The Toronto Party

Do you get the distinct sense that the Liberals have given up on the rest of the province?
For the second straight day, Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty refused to give into pressure from his rivals to participate in a debate on Northern issues in the sprawling region. The Progressive Conservatives even offered to pick up the tab for his travel costs.

Mr. McGuinty told reporters in Sault Ste. Marie on Thursday that the organizers of the debate invited him in early August to participate. He told them the date did not work for him but was not given an alternate time.

This sort of thing isn't being too well received in the North, as you might imagine.

And just what are these tone-deaf lunkheads doing in Southwest Ontario?

That changed Wednesday, when the same Liberal staffers arrived at a morning press conference about sex offenders and handed out fake GPS bracelets wrapped in paper that read “Manufactured by Ontario PC cronies.”

The Conservative campaign took the bracelets as an insult to the people who agreed to discuss their concerns about sex offenders in their community, and pressed reporters to get the families’ opinions of the stunt.

If you were to read the Liberal platform- which nobody is- you would find a distinct lack of attention paid to the North, the Southwest, and the East. They're going to maintain a couple of development funds that really haven't done the job. Maybe that's why they're just not competitive outside the GTA.

Of course, the Liberals are just fine with a sea of blue being told what to do by a dot of red in the centre. Except, if they continue to write off the PC's like they've been doing with 3 weeks left, they might not even have that to console them.