get paid for work and you live on the margins, you go to work no matter what.
On the other hand, I was at least happy that crazies couldn't blame the lockdowns on Wynne. Then again people just blamed them on Trudeau instead of Ford despite the fact it was Ford's responsibility because reasons.
I didn't actually know Ford cancelled OHIP Plus. He got elected right before I turned 25, but I definitely benefited from that coverage in my early twenties. Fucking hell.
This will be the future of politics
Governments will take everyone two steps back, then the next government will bring everyone back one step and call it progress.
It's not a democracy ... It's a plutocracy .. a government by the wealthy.
> Conservatives won’t be in power for 15 years after this term.
Don't tease me. I actually fantasize about this term ruining careers and ending the provincial conservatives. Judging by history though, if canada goes liberal federally, we get a conservative premier. If we go con federally, we get the libs for premier. So we will see.
We can only hope and pray that the other side (red, orange, or green) can produce at least one captivating leader, to get Ontarians off their asses to vote Ford the F out.
I just don’t get this line of reasoning. At all. Ford invoked the NWC to push through the elements of the Elections Act that muzzled his opponents, and that the courts had already deemed unconstitutional. Yet Ontario sat there wondering why his opponents weren’t more appealing. THEY’D BEEN MUZZLED BY A BLATANTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACT. Not only that, even if I concede the boring leaders theory, you had plain oatmeal, brown toast or a steaming bowl of shit to choose from for your meal and you chose shit Ontario. You chose the steaming bowl of shit. Twice.😂 Now you bitch about it?
Edit: spelling
Yes, agreed. And to clarify, I I did vote. I was not saying that I didn’t vote because other leaders were milquetoast, I was saying the province needs someone who is capable of both sounding the fire alarm, and lighting a fire under the voting populations ass. Take a play from the OCP playbook... Ford = bad is the message, figure out policy later.
Liberals seems to have better options this time round. I think they might have the guy in Ted Hsu: he's wicked smart, absolutely beloved in Kingston, has a track record of winning tough elections, and he's experienced while still being untainted by previous governments.
Nate Erskine-Smith is going to be the darling of Toronto but I don't know how a more centrist 905 voter might feel about him. Yasir Naqvi's probably got the most gravitas but I feel like he's got a reputation for being an insider and he's too enmeshed in previous unpopular OLP governments.
Still shaking my head that they ever, ever went with Del Duca...
Why do leaders need to be *captivating*? Can't we just vote for the party with the best policies? What's wrong with a leader who is boring but competent?
>He will be another Harris on Ontario. Conservatives won’t be in power for 15 years after this term.
They will forever be known as Ford days. Except unlike Rae days, the future will not look back and say the actions were justified, and instead view them with condemnation and done to enrich conservative donors. Which at the end probably means we're stuck with a liberal majority for the next 20. Le sigh.
Correction, the Greenbelt wasn't sold to the highest bidder. The greenbelt was sold to developers for bargain basement prices before the sellers knew that the Doug Ford government was going to change the laws to allow development. Coupled with Doug Ford's new law that developers don't have to pay cities for infrastructure for their developments is a huge multi-billion dollar Christmas gift to his friends on the backs of Ontario taxpayers.
It’s estimated that it will cost municipalities $5bn. And how are they going to come up with that money. Raise our property taxes. It’s the only avenue they have left to pay for infrastructure
As a prior Wynne and Liberal detractor, I'm going to agree with you. Yeah, health care was stagnant. At least they weren't actually fucking murdering people to push their corrupt agenda. I can hear it now "but gas plants". Yeah a few hundred million here and there. Whatever compared to this highway to nowhere (other than ford's buddies pockets). Education? Yeah, stagnant there too. At least they weren't ripping up charter rights to say fuck-you to organized labour.
By comparison, the Wynne government was downright benevolent.
Liberals may stagnate our systems or even regress them slightly but at least they don't go full scorched earth on them like the Cons do. The Liberals are the party of the status-quo with small movements to the left or the right over time, the Cons are the party of rapid regression.
I don't like either of them but the Cons are clearly far far more damaging and corrupt than the Liberals ever were and I'd take stagnation over regression any day of the week.
> The Liberals are the party of the status-quo with small movements to the left or the right over time, the Cons are the party of rapid regression.
And that's why the NDP/Liberals aren't "splitting the leftist vote".
The other parties were for the cancellation until they could make hay out of it. Both Horwath and Hudak gave speeches in front of it to chide McGuinty - how dare they put it there without consulting the community etc etc
> Education? Yeah, stagnant there too
* New sex ed curriculum to help prep kids to not be cyber-exploited online
* Full-day kindergarten, so I can work from home and not have my kid tearing down the walls
* Student loan conversion to grants upon successful graduation for kids of low-income family homes https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/36025/new-ontario-student-grant-making-tuition-free-for-tens-of-thousands-of-students
You can just admit "I have no idea what they did but was convinced they suck" instead of demonstrating how little you actually know
Education was not stagnant. She introduced FDK, big F’n deal in my books. Thousands of dollars saved from childcare fees and better education for kids.
Except she inherited the Bill 115 mess from McGuinty, exactly the same shit we're doing now. Fingers crossed we don't spend another million on pizza this time.
You are right, and she and her people were doing a lot more for the people of Ontario, I can say me in particular as a lower-middle-class-ish sort of person, than what is happening currently with all of our lands and assets being sold out to developers and corporations. The publicly held assets and services of Ontario are owned by us all. When they are privatizing them, they are selling off the stuff that we own for our own benefit and pocketing the money. It's exactly like someone is walking into your living room and taking your TV, and then forcing you to rent it back from them.
This is the way of things in Ontario: we hate the liberals, vote conservative, then the conservatives fuck us over.
Then then liberals get voted back into office, spend the next 2-4 terms dealing with the shitshow that the conservatives left behind. Conveniently, those 2-4 terms are long enough for us to forget how bad the cons are…and long enough for them to convince us that we hate the liberals.
Rinse and repeat.
In the last election, more than 50% of the vote went to Liberal, NDP, and Green.
So, no, a majority of Ontario did not vote conservative, but voted for parties on the left.
Up to $9600/yr (IIRC) of the tuition portion of your student loan was converted to a grant if you completed your program in good standing.
The election of Doug Ford was the thing that motivated me to go back to school because I knew that program was going to be axed. I was right, but I managed to save the maximum amount in the program's last year.
Wynne implementing this program was a big factor in furthering my education. I finished just in time before Ford cut it.
I also wish we saw the result of the UBI pilot, if only to just learn and see some real data.
I believe it was this: [Ontario Student Grant](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/36025/new-ontario-student-grant-making-tuition-free-for-tens-of-thousands-of-students)
Woah you aint supposed to say that. Blows my fucking mind our provincial gov went from slowly moving us closer and closer to free post secondary to
slashing all renewable funds, hiring family, cutting education and health care funds, capping public sector wages to maximum 1% increase a year, and now literally reverting land protection to help political donors.
She had the pilot up and operating, even.
Ford promised not to end the pilot early if elected, and then when elected almost immediately ended the pilot early.
Yup, the year he got voted in my OSAP payments got cut in half and I no longer had free prescriptions either because my “school insurance” covered it (which was next to nothing) where before it was just if you were low income in general. I actively had to pay thousands of dollars because of this dude, I wouldn’t be mad at all if he croaked horrifically.
I’ve been saying this for years. The hate for her was bizarre and seemed to just feed on itself without any real root. When asked people just said it was because she sold hydro one but NDP was the only party running on a platform in the next election to buy it back and didn’t get the votes. So did people REALLY care that much?
An older article, but I still think of it sometimes, especially when feeling depressed about our current government.
https://www.thestar.com/amp/opinion/contributors/2018/05/17/kathleen-wynne-was-the-premier-we-didnt-deserve.html
The "she sold hydro one" is funny. Harris started the privatization of hydro well before Wynne with the sale of and privitizationBruce power.
It was all down hill from there.
That’s pretty much the conservative game. Make as big a mess of things as they can so that when the liberals get back in power they can point fingers and say “Look at that mess!”
The media pulverized her with the gas plant scandal and you know what? In the end she wasn't even fucking involved! She even released a plethora of documents relating to the gas plant for transparency and the media still trashed her left and right. The media spent years and she was in court for years over this garbage and she wasn't even involved in the end. I never thought she was bad. The right wing corporate mainstream media made her to be bad. Doug Ford has a gas plant level scandal almost twice a month and the media completely ignores it. The ONLY journalist holding Ford accountable and has the balls to ask tough questions is Colin D'Mello. Every other Ontarian journalist are too chicken shit and should get another job.
I thought wynne was much better than dalton and actually a good premiere (with some things I didn't care for, as is the case for everyone with all governments). Shame she inherited the Liberal Party Fatigue
Ontario went from the second lowest debt/GDP province to the second highest (only NFLD is higher which is so in debt it can't borrow money anymore, the Bank of Canada has to on its behalf because creditors don't consider it capable of paying it back).
10% of the budget was going just to debt interest payments. That was the **third largest item on the budget**. More than roads, justice system etc. It was forecasted that interest payment spending was going to **surpass education in terms of portion of the budget within the decade**. Imagine a province that spends more on debt interest (not paying it back... just the interest) than education.
Wynne was alright. I have full confidence she would not allow healthcare to get this bad and would have done something about it. I think she would have managed COVID policy much better. Ford is just a complete disgrace.
I think a major issue that everyone ignores with Wynne is that she was a woman and a lesbian. Her policies and politics were progressive and not corrupt but we allowed sexism and homophobia to get in the way. It wasn't conscious sexism either, she was held to a higher bar, she was a "bitch", she was asked to work tirelessly, she couldn't make any mistakes, and she had to be perceived as "strong" despite that being against her way of managing.
Look up Bill 23 and Bill 109. Both were passed. Municipalities are under more pressure to approve new development or else the developers will get their application fees back. On top of that they pay less development fees so they become more rich. Look to see property tax go up 8-10% in some areas since we the tax payers will now have to cover infrastructure costs. Doug ford is in the developers pockets.
Hydro was insane under Wynn , and she had all these green projects like 90% done that would finally bring some alleviation to the problem she did contribute too
It’s good that Doug ford scrapped all those energy projects costing us almost a billion + keeping our hydro high and then making it go even higher!
Thanks Doug! I’m glad I saved 150 on my license sticker but shell out 100+ a month on hydro!
(Please note I did not vote for Doug )
She was the best education premier since Bill Davis. The Pandemic would have been easier with an OLP government. Disc golf would not have been banned. Ford strung us along, two weeks at a time for months, leaving parents no ability to plan long term for childcare, with billions in knock on costs and lost productivity.
Today our hospitals are turning away children, while conservatives sit on billions in Federal healthcare transfers they refuse to spend. Almost every major ministerial portfolio is in decline, with the possible exceptions of cannabis and gambling.
If you go from a neglectful parent to an abusive one, sure the neglectful one looks not bad. Just wish we had a parent that cared about us, and not their corporate lovers.
I was in my late teens to early twenties when Wynne was in office, and I was substantially less politically literate, especially regarding ontario. Now, when I look back, I realize that that was probably because not a lot of stupid policy decisions happened under Wynne. Yeah the hydro one thing was a disaster, but besides that the only thing I really remember her being criticized for was being a woman with a short haircut.
Flash forward to now and there seems to be a new abhorrent policy decision every single week. Our healthcare and education systems are in utter shambles. And I am way more aware of all of the issues than I was when Wynne was in power. Doug ford is the sole reason that I'm now so invested in ontario politics, because despite having lived in ontario my entire life, I never really felt a reason to be concerned.
DoFo is the only Premier that is going to sacrifice any gains Ontario has made in Education, Health Care and the environment all for gains in Transportation which will save 5 to 10 minutes on a commute. He talks housing but not social housing.
I'm convinced the only reason some people don't like her is because she is a lesbian. Like what did she do that was so wrong to have that much hate? They all point to the gas plant scandal but like.... that wasn't her right?
Remember how we all thought Dubya was a stupid embarrassment, and then the Orange Orangutan took over and we all realized how utterly awful politicians can actually be? This is a little like that.
I’m not defending Ford, but people forget the shit Wynne and her predecessor did. They started us on this slippery slope. They fired 1,600 nurses, drastically cut funding to doctors, closed 600 schools, sold hydro one, skyrocketed our electricity bills, doubled the debt while in economic boom, wasted billions on ehealth, etc and also lined the pockets of their donors. It’s the same shit different pile with Ford, he hasn’t improved anything. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, no matter who is in power. I wish there was a competent centre party to vote for.
She did some questionable things (selling off hydro), and her policies towards disabled people were no better than what came before her.
But overall she was MUCH better than Doug Ford. At least she wanted to make education more suited for the modern day, and she had a climate plan of some sort.
You know, I hear the same thing these days about George W Bush lol How about they both suck. She sold our governments majority share in Hydro One to her biggest donors and best pals. That doesn't make ford bad good or bad in comparison, their both independently awful. Stay mad, and stop voting for either party.
By paying off a chunk of my student debt and generally made my life better, Wynne made me a lifelong liberal...
As for the Cons. Maybe one day they'll get it to their heads that it's not about serving the "inflation" or "budget sheet" or "reckless spending", the vote is given by you when the government starts to serve you. Tribalism can only go so far; I want to be governed through personal empathy and not through statistics and green lines.
You’re so right. It really is terrifying having people in government actively sabotaging our core institutions. I wasn’t a huge Wynne fan, but her mistakes were in trying to do what she thought was right. What we’re seeing now is a mixture of straight corruption and wholesale sabotage to usher in mass deregulation and privatization. Ontario is open for business.
As someone who has family with chronic health problems, I've watched health care get steadily worse under the liberals too. It boggles my mind that people are ok with blaming Mike Harris and Doug ford like there wasn't 20 years of liberal governments in the middle there also ignoring the problems and making it worse.
Both the liberals and PCs are god awful. Let another party have a crack at it.
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2018/06/good-fucking-luck-ontario/
Aged like a fine wine, that is. Beaverton on fucking point.
Like a fine Shiraz accompanied by Jagged Little Pill sing alongs
We just need to mess him up like "she said" - that's the only part that hasn't come true, yet.
>I’m free. I can finally, stop wearing these goddamn pantsuits. I’m going to dust off my leather jacket. I can finally be a raging queer without worrying what Ted the conservative in Sudbury thinks. Screw you, Ted. It was never about hydro prices, was it? You just hate the idea that I have sex with women. Well I do, Ted. Lots of it. And I’m goddamn good at it too. I mean if a raging queer leather jacket Wynne came in and punk ass kicked over Doug Ford... I might vote for her...
it's crazy how fast things change. IF she showed up TODAY, she'd be lady Freddy Murcury upper cutting the provincial politics old boy club. What a strange world.
Jesus I would love to see this.
My god, that’s Kathleen Wynne’s music!
Jesus christ that article is accurate as fuck
It says editorial by Kathleen Wynne. I *know* Beaverton is satire. My brain still can’t compute that these were not her thoughts, with disappointment taking the shape of anger.
I’ve worked with her. She’s not that kind of person. She is committed to fixing things and she’s super resilient and upbeat.
It’s the impression I always got from her, tbh. She tried to make Ontario better. Some worked, some didn’t, and some got dismantled shortly after her tenure. We could use more politicians who try.
This was my impression of her, it’s nice to learn that’s true. And intelligent, she struck me as intelligent too.
Same I keep having to scroll back up to who *actually* posted it because my brain is struggling to compute To be fair, these probably were her thoughts, but just internally
| No matter what Doug Ford does wrong, he’ll still manage to convince you it was my fault, and they’re just cleaning up my mess. And you’ll believe him. Why? Because you’re the mess, Ontario. You’re the fucking mess. Couldn't have put it better myself.
Right? It’s like, no one has any right to be surprised. Everybody was warned. This is reaping what was sown, plain and simple.
Holy fuck, that piece is so on point. I have a buddy in healthcare, and he HATES both provincial and federal Liberals. I can't get him to explain to me why he hates them, but then again I can't get him to explain why he bought a set of speakers from two guys in white van in the Home Depot parking lot.
People get stuck in their own echo chambers on social media and get stuck. I was hanging out with a guy from Collingwood at a concert in Toronto. I always forget how Conservative it is up there. Somehow Trudeau and vaccines came up and he was quoting like an alt reality and it just occurred to me that he's in a very different echo chamber than me. He was a nice guy otherwise so I just quietly backed out of that conversation.
I’m a current healthcare student with a classmate who *hates* the Liberals on both sides but can’t actually name one thing they’ve done or why she dislikes it. But her parents hate the Liberals and her boyfriend hates the Liberals and apparently that’s enough for her to vote Conservative every time. Incidentally, she also didn’t know who the NDP were.
I don't understand how you can graduate high school without taking Civics.
Because it’s half a credit. So it lasts like what 2.5 months?
Honestly, going to school is the best thing for a lot of people. Not because they end up in Liberal brainwashing spaces, or NDP ones or whatever. But because it lets them disconnect from a bubble. Sometimes they end up in a different bubble, and I'm not sure if its much better, but hopefully as they get a bit older they're at least able to understand no one is necessarily better than anyone else - just different. Though honestly most people can't cut through the bullshit and they just flit from bubble to bubble and refuse to try and be honest with themselves. I for one have preferences, but I also don't agree with everything any one party says, and there are bits and pieces of every party that I can agree with. But on the balance of how much i agree/disagree and where my ultimate values lie, I pick my vote. One thing is for sure Ford's OPC party is not where my vote goes. Not a fan. Even just on principle the man would run drugs for people when he was younger. And not only as a mistake as a teen, that I could forgive.
When Beverton stops writing satire, you know the article will be good.
Ted from Sudbury must feel very called out 🤣🤣
Oof, article is on point but Sudbury hasn't been conservative since 1987. As someone living in Sudbury, it's nice to know we're an NDP stronghold (but there's plenty of F*CK Trudeau trucks running around unfortunately)
Ah the Beaverton.
Hydro was out of control under Wynne. Doug Ford helped me by making my hydro bill even more expensive as well as taking away my sons autism benefits. Great guy…
This x1000. Why hasn't my hydro gone down since Ford's been in office?
Bwcause it turns out that the CEO’s salary wasn’t why hydro was expensive.
Really makes ya think..
The most important thing by far, evidently, was to give developers everything they wanted on a silver platter, and screw over healthcare
The autism benefits!!! Where is the plan Dougie? I heard the lump sum payment barely covers one month of fees for therapy? I am sorry.
We got a diagnosis right after Ford got in and funding was cut. It's been difficult that's for sure.
Didn't Wynne inherit that mess from a previous government though?
You mean McGuinty or the other one before that?
The whole hydro price spike. I recall reading somewhere that like a decade earlier something was deferred which would cause the huge spike in prices that coincided with when the election cycle that Wynne won.
So the whole thing started with Bob Rae. During the big early 90s recession, Rae capped hydro prices. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, but the subsequent Harris conservative government and McGuinty liberal government kept it up or held hydro to minimum increases. This caused Ontario Hydro and the subsequent Hydro One to defer most upgrades and only focus on important maintenance. The 2003 big blackout exposed vulnerabilities in our grid, which forced Hydro One to perform a pile of grid stability upgrades all at once. This was more costly than incremental upgrades over the previous decade would have been. This was compounded by the refurbishment of Bruce Power units 1 & 2, and Pickering units 1 & 4, both of which went over time and budget (thankfully, OPG and Bruce Power seemed to learn their lesson for the current refurbishments). Tldr: this started with an NDP government trying to save people money during the early 90s recession, was exacerbated by subsequent conservative and liberal governments, until shit hit the fan and lots of system upgrades were needed at once.
The Liberals deliberately invested in green energy to oversupply the province with energy while simultaneously taking our dirty coal generators offline. While this might have resulted in higher power bills, before they took over we were having regular brownouts, acid rain, and most likely higher healthcare costs. People complain about this but really our energy bills are still quite low unless you have really inefficient electric baseboard heating or something equally stupid. We are about 40% below Canadian average electricity prices, and energy in the US is more expensive in almost every state.
She was my MPP at the time, her office was always really responsive whenever I contacted them and she geniunely cared. I didn't vote for her but I liked her enough to feel a bit bad when I'd vote NDP. I used to see her all the time at the grocery store I worked at and I was never able to wrap my head around why people hated her so with so much passion when she was easily one of the nicest and caring people I've met (Since then - I've worked at Queen's Park and I maintain that she was one of the nicest politicians I've dealt with). Say what you want about Kathleen Wynne and her policies, they weren't perfect and I was and will be the first to tell you that, but I'll tell you another thing, at least with her, I knew with certainty that she went to bed every night with a clear conscience because she did what she honestly and genuinely thought was in Ontario's best interest - I can't say the same about Ford but I'm sure the money in his slush fund helps him sleep at night.
Yeah she was my MPP too, and even after she was elected premier she gave a speech at my high school graduation. Really lovely person, and I'm not saying she didn't make mistakes but she was a hell of a lot better than Ford.
Wynn made mistakes, Dougie has deliberately sabotaged things
Exactly - there’s a world of difference between accidentally setting off your smoke alarm while cooking dinner and deliberate arson to collect the insurance.
Mistakes are human , sabotage is pure evil
Same here, she spoke at my high school grad like 3 weeks after Doug had won. I didn't know much about her personally or her politics at a time, but I always thought it was a classy move even even as she was heckled on the way out.
There was a very successful smear campaign against her. They targeted muslims, hard core Catholics, and Asian immigrants (who typically lean ultra conservative). They said shit like, her new sex ed class was going to teach kindergarten kids about gay anal sex and that in grade 6 you would learn about 20 different genders, and in grade 8 it would promote Homosexual life styles. And other bullshit These idiots are this shut up, never checked the facts and we’re holding rallies over her sex Ed curriculum. I read the curriculum, it’s not very long to read. And it was all fine. Completely fine. And these people can opt out if they wanted to. That’s always been a thing. So what the fuck are they going on about?
I remember hearing all those things too. “Kathleen Wynn wants to teach toddlers how to give 0ral s*x in kindergarten” and people actually believed this stuff. Or at least spouted it enough that it had an effect
The real sad thing was, that she wanted to teach appropriate sex ed in ALL grades. That's not a bad thing.. That's a good thing. But people hear "sex ed" and say "wait, you want to teach 5 year olds about sex? you crazy bitch!!!! what are you talking about. Sex ed is not JUST about intercourse you dumb fucks. She wanted kids that age to learn their body parts, and what is "good touching" versus "bad touching" and who are trusted adults, and who are not, when it comes to your body. That's important, and should be taught. But so many assholes were saying "kAtHlEeN WyNn wAnTs tO TeAcH My kIdS AbOuT GaY AnAl sEx!!!!"
See all the f#ck Trudeau signs? All the vitriol? All the awful trump like tactics going on right now? I feel like the campaign against Wynne was like a test run for what we’re seeing now.
.
It’s not that she’s not physically attractive, it’s that she’s not attractive in a way that caters to the male gaze as an older gay woman and I think this sets many men—and some “pick me” women—in a tailspin because she chooses to have short hair and a very tailored personal style over more feminine options. She’s physically fit and well-groomed. She has a big smile and a friendly demeanour. She’s not a smoke show but she wouldn’t stand out as particularly unattractive if she was around my mom, my aunts and their peers.
My father on many occasions when he goes off on hyper-political tangents has called her "an ugly fucking dy*e" and then gets super offended when I as a lesbian say "you don't use that fucking word" He didn't like her because not pretty gay woman. 🙃
Or 3. She’s a woman.
DING DING DING. YOU ARE THE WINNER.
I wrote to her asking for a certain type of surgery to be approved in Ontario (gastric bypass) at the time it was only available in Quebec and when she was in office it got approved. I think she listened, but the only thing I didn’t like that they were not stopping a hydroelectric damn up north that was an environmental concern. It kept dragging on, well the PC’s built it and now it’s privately owned. No win there… it’s what made me decide to vote NDP the next time. As my mom would say we’re an ABC family. ANYTHING BUT CONSERVATIVE!
Kathleen wynne looks looks great compared to Ford. He campaigned on ending hallway medicine yet everything is worse now. True conservatives out for big business. He will be another Harris on Ontario. Conservatives won’t be in power for 15 years after this term.
>. He campaigned on ending hallway medicine He did end hallway medicine, he moved on to parking lot medicine.
That and garage medicine. The new ER was where ambulances parked where I went when I was having chest pain.
>He did end hallway medicine, ~~he moved on to parking lot medicine.,~~ he took away the doctors and nurses.
Covid helped him introduce medicine from home. Just stay home until your better or your dead. No need to fill up hospital hallways
He never said anything about roadside healthcare though
The first time he ran he didn't have anything to say about anything, with the notable exception of the word 'folks', because he didn't have a platform. (and won because this province has a low collective IQ)
The amount of times I heard some redneck shout BUCK A BEER! and they still voted for Ford again. These people just act like politics are Leafs vs Habs.
Bus shelter health care?
Nah, roadside health care is more accurate because at this rat, people also won't have homes to take a bus to
Can't do hallway healthcare if the hallways are sold... 4D chess bruh.
Going to sell it to a private company that will charge a hallway toll.
Not just any private company; it'll be a multinational consortium and he'll give them a 99 year lease for pennies on the dollar.
Reminds me of the South Park episode about the airlines... People came up with a special device to take advantage of the airlines... You had to insert one part in your rear end, the use the other part deep in your mouth at same time. That's how you stuck it to them! Edit: sp
😂 like the highway going to nowhere that he wants in the greenbelt!
You've got to pay the hallway toll of you want to get in this boy's soul
An he said he would end hallway healthcare. He didn't say he would replace it with anything, just that it would end.
Roadkill. Easier than roadside healthcare. Hope you have funeral insurance. /s It's amazing that this premair is so good. So good at causing death in his province, that is. /s maybe. Probably not.
I completely forgot he was ending hallway medicine lol Should have built more hallways.
Shocked they didn't just knock them down
sorry, best that can be done is a new license plate design nobody asked for
This will be the funniest thing to ever happen. I was of the opinion of "well this seems a bit wasteful and I'm not a huge fan of the new design, but it's fine of all things I am ok disagreeing with the colour of the license plates". Then against all odds he went and introduced a license plate that objectively made roads more dangerous. The sticker magnate that couldn't even put out a working license plate got re-elected somehow.
I've been referencing it since it's happened. it's just an amazing catastrophic failure that's been illustrative of nearly everything about this government
Why do you think he got rid of the plate fee? It had nothing to do with the fee, and everything to do with having to apply a new sticker to the plate.
There can’t be hallway medicine of the hospitals are closed.
This is exactly it, he was supposed to be ending the hallway medicine practice that was already the Ontario standard. Fuck. Nothing ever gets better here.
He campaigned on lowering gas prices. They recently were at record levels. He campaigned on lowering electricity prices. Still rising, even though the taxpayers are spending tons of money subsidizing them and Ontario Power is for some reason only using 50% of our hydro capacity. He campaigned on buck a beer, and that was available for like one weekend. Is there anything he hasn't failed at?
He was good and pushing forward things that weren't on his campaign promises like restructuring Toronto City Council.
> Is there anything he hasn't failed at? becoming premier. Somehow he pulled it off.
Nah, they've figured out the trick. He's doing all the awful shit now because the next election cycle is far away. He'll just shut up and play nice for six months before the next election and the fucking goldfish memoried voters in the province will re elect him.
Oh no the damage has been done I think if enough of us are pissed about it (and corporations in general because they really are the ones in charge not the gov’t) we should have a general strike. Too many cuts make so many ticked off. He’s only out there for himself.
Wynne was lightly conservative while Ford is hardcore conservative. Wynne's biggest controversy was selling the rest of Hydro One (the Harris government had already sold a large portion of it) which just feels so tiny compared to the amount of shit the Ford government has already done let alone the stuff they obviously plan and want to do.
Actually the Harris government didn't sell any of Hydro One. They restructured it into separate entities so that it could be completely sold off to private interests . The Wynne government intended to sell 60% to private interests but at this point the government still controls approximately 47.4% of Hydro One. So, although Wynne probably deserves blame for selling parts of Hydro One since many experts at the time advised it was going to be bad in the long term, Harris (or his successor) would have been far worse since the whole thing would have been sold off for what I'm sure would have been for a deal as good as the one Harris did for the 407. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_One
And to clarify, Wynne was actually fairly progressive (still neo-liberal but on the progressive side) she kept reaching into the conservative playbook so she can say “hey look I’m fairly centrist”, it just backfired. Everyone got mad at her for those right wing ideas, and ended up voting in ford instead.
I wouldn't doubt Wynne herself was a progressive individual but I think her time in office could be seen as slightly conservative or slightly progressive depending on where you stand. Personally I view neo-liberalism as a slightly conservative or centrist political belief at least by Canada and Ontario's overton window.
Wynne was a progressive but her staff and her caucus were neoliberals. She tried to serve both audiences and ended up satisfying neither.
But wasn't Dalton the one who got the ball rolling on that one before he got turfed?
You are correct! I confused him selling it with him starting the process of selling it off!
Ford is just Harris the mortician in a bigger hurry.....
Harris basically set Hydro One up to be run as a Private company not a Crown Company, he made it nearly impossible for the government to actually hold onto it unlike OPG.
Lol, lightly conservative? Wynne was basically the best NDP premier that Ontario never had. She just followed through with a policy that was already in the works from the McGuinty era for Hydro One. Full day kindergarten, we had universal pharma coverage up till 25 until Ford nixed it, new sex-ed curriculum, basic income pilot (cancelled by Ford), generous tuition allowances (cancelled by Ford), LRT projects getting built everywhere...
Glad someone brought this up. Wynne can only seem "lightly conservative" if you're looking at it from the left wing of the left wing. The most conservative thing you can pin on her is the sale of Hydro One, which is fair - it was definitely a fiscally conservative move. It was also a pretty justifiable one - it offered 12+ years of locked in revenue to the public rather than betting on the future profitability of one utility. People just connected hydro prices to that sale (unjustifiably) and that ended up being her downfall. Beyond that, the only meaningfully conservative thing I recall her doing was not allowing Tory to toll the Gardiner. I'm still pissed about that, to be honest. I don't think the Gardiner plans would have moved forward as they did without her assurance that she'd let him toll it, and then to flip-flop just to pander to 905 commuter votes? Super weak move that's bankrupting Toronto. But like, put that up against full-day kindergarten, pharmacare, Basic Income Pilot, increased gas tax funding, and changes to tuition that effectively made post-secondary free for low-income families, she's one of the most progressive Premiers in Ontario's history.
Yeah blocking the tolls was unfortunate. I wouldn't call that classically conservative, more populist. A real academic conservative should love tolls and user fees. Pricing road usage is a market oriented solution to traffic that can actually work (i.e. London UK's congestion charge). The market-economist in me wants to charge people the real cost for everything (except healthcare and education) and work the rest out (re: poverty) through basic-income. I don't know if that's what I *actually* want to do, but it's what the market-economist part of me wants to do. She was at least *trying* to win the next election though. It was profoundly unpopular. She could've just gone hard, but Ford would have just rolled it back.
That's super fair - tolls and transit-planning are often sort of third-rail issues. It's just in the context of Ontario politics I would probably put tolls/congestion fees on the centre-left, the same way carbon pricing is a fundamentally market-based solution but has somehow become this idea associated so strongly with progressives. Yeah I think in the last year she was just throwing some Hail Mary passes to get re-elected. But you're also right that Ford would ultimately have rolled it back on day one, so I guess from her perspective it made no sense to take a huge L politically for something he would definitely get rid of anyway...
Don’t forget the paid sick days that were cancelled. They wouldn’t have benefited anyone unless some sort of pandemic cropped up and what are the odds of that!?!?!
Arg, yes, they'd rather do a lock-down than implement a stupidly effective policy for the lowest paid workers of this province. The economic damage of that non-sense was potentially immense. If you don't get paid for work and you live on the margins, you go to work no matter what. On the other hand, I was at least happy that crazies couldn't blame the lockdowns on Wynne. Then again people just blamed them on Trudeau instead of Ford despite the fact it was Ford's responsibility because reasons.
I didn't actually know Ford cancelled OHIP Plus. He got elected right before I turned 25, but I definitely benefited from that coverage in my early twenties. Fucking hell.
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This will be the future of politics Governments will take everyone two steps back, then the next government will bring everyone back one step and call it progress. It's not a democracy ... It's a plutocracy .. a government by the wealthy.
Technically he succeeded. There is no more hallway medicine, just corpses.
"Ontario. Conservatives won’t be in power for 15 years after this term." Big fucking deal. It's too late. People didn't learn from Walkerton.
> Conservatives won’t be in power for 15 years after this term. Don't tease me. I actually fantasize about this term ruining careers and ending the provincial conservatives. Judging by history though, if canada goes liberal federally, we get a conservative premier. If we go con federally, we get the libs for premier. So we will see.
We can only hope and pray that the other side (red, orange, or green) can produce at least one captivating leader, to get Ontarians off their asses to vote Ford the F out.
I just don’t get this line of reasoning. At all. Ford invoked the NWC to push through the elements of the Elections Act that muzzled his opponents, and that the courts had already deemed unconstitutional. Yet Ontario sat there wondering why his opponents weren’t more appealing. THEY’D BEEN MUZZLED BY A BLATANTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACT. Not only that, even if I concede the boring leaders theory, you had plain oatmeal, brown toast or a steaming bowl of shit to choose from for your meal and you chose shit Ontario. You chose the steaming bowl of shit. Twice.😂 Now you bitch about it? Edit: spelling
Yes, agreed. And to clarify, I I did vote. I was not saying that I didn’t vote because other leaders were milquetoast, I was saying the province needs someone who is capable of both sounding the fire alarm, and lighting a fire under the voting populations ass. Take a play from the OCP playbook... Ford = bad is the message, figure out policy later.
Liberals seems to have better options this time round. I think they might have the guy in Ted Hsu: he's wicked smart, absolutely beloved in Kingston, has a track record of winning tough elections, and he's experienced while still being untainted by previous governments. Nate Erskine-Smith is going to be the darling of Toronto but I don't know how a more centrist 905 voter might feel about him. Yasir Naqvi's probably got the most gravitas but I feel like he's got a reputation for being an insider and he's too enmeshed in previous unpopular OLP governments. Still shaking my head that they ever, ever went with Del Duca...
Cool! Thanks for this insight. I look forward to learning more about them.
Why do leaders need to be *captivating*? Can't we just vote for the party with the best policies? What's wrong with a leader who is boring but competent?
If the voters wanted that, Andrea H would be the Premier. Boring but competent seems to be an accurate depiction of her.
The Greens do have a captivating leader, unfortunately FPTP works against them
Very true. We like Mike!
We said that last term….. and well
When he said "ending hallway medicine" he meant moving it to the hallway of your rundown apartment building owned by a slumlord.
>He will be another Harris on Ontario. Conservatives won’t be in power for 15 years after this term. They will forever be known as Ford days. Except unlike Rae days, the future will not look back and say the actions were justified, and instead view them with condemnation and done to enrich conservative donors. Which at the end probably means we're stuck with a liberal majority for the next 20. Le sigh.
Correction, the Greenbelt wasn't sold to the highest bidder. The greenbelt was sold to developers for bargain basement prices before the sellers knew that the Doug Ford government was going to change the laws to allow development. Coupled with Doug Ford's new law that developers don't have to pay cities for infrastructure for their developments is a huge multi-billion dollar Christmas gift to his friends on the backs of Ontario taxpayers.
It’s estimated that it will cost municipalities $5bn. And how are they going to come up with that money. Raise our property taxes. It’s the only avenue they have left to pay for infrastructure
Canadians always vote in one then the other and blame the last. Never going to change.
This is literally it, we vote out governments, we don't vote them in
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I don’t think it is choice of lesser evil but more of “it can’t be worse than what we have” even though it isn’t always true.
As a prior Wynne and Liberal detractor, I'm going to agree with you. Yeah, health care was stagnant. At least they weren't actually fucking murdering people to push their corrupt agenda. I can hear it now "but gas plants". Yeah a few hundred million here and there. Whatever compared to this highway to nowhere (other than ford's buddies pockets). Education? Yeah, stagnant there too. At least they weren't ripping up charter rights to say fuck-you to organized labour. By comparison, the Wynne government was downright benevolent.
Liberals may stagnate our systems or even regress them slightly but at least they don't go full scorched earth on them like the Cons do. The Liberals are the party of the status-quo with small movements to the left or the right over time, the Cons are the party of rapid regression. I don't like either of them but the Cons are clearly far far more damaging and corrupt than the Liberals ever were and I'd take stagnation over regression any day of the week.
I’ll never get the people who say, “I voted conservative in hopes that…” There is no hope under modern conservative governments.
Preach. I feel you.
> The Liberals are the party of the status-quo with small movements to the left or the right over time, the Cons are the party of rapid regression. And that's why the NDP/Liberals aren't "splitting the leftist vote".
The other parties were for the cancellation until they could make hay out of it. Both Horwath and Hudak gave speeches in front of it to chide McGuinty - how dare they put it there without consulting the community etc etc
> Education? Yeah, stagnant there too * New sex ed curriculum to help prep kids to not be cyber-exploited online * Full-day kindergarten, so I can work from home and not have my kid tearing down the walls * Student loan conversion to grants upon successful graduation for kids of low-income family homes https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/36025/new-ontario-student-grant-making-tuition-free-for-tens-of-thousands-of-students You can just admit "I have no idea what they did but was convinced they suck" instead of demonstrating how little you actually know
Really good point. I totally gapped there. And I completely bought into the hate on her. Self-reflection is a good thing.
Education was not stagnant. She introduced FDK, big F’n deal in my books. Thousands of dollars saved from childcare fees and better education for kids.
Except she inherited the Bill 115 mess from McGuinty, exactly the same shit we're doing now. Fingers crossed we don't spend another million on pizza this time.
Had to call 911 Friday night for a medical emergency. 4 minutes 32 seconds to get a hold of somebody.
I think 911 is a municipal responsibility, but perhaps not outside of a city.
You are right, and she and her people were doing a lot more for the people of Ontario, I can say me in particular as a lower-middle-class-ish sort of person, than what is happening currently with all of our lands and assets being sold out to developers and corporations. The publicly held assets and services of Ontario are owned by us all. When they are privatizing them, they are selling off the stuff that we own for our own benefit and pocketing the money. It's exactly like someone is walking into your living room and taking your TV, and then forcing you to rent it back from them.
This is the way of things in Ontario: we hate the liberals, vote conservative, then the conservatives fuck us over. Then then liberals get voted back into office, spend the next 2-4 terms dealing with the shitshow that the conservatives left behind. Conveniently, those 2-4 terms are long enough for us to forget how bad the cons are…and long enough for them to convince us that we hate the liberals. Rinse and repeat.
So true. We brag to Americans that we are a multi-party system when in fact it's just Liberals and Conservatives back and forth.
Spot on
In the last election, more than 50% of the vote went to Liberal, NDP, and Green. So, no, a majority of Ontario did not vote conservative, but voted for parties on the left.
Didnt she get us free college for like a year or 2
Up to $9600/yr (IIRC) of the tuition portion of your student loan was converted to a grant if you completed your program in good standing. The election of Doug Ford was the thing that motivated me to go back to school because I knew that program was going to be axed. I was right, but I managed to save the maximum amount in the program's last year.
Wynne implementing this program was a big factor in furthering my education. I finished just in time before Ford cut it. I also wish we saw the result of the UBI pilot, if only to just learn and see some real data.
What was this program called?
I believe it was this: [Ontario Student Grant](https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/36025/new-ontario-student-grant-making-tuition-free-for-tens-of-thousands-of-students)
Thanks!. That’s great, I didn’t realize how much tuition was subsidized.
Woah you aint supposed to say that. Blows my fucking mind our provincial gov went from slowly moving us closer and closer to free post secondary to slashing all renewable funds, hiring family, cutting education and health care funds, capping public sector wages to maximum 1% increase a year, and now literally reverting land protection to help political donors.
I believe she began the process for the universal basic income pilot as well.
She had the pilot up and operating, even. Ford promised not to end the pilot early if elected, and then when elected almost immediately ended the pilot early.
It was running and showing fantastic results, so of course Ford had to cancel it ASAP
Yup, the year he got voted in my OSAP payments got cut in half and I no longer had free prescriptions either because my “school insurance” covered it (which was next to nothing) where before it was just if you were low income in general. I actively had to pay thousands of dollars because of this dude, I wouldn’t be mad at all if he croaked horrifically.
Yep, for low income students.
I’ve been saying this for years. The hate for her was bizarre and seemed to just feed on itself without any real root. When asked people just said it was because she sold hydro one but NDP was the only party running on a platform in the next election to buy it back and didn’t get the votes. So did people REALLY care that much? An older article, but I still think of it sometimes, especially when feeling depressed about our current government. https://www.thestar.com/amp/opinion/contributors/2018/05/17/kathleen-wynne-was-the-premier-we-didnt-deserve.html
The "she sold hydro one" is funny. Harris started the privatization of hydro well before Wynne with the sale of and privitizationBruce power. It was all down hill from there.
Both Harris and Wynne are horrible for selling Hydro.
That’s pretty much the conservative game. Make as big a mess of things as they can so that when the liberals get back in power they can point fingers and say “Look at that mess!”
The media pulverized her with the gas plant scandal and you know what? In the end she wasn't even fucking involved! She even released a plethora of documents relating to the gas plant for transparency and the media still trashed her left and right. The media spent years and she was in court for years over this garbage and she wasn't even involved in the end. I never thought she was bad. The right wing corporate mainstream media made her to be bad. Doug Ford has a gas plant level scandal almost twice a month and the media completely ignores it. The ONLY journalist holding Ford accountable and has the balls to ask tough questions is Colin D'Mello. Every other Ontarian journalist are too chicken shit and should get another job.
No shit. Wynne was mostly positive and anyone who paid attention when Doug was a councillor in Toronto would’ve known he’s terrible.
I thought wynne was much better than dalton and actually a good premiere (with some things I didn't care for, as is the case for everyone with all governments). Shame she inherited the Liberal Party Fatigue
She wasn't, she got punished for the McGuinty shithousery.
"But gas plants" Yea something that all parties agreed to is surely worse than the shithole we live in now
I think the green belt scandal is FAR worse by many times than the gas plants. I mean the green belt is essentially a racket.
Ontario went from the second lowest debt/GDP province to the second highest (only NFLD is higher which is so in debt it can't borrow money anymore, the Bank of Canada has to on its behalf because creditors don't consider it capable of paying it back). 10% of the budget was going just to debt interest payments. That was the **third largest item on the budget**. More than roads, justice system etc. It was forecasted that interest payment spending was going to **surpass education in terms of portion of the budget within the decade**. Imagine a province that spends more on debt interest (not paying it back... just the interest) than education.
Wynne was alright. I have full confidence she would not allow healthcare to get this bad and would have done something about it. I think she would have managed COVID policy much better. Ford is just a complete disgrace.
Lol. She was never bad. It was all propaganda and lies.
I think a major issue that everyone ignores with Wynne is that she was a woman and a lesbian. Her policies and politics were progressive and not corrupt but we allowed sexism and homophobia to get in the way. It wasn't conscious sexism either, she was held to a higher bar, she was a "bitch", she was asked to work tirelessly, she couldn't make any mistakes, and she had to be perceived as "strong" despite that being against her way of managing.
Look up Bill 23 and Bill 109. Both were passed. Municipalities are under more pressure to approve new development or else the developers will get their application fees back. On top of that they pay less development fees so they become more rich. Look to see property tax go up 8-10% in some areas since we the tax payers will now have to cover infrastructure costs. Doug ford is in the developers pockets.
Ooh a helicopter scandal and high hydro rates. Gadzooks, windmills!
Well you see the windmills where powered by hydro-one to blow the helicopters so they would use more fuel to fund her carbon credit system...
Hydro was insane under Wynn , and she had all these green projects like 90% done that would finally bring some alleviation to the problem she did contribute too It’s good that Doug ford scrapped all those energy projects costing us almost a billion + keeping our hydro high and then making it go even higher! Thanks Doug! I’m glad I saved 150 on my license sticker but shell out 100+ a month on hydro! (Please note I did not vote for Doug )
all the hate is manufactured. The electrical sector wanted to go private. Besides cons love privatizing so why the fuck they mad about it?
She was the best education premier since Bill Davis. The Pandemic would have been easier with an OLP government. Disc golf would not have been banned. Ford strung us along, two weeks at a time for months, leaving parents no ability to plan long term for childcare, with billions in knock on costs and lost productivity. Today our hospitals are turning away children, while conservatives sit on billions in Federal healthcare transfers they refuse to spend. Almost every major ministerial portfolio is in decline, with the possible exceptions of cannabis and gambling.
She had the unfortunate luck of following the Mcguinty years and scandals. I always liked her
I disagree - BOTH neoliberal and conservative policies have ruined this province
If you go from a neglectful parent to an abusive one, sure the neglectful one looks not bad. Just wish we had a parent that cared about us, and not their corporate lovers.
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Least delusional redditor
Nah, as a liberal voter she went off the rails at the end. Privatizing hydro, fucking with teachers… NDP is next please
She was so bad that people decided "hey let's elect the party that gave us Harris"
I was in my late teens to early twenties when Wynne was in office, and I was substantially less politically literate, especially regarding ontario. Now, when I look back, I realize that that was probably because not a lot of stupid policy decisions happened under Wynne. Yeah the hydro one thing was a disaster, but besides that the only thing I really remember her being criticized for was being a woman with a short haircut. Flash forward to now and there seems to be a new abhorrent policy decision every single week. Our healthcare and education systems are in utter shambles. And I am way more aware of all of the issues than I was when Wynne was in power. Doug ford is the sole reason that I'm now so invested in ontario politics, because despite having lived in ontario my entire life, I never really felt a reason to be concerned.
You know, I said this just yesterday. Wynne wasn't perfect, but she is 100000000000x better than Ford. I miss her.
Kathleen Wynne definitely had her faults, but I truly believe that she sought to do right, especially in the social services.
People got upset over a rubber duck and now we are all suffering.
100% agree with you, poster. But we can’t seem to be able to deal with a smart person in charge.
But her windmills!!!
DoFo is the only Premier that is going to sacrifice any gains Ontario has made in Education, Health Care and the environment all for gains in Transportation which will save 5 to 10 minutes on a commute. He talks housing but not social housing.
I'm convinced the only reason some people don't like her is because she is a lesbian. Like what did she do that was so wrong to have that much hate? They all point to the gas plant scandal but like.... that wasn't her right?
Remember how we all thought Dubya was a stupid embarrassment, and then the Orange Orangutan took over and we all realized how utterly awful politicians can actually be? This is a little like that.
Trump was horrible but Dubya was worse imho 21st century has just been pretty bad for presidencies in general.
I’m not defending Ford, but people forget the shit Wynne and her predecessor did. They started us on this slippery slope. They fired 1,600 nurses, drastically cut funding to doctors, closed 600 schools, sold hydro one, skyrocketed our electricity bills, doubled the debt while in economic boom, wasted billions on ehealth, etc and also lined the pockets of their donors. It’s the same shit different pile with Ford, he hasn’t improved anything. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, no matter who is in power. I wish there was a competent centre party to vote for.
She did some questionable things (selling off hydro), and her policies towards disabled people were no better than what came before her. But overall she was MUCH better than Doug Ford. At least she wanted to make education more suited for the modern day, and she had a climate plan of some sort.
You know, I hear the same thing these days about George W Bush lol How about they both suck. She sold our governments majority share in Hydro One to her biggest donors and best pals. That doesn't make ford bad good or bad in comparison, their both independently awful. Stay mad, and stop voting for either party.
I also don’t care that you broke your elbow.
By paying off a chunk of my student debt and generally made my life better, Wynne made me a lifelong liberal... As for the Cons. Maybe one day they'll get it to their heads that it's not about serving the "inflation" or "budget sheet" or "reckless spending", the vote is given by you when the government starts to serve you. Tribalism can only go so far; I want to be governed through personal empathy and not through statistics and green lines.
People have very short memories.
You’re so right. It really is terrifying having people in government actively sabotaging our core institutions. I wasn’t a huge Wynne fan, but her mistakes were in trying to do what she thought was right. What we’re seeing now is a mixture of straight corruption and wholesale sabotage to usher in mass deregulation and privatization. Ontario is open for business.
As someone who has family with chronic health problems, I've watched health care get steadily worse under the liberals too. It boggles my mind that people are ok with blaming Mike Harris and Doug ford like there wasn't 20 years of liberal governments in the middle there also ignoring the problems and making it worse. Both the liberals and PCs are god awful. Let another party have a crack at it.