Ontario Election

[The Bread Guy]

Oh joy, the kind of record we DON'T want to break for these sorts of things - shared with the usual disclaimer ....

Voter turnout in Thursday’s Ontario election dropped to a record low, with only 49.2 per cent of eligible voters going to the polls. The previous low record was 52.8 per cent, set in 2007.

There had been some optimism ahead of the election that voter turnout would be good, after a reasonably high turnout in advance polls.

According to preliminary figures, almost 625,000 people cast their votes in advance, an increase of about 175,000 compared with 2007 advance polls ....

CBC.ca, 7 Oct 11

 

[ArmyRick]

Personally I am disgusted that only half of Ontario eligible voters turned out.

 

[The Bread Guy]

This from the Australian Electoral Commission intrigued me - highlights mine:

Voter turnout is a form of political participation. The level of voter turnout can indicate a strong democracy and how representative governments are of the electorate. However, this measure can be difficult to interpret. Low turnout might represent a weak democratic system or alienation of the electorate from the electoral process. Alternatively, it might represent widespread contentment among voters (IDEA 2002).

In Australia enrolment and voting in state and federal elections is compulsory, so voter turnout is not necessarily a good measure of progress in our democracy, and it is perhaps more informative to consider the proportion of informal votes cast. Voter turnout in federal elections has remained at 94% or higher since the 1925 federal election when it was about 91% (AEC 2010b).

In June 2009, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) estimated around 92% of eligible Australians were enrolled to vote. There were differences in enrolment across age groups, for example, a lower proportion of eligible 18–25 year olds were enrolled (81%) than eligible Australians in general (AEC 1998-2009).

Comparing the voter turnout rates for compulsory and non-compulsory local government elections, in the 2008 local government elections in New South Wales and Victoria where voting is compulsory, the turnout rate was 83% and 76%, respectively (NSWEC 2008; VEC 2010). However, in other states where voting is not compulsory, turnout rates were much lower. For example, about 56% of enrolled people voted in Tasmania's 2009 local government elections (TEC 2010), and 33% did so in Western Australia's 2009 local government elections (WAEC 2009). There is concern from some parts of the community about the relatively low voter turnout at local government elections. For example, increasing voter turnout at local government elections is one of the targets embodied in South Australia's Strategic Plan (SA Government 2007).

Source

So, where it's not mandatory, even the Aussies don't show up to provincial or municipal elections.

 

[The Bread Guy]

The attached from Sun Media's Ottawa National Bureau-meister David Akin - more here.

 

[mad dog 2020]

I vote every time in all elections.  But in some cases I wonder why.  The media makes money on backing what is best for them. In the last election Hudak did not push hard enough on important issues. Not to mention ALL the key unions knew the Dalton gang was the softest touch so teachers, nurses, public servants hedged their bets.  That national colilition of working families was a total crock and a camouflaged liberal weapon.
So this province can go the way of Greece. Stay tuned.
I foresee a run for Alberta.
I don't think the average voter has any say. 
It's all money, media and corporate friends.
Please save us......

 

[Lowlander]

I'm no expert on this, but with less then 50% voter turn out, dosent that mean that we have to have another election?

 

[MJP]

I'm no expert on this, but with less then 50% voter turn out, dosent that mean that we have to have another election?

No there have been quite a few elections that have been decided by less than 50% of the electorate.  It is a worrisome stat though...

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Hey- shouldn't the NDP and Liberals be harumphing right now about how, since nobody got 50% + 1 of the vote, that the result is anti-democratic?  Or that we should have PR?

Oh wait- that only works in a Federal election and only when the Conservatives win, I guess....

 

[dapaterson]

My impressions:

Tim Hudak entered with a 10% advantage in the poll. He lost this election.

Dalton McGuinty entered with a majority and was reduced to a minority government.  He also lost this election.

The NDP, despite hopeless paens to their deceased federal leader in most major media, remain stubbornly in third place.  They also lost this election.


Edward:  Electoral efficiency is an interesting issue.  Far more interesting would be to have riding made more equal; current Ontario (and Canadian) practice is to over-represent rural areas, and under-represent urban areas.

Provincially, the Tories have yet to make significant inroads into urban areas.  Were urban areas to be treated equally in terms of representation, the Liberals would be in a majority today.

It may be time for an urban leader for the Ontario Conservatives - one who will push to abolish farm markeing boards and who will understand that family farms are photo ops, not drivers of trade policy.  One who will embrace the very conservative notion that Trudeau espoused - that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.

Instead, today's Ontario Tories are small town folks pushing to maintain a 1950s ideal that never existed, and thus pushing for increased social regulation.

 

[a_majoor]

The Liberals and NDP do more "social legislation" to support their social engineering goals than any conservative government, but that trope does not support the "narrative".

The reality is we now have an informal Liberal-NDP coalition (do you really think the Liberals will allow their grip on power to slip now?) and will see our standard of living erode even farther. Since Ontario's debt has exploded to 36% of the size of the Federal debt, with no plans to cut spending, we can look forward to a future similar the the PIIGS.

Have already had that conversation with the wife, will be spending the next few weeks weighing the options (going Okie, going Galt or standing and fighting).

 

[Edward Campbell]

My impressions:

Tim Hudak entered with a 10% advantage in the poll. He lost this election.

Dalton McGuinty entered with a majority and was reduced to a minority government.  He also lost this election.

The NDP, despite hopeless paens to their deceased federal leader in most major media, remain stubbornly in third place.  They also lost this election.


Edward:  Electoral efficiency is an interesting issue.  Far more interesting would be to have riding made more equal; current Ontario (and Canadian) practice is to over-represent rural areas, and under-represent urban areas.

Provincially, the Tories have yet to make significant inroads into urban areas.  Were urban areas to be treated equally in terms of representation, the Liberals would be in a majority today.

It may be time for an urban leader for the Ontario Conservatives - one who will push to abolish farm markeing boards and who will understand that family farms are photo ops, not drivers of trade policy.  One who will embrace the very conservative notion that Trudeau espoused - that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.

Instead, today's Ontario Tories are small town folks pushing to maintain a 1950s ideal that never existed, and thus pushing for increased social regulation.

I agree that rural areas are, in some cases grossly over-represented, but, I think (and the research necessary to 'know' is a bit more than I am willing to do right now) that it is suburban areas that are most under-represented. See: Federal Electoral Districts – Representation Order of 2003; a quick glance says that, in all of Canada, suburban Brampton West, Vaughn and Bramalea–Gore–Malton (at 170,422, 154,206 and 128,430 residents, respectively) are the biggest "losers" in rep by pop while, in BC, for example, urban Vancouver Centre is smaller than either suburban Abbotsford, Nanaimo–Cowichan or West Vancouver–Sunshine Coast–Sea to Sky Country.

There was, and maybe still is a tacit acknowledgement that remote ridings like Nunavut and Algoma–Manitoulin–Kapuskasing were/are a little harder to 'manage,' based on sheer geography than, say, urban Trinity Spadina, but that fails to account for the fact that rural Peace River has a higher population than urban Edmonton Centre.

 

[cn]

I vote every time in all elections.  But in some cases I wonder why. The media makes money on backing what is best for them. In the last election Hudak did not push hard enough on important issues. Not to mention ALL the key unions knew the Dalton gang was the softest touch so teachers, nurses, public servants hedged their bets.  That national colilition of working families was a total crock and a camouflaged liberal weapon.
So this province can go the way of Greece. Stay tuned.
I foresee a run for Alberta.
I don't think the average voter has any say.
It's all money, media and corporate friends.
Please save us......

Everyone has the same say.  Everybody (eligible) gets one vote. Every vote is counted.

The above is the attitude of the other 51.8% of the population that did not come out to exercise their voice. Maybe there would have been a far different outcome if they didn't share that belief. 

I can't stand comments such as: "I'm not gonna vote, it's not like it will make a difference..."  :facepalm:

 

[The Bread Guy]

I can't stand comments such as: "I'm not gonna vote, it's not like it will make a difference..."  :facepalm:

A reminder to such people, to slightly edit a parody motivational poster slogan:
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for can create the flood.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Well, I am off to vote tomorrow after a truly uninspiring election campaign.  :boring:  I have a credible candidate representing my party so that isn't a problem. But, as I pointed out earlier, in a few weeks, after a new cabinet is sworn, we will have a new premier and a new "first man" in Toronto: Don Drummond.

Don Drummond

Drummond is one of the best financial minds in Canada and he will, I am certain, provide the next government with a workable, but doubtless, painful plan. The most senior civil servants, those advising the premier and all ministers, will line up solidly behind Drummond's plan; some of the media, many politicians and all of the social activists will be equally solidly opposed - that's how we will know it is a good plan.

So I'm happy to vote, knowing that Don Drummond (his plan, anyway) will be running Ontario for the next few years.

Jeffrey Simpson finally gets it, in this column, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

(My emphasis added)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/needed-the-political-will-to-subtract/article2194569/

Needed: the political will to subtract

JEFFREY SIMPSON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Oct. 08, 2011

The Ontario election is mercifully over. The campaign’s fanciful inventions are past, to say nothing of the studied flight from hard choices.

Very soon, because it’s their job, senior civil servants will tell the new government either what its leadership knew but was too scared to reveal or didn’t know because it actually believed campaign rhetoric: Ontario is in the fiscal soup.

When governments find themselves needing to cut expenditures, they apparently dare not say so during an election campaign for fear of scaring voters. So what happens shortly after a campaign is that the new government calls in outside experts.

In Nova Scotia, the new NDP government summoned a group of experts, even from outside the province, to review the accounts. The group told the NDP what it ought to have known: The fiscal cupboard was bare.

In Ottawa, the Harper government is paying a king’s ransom to a consulting firm to help it identify how to cut spending. This effort began, predictably, after the last federal campaign.

In Ontario, the Liberal government actually appointed renowned public policy economist Don Drummond to study spending patterns before the election, but then said nothing about the exercise during the campaign. Attacking the province’s fiscal challenge will be harder still with the kind of minority government Ontarians elected on Thursday.

These review exercises – outside experts to advise on internal cuts – will all fail without the fundamental political will to do the most difficult thing in government: eliminate or curtail existing programs.

Private-sector enterprises constantly monitor themselves for efficiencies, redundancies and programs that have outlived their usefulness. In the public sector, however, this kind of search is episodic, if it happens at all.

Governments, except in isolated cases, are in the business of adding, not subtracting, programs. They puncture the tax system with credits and other forms of tax expenditures; they add new spending programs, or enrich existing ones. These new policies are sometimes vital, but the instinct to pay for them by making hard choices elsewhere is seldom apparent.

Around these tax expenditures or programs are grafted people and organizations that benefit from them. The exercise of government discretion then becomes an entitlement in the eyes of the beneficiaries, and entitlements, in turn, become so entrenched they’re difficult to end or curtail.

Ask yourself: Which politician, regardless of party, ever held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to announce the end of something? Rather than systematically making choices about cutting something old to pay for something new, the political imperative is to just add something new. And this applies to all parties, including conservatives who promise smaller government but invariably deliver bigger government.

When the fiscal situation gets bad, governments call in the outsiders, as Nova Scotia, Ottawa and Ontario have done. But the best expert advice goes for naught without one critical factor: the political will to cut or curtail programs. Trimming here and there, dreaming of “administrative savings” or “eliminating waste and duplication” won’t suffice if a government needs large savings.

The Conservative government in Ottawa and the Liberal government in Toronto, like governments across Canada for the most part, have shown no inclination to cut or curtail programs (except for the Ontario Liberal attack on pharmacy pricing). Programs go on and on, without people asking whether they serve any compelling purpose.

Examples are legion, but consider just one from the federal government. The Mulroney government created the Western Economic Diversification Canada program, a regional development agency. Western Canada is booming. It doesn’t need such a program, but there’d be political hell to pay if it were disbanded because people in that region would think they were losing something they deserve even though the policy rationale for the program disappeared long ago.

Rather than disbanding the fund and using the money elsewhere or saving the money altogether, the Harper government set up new funds with fresh money for the Far North and Southern Ontario. Now, the entire country is covered by such agencies, a classic example of adding without subtracting.

As much as it pains Simpson he, finally, acknowledges that Dalton McGuinty is big spending, high taxing Liberal of the failed Trudeau school. National governments - Conservative and Liberal - have, almost, wrung the last of Trudeau's economic vandalism out of our system; Ontario must, but in less time, do the same.

 

[ModlrMike]

Where Simpson misses the point is that Ontario has a minority government where federally the Conservatives have a majority. The Torries are in a much better position to make changes through elimination of smaller programmes than the McGuinty is as they do not need the support of the NDP to retain power. McGuinty's biggest challenge will be to defund the special interest programmes without raising the ire of the NDP.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Where Simpson misses the point is that Ontario has a minority government where federally the Conservatives have a majority. The Torries are in a much better position to make changes through elimination of smaller programmes than the McGuinty is as they do not need the support of the NDP to retain power. McGuinty's biggest challenge will be to defund the special interest programmes without raising the ire of the NDP.

At the risk of repeating myself: If McGuinty is smart he will offer solutions that should appeal to the PCs. It's a win/win for him. If the PCs support his conservative proposals he stays in power, if they oppose he can paint them, again, but with some justification, as Tea Party types who oppose everything, even conservative proposals, just for the sake of opposing.

 

[ModlrMike]

If McGuinty is smart...

How likely is that?  ;D

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Where Simpson misses the point is that Ontario has a minority government where federally the Conservatives have a majority. The Torries are in a much better position to make changes through elimination of smaller programmes than the McGuinty is as they do not need the support of the NDP to retain power. McGuinty's biggest challenge will be to defund the special interest programmes without raising the ire of the NDP.

Why would McGuinty defund special interests? He's built a career on either funding them or creating them.

 

[ModlrMike]

Why would McGuinty defund special interests? He's built a career on either funding them or creating them.

Exactly my point, but trimming excess and concentrating on the core functions of government is the only way to get back on track.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Exactly my point, but trimming excess and concentrating on the core functions of government is the only way to get back on track.

He has absolutely no interest in triming anything. Unless it's to gather more funds to further his socialist agenda. Decreasing the deficit is the furthest thing from his mind.