Oy Vey!

He told the Canadian Jewish News (scroll to page 19) that he thought funding faith based schools would be a good idea after the kind of campaign the Liberals ran in 2007. He's on record as saying the Syrian government isn't really that bad.

Now, the out-to-lunch MPP from St. Paul's, Dr. Eric Hoskins, is under fire for putting an approving quote from noted critic of Israel Sid Ryan on campaign literature.

When I heard OFL President Sid Ryan making nice with Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals last year in their battle to end payments made to druggists to stock generic drugs, I knew this would end in a painful divorce.

It boomeranged on the Liberals last week when they put out a pamphlet quoting a gushing Ryan, lauding the Liberals for taking on Big Pharma.

“Finally, a government that is willing to take on the drug companies and big pharmacies,” Ryan is quoted in the Liberal brochure.

It all hit the fan in St. Paul’s riding, currently held by Liberal Eric Hoskins.

It’s a riding with a large Jewish population, many of whom are outraged that the Liberals would use Ryan — an outspoken critic of Israel — as a spokesman.

“I was extremely upset to see Sid Ryan’s name on any Liberal Party marketing piece, given his very public anti-Israel statements and actions,” Eva Melamed said in an e-mail.

“I am beyond disappointed in my MPP’s decision to distribute these flyers,” she said.

“This will definitely have an impact on my voting decision.”

In 2009, when he was president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Ryan led a successful bid to have the union urge a boycott of Israel because of what it said were, “apartheid-like practices of the Israeli state.”

He also said universities here should bar Israeli professors who refused to condemn Israel’s 2008 bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza.

Now, St. Paul's being St. Paul's (namely, the type of place that would elect a goof like this in the first place), I don't expect to see much of a vote shift there. But what about the rest of the campaign? What, if anything, does Thornhill candidate Bernie Farber have to say about this?