Well, election season is upon us once again. Are you feeling ready? Elections are always exciting for reporters, but I often wonder if regular people get as anxious as we do. I haven’t been a non-reporter in almost 20 years so it’s hard to remember.
We’ll be choosing a new city council come the fall, but next month, in only about five weeks or so, will be a hotly contested provincial election. Voting day is June 7, by the way. Mark your calendars.
Ontario might have its first non-Liberal government in 15 years once the dust settles. PC Leader Doug Ford is waving his populist, line-by-line, stop-the-gravy-train banner for all he’s worth, and so far, polls show people like what he’s saying. That, or they're just really fed up with the Liberals.
Given the long, long years of Liberal rule, the build-up of scandal, bad blood, frustration and just plain exhaustion that comes with seeing the same faces repeat similar talking points, all of this might actually sink Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals this time.
Of course, everyone was saying that four years ago and Wynne still managed a majority government (helped along, no doubt, by then Tory Leader Tim Hudak’s incomprehensible election tactic of promising to cut 100,000 civil service jobs. Yeah, that was a good idea.).
But that was before. Now, the Libs have four more years behind them, four years of overcrowded hospitals, electricity prices artificially lowered by taking on more debt, and four more years of spending. Ontario’s books, which were supposed to be balanced by now, are $11.7 billion in the red the auditor general says, not the $6.7 billion the Liberals told us it was.
That was before the dawn of the Donald, too. The TV-star-turned-U.S.-president's populist, anti-politician persona has found fertile ground not just in the U.S., but in other Western democracies. I’m not sure we as a society have fallen fully into the pit of demagoguery, but we’re dancing along the lip. Polls have Doug Ford out front.
His promises so far might seem a bit scattershot to many people, but the polls don’t lie (though they can be wrong). Ford’s leadership is bearing fruit for the PCs.
The Liberal years were good for Sudbury. Hundreds of millions of government dollars flowed into this city, first under Rick Bartolucci and now under Glenn Thibeault. You can’t argue with the numbers. Liberal red was cash green for the Nickel City.
One has to wonder if Doug Ford, being more synonymous with the GTA than either Wynne or NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, would be as favourable a premier for Sudbury as Dalton McGuinty was or Kathleen Wynne has been.
Meanwhile, Wynne is not only out-spending the other parties with our money, she’s once again trying to out-lefty the NDP with social spending, as she did during the last election. To her credit, Horwath has put together a pretty solid platform that focuses on families and the middle-class. Still, it would be a surprise if she won.
In Sudbury, incumbent and energy minister Glenn Thibeault is facing challenges from Jamie West of the NDP, Troy Crowder for the Tories and David Robinson from the Green Party. In Nickel Belt, France Gélinas (the obvious choice for health minister in an NDP government) is facing challenges from Tay Butt for the Liberals (who ran municipally in 2014) and political newcomer Jo-Ann Cardinal for the PCs.
Northern Life plans to introduce you to each of them in a series of videos we have planned for the coming weeks. We also plan to livestream as many local debates as we can to help keep you informed and ready to vote.
You can also keep abreast of each candidates public statements as well as party positions on our website, Sudbury.com. We’ve created an Election section once again (look for the word “Election” in red in the menu bar on our homepage).
There, you can find info on each candidate, as well as press releases issued by the parties and candidates. It’s sort of a one-stop shop to find out where the parties stand and what the local candidates are saying (or not saying, as the case may be).
After June 7, we can all take the summer off to recover. We’ll need the rest because we’re going back into election mode again in the fall for the October municipal election. Stay hydrated, folks, it’s going to be a busy, political few months.
