Second Reading: November 29th, 2011

I thought I'd kick off a new feature here at The Clown at Midnight, focusing on the PC Party's efforts to wear Dalton down through legislation at Queen's Park.

For you see, my loyal readers, it is my duty to annoy Liberals like the War Room Boss and his cadre of cronies, but it is also my duty to inform you about how our stalwart representatives fight the good fight on our behalf. Since the news media are caught up with other breaking news stories that you can't start your day without, it's up to me to help get the message out there.

Prince Edward Hastings MPP Todd Smith wants to make it harder for the Liberals to just plunk down wind farms wherever they want by giving municipal councils more of a say. Dalton plans to "listen" to the bill, which I suppose is an improvement over his current practice of staying away from QP whenever he can. Looks like losing three cabinet ministers over wind farm opposition can change a man.

And while Smith's bill leaves Dalton blowing in the wind, Rob Leone of Cambridge took it upon himself to author a PMB of his own that passed 54-50 yesterday which would hold the government to account over promises to build hospitals. We know the McGuinty Liberals have had some trouble getting hospitals completed when they said they would, so maybe this humiliating defeat will light a fire under them.

For his part, Hudak will continue to push for reform to the apprenticeship system and hopefully create a situation where the government stops looking down their nose at people who want a career in the trades.

Full steam ahead!

More Liberal-On-Liberal Violence

Popcorn, anyone?

Should put to rest any persistent rumours that the platform leak was a trap.

Liberal Screwup Roundup, November 26th

Since the Liberals are supplying 'em, and you demanded 'em, it's time for another Liberal Screwup Roundup!

We begin with the revelation that Ontario's financial woes are scaring immigrants away. And here I thought the Liberals could offer a pandering tax credit or two and we'd become a hub for skilled workers from other countries. Now we can't even find people to replace the ones who've decamped for the West thanks to Dalton's bungling.

Then we've got more bad press from Martin Regg Cohn in the Star, who lays out a scenario where Dalton isn't in the mood to listen to anybody. And people wonder why Hudak is so annoyed all the time! Here he is trying to keep Dalton from crashing into a brick wall, and the warnings are just not getting through. Maybe if Dalton wasn't surrounded by handlers pumping him full of talking points, he'd be more open to suggestions.

Then finally we have Liberal MPP Kim Craitor (rhymes with "traitor") up to his old tricks again. He's on record as being against the HST on home heating bills, but when it came time to vote on the recent symbolic PC/NDP stand against it, he couldn't be bothered to show up!

These Liberals pretend to be masters at playing all sides against each other, but they're the ones losing out here.

Can't Win For Losing

Forget waiting for the release of the Drummond report, because the Liberals have started hacking and slashing away already!

We learn today courtesy of the inestimable Robert Benzie via Twitter that at least 200 Liberal staffers were given the boot and are complaining loudly to anyone who will listen. I think that number's quite a low estimate, myself. Pretty ironic that people who spent the last few months defending Dalton's supposed job-creation record got the pink slip from the man himself!

If you're a York Region Transit bus driver, though, you don't need to worry about working any time soon, because Dalton's got your back. He ganged up with the NDP to defeat a PC PMB which would have made life easier for a lot of 905 voters who likely won't be voting Liberal anytime soon. Who says the Liberals are promoters of clean, green transit? Not when there's a union to be paid off!

The NDP can be useful at times, though, as they embarassed the government with the support of the PC Party by passing a bill to remove the HST from home heating bills. The Liberals, of course, don't think much of the opinions of the majority of elected representatives in Queen's Park, so they decided to just pretend it never happened.

Sure looks like the PC's are playing for keeps here. Way to be, guys!

Who Is Responsible?

The penny drops for Dan Gardner.

"As Conservative strategist Rod Love told author Lawrence Martin, Harper and other Reformers seethed — and rightly so — at the way the Chrétien-era Liberals framed them as the lunatic fringe."

Yep. And the Liberals are still doing that, aren't they? Here in Ontario and everywhere. No matter how progressive we try to be.

What role, I wonder, did the Liberals play in the development of today's Canada and Toronto, under Harper and Ford? How much of their current misery is self-caused?

Where do guys like Harper come from, they wonder? And how does he find people- similarly demonized as the lunatic fringe, no doubt- that will vote for him? And why do there seem to be more and more of them?

And when this realization finally hits home for the PC Party of Ontario, just how screwed will the Ontario Liberals be?

Trouble In Trinity Spadina!

Run for the hills! There's a bit of a Liberal-on-Liberal tiff going on in downtown Toronto.

The fight seems to be between defeated Liberal candidate Sarah Thomson, and defeated (federal) Liberal candidate Christine Innes, wife of defeated Trin-Spa Liberal MP Tony Ianno. There are allegations of investments that disappeared, and nobody seems to know who's married to whom! Crazy!

With Liberal backbenchers "disaffected" according to the Toronto Star, can the kept-alive-with-prayers Ontario Liberal Party afford this kind of infighting? It threatens to destroy their fragile minority! Election imminent! Red alert! Oh noez!

We here at the PC Party will watch with BIIIIIIIIIIIG smiles on our faces as this fail parade continues to march along. :D :D :D

The First Day of Dalton's Last Stand

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. While the Liberals are focused on a bunch of inside baseball and he-said she-said, as per usual, there were two major developments that hampered them right out of the gate. (The aforementioned inside baseball will be commented on tomorrow, because I *know* that's what all of you, Liberal and Tory alike, really want to hear about. :P)

First of all, the Speaker for the first minority Legislature since the 80's is, shockingly, Dimbulb Dave Levac. The guy who misspoke when he actually mistyped on whether a carbon tax was on the table. The guy who fiddled my time away while Caledonia burned. Truly the kind of inspiring, definitive leadership we're going to need in a one-seat minority! Look! He has to be dragged to the Speaker's chair. ;)

How did this lowlight of a Junior Energy Minister get to be the most one of the most powerful people in the Legislature? Maybe it's because the other three candidates were from GTA or Toronto ridings, which the Liberals likely think they will hold on to forever....except, um, that the former prospective front-runner, Donna Cansfield, admitted she wouldn't be running in the next election:

"I’m not going to run another time. I’m not here for future considerations at all,” said the former cabinet minister who was first elected in 2003.

By signalling she won’t be a candidate in the election expected in 2015 — though with a minority government it could come sooner — Cansfield underscores her autonomy in refereeing the Legislative Assembly."

Yikes! First day and already Liberals are getting while the getting's good.

Now, we know the Liberals like to talk a good game about how they respect women, but it seems that Christine Elliot and Lisa Macleod's endorsements of Cansfield may have provoked a massive stampede to Levac amongst the Liberals. Andrea Horwath was also on the record as saying she wanted to see more women in leadership roles. So we have two Tories and the NDP leader leaning towards Cansfield, which means that for Levac to have won, the Liberals must have backed him en masse. Yeah, we could have had the first female Speaker in Ontario's history, but that would have meant giving the Tories and NDP what they wanted. Can't have that!

You might have heard about how perennial Liberal leadership hopeful Chris "Smoove B" Bentley was about as smooth as chunky peanut butter during his announcement that the Liberals had finally halted construction on That Power Plant 58 days after they said construction had stopped. Why do you suppose Liberal leadership hopeful Chris Bentley is constantly made to look like a doofus and getting handed all these tough files? Hmmm. I wonder. I also wonder if work will begin again once people have moved onto another story.

We don't know how much this decision will cost taxpayers. So how about we ask and ask and ask until we get an answer? No, better yet....how about we answer every single one of their annoying questions about when we're going to apologize for something with a question about when they're going to tell us how much cancelling the plant will cost?

And we've only just begun!