actually been able to vote in an election that might mean something.
In the past, my votes were were wasted because Labour have a landslide. But now we have an election in London that might sway things.
Although I adore Ken, I reckon he's been there far too long. (And I'm old enough to remember the GLC and everything Ken's done for London.
Also my family and their parents and grandparents were all working class Liverpuddlian Labour voters, until my Dad became an engineer and we all went kinda middle class and moved to Essex and then Canada and he started voting Conservative. All those taxes !
I did vote for Pierre Trudeau more than once when I lived in Canada ages ago, I even kissed him on each cheek and then shook his hand once, that worked! edit: I've just worked out that I must've just reached voting age that year. Was it 1986?
I've seen and met Ken umpteen times in the last 10 years. Never bothered to kiss him. There's something I don't like about him I haven't figured out yet.
He's so green, he says, he's mouldy.
Anyone here care to tell me how to vote? This is an election which will make a diff.
Boris cycles and he's a high-class blond and ...
Linda,
Back in the days when you were still living here in Ontario was probably the last time I ever thought it made sense to vote Conservative. I too was a Bill Davis conservative, until he stepped down. Then my vote went to David Peterson in the Liberal party. Then in the next election it went to Bob Rae of the NDP. When he helped to defeat the Conservative minority and put Peterson's Liberals in power.
I saw the way those two worked together to stimulate business in this province, and how they worked to attract the film industry here. With his wife Shelley also being an actor, I knew he would have first hand knowledge about our needs within the film industry, and we'd be well taken care of. The way Bob Rae of the NDP worked with Peterson of the Liberals to bring about change in this province demonstrated to me the leadership, strength and non-partisan efforts we needed from our elected officials.
It was no surprise to most of us when he swept the next elections with a majority mandate from the people. Every single riding in Toronto went orange. I loved it. My boyfriend at the time had an absolute kanipfit, as did most of Bay Street, ...but the people were loving it.
He did do one thing that pissed me off to no end tho. It was when he altered the structure of how OHIP coverage came about. Instead of charging each person individually for it whether they wanted it or not, or whether they were covered elsewhere or not, (the way the Conservatives did) he shifted the burden to employers. Because I owned a corporation, I got dinged BIG TIME for health insurance premiums for employee health care coverage. And at the time, my corp only had one employee... moi, and I wasn't even drawing a salary, so I got dinged up the wazzoo. Thankfully, they restructured that pretty quickly.
Sadly, he did inherit a huge mess, and the BS mulroney did at the federal level didn't leave him with much wiggle room. He had a tough task ahead of him, but he pulled it off. Sadly, this province voted him out in 96 to usher in the conservatives of Mike Harris in the supposed "Common Sense" revolution, ...and we've been paying for it ever since.
After what the conservatives did to this province, and the legacy that is just now being felt, people are realizing what a good man Bob Rae really was, and they voted him out of office not for what he did wrong, ...but instead for what he did right. Within the last year, Bob Rae has exitted from provincial politics and moved to the federal level, and he's also crossed the floor from the NDP party to the Liberal party.
I've never met a Conservative on the Federal level I'd vote for except perhaps Jean Charest, ...but in recent years, in an attempt to help save this country and keep all provinces in confederation, he too crossed the floor and moved from the Conservative party to join the Liberal party, stepped down from politics at the federal level to assume leadership of the Quebec Liberal party on the provincial level. hmmm....
This seems to be a trend going on here in Canada... all the good politicians on the left, and all the good politicians on the right, ...are crossing the floor to sit with the Liberals in the center. Just once in my lifetime, I'd like to see a Liberal majority in Ottawa, with a Liberal majority at Queens park, ...with the Democrats in office in the USA.
Then, ...you'd see some spectacular things happening this side of the pond by golly. Is that too much to ask?
