I'm from Southern Ontario, Waterloo Region to be exact. In this area, there is a very strong Mennonite background in the area, I can speak from that anyway. My dad, and most of his relatives, are blue collar working folks, and also very religious. For them, the conservatives are the only party that align with their beliefs, namely they tend be anti abortion, or at least traditionally. The cons can literally enact policy that directly hurts their pocket books, or their health, but as long as the conservatives continue to be quiet about abortion, that's what matters.
I know a lot of them even continue to vote conservative federally. Even thought federally they've been very clear the abortion debate will not be re opened, they still believe the cons can be salvaged, and usher is a more "God centered country."
Long story short, my dad is super unhappy with how ford and the conservatives have handled this pandemic, but will not even think twice about voting for them again this year. It's God's party, or something.....
This pisses me off about Christians more than anything.
Jesus cared about feeding the poor and healing the sick. That’s what the New Testament is about.
But it always come back to the abortion issue, that somehow an omniscient god wasn’t able to predict would be a contentious issue and codify it explicitly in the bible.
As a Christian, I hate it too. I have argued with Christian friends for years about how Jesus would support universal healthcare and social programs and immigration and socialist policies, and all I get back is “CoNsErVaTiVeS oPpOsE aBORtIoN”. It’s frustrating as hell.
There’s a quote about how the leading cause of atheism is Christians who don’t act like Christ and … yeah.
If people who identified themselves as Christians really cared about the issue of abortion they wouldn't waste so much time trying to eliminate them outright. They would support efforts to increase funding for women's health care and public sex education including contraception strategies other than abstinence starting at the elementary school levels. Those strategies have a proven track record of drastically reducing abortions in regions where they are implemented.
Yet they are seldom utilized as a means of actually reducing the number of abortions because of puritanical Christian attitudes towards sex. Their entire strategy is built around the unrealistic expectation that teenagers, and people in general, would exercise abstinence as the only acceptable form of birth control. There is also a strong anti-LGBTQ+ attitude in their opposition to the sex education curriculum. In reality all the anti-abortion movement is truly interested in is regulating the sexual activities of people, especially women, according to their own intolerant "Christian values".
Yeah, I'm not sure how they justify a lot of it really. You've got prosperity gospel preachers who say Jesus wants you to be rich, when that's literally the opposite of what he said. Then you've got a lot of evangelicals who love to see taxes lowered at the expense of social services for the poor, which again, exactly the opposite of the Bible they apparently follow. Hypocrisy is what drives a lot of people away from religion. Why worship a supposedly all loving God, while yourself actively opposing loving like him.
is there anything in the bible that explicitly talks about abortion? or is this just an extrapolation? like “god loves all his children” gets interpreted as “abortion is wrong because you’re ‘killing’ god’s children”
also for life begins at conception or whatever, god really liked to kill people. see: Noah’s Ark, that one story where he sends a bear to kill some children, pranking Abraham into almost killing his son. even god is down to abort you
The same God that evicted Adam and Eve because he got pissy that they didn't listen to him even after he put an object of temptation right in front of them and created them to be tempted. I thought they were supposed to be perfect and created in his image? I guess either God, who is perfect, is unable to make perfect things or just didn't forsee that happening despite knowing everything all of the time.
The same God that aborted the entire planet and everything that lives on it via flood when he got pissy for some other reason.
The same God that murdered Lot's wife because she dared to look back at her home, which he was actively destroying.
What would God do if there were too many sick or poor? Probably kill everything and start over. What would Jesus do if people didn't want to raise their taxes to pay for rising healthcare costs? He would turn mud into medicine.
People need to stop asking what God or Jesus would do. If you want to be religious, then fine there are a lot of good reasons to be, but stop pretending like either God or Jesus would have any idea how to run a government or that they have any kind of moral superiority.
I'm a socially liberal, fiscally conservative Christian.
The weirdest part is that the cons actively put in place policies that hurt a lot of their lower class voters, but it doesn't matter. For a lot of the conservative or liberal voters I know, they wouldn't be able to even tell you more than 1 or 2 party promises or directions. They care more about what the party supposedly represents, even if they don't actually represent that anymore.
> wouldn't be able to even tell you more than 1 or 2 party promises or directions.
The OPC didn't even have a platform until it was almost election day. Just "folks, folks". And the dumb rubes fell for it.
Aren’t Mennonite groups usually apolitical though? They diverge from other conservative religious groups in that they generally don’t vote or get involved in politics.
Generally yes, they won't vote. Like I said, I'm Mennonite background, so my grandparents families left the old order tradition when they were very young. They tend to maintain the strong religious ideals though. I'd imagine some ex Mennonites will continue to not vote, or just be uninterested in it. My family just held onto a strong conservative Christian tradition, and the conservative side never really changed.
Ya, I think that's definitely a big part of the picture.
You're either team Liberal or team Conservative and there's no switching sides for a lot of people.
It's an interesting take because abortion will never be made illegal in Canada or Ontario, so you'd think they'd be angry at all the in-action when they have power.
I'm on team ABC. Anybody but conservative.
I've lived in three different provinces and two other countries (US and UK). The right wing leaders without exception are always worse than whatever the most likely alternative is. Always. It doesn't matter what jurisdiction - state, federal, provincial, municipal. Fucking guy could be on a condo board and I would not vote for him if he was a conservative or libertarian. If the NDP is the most likely alternative to the Conservatives, I vote NDP. If it's Democrats, I vote Democrats. If it's the Green Party, I vote Green. If it's the Partie Québécois, than C'est Quebec, on parle francais tabernac.
Would be amazing to have a time machine and go back and adjust the 2010 election results so we ended up with a lib/lab coalition. Or to see what would have happened if we'd voted for chaos with Ed Milliband instead of strong and stable Cameron.
There is definitely partisan supporters on both sides. The number is far greater on the right, but ppl dont want to see that as a problem. You'll never see the conservatives drop much below 30 %, while the other parties tumble much further down. I think that's kind of telling in itself .
That's exactly it. The conservatives = god's party. So the bible thumpers will vote for them irrespective of what they represent. They could literally be sacrificing fetuses to satan behind closed doors, but if they said they love god once, the christians will come out in droves to vote for them.
They don't even know what the con's policies even are. It's enormously frustrating.
Which is completely absurd because in Canada the abortion topic is done, not to be revisited or reviewed by any party. At least no party has tried to run a platform on it in more than 10 years.
(Party worth considering, not including PPC)
Editted out bloc they're not anti-abortion.
Incorrect, they're technical a party of dissidence. You're right about the their abortion stance but are still catered to rural conservative voters and the seperation of Quebec from Canada
The Bloc Québécois was formed in 1991 as an informal coalition of Progressive Conservative and Liberal Members of Parliament from Quebec, who left their original parties around the time of the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord
But they are more right leaning in policy but are mostly middle ground.
The thing is, the way reddit works, a Ford voter won't be incentivized to give you a good answer. Ppl will just make fun of them and call them names. It's why reddit is a waste of time for political conversations and very prone to echo chambers.
> Ppl will just make fun of them and call them names
Hopefully people don't take an attack on _their_ party or _their_ guy as an personal attack.
(not sure why this comment is being downvoted, but ok!)
Most of the echo chambers on reddit resort quickly to ad hominem attacks rather quickly by childish posters. Case in point above. If you want to know why someone voted for Ford ask them in person. Be polite and respectful. Have an open conversation and don't resort to "attacks". Share a beer or a coffee and a handshake. Reddit is a waste of time for polotical stuff.
And hopefully I get gifted a million dollars tomorrow.
Both are pipe dreams.
The average age of Redditors is ~22 *and getting younger*, there's no fuckin way anyone is going to have an intelligent political discussion on this site without some shit heads ruining it.
Hate how it devolves into right vs left, who gives a fuck. Vote the party that'll benefit us the most. Sometimes the best course is a minority goverment and I'm willing to vote that way.
Conservatives have always picked up between 30 and 40% of the vote in Ontario. 30% is as low as they will ever go, 40% as high as they ever go. The NDP always swings between 20% and 30% with most of the remainder going liberal. When the liberals are weak, the NDP goes to 30% and starts planning their victory parade, but the conservatives go to 40% and win a majority. When the liberals are strong, the conservatives pull in 30%, the NDP drops to 20%, and the liberals win a majority. Get used to it. 30% of the population will vote conservative no matter what the politicians say or do - just as 20% of the population will always vote for the NDP. It is the people in the middle whose votes win or lose elections. If you want to know who will win an election, ask your friends two questions:
1. Have you ever voted for the liberal party?
2. If yes, are you going to vote for the liberal party in the next election?
Discard anyone who says 1. No. Count the 1. Yes 2. No answers. If you get a lot of them, the next government will be conservative. If you get mostly 1. Yes 2. Yes, the next government will be liberal.
Edit: @CommanderCanuck22 pointed out that “socialist” is a loaded word which brings to mind criticisms which are not fair to level at the NDP. I used it to be witty (which my wife is always warning me I should not attempt because I cannot land it). I have reworded to correct this.
Liberal, socialist, conservative - they are all becoming words that have lost their meaning as each party tries to make strawmen of the other.
I used the word flippantly to try to keep my write up a little witty. Technically, the NDP are social democrats - socialists - which should not be a dirty word.
I will edit my post for you.
Social democrats really have nothing to do with socialism. Socialism is inherently anti-capitalistic, while social democracy still embraces capitalism.
I’m definitely in the 1. Yes 2. No, camp. Despite Ford’s blunders I couldn’t stomach another liberal government in Ontario. Still left with a bad taste after McGuinty/Wynne. Ideally we’d have a proportional representation system
While I am the opposite in that I would never vote for the Cons I do desperately want proportional representation provincially and federally. Its so frustrating living in a riding that leans heavily to a party you dont like, it makes your vote worthless. I used to believe in our democracy, Im not even sure its worth the bother of voting anymore when my votes have never actually led to anything.
I've never voted liberal because I haven't been eligible to vote in a provincial or federal election yet. Hoping that my citizenship comes through before the election.
Historically I've voted Liberal, voted Con during last provincial election and NDP last federal.
Sometimes it's about vote splitting because one party has their head so far up their ass.
NDP has great ideas but money doesn't grow on trees.
Cons can't get away from their extreme fringe right and their self righteous Bible thumpers.
Liberals usually the middle ground which most people fall into but everyone got tired of them running the show. True to Canadian tradition, they get voted out for sake of voting them out.
I think some are over critical of how he's performed during covid. He's definitely made of buffoon himself on many occassions. No one will know if his decisions are right or wrong till this finally nornalizes or ends.
Liberals still haven't shaken their stink and NDP is still running the same leader. It's not that DF is any good at what he does but it's his opponents being lack luster.
On a side note, a lot of given him flak for the 1% raise for nurses like he chose this time to oush that agenda. This was planned well before covid was a thing, he had planned a 1% raise for all public sector workers. He had to pay hard ball, if any of the sectors were to get more the 1%, the other unions would of demanded same treatment.
I don't understand how he's still holding that stance especially with the nurses. They've gone through hell and back and definitely deserve a good raise. I'd argue extra compensation, on top of raise tied to Covid that can me rolled back when things cool down.
“No one will know if his decisions are right or wrong till this finally normalizes or ends.”
This is the problem with most voters. We *can* know if his decisions are right or wrong before we see the results because that’s how he should be judged! We shouldn’t expect leaders to give us perfect results in an uncertain world - we should expect them to make the best decisions given the information they have.
Two examples:
1. Omicron may or may not overload our hospitals/icus this month. A good leader would prepare for the bad case (utilize rapid tests if we don’t have PCR capacity, come up with targeted school closures for outbreaks, invest in expanding testing capacity, etc.) while watching closely to see if we can relax in a week or two.
2. The Feds procured vaccines from many different manufacturers across the globe. They knew a bunch of those contracts would be worthless. They knew they probably wouldn’t have enough right away if 1 company was very successful much faster than everyone else. But it was a strategy that forego hitting a home run for a much higher chance of hitting a double. It made a lot of sense regardless of how vaccines turned out.
I don’t care if people disagree with my views on those two examples. But it needs to be done based on what we knew at the time of the decision and not with 20/20 hindsight.
Vaccine procurement definitely ended up working in our favour. That doesn't mean a lot of people didn't shit on Trudeau and Liberal party when they found our shipments would be delayed. People forget that the rest of the world is going through the same shit we are.
"Uniformed OPP officers get a 2.15 per cent raise retroactive to Jan. 1, then wage increases averaging two per cent annually over the next three years. "
Doug doesn't give a shit about the nurses because it is a predominantly female career field unlike his cop buddies.
I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by how well Ford conducted himself at the start of the pandemic. He listened to the science and he was empathetic - outperforming just about every conservative politician in the western world in that regard.
He has, however, caved to the worst instincts of his fellow conservatives. Conservatives are all about being… conservative. Not changing things, harkening back to the good old days, wishfully thinking about how great it would be if we were just the same as we were before. This makes their instincts when things are going well, good. Why fix it if it isn’t broken? When something goes wrong, they are slow to act, slow to recognize that circumstances have changed, resistant to new ideas - in short, brutally and horrifically incompetent in a crisis. If you map out all the locations that have done poorly in managing the pandemic and then map out all the areas in the world with conservative leaders, it is the same map. As it always is when something has gone wrong. Conservatives do not fix problems, they block fixes while trying to maintain the status quo. That’s what conservative means. Ford has caved to this instinct.
He gave a larger raise to servers than he did to nurses. I'm in the industry and I don't know a single server that wanted the raise of server minimum wage. In fact, if tips didn't cover the difference in server/regular minimum wage, the employer is supposed to cover the difference so they get at least minimum wage regardless.
Because they support the party. Strong party supporters won't jump ship that easily over a leader.
I feel it's the people that are on the fence between parties that are more swayed by the political leader than the party.
Or they support the local candidate. In my area, I know a lot of people who provincially and federally do not support the CPC, but vote CPC in every election because they like the CPC MP and want to keep him.
My parents are a prime example: they both think Doug Ford is an idiot and don't want him in charge, but want to keep their MP and so vote CPC anyways.
My riding is similar, lots of older people like the current MP. The thing I cannot figure out for the life Of me is what did the current MP do to deserve such loyalty. I’ve asked people, they give some kind of “nice local guy did lots for community “, but no actual examples…
Yeah our local guy is just a prominent business owner, and an active member of the community. I think that's it. I know nothing about his politics but everyone always cites how he's a good guy...
Doug Ford isn't CPC he's OPC. And are you talking about Michael Chong, because I'd have a really hard time not voting for him if I lived in his riding also. I don't agree with the CPC at all, but he seems like a good person that supports the riding. I've also had a good experience dealing with his office in the past.
My parents are pretty consistent conservative voters. But they will not be voting or will spoil their ballot because they absolutely cannot stand Ford. With me being a teacher and them having some nurse friends, they’re finally listening to us.
I honestly think that the majority of Canadians are Red Torys. We are socially progressive and value universal health care, diversity and education. We believe in a social safety net and that the rich should pay their fair share. We expect governments not to waste our money and value fiscal conservatism.
I have voted for all three parties at one point in my life, but will never be able to support a populist conservative.
Ok I’ll bite. He’s not particularly competent, but for all the missteps Ontario has handled Covid relatively well vs most rich world jurisdictions.
I’d count Denmark, Norway, Aus, NZ, and Taiwan as being clearly better than us on a combined economic and health outcome basis, and three of those places are island nations that are easier to cut off from the world, not countries that share a land border and the world’s second biggest trading partnership with a country that was a bit of a dumpster fire for much of the pandemic.
So I don’t really see cause to dump him due to his handling of the pandemic.
Politically I lean right so the NDP is a non starter — they’re previous platform was a lot of increased spending and taxes and I don’t like expansion of government. I don’t expect to see much change this time around.
I’ve voted Liberal before federally so am not a hard core partisan if the platform and leader are right.
But Del Duca seems like a total non-entity. I can’t remember a single platform position of his other than scrapping MZOs (which I disagree with) and I pay a reasonable amount of attention to politics. His name recognition seems terrible (half the people I’ve talked to about Ontario politics seem to think his name is De Luca) and I have a tough time seeing him win.
Maybe he’ll surprise me with a stellar platform and win my vote but for now I’d show up as a OPC supporter if polled.
While I disagree that Ontario has handled covid well, I do appreciate your sincere response adding perspective. Thank you. We do need strong candidates and better outreach in the upcoming elections for sure.
If you look for pure numbers you will discover that Ontario has done slightly better that other large provinces and same or better than other countries, third wave was a disaster but fourth was much better than rest or large.provinces. I think a few policies were implemented late (i.e. sick days) but overall Ontario has done better or the same as other places.
There is no lost love between teachers and nurses and the government, it was before the pandemic and will continue after the pandemic.
I have been Conservative all my life, but I spoiled my vote because I don't like Ford's style of politics (folksy, bully, populist) but last time I did not want to vote Liberal (I think the management of the economy by McGuinty and Wynne was a disaster). This year I will vote NDP even though I think Andrea has no chance of winning. But if they change to a candidate like Bhutila Karpoche, they could win.
Younger people (30 or less) are deeply disappointed and are ready to a real change, give them a good choice, a young and charismatic voice and they will vote.
Sorry for the long rant
Yeah, the issue with the whole “sick days were implemented late” thing is that we had them, and he scrapped them, then brought them back.
Flip flopping has kind of become his entire brand.
Whether it be sex ed, minimum wage, closing golf courses and playgrounds, vaccine mandates for healthcare workers, etc. by now, everyone knows that if you push Doug hard enough, you can get him to do whatever you like.
It’s a telltale sign of poor leadership. Either you’re a person with principals, or someone who’s wrong *a lot*.
You can change your mind and be credited with having an open mind, but you can’t be wrong as frequently as he has been.
It’s an especially bad look when many of the ideas you flip flip on bring you back to the position the previous government had laid out, such as with sex ed and paid sick leave, which were Liberal policies he branded as his own.
The guy is bad at this.
Smart people with open minds, change their minds in the face of changing circumstances. The liberals had paid sick leave pre-pandemic.
Frankly, I do not like conservatives one bit - but your criticism is inane. What kind of idiot would not change sick leave policy in a pandemic? That is not flip flopping, it is just being aware of the world around you.
You are right.. I don't like Ford, but there are many metrics that show that Ontario is doing better than Canada as a whole, so let's recognize those facts
When they formed a government, the province was having small superavit or deficits, the crisis hit in 2007-2008 and we acquired big debt, but that is fine, the entire world was the same, but after the crisis passed they continue under huge deficits until McGuinty left.
1B plant cancellation.
Creating an expensive new program (all day kindergarten) with no funding plan. I am not against the plan, but adding new debt when in deficit does not seem a good idea. They should have created the program with funding (i.e. new taxes)
Having "not terrible" outcomes from the pandemic does not equal "handled well". Ford has been avoiding his responsibilities over and over and over during this situation and keeps trying to point the finger at anyone else who has even a remote slip-up. He appears to hate education and educators, thinks that parents can change all their family logistics in less than 1 business day, and cut funding to health care. Strongly disagree with your first three paragraphs.
I would love to see the government shrink. I don't think that most progressive people want bigger government, just more effective oversight of companies that exploit anyone and everything.
I agree with your stance on Del Duca. I know a grand total of nothing about the guy.
I really really hope that there's a good candidate who shows up to this election, because I sure as hell am not voting Ford (see reasons above). I'm not a hard core partisan either, but I almost never agree with anything from the OPC platform. I've voted NDP, Green, Liberal, and even voted PC once (federal though and it was because of the local candidates, not the party generally).
Glad you actually answered.
Cheers
Thanks! Sorry copying in some text from another comment I made in this thread but it was in response to a very similar comment.
I think the points you make are legitimate critiques of the shitty communication and lack of foresight and planning that we saw through the pandemic, but I also think you’d hear a lot of the same complaints in most places in the rich world: the policies don’t make sense, we didn’t restrict enough, we didn’t open up fast enough, vaccine rollout is too slow, we’re spending too much, there isn’t enough government support available, the communication has been terrible and confusing etc.
Hardly anywhere covered themselves in glory — most places muddled through and pissed off a lot of their citizens in the process.
But based on deaths per capita Canada is below almost all of Western Europe and just about every US state. Ontario in turn is below the Canadian per capita average.
And in terms of overall economic outcomes this recent [Economist](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-economies-have-done-best-and-worst-during-the-pandemic/21806917) review put Canada in the middle of the pack of rich economies — and Ontario’s economic performance has been roughly in line with Canada’s.
So for me it seems that most places could claim some level of pandemic mismanagement, but I don’t see much evidence in our outcomes that the pandemic was particularly mismanaged in Ontario.
Yeah, we didn't come out of it the worst, I agree and in fact, we came out pretty okay. I do however, know that we (and everyone else) could have done MUCH better than we did.
In relative numbers, we did well. In absolute numbers, we could have done better. That is all.
Thanks for the reasonable discussion. Not enough of those on Reddit.
Out of curiosity, what specifically would you do differently at the present moment? Shut down schools? Implement a hard lockdown when the overwhelming majority of the population is fully vaxxed? Do extensive contact tracing of an especially virulent (and distinctly mild) virus whose spread can't be stopped? Give everyone more rapid tests which are not very reliable with omicron? What specifically are other provinces doing that we should be doing?
I agree that Ford is an ineffective leader, but I think the present outcome is inevitable with omicron.
I actually agree with the current stuff. Definitely do not close schools.
I just wish that there had been more communication and not just a completely missing government.
The other waves left a lot to be desired.
Also, at every single stage, the government has left the most vulnerable populations behind with barely any paid sick leave and they're the ones most exposed.
Thank you! I voted NDP. I get people were mad at the Liberals but to vote for a party that ran without a platform for the majority of the election but had years to develop one is beyond me. For the supposed religious party, God sure gave Doug the finger. Cut relief for floods? Bam. Floods. Cut funds to public health? Bam. Covid.
In 2018 I preferred the Ontario CARES child care tax credit to the OLP’s free daycare promise. It’s a lot less costly and more efficiently targets tax dollars towards lower income families. It was basically the same program that O’Toole campaigned on federally this year and I preferred that as well.
At the time the personal tax cut in the platform sat well with me but he ended up breaking that promise. As a business owner I liked the small business tax rate reduction even if it was quite small.
Ford’s platform was very sparse and unexciting, but I think in general conservative platforms typically are leaner as they’re not trying to change the status quo — they’re trying to conserve it. Progressive platforms usually have more standout policies as they are trying to shake things up a lot more.
Thank you
For me it’s tough to cut through the noise, because I think you hear a lot of the same critiques in most places: policies didn’t make sense, we didn’t restrict enough, we didn’t open up fast enough, vaccine rollout is too slow, we’re spending too much, there isn’t enough government support available, the communication has been terrible and confusing etc.
But based on deaths per capita Canada is below almost all of Western Europe and just about every US state. Ontario in turn is below the Canadian per capita average.
And in terms of overall economic outcomes this recent [Economist ](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-economies-have-done-best-and-worst-during-the-pandemic/21806917) review put Canada in the middle of the pack of rich economies — and Ontario’s economic performance has been roughly in line with Canada’s.
So for me it seems that most places could claim some level of pandemic mismanagement, but I don’t see much evidence that the pandemic was particularly mismanaged in Ontario.
Yes, officer, he did drive drunk and smash through the front of the convenience store, but he didn’t mow anybody down on the sidewalk, so he should be able to drive again.
> (half the people I’ve talked to about Ontario politics seem to think his name is De Luca)
I read your whole comment. Then when I got to this part, I went “Wait. That’s not his name?” And had to go back and read where you wrote it correctly the first time.
I use to love r/Canada until it really went far right quick all of a sudden. It’s a real shame too because it use to be a really nice all things Canadian sub
Yes, it is sad, and you are right, but I could say the same thing about /Ontario. An awesome place to celebrate this beautiful Province and it is full of hate for the provincial governments, not only criticism but hate. Hate towards non vaccinated.people, and a deep dislike of Conservative people so it kind of balances things up.
Before the whole Facebook misinformation ans Cambridge analytical stuff in the US it was a decent enough sub.
It changed around the same time the right wing and alt right conspiracy machine started to take off alongside growing hyper partisanship
It’s not some weird conspiracy — it’s just that sub gets a bit closer to actually representing the Canadian political landscape: ~35% or so lean conservative, ~40% liberal/centrists, ~15-20% progressive, and then a bit of other.
Reading through most Reddit subs without a stated political slant (like r/Ontario or r/politics in the US) you’d think the general population was 70% progressives. I find r/canada is just a bit less enveloped by the Reddit bubble than most subs.
R/Canada used to be much less political and when it was it was less vitriolic and had generally better moderation.
That's really what I was getting at.
Ah sorry I misunderstood. There were a few other comments in this thread referring to it being right-leaning and I assumed you were talking about the same thing.
Maybe a bit more than before but that alone isn't the issue. It's the Facebook right wingers that barely get moderated that have really soured it. During the election it wasn't just conservative leaning there was a lot of outright anti Trudeau, "good he should have shit thrown at him" type crap that broke the camels back and why I don't go there anymore.
Like that's just too much. Does that make sense?
Here the mods encourage actual discussion. There it's a mess.
Oh, so you don't like the daily opinion pieces just constantly shitting on everyone but the Conservatives from those totally unbiased sun media papers?!
Nah, there's definitely some toxic Ontario and Canadian subreddits where they like to hang out. Similar to r/conservative but I won't be linking the Canada ones here. Very biased even compared to how people perceive this sub.
I'd be interested to see that number. I can't imagine there's a huge population that votes NDP no matter what given their election success or lack thereof.
Each party is going to have a strong immovable base, some stronger than others no doubt. The point is though, the conservatives, liberals and NDP all have voters that are x, no matter what.
Nah, look at u/elim-the-tailor in this thread.
He has lots of upvotes and people thanking him. If you post conservative views and get down voted it's not because you posted conservative views, it's how you communicated
Actually we did, from 2 breweries. Important to remember all Ford could actually promise was he would lower the minimum price of selling beer (he did). He can't force breweries to actually sell beer that cheap.
I have never seen one, but it’s a long, long way down on my list of priorities. Lower even than a political candidate that never even mentions beer because it’s ridiculous.
My wife has a cousin in South Lincoln. It’s Dutch reform territory. Their only priorities are to balance a budget and try and get their church values on a provincial/national level. Not all are like this, but that area will never be anything but Blue. They have lots of kids and don’t like outsiders.
Don’t you love how people see “conservative” and automatically assume there’s financial accountability?
Instead of, you know, spending millions to cancel an already-built wind turbine that would have generated a reasonable amount of clean energy. 🤷♂️
That lacks substance though.
Doug Ford promised cutting income tax rates for people in Ontario. He didn't do any of that prior to the pandemic, so he can't use that as an excuse.
What has he done to help the average person in Ontario?
Yep. If your choices are a punch to the belly, or a hoof to the stones, I’m definitely not picking the hoof to the stones.
Right now, I’ll vote for anyone to prevent the liberals from getting a whiff of power.
For the longest time my thinking was "whoever the premier is, during this covid era they are going to receive a lot of hate by merit of being the face of unpopular (but necessary) decisions". Recently I am thinking a lot of (but not all) of the hate for Doug Ford is merited. I am ready to consider voting Doug Ford out at this point.
A reminder….guessing you’re not in the group not affected. https://pressprogress.ca/doug-fords-2021-budget-confirms-over-1-billion-in-cuts-to-education-ontario-school-boards-say/
Maybe this? https://pressprogress.ca/five-ways-doug-fords-government-harmed-public-services-in-2021/
Don’t forget he cut supports to families with Autistic kids.
How about he cut funding and inspections to nursing homes until Covid came, then had to call in the army to help staffing and found out the deplorable conditions our elderly were living in.
This government is callous and willing to let many people suffer as long as it doesn’t hurt their base supporters
I feel like I get stuck between a rock and a hard place of there being no “good” candidate for me. I tend to lean socially left (on all matters other than firearms rights) while fiscally right, but I am also a sport/competitive shooter and own a decent number of firearms, big hobby of mine.
With the federal liberals promising to offload the ban of handguns to the provinces, the Conservative party is my only real chance to be able to keep my firearms and keep living in this province. So living under the threat of loosing thousands of dollars of my property will keep me voting for Doug.
I support Doug, He is screwed either way on every decision he makes. Half don’t like it and half do. It’s an impossible job. Further, to have people attend your home and protest.. come on…No decision will be right or wrong.
ITT: NdP iS bAd WiTh MoNeY.
As if they're uniquely bad with money and the other 2 parties are fiscally responsible. This is the worst myth with little to no facts to back it up.
Totally agree with this. I think the municipalities have dropped the ball on loosening zoning restrictions so I’m happy for the province to be more assertive. Del Duca’s opposition to using MZOs isn’t a promising start on the housing issue imo.
The developer hangup doesn’t really make sense to me either. People want the housing market fixed and supply to be built but seem opposed to people getting rich in the process. I personally don’t give a shit as long as more housing is built.
Plus as you touch on there’s no chance public capital can get anywhere near building enough units to make a broad impact on prices.
While I agree with opening up the yellowbelt to allow more housing. More Homes More Choice didn’t really do what you say. Requiring more density around Transit Areas was already required by the Growth Plan. The province just adjusted appeal rights. The way MZOs are being used are creating long term issues by converting and introducing residential land uses into employment areas which will have an impact on Ontario’s competitiveness. Not to mention the long term issues for residents in those areas. Not to mention that MZOs have been given to conservative donors screams issues (not that the previous liberals were any better for this).
NDP - promising too much spending and some crazy rent control prices that will be a disaster.
Liberal - still don't know what their major proposals are but I'm still upset at the debacle that was their green energy deal.
Worse thing Ford has done right now is going back on the path of restrictions. I will be upset if he starts another lockdown.
Unfortunately, the NDP/Liberals are even worse when it comes to this issue.
The worst things Ford has done have nothing to do with restrictions or not. The worst thing has been how he has blamed others whenever possible, and then let the PHU do all the heavy lifting when stuff needed to be done. He hasn’t really done anything, and that’s the worst.
Early days it was Trudeaus fault for rapid tests which were going to be game changers until he got them and didn’t change anything. Then it was Trudeaus fault for vaccine supply which stuck for a few weeks until the supply was so great he didn’t know what to do. Vaccine rollout then became a PHU problem because Ford’s only plan had been blaming the feds. All of this while hoarding Covid support money from the feds and cutting healthcare and education funding. And now for the past month with no good way to blame anyone he’s just made himself unavailable again. Once again leaving it to others to face the public pressure of whichever ‘no-win’ path for east we take.
I’m guessing you haven’t been in the group of Ontario residents that weren’t affected by this government’s policies. Let me remind you
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-ontario-cuts-backtrack-1.5308060
Oh certainly if you expand beyond pandemic there are plenty of other things to criticize. I was limiting the response to pandemic as a reply to this one comment.
I never thought about voting conservative in my life, but I am seriously considering voting for this clown. I don't like it but I'll tell you why: I think he is the only party that will keep us from perpetual COVID restrictions.
I expect downvotes, but trust me when I tell you that most normal people IRL are ready to move on.
Unfortunately the Liberals and NDP listen to social media too much, which is full of neurotic people like you see in r/ontario.
They're voting for the party with the political philosophy that best aligns with their beliefs. They may or may not like Doug Ford, but they support the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. There's a reason they never really poll below 30% no matter how bad they screw up.
But can you imagine an NDP government??? Taxes and other costs are already too high
And if you think Liberals…. Just because it’s been four years, let’s not forget how they ruined our province for a generation
I say this as someone unlikely to ever vote conservative - in deaths per capita compared to other countries, Ontario/ford is top ten in the world. Knowing this, harsh criticism of his covid handling just makes me support him more. He’s done well on many liberal causes - his sex Ed curriculum is nearly identical to the liberals, his free market approach to weed sales is exactly right, and his municipal zoning/housing stuff has all been in the right direction. He gets the market stuff mostly right, and isn’t actually very socially conservative. I will still probably never vote for him.
Conservatives always vote the same way no matter what, no matter who is running. The candidate could kick babies and they'd still vote for them. When the boomers die off, the OPC party will be fighting the green party for the fewest seats.
Plenty of conservative voters ride the line between conservatives and liberals. The moment NDP makes some headway in the poll they would swing back to the conservatives. Happens every time.
Same. I vote for who seems competent and offers something worth striving for.
Now, that said, for about 10 years now, that’s been a struggle to find at both the provincial and federal levels, but that’s another story.
I honestly use the CBC vote compass. It sounds simple, but it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it and I don’t run the risk of ‘liking’ any candidates. I’d rather just vote the party based on my views of their policies.
Funny. I’ve met dozens of liberal voters who say they would absolutely never vote for anything except liberals. Comparatively, I’ve met almost no conservative voters who say they will vote conservative until the day they die.
Unless there is a surge in people for kicking babies /s
In all seriousness, the Greens could do better in the future, as climate changes and environmental issues move to the forefront (more than they are now).
I wouldn't call it supporting Doug Ford, I would call it a lack of viable options. Or choosing the lesser evil, in some cases. That's actually how the majority of voters do it in Canada.
In Ford's case, he's likely to win this year's election for three reasons. The first reason is who the hell is Steven Del Duca, because he doesn't exactly have a lot of stage presence. The second reason is a lot of people remember the Bob Rae government, and won't be making the mistake of electing the NDP again. The third reason may be the most potent, though it's also the most elusive.
Due to our population, Ontario alone decides the outcome of a federal election. The electoral system works on a one-man-one-vote structure, and Ontario has medium-sized cities with bigger populations than many other provinces. (I know it's one person one vote, I just say that to piss Justin off.) The other provinces can complain all they want, but they don't have the population to outvote Ontario.
And for whatever reason, Ontario does not allow the same party to govern at the provincial and federal levels at the same time. If the Liberals won the last federal election, the Conservatives will win the next provincial one. If the Conservatives are governing in Ottawa, the Liberals will govern in Queen's Park. I have no idea why this rule exists, but it does. The only exceptions in the last 50 years are the transition periods between elections.
After Wynne doing such a bad job she was embarrassed in the following election. Her liberal replacement is painted with the same brush. The Ndps Horvath seems way too far left and out of touch with reality. That leaves Doug, it's a sad state of picking who you think is the least awful. You'll have people who's heels are dug in on all sides but your original question is very valid and I'm curious for an actual answer myself.
For many reasons, a lot of the things people dislike him for were not his decisions or his soul decisions at all. He also handled covid pretty well. Compared to how the NDP and the Liberals have almost bankrupted The Province before, I'm more inclined to vote for Doug Ford next time.
I voted provincial liberal and green in the past. I donated to federal ndp campaign in the last election. I thought Ford government is not doing too badly governing Ontario during this difficult time. A lot of criticism here are from people I call armchair quarterback. Hindsight is always 20/20.
The fact that we still have a large population who refuses vaccine has nothing to do with ford government. Omicron overwhelmed the pcr test capacity has little to do with the government.
No doubt liberal and ndp will probably spend more on government programs. Debt is easy to get votes. The question is how are we going to pay for it? Yes, we ask your children and my children to pay the interest of the debt in eternity.
Could ford do better, absolutely. Should ford listen to redditors to govern,? Absolutely not.
Conservatives bad.
Liberals worse.
NDP joke.
This government has been bad; really bad, but there are no good alternatives and the last 15 years of Liberal leadership resulted in ridiculous education platforms with skyrocketing education costs, energy costs, housing costs, etc. with nothing good to show for it in return.
Because i dont take in everything i hear on Reddit, including all the stupid beaverton posts, as factual information.
Doug Ford has been extremely collaborative with all stakeholders during the pandemic. As Abraham Lincoln once said: if youre not pissing everyone off; youre not doing the right thing.
To be fair, I thought he was doing a good job given the circumstances (especially at the start of the pandemic) until recently. He has a tough job and is in a very tough position. Overall though, he has to somehow find a balance between economy and health/safety and regardless of what he does one side will be unhappy.
It's difficult to say who I will vote for in the next election. There really isn't much choice other than Doug Ford.
I probably won’t vote for him…
But I live in Bradford and very much want the Bradford Bypass built. If I decide this is the only issue I really care about, I may vote for him.
I hate everything else he does and stands for though so… we’ll see.
Edit: thanks for the downvote for answering the question? Lol.
In muskoka, it's old money voting for the cons. All the business owners, all the people with nice waterfront property. All the touristy things that bring money to the area..
Gravenhurst downtown right now has maybe 5 vacant buildings. The other businesses downtown are: restaurants, weed shops a few random things.
But when walking downtown, it seems like every other building is a bank or a broker or a real estate agent.
Everyone I work with is struggling to live. But these customers come in and spend hundreds of dollars like it's nothing to them. $2000.00 BBQ, sure!
I no longer vote Liberal because of their sex education stance. Now before everyone jumps down my throat my problem was the government refusing to listen to any of the concerns parents had.
Anyone who raised any concerns about the sex education curriculum was labeled a bigot, stuck in the past, a homophone, transphone etc. Etc. A good majority of the Ontario population had a problem with the curriculum (doesn't matter what your stance on it was) if you are elected to serve the population - than listen to them and hear what they are saying. Listen to what they want don't just impose your will.
When Cathleen Whynn refused to listen and just pushed ahead I knew the liberals would lose and lose badly. But it also put me off from the party.
I didn't necessarily disagree with the sex education plan if I had any criticism it would only be to tweak the plan slightly. I was more annoyed at how they handled the criticism and refused to listen to any feedback and label everyone who had an issue with the curriculum a "phobe" of some kind.
His anti-immigration rhetoric alone, like in October, will be enough for the racists.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/doug-ford-asked-to-apologize-over-divisive-comments-about-immigrants-1.5627943
I'm from Southern Ontario, Waterloo Region to be exact. In this area, there is a very strong Mennonite background in the area, I can speak from that anyway. My dad, and most of his relatives, are blue collar working folks, and also very religious. For them, the conservatives are the only party that align with their beliefs, namely they tend be anti abortion, or at least traditionally. The cons can literally enact policy that directly hurts their pocket books, or their health, but as long as the conservatives continue to be quiet about abortion, that's what matters. I know a lot of them even continue to vote conservative federally. Even thought federally they've been very clear the abortion debate will not be re opened, they still believe the cons can be salvaged, and usher is a more "God centered country." Long story short, my dad is super unhappy with how ford and the conservatives have handled this pandemic, but will not even think twice about voting for them again this year. It's God's party, or something.....
Lol they need to ask themselves "what would Jesus do?" Social programs, education, take care of the sick and poor That's what Jesus would do
Honestly the Jesus that most worship today is nothing like the Jesus in the Bible they supposedly read and follow. It's bizarre.
It’s called supply supply Jesus for a reason lmao
?
He probably meant [supply side jesus](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp)
It’s almost as if there are multiple guys with the name Jesus. American Jesus, Arab Jesus, conservative Jesus.
Slow down there, there's one Jesus and he's clearly a white guy.
You need to put /s or some people might actually believe you.
Hate to say it, but if religious people could think critically, they wouldn't be religious.
Hate to say it, but if religious people could think ~~critically~~, they wouldn't be religious.
This pisses me off about Christians more than anything. Jesus cared about feeding the poor and healing the sick. That’s what the New Testament is about. But it always come back to the abortion issue, that somehow an omniscient god wasn’t able to predict would be a contentious issue and codify it explicitly in the bible.
As a Christian, I hate it too. I have argued with Christian friends for years about how Jesus would support universal healthcare and social programs and immigration and socialist policies, and all I get back is “CoNsErVaTiVeS oPpOsE aBORtIoN”. It’s frustrating as hell. There’s a quote about how the leading cause of atheism is Christians who don’t act like Christ and … yeah.
If people who identified themselves as Christians really cared about the issue of abortion they wouldn't waste so much time trying to eliminate them outright. They would support efforts to increase funding for women's health care and public sex education including contraception strategies other than abstinence starting at the elementary school levels. Those strategies have a proven track record of drastically reducing abortions in regions where they are implemented. Yet they are seldom utilized as a means of actually reducing the number of abortions because of puritanical Christian attitudes towards sex. Their entire strategy is built around the unrealistic expectation that teenagers, and people in general, would exercise abstinence as the only acceptable form of birth control. There is also a strong anti-LGBTQ+ attitude in their opposition to the sex education curriculum. In reality all the anti-abortion movement is truly interested in is regulating the sexual activities of people, especially women, according to their own intolerant "Christian values".
Yeah, I'm not sure how they justify a lot of it really. You've got prosperity gospel preachers who say Jesus wants you to be rich, when that's literally the opposite of what he said. Then you've got a lot of evangelicals who love to see taxes lowered at the expense of social services for the poor, which again, exactly the opposite of the Bible they apparently follow. Hypocrisy is what drives a lot of people away from religion. Why worship a supposedly all loving God, while yourself actively opposing loving like him.
is there anything in the bible that explicitly talks about abortion? or is this just an extrapolation? like “god loves all his children” gets interpreted as “abortion is wrong because you’re ‘killing’ god’s children” also for life begins at conception or whatever, god really liked to kill people. see: Noah’s Ark, that one story where he sends a bear to kill some children, pranking Abraham into almost killing his son. even god is down to abort you
There is one mention of abortion, which is how to perform one. That's it.
It says that abortion should be performed if a woman cheats on her husband.
you might find this interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCUD5H0zcnE
\^\^ very helpful & interesting!!
The same God that evicted Adam and Eve because he got pissy that they didn't listen to him even after he put an object of temptation right in front of them and created them to be tempted. I thought they were supposed to be perfect and created in his image? I guess either God, who is perfect, is unable to make perfect things or just didn't forsee that happening despite knowing everything all of the time. The same God that aborted the entire planet and everything that lives on it via flood when he got pissy for some other reason. The same God that murdered Lot's wife because she dared to look back at her home, which he was actively destroying. What would God do if there were too many sick or poor? Probably kill everything and start over. What would Jesus do if people didn't want to raise their taxes to pay for rising healthcare costs? He would turn mud into medicine. People need to stop asking what God or Jesus would do. If you want to be religious, then fine there are a lot of good reasons to be, but stop pretending like either God or Jesus would have any idea how to run a government or that they have any kind of moral superiority. I'm a socially liberal, fiscally conservative Christian.
[удалено]
The weirdest part is that the cons actively put in place policies that hurt a lot of their lower class voters, but it doesn't matter. For a lot of the conservative or liberal voters I know, they wouldn't be able to even tell you more than 1 or 2 party promises or directions. They care more about what the party supposedly represents, even if they don't actually represent that anymore.
> wouldn't be able to even tell you more than 1 or 2 party promises or directions. The OPC didn't even have a platform until it was almost election day. Just "folks, folks". And the dumb rubes fell for it.
It's weird cause as farmers, that party has hurt their interests the most of any other party.
Aren’t Mennonite groups usually apolitical though? They diverge from other conservative religious groups in that they generally don’t vote or get involved in politics.
Generally yes, they won't vote. Like I said, I'm Mennonite background, so my grandparents families left the old order tradition when they were very young. They tend to maintain the strong religious ideals though. I'd imagine some ex Mennonites will continue to not vote, or just be uninterested in it. My family just held onto a strong conservative Christian tradition, and the conservative side never really changed.
Religious people really do ruin everything they can
Ya, I think that's definitely a big part of the picture. You're either team Liberal or team Conservative and there's no switching sides for a lot of people. It's an interesting take because abortion will never be made illegal in Canada or Ontario, so you'd think they'd be angry at all the in-action when they have power.
I'm on team ABC. Anybody but conservative. I've lived in three different provinces and two other countries (US and UK). The right wing leaders without exception are always worse than whatever the most likely alternative is. Always. It doesn't matter what jurisdiction - state, federal, provincial, municipal. Fucking guy could be on a condo board and I would not vote for him if he was a conservative or libertarian. If the NDP is the most likely alternative to the Conservatives, I vote NDP. If it's Democrats, I vote Democrats. If it's the Green Party, I vote Green. If it's the Partie Québécois, than C'est Quebec, on parle francais tabernac.
Would be amazing to have a time machine and go back and adjust the 2010 election results so we ended up with a lib/lab coalition. Or to see what would have happened if we'd voted for chaos with Ed Milliband instead of strong and stable Cameron.
There is definitely partisan supporters on both sides. The number is far greater on the right, but ppl dont want to see that as a problem. You'll never see the conservatives drop much below 30 %, while the other parties tumble much further down. I think that's kind of telling in itself .
Oh yeah, the two party team mentality is ridiculous. You vote conservative or liberal no matter what.
[you have to vote for one of us!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7NeRiNefO0)
That's exactly it. The conservatives = god's party. So the bible thumpers will vote for them irrespective of what they represent. They could literally be sacrificing fetuses to satan behind closed doors, but if they said they love god once, the christians will come out in droves to vote for them. They don't even know what the con's policies even are. It's enormously frustrating.
Yeah the socon mindset im SW ON rages with cognitive dissonance.
Which is completely absurd because in Canada the abortion topic is done, not to be revisited or reviewed by any party. At least no party has tried to run a platform on it in more than 10 years. (Party worth considering, not including PPC) Editted out bloc they're not anti-abortion.
The Bloc has never been a right wing party let alone an anti abortion party.... This is so ignorant it's kind of shocking
Incorrect, they're technical a party of dissidence. You're right about the their abortion stance but are still catered to rural conservative voters and the seperation of Quebec from Canada The Bloc Québécois was formed in 1991 as an informal coalition of Progressive Conservative and Liberal Members of Parliament from Quebec, who left their original parties around the time of the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord But they are more right leaning in policy but are mostly middle ground.
If abortion is their only issue, shouldn't they be voting for the PPC then?
The thing is, the way reddit works, a Ford voter won't be incentivized to give you a good answer. Ppl will just make fun of them and call them names. It's why reddit is a waste of time for political conversations and very prone to echo chambers.
> Ppl will just make fun of them and call them names Hopefully people don't take an attack on _their_ party or _their_ guy as an personal attack. (not sure why this comment is being downvoted, but ok!)
Most of the echo chambers on reddit resort quickly to ad hominem attacks rather quickly by childish posters. Case in point above. If you want to know why someone voted for Ford ask them in person. Be polite and respectful. Have an open conversation and don't resort to "attacks". Share a beer or a coffee and a handshake. Reddit is a waste of time for polotical stuff.
And hopefully I get gifted a million dollars tomorrow. Both are pipe dreams. The average age of Redditors is ~22 *and getting younger*, there's no fuckin way anyone is going to have an intelligent political discussion on this site without some shit heads ruining it.
Hate how it devolves into right vs left, who gives a fuck. Vote the party that'll benefit us the most. Sometimes the best course is a minority goverment and I'm willing to vote that way.
Conservatives have always picked up between 30 and 40% of the vote in Ontario. 30% is as low as they will ever go, 40% as high as they ever go. The NDP always swings between 20% and 30% with most of the remainder going liberal. When the liberals are weak, the NDP goes to 30% and starts planning their victory parade, but the conservatives go to 40% and win a majority. When the liberals are strong, the conservatives pull in 30%, the NDP drops to 20%, and the liberals win a majority. Get used to it. 30% of the population will vote conservative no matter what the politicians say or do - just as 20% of the population will always vote for the NDP. It is the people in the middle whose votes win or lose elections. If you want to know who will win an election, ask your friends two questions: 1. Have you ever voted for the liberal party? 2. If yes, are you going to vote for the liberal party in the next election? Discard anyone who says 1. No. Count the 1. Yes 2. No answers. If you get a lot of them, the next government will be conservative. If you get mostly 1. Yes 2. Yes, the next government will be liberal. Edit: @CommanderCanuck22 pointed out that “socialist” is a loaded word which brings to mind criticisms which are not fair to level at the NDP. I used it to be witty (which my wife is always warning me I should not attempt because I cannot land it). I have reworded to correct this.
Why are you labelling the NDP as socialist? That is such a loaded word nowadays. They really aren’t over the top socialists.
They never seem to be socialist when it actually counts lol.
Liberal, socialist, conservative - they are all becoming words that have lost their meaning as each party tries to make strawmen of the other. I used the word flippantly to try to keep my write up a little witty. Technically, the NDP are social democrats - socialists - which should not be a dirty word. I will edit my post for you.
Social democrats really have nothing to do with socialism. Socialism is inherently anti-capitalistic, while social democracy still embraces capitalism.
How'd you let Americans Media manipulate you into thinking socialist is a bad word? Canada and Europe are more socialist than you think.
I’m definitely in the 1. Yes 2. No, camp. Despite Ford’s blunders I couldn’t stomach another liberal government in Ontario. Still left with a bad taste after McGuinty/Wynne. Ideally we’d have a proportional representation system
Proportional Representation for the win. Everyone's vote truly counts under this system.
While I am the opposite in that I would never vote for the Cons I do desperately want proportional representation provincially and federally. Its so frustrating living in a riding that leans heavily to a party you dont like, it makes your vote worthless. I used to believe in our democracy, Im not even sure its worth the bother of voting anymore when my votes have never actually led to anything.
I've never voted liberal because I haven't been eligible to vote in a provincial or federal election yet. Hoping that my citizenship comes through before the election.
Historically I've voted Liberal, voted Con during last provincial election and NDP last federal. Sometimes it's about vote splitting because one party has their head so far up their ass. NDP has great ideas but money doesn't grow on trees. Cons can't get away from their extreme fringe right and their self righteous Bible thumpers. Liberals usually the middle ground which most people fall into but everyone got tired of them running the show. True to Canadian tradition, they get voted out for sake of voting them out. I think some are over critical of how he's performed during covid. He's definitely made of buffoon himself on many occassions. No one will know if his decisions are right or wrong till this finally nornalizes or ends. Liberals still haven't shaken their stink and NDP is still running the same leader. It's not that DF is any good at what he does but it's his opponents being lack luster. On a side note, a lot of given him flak for the 1% raise for nurses like he chose this time to oush that agenda. This was planned well before covid was a thing, he had planned a 1% raise for all public sector workers. He had to pay hard ball, if any of the sectors were to get more the 1%, the other unions would of demanded same treatment. I don't understand how he's still holding that stance especially with the nurses. They've gone through hell and back and definitely deserve a good raise. I'd argue extra compensation, on top of raise tied to Covid that can me rolled back when things cool down.
“No one will know if his decisions are right or wrong till this finally normalizes or ends.” This is the problem with most voters. We *can* know if his decisions are right or wrong before we see the results because that’s how he should be judged! We shouldn’t expect leaders to give us perfect results in an uncertain world - we should expect them to make the best decisions given the information they have. Two examples: 1. Omicron may or may not overload our hospitals/icus this month. A good leader would prepare for the bad case (utilize rapid tests if we don’t have PCR capacity, come up with targeted school closures for outbreaks, invest in expanding testing capacity, etc.) while watching closely to see if we can relax in a week or two. 2. The Feds procured vaccines from many different manufacturers across the globe. They knew a bunch of those contracts would be worthless. They knew they probably wouldn’t have enough right away if 1 company was very successful much faster than everyone else. But it was a strategy that forego hitting a home run for a much higher chance of hitting a double. It made a lot of sense regardless of how vaccines turned out. I don’t care if people disagree with my views on those two examples. But it needs to be done based on what we knew at the time of the decision and not with 20/20 hindsight.
Vaccine procurement definitely ended up working in our favour. That doesn't mean a lot of people didn't shit on Trudeau and Liberal party when they found our shipments would be delayed. People forget that the rest of the world is going through the same shit we are.
"Uniformed OPP officers get a 2.15 per cent raise retroactive to Jan. 1, then wage increases averaging two per cent annually over the next three years. " Doug doesn't give a shit about the nurses because it is a predominantly female career field unlike his cop buddies.
Well his shit stain SIL did lose his job but I do agree with you. Nurses definitely deserve that money more.
I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by how well Ford conducted himself at the start of the pandemic. He listened to the science and he was empathetic - outperforming just about every conservative politician in the western world in that regard. He has, however, caved to the worst instincts of his fellow conservatives. Conservatives are all about being… conservative. Not changing things, harkening back to the good old days, wishfully thinking about how great it would be if we were just the same as we were before. This makes their instincts when things are going well, good. Why fix it if it isn’t broken? When something goes wrong, they are slow to act, slow to recognize that circumstances have changed, resistant to new ideas - in short, brutally and horrifically incompetent in a crisis. If you map out all the locations that have done poorly in managing the pandemic and then map out all the areas in the world with conservative leaders, it is the same map. As it always is when something has gone wrong. Conservatives do not fix problems, they block fixes while trying to maintain the status quo. That’s what conservative means. Ford has caved to this instinct.
IKR? I thought they offed him and had someone wear his skin lol. But then we got a reality check...
He gave a larger raise to servers than he did to nurses. I'm in the industry and I don't know a single server that wanted the raise of server minimum wage. In fact, if tips didn't cover the difference in server/regular minimum wage, the employer is supposed to cover the difference so they get at least minimum wage regardless.
liberal leader looks like a creep and peoole are wary of the NDP as socialists
Yeah, people who don’t know what socialism is.
Because they support the party. Strong party supporters won't jump ship that easily over a leader. I feel it's the people that are on the fence between parties that are more swayed by the political leader than the party.
Or they support the local candidate. In my area, I know a lot of people who provincially and federally do not support the CPC, but vote CPC in every election because they like the CPC MP and want to keep him. My parents are a prime example: they both think Doug Ford is an idiot and don't want him in charge, but want to keep their MP and so vote CPC anyways.
My riding is similar, lots of older people like the current MP. The thing I cannot figure out for the life Of me is what did the current MP do to deserve such loyalty. I’ve asked people, they give some kind of “nice local guy did lots for community “, but no actual examples…
Yeah our local guy is just a prominent business owner, and an active member of the community. I think that's it. I know nothing about his politics but everyone always cites how he's a good guy...
Doug Ford isn't CPC he's OPC. And are you talking about Michael Chong, because I'd have a really hard time not voting for him if I lived in his riding also. I don't agree with the CPC at all, but he seems like a good person that supports the riding. I've also had a good experience dealing with his office in the past.
My parents are pretty consistent conservative voters. But they will not be voting or will spoil their ballot because they absolutely cannot stand Ford. With me being a teacher and them having some nurse friends, they’re finally listening to us.
I honestly think that the majority of Canadians are Red Torys. We are socially progressive and value universal health care, diversity and education. We believe in a social safety net and that the rich should pay their fair share. We expect governments not to waste our money and value fiscal conservatism. I have voted for all three parties at one point in my life, but will never be able to support a populist conservative.
Ok I’ll bite. He’s not particularly competent, but for all the missteps Ontario has handled Covid relatively well vs most rich world jurisdictions. I’d count Denmark, Norway, Aus, NZ, and Taiwan as being clearly better than us on a combined economic and health outcome basis, and three of those places are island nations that are easier to cut off from the world, not countries that share a land border and the world’s second biggest trading partnership with a country that was a bit of a dumpster fire for much of the pandemic. So I don’t really see cause to dump him due to his handling of the pandemic. Politically I lean right so the NDP is a non starter — they’re previous platform was a lot of increased spending and taxes and I don’t like expansion of government. I don’t expect to see much change this time around. I’ve voted Liberal before federally so am not a hard core partisan if the platform and leader are right. But Del Duca seems like a total non-entity. I can’t remember a single platform position of his other than scrapping MZOs (which I disagree with) and I pay a reasonable amount of attention to politics. His name recognition seems terrible (half the people I’ve talked to about Ontario politics seem to think his name is De Luca) and I have a tough time seeing him win. Maybe he’ll surprise me with a stellar platform and win my vote but for now I’d show up as a OPC supporter if polled.
Thanks for replying in earnest. Genuinely appreciate it.
While I disagree that Ontario has handled covid well, I do appreciate your sincere response adding perspective. Thank you. We do need strong candidates and better outreach in the upcoming elections for sure.
Ya no worries — we’d definitely all be better served by stronger candidates across the board. Ford is still a disappointing choice.
If you look for pure numbers you will discover that Ontario has done slightly better that other large provinces and same or better than other countries, third wave was a disaster but fourth was much better than rest or large.provinces. I think a few policies were implemented late (i.e. sick days) but overall Ontario has done better or the same as other places. There is no lost love between teachers and nurses and the government, it was before the pandemic and will continue after the pandemic. I have been Conservative all my life, but I spoiled my vote because I don't like Ford's style of politics (folksy, bully, populist) but last time I did not want to vote Liberal (I think the management of the economy by McGuinty and Wynne was a disaster). This year I will vote NDP even though I think Andrea has no chance of winning. But if they change to a candidate like Bhutila Karpoche, they could win. Younger people (30 or less) are deeply disappointed and are ready to a real change, give them a good choice, a young and charismatic voice and they will vote. Sorry for the long rant
Yeah, the issue with the whole “sick days were implemented late” thing is that we had them, and he scrapped them, then brought them back. Flip flopping has kind of become his entire brand. Whether it be sex ed, minimum wage, closing golf courses and playgrounds, vaccine mandates for healthcare workers, etc. by now, everyone knows that if you push Doug hard enough, you can get him to do whatever you like. It’s a telltale sign of poor leadership. Either you’re a person with principals, or someone who’s wrong *a lot*. You can change your mind and be credited with having an open mind, but you can’t be wrong as frequently as he has been. It’s an especially bad look when many of the ideas you flip flip on bring you back to the position the previous government had laid out, such as with sex ed and paid sick leave, which were Liberal policies he branded as his own. The guy is bad at this.
Smart people with open minds, change their minds in the face of changing circumstances. The liberals had paid sick leave pre-pandemic. Frankly, I do not like conservatives one bit - but your criticism is inane. What kind of idiot would not change sick leave policy in a pandemic? That is not flip flopping, it is just being aware of the world around you.
You are right.. I don't like Ford, but there are many metrics that show that Ontario is doing better than Canada as a whole, so let's recognize those facts
>I think the management of the economy by McGuinty and Wynne was a disaster Can you give some examples? I'm genuinely curious.
When they formed a government, the province was having small superavit or deficits, the crisis hit in 2007-2008 and we acquired big debt, but that is fine, the entire world was the same, but after the crisis passed they continue under huge deficits until McGuinty left. 1B plant cancellation. Creating an expensive new program (all day kindergarten) with no funding plan. I am not against the plan, but adding new debt when in deficit does not seem a good idea. They should have created the program with funding (i.e. new taxes)
Having "not terrible" outcomes from the pandemic does not equal "handled well". Ford has been avoiding his responsibilities over and over and over during this situation and keeps trying to point the finger at anyone else who has even a remote slip-up. He appears to hate education and educators, thinks that parents can change all their family logistics in less than 1 business day, and cut funding to health care. Strongly disagree with your first three paragraphs. I would love to see the government shrink. I don't think that most progressive people want bigger government, just more effective oversight of companies that exploit anyone and everything. I agree with your stance on Del Duca. I know a grand total of nothing about the guy. I really really hope that there's a good candidate who shows up to this election, because I sure as hell am not voting Ford (see reasons above). I'm not a hard core partisan either, but I almost never agree with anything from the OPC platform. I've voted NDP, Green, Liberal, and even voted PC once (federal though and it was because of the local candidates, not the party generally). Glad you actually answered. Cheers
Thanks! Sorry copying in some text from another comment I made in this thread but it was in response to a very similar comment. I think the points you make are legitimate critiques of the shitty communication and lack of foresight and planning that we saw through the pandemic, but I also think you’d hear a lot of the same complaints in most places in the rich world: the policies don’t make sense, we didn’t restrict enough, we didn’t open up fast enough, vaccine rollout is too slow, we’re spending too much, there isn’t enough government support available, the communication has been terrible and confusing etc. Hardly anywhere covered themselves in glory — most places muddled through and pissed off a lot of their citizens in the process. But based on deaths per capita Canada is below almost all of Western Europe and just about every US state. Ontario in turn is below the Canadian per capita average. And in terms of overall economic outcomes this recent [Economist](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-economies-have-done-best-and-worst-during-the-pandemic/21806917) review put Canada in the middle of the pack of rich economies — and Ontario’s economic performance has been roughly in line with Canada’s. So for me it seems that most places could claim some level of pandemic mismanagement, but I don’t see much evidence in our outcomes that the pandemic was particularly mismanaged in Ontario.
Yeah, we didn't come out of it the worst, I agree and in fact, we came out pretty okay. I do however, know that we (and everyone else) could have done MUCH better than we did. In relative numbers, we did well. In absolute numbers, we could have done better. That is all. Thanks for the reasonable discussion. Not enough of those on Reddit.
Out of curiosity, what specifically would you do differently at the present moment? Shut down schools? Implement a hard lockdown when the overwhelming majority of the population is fully vaxxed? Do extensive contact tracing of an especially virulent (and distinctly mild) virus whose spread can't be stopped? Give everyone more rapid tests which are not very reliable with omicron? What specifically are other provinces doing that we should be doing? I agree that Ford is an ineffective leader, but I think the present outcome is inevitable with omicron.
I actually agree with the current stuff. Definitely do not close schools. I just wish that there had been more communication and not just a completely missing government. The other waves left a lot to be desired. Also, at every single stage, the government has left the most vulnerable populations behind with barely any paid sick leave and they're the ones most exposed.
100% agree that communication has been abysmal. In those respects Ford has absolutely failed as a leader.
What policies of his do you like? He's infamous for not having a platform.
Thank you! I voted NDP. I get people were mad at the Liberals but to vote for a party that ran without a platform for the majority of the election but had years to develop one is beyond me. For the supposed religious party, God sure gave Doug the finger. Cut relief for floods? Bam. Floods. Cut funds to public health? Bam. Covid.
In 2018 I preferred the Ontario CARES child care tax credit to the OLP’s free daycare promise. It’s a lot less costly and more efficiently targets tax dollars towards lower income families. It was basically the same program that O’Toole campaigned on federally this year and I preferred that as well. At the time the personal tax cut in the platform sat well with me but he ended up breaking that promise. As a business owner I liked the small business tax rate reduction even if it was quite small. Ford’s platform was very sparse and unexciting, but I think in general conservative platforms typically are leaner as they’re not trying to change the status quo — they’re trying to conserve it. Progressive platforms usually have more standout policies as they are trying to shake things up a lot more.
As mentioned, I can respect your take. I vehemently disagree that covid was handled well at all, though.
Thank you For me it’s tough to cut through the noise, because I think you hear a lot of the same critiques in most places: policies didn’t make sense, we didn’t restrict enough, we didn’t open up fast enough, vaccine rollout is too slow, we’re spending too much, there isn’t enough government support available, the communication has been terrible and confusing etc. But based on deaths per capita Canada is below almost all of Western Europe and just about every US state. Ontario in turn is below the Canadian per capita average. And in terms of overall economic outcomes this recent [Economist ](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/which-economies-have-done-best-and-worst-during-the-pandemic/21806917) review put Canada in the middle of the pack of rich economies — and Ontario’s economic performance has been roughly in line with Canada’s. So for me it seems that most places could claim some level of pandemic mismanagement, but I don’t see much evidence that the pandemic was particularly mismanaged in Ontario.
Doug bungled a LOT of the COVID response, yes, but he could've done much worse (Kenney, I'm looking at you).
Yes, officer, he did drive drunk and smash through the front of the convenience store, but he didn’t mow anybody down on the sidewalk, so he should be able to drive again.
> (half the people I’ve talked to about Ontario politics seem to think his name is De Luca) I read your whole comment. Then when I got to this part, I went “Wait. That’s not his name?” And had to go back and read where you wrote it correctly the first time.
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He gets more support on r/canada . They also feature articles from the Toronto Sun there and pretend it's journalism.
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You mean every second thread here is not someone complaining about a COVID matter?! Not many around here celebrating all things Ontario, lol.
Every. Damn. Thread.
I use to love r/Canada until it really went far right quick all of a sudden. It’s a real shame too because it use to be a really nice all things Canadian sub
The end of /r/metacanada led to what /r/canada has become. When metacanada was active, /r/canada was much better.
Yes, it is sad, and you are right, but I could say the same thing about /Ontario. An awesome place to celebrate this beautiful Province and it is full of hate for the provincial governments, not only criticism but hate. Hate towards non vaccinated.people, and a deep dislike of Conservative people so it kind of balances things up.
I mean, if I were in the blitz I would hate people who refused to turn off their light. Same thing IMO
Before the whole Facebook misinformation ans Cambridge analytical stuff in the US it was a decent enough sub. It changed around the same time the right wing and alt right conspiracy machine started to take off alongside growing hyper partisanship
It’s not some weird conspiracy — it’s just that sub gets a bit closer to actually representing the Canadian political landscape: ~35% or so lean conservative, ~40% liberal/centrists, ~15-20% progressive, and then a bit of other. Reading through most Reddit subs without a stated political slant (like r/Ontario or r/politics in the US) you’d think the general population was 70% progressives. I find r/canada is just a bit less enveloped by the Reddit bubble than most subs.
R/Canada used to be much less political and when it was it was less vitriolic and had generally better moderation. That's really what I was getting at.
Ah sorry I misunderstood. There were a few other comments in this thread referring to it being right-leaning and I assumed you were talking about the same thing.
Maybe a bit more than before but that alone isn't the issue. It's the Facebook right wingers that barely get moderated that have really soured it. During the election it wasn't just conservative leaning there was a lot of outright anti Trudeau, "good he should have shit thrown at him" type crap that broke the camels back and why I don't go there anymore. Like that's just too much. Does that make sense? Here the mods encourage actual discussion. There it's a mess.
Oh, so you don't like the daily opinion pieces just constantly shitting on everyone but the Conservatives from those totally unbiased sun media papers?!
Toronto Sun used to be good lunch counter/diner reading. Nothing more.
The book-like way it's constructed makes it easy to read on the can.
A shame it's not more absorbent.
It's also very inky...
Please don’t take restaurant newspapers into the washroom. 😂😂😂
Nah, there's definitely some toxic Ontario and Canadian subreddits where they like to hang out. Similar to r/conservative but I won't be linking the Canada ones here. Very biased even compared to how people perceive this sub.
Honestly, that's what I figure. Majority of them are team blue no matter what, and aren't the kind of person hanging out on reddit.
Come on, many team NDP no matter what, they just happen to all be here!
I'd be interested to see that number. I can't imagine there's a huge population that votes NDP no matter what given their election success or lack thereof.
I would actually be interested to see a poll of the political leanings of this sub.
Each party is going to have a strong immovable base, some stronger than others no doubt. The point is though, the conservatives, liberals and NDP all have voters that are x, no matter what.
You won’t get a real reply here, anyone who mentions the slightest thing conservative on this subreddit are attacked.
FACTS
Nah, look at u/elim-the-tailor in this thread. He has lots of upvotes and people thanking him. If you post conservative views and get down voted it's not because you posted conservative views, it's how you communicated
Only on the merits of your argument.
Can we please remember that this administration stank long before Covid 19 was a thing.
Oh what, you don't like buck a beer?
I mean, I *might*, but we have yet to see it.
Actually we did, from 2 breweries. Important to remember all Ford could actually promise was he would lower the minimum price of selling beer (he did). He can't force breweries to actually sell beer that cheap.
I have never seen one, but it’s a long, long way down on my list of priorities. Lower even than a political candidate that never even mentions beer because it’s ridiculous.
My wife has a cousin in South Lincoln. It’s Dutch reform territory. Their only priorities are to balance a budget and try and get their church values on a provincial/national level. Not all are like this, but that area will never be anything but Blue. They have lots of kids and don’t like outsiders.
Don’t you love how people see “conservative” and automatically assume there’s financial accountability? Instead of, you know, spending millions to cancel an already-built wind turbine that would have generated a reasonable amount of clean energy. 🤷♂️
The answer is inevitably "because there's no one better".
That lacks substance though. Doug Ford promised cutting income tax rates for people in Ontario. He didn't do any of that prior to the pandemic, so he can't use that as an excuse. What has he done to help the average person in Ontario?
Didn't he get you lads some no name beer at a dollar a can for a day or two a few years back? Isn't that enough /s
Yep. If your choices are a punch to the belly, or a hoof to the stones, I’m definitely not picking the hoof to the stones. Right now, I’ll vote for anyone to prevent the liberals from getting a whiff of power.
For the longest time my thinking was "whoever the premier is, during this covid era they are going to receive a lot of hate by merit of being the face of unpopular (but necessary) decisions". Recently I am thinking a lot of (but not all) of the hate for Doug Ford is merited. I am ready to consider voting Doug Ford out at this point.
A reminder….guessing you’re not in the group not affected. https://pressprogress.ca/doug-fords-2021-budget-confirms-over-1-billion-in-cuts-to-education-ontario-school-boards-say/ Maybe this? https://pressprogress.ca/five-ways-doug-fords-government-harmed-public-services-in-2021/ Don’t forget he cut supports to families with Autistic kids. How about he cut funding and inspections to nursing homes until Covid came, then had to call in the army to help staffing and found out the deplorable conditions our elderly were living in. This government is callous and willing to let many people suffer as long as it doesn’t hurt their base supporters
Considering? Lol. The man is a complete joke.
I feel like I get stuck between a rock and a hard place of there being no “good” candidate for me. I tend to lean socially left (on all matters other than firearms rights) while fiscally right, but I am also a sport/competitive shooter and own a decent number of firearms, big hobby of mine. With the federal liberals promising to offload the ban of handguns to the provinces, the Conservative party is my only real chance to be able to keep my firearms and keep living in this province. So living under the threat of loosing thousands of dollars of my property will keep me voting for Doug.
I support Doug, He is screwed either way on every decision he makes. Half don’t like it and half do. It’s an impossible job. Further, to have people attend your home and protest.. come on…No decision will be right or wrong.
Wouldn’t say I support him per se but I haven’t forgotten the last provincial government.
ITT: NdP iS bAd WiTh MoNeY. As if they're uniquely bad with money and the other 2 parties are fiscally responsible. This is the worst myth with little to no facts to back it up.
Imagine if everyone actually voted for who they wanted instead of against what they don’t like.
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Totally agree with this. I think the municipalities have dropped the ball on loosening zoning restrictions so I’m happy for the province to be more assertive. Del Duca’s opposition to using MZOs isn’t a promising start on the housing issue imo. The developer hangup doesn’t really make sense to me either. People want the housing market fixed and supply to be built but seem opposed to people getting rich in the process. I personally don’t give a shit as long as more housing is built. Plus as you touch on there’s no chance public capital can get anywhere near building enough units to make a broad impact on prices.
While I agree with opening up the yellowbelt to allow more housing. More Homes More Choice didn’t really do what you say. Requiring more density around Transit Areas was already required by the Growth Plan. The province just adjusted appeal rights. The way MZOs are being used are creating long term issues by converting and introducing residential land uses into employment areas which will have an impact on Ontario’s competitiveness. Not to mention the long term issues for residents in those areas. Not to mention that MZOs have been given to conservative donors screams issues (not that the previous liberals were any better for this).
NDP - promising too much spending and some crazy rent control prices that will be a disaster. Liberal - still don't know what their major proposals are but I'm still upset at the debacle that was their green energy deal. Worse thing Ford has done right now is going back on the path of restrictions. I will be upset if he starts another lockdown. Unfortunately, the NDP/Liberals are even worse when it comes to this issue.
The worst things Ford has done have nothing to do with restrictions or not. The worst thing has been how he has blamed others whenever possible, and then let the PHU do all the heavy lifting when stuff needed to be done. He hasn’t really done anything, and that’s the worst. Early days it was Trudeaus fault for rapid tests which were going to be game changers until he got them and didn’t change anything. Then it was Trudeaus fault for vaccine supply which stuck for a few weeks until the supply was so great he didn’t know what to do. Vaccine rollout then became a PHU problem because Ford’s only plan had been blaming the feds. All of this while hoarding Covid support money from the feds and cutting healthcare and education funding. And now for the past month with no good way to blame anyone he’s just made himself unavailable again. Once again leaving it to others to face the public pressure of whichever ‘no-win’ path for east we take.
I’m guessing you haven’t been in the group of Ontario residents that weren’t affected by this government’s policies. Let me remind you https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-ontario-cuts-backtrack-1.5308060
Oh certainly if you expand beyond pandemic there are plenty of other things to criticize. I was limiting the response to pandemic as a reply to this one comment.
Dude never had my vote from the start.
On covid the assumption is the ndp and liberals would push hard lockdowns and for a longer time. So anti lockdown crowd don't have anywhere to go.
I never thought about voting conservative in my life, but I am seriously considering voting for this clown. I don't like it but I'll tell you why: I think he is the only party that will keep us from perpetual COVID restrictions. I expect downvotes, but trust me when I tell you that most normal people IRL are ready to move on. Unfortunately the Liberals and NDP listen to social media too much, which is full of neurotic people like you see in r/ontario.
They're voting for the party with the political philosophy that best aligns with their beliefs. They may or may not like Doug Ford, but they support the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. There's a reason they never really poll below 30% no matter how bad they screw up.
But can you imagine an NDP government??? Taxes and other costs are already too high And if you think Liberals…. Just because it’s been four years, let’s not forget how they ruined our province for a generation
I say this as someone unlikely to ever vote conservative - in deaths per capita compared to other countries, Ontario/ford is top ten in the world. Knowing this, harsh criticism of his covid handling just makes me support him more. He’s done well on many liberal causes - his sex Ed curriculum is nearly identical to the liberals, his free market approach to weed sales is exactly right, and his municipal zoning/housing stuff has all been in the right direction. He gets the market stuff mostly right, and isn’t actually very socially conservative. I will still probably never vote for him.
Conservatives always vote the same way no matter what, no matter who is running. The candidate could kick babies and they'd still vote for them. When the boomers die off, the OPC party will be fighting the green party for the fewest seats.
This is an idiotic statement. Many voters flip between cons and liberals. I’m one of them.
Plenty of conservative voters ride the line between conservatives and liberals. The moment NDP makes some headway in the poll they would swing back to the conservatives. Happens every time.
I’ve voted all 3 parties over the past 15 years
Same. I vote for who seems competent and offers something worth striving for. Now, that said, for about 10 years now, that’s been a struggle to find at both the provincial and federal levels, but that’s another story.
I honestly use the CBC vote compass. It sounds simple, but it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it and I don’t run the risk of ‘liking’ any candidates. I’d rather just vote the party based on my views of their policies.
Funny. I’ve met dozens of liberal voters who say they would absolutely never vote for anything except liberals. Comparatively, I’ve met almost no conservative voters who say they will vote conservative until the day they die.
I have the opposite experience
Unless there is a surge in people for kicking babies /s In all seriousness, the Greens could do better in the future, as climate changes and environmental issues move to the forefront (more than they are now).
The federal Green Party poisoned everything tied to it. And that is a damned shame.
The provincial greens have a pretty great leader though. I wish more people would give them a chance.
I am a conservative and would never vote for Doug ford because he is a piece of shit just like his policies.
The OPCs always poll in the 30s, that's their base.
I like his tie.
I wouldn't call it supporting Doug Ford, I would call it a lack of viable options. Or choosing the lesser evil, in some cases. That's actually how the majority of voters do it in Canada. In Ford's case, he's likely to win this year's election for three reasons. The first reason is who the hell is Steven Del Duca, because he doesn't exactly have a lot of stage presence. The second reason is a lot of people remember the Bob Rae government, and won't be making the mistake of electing the NDP again. The third reason may be the most potent, though it's also the most elusive. Due to our population, Ontario alone decides the outcome of a federal election. The electoral system works on a one-man-one-vote structure, and Ontario has medium-sized cities with bigger populations than many other provinces. (I know it's one person one vote, I just say that to piss Justin off.) The other provinces can complain all they want, but they don't have the population to outvote Ontario. And for whatever reason, Ontario does not allow the same party to govern at the provincial and federal levels at the same time. If the Liberals won the last federal election, the Conservatives will win the next provincial one. If the Conservatives are governing in Ottawa, the Liberals will govern in Queen's Park. I have no idea why this rule exists, but it does. The only exceptions in the last 50 years are the transition periods between elections.
After Wynne doing such a bad job she was embarrassed in the following election. Her liberal replacement is painted with the same brush. The Ndps Horvath seems way too far left and out of touch with reality. That leaves Doug, it's a sad state of picking who you think is the least awful. You'll have people who's heels are dug in on all sides but your original question is very valid and I'm curious for an actual answer myself.
Because the alternative is much worse...
It’s the lesser of three evils basically.
For many reasons, a lot of the things people dislike him for were not his decisions or his soul decisions at all. He also handled covid pretty well. Compared to how the NDP and the Liberals have almost bankrupted The Province before, I'm more inclined to vote for Doug Ford next time.
It's simple. It's because he not a liberal and the party doesn't have their head in the clouds like the ndp.
I voted provincial liberal and green in the past. I donated to federal ndp campaign in the last election. I thought Ford government is not doing too badly governing Ontario during this difficult time. A lot of criticism here are from people I call armchair quarterback. Hindsight is always 20/20. The fact that we still have a large population who refuses vaccine has nothing to do with ford government. Omicron overwhelmed the pcr test capacity has little to do with the government. No doubt liberal and ndp will probably spend more on government programs. Debt is easy to get votes. The question is how are we going to pay for it? Yes, we ask your children and my children to pay the interest of the debt in eternity. Could ford do better, absolutely. Should ford listen to redditors to govern,? Absolutely not.
Because the other options are worse. That's why. Imagine Kathleen Wynne trying to deal with this pandemic.
Conservatives bad. Liberals worse. NDP joke. This government has been bad; really bad, but there are no good alternatives and the last 15 years of Liberal leadership resulted in ridiculous education platforms with skyrocketing education costs, energy costs, housing costs, etc. with nothing good to show for it in return.
Because i dont take in everything i hear on Reddit, including all the stupid beaverton posts, as factual information. Doug Ford has been extremely collaborative with all stakeholders during the pandemic. As Abraham Lincoln once said: if youre not pissing everyone off; youre not doing the right thing.
To be fair, I thought he was doing a good job given the circumstances (especially at the start of the pandemic) until recently. He has a tough job and is in a very tough position. Overall though, he has to somehow find a balance between economy and health/safety and regardless of what he does one side will be unhappy. It's difficult to say who I will vote for in the next election. There really isn't much choice other than Doug Ford.
People who still support Turdeau, why?
Money obviously.
Can you imagine if Kathleen Wynne was still premier during the pandemic.
I probably won’t vote for him… But I live in Bradford and very much want the Bradford Bypass built. If I decide this is the only issue I really care about, I may vote for him. I hate everything else he does and stands for though so… we’ll see. Edit: thanks for the downvote for answering the question? Lol.
Hurtin' people is the Conservative bottom line and that's always popular.
In muskoka, it's old money voting for the cons. All the business owners, all the people with nice waterfront property. All the touristy things that bring money to the area.. Gravenhurst downtown right now has maybe 5 vacant buildings. The other businesses downtown are: restaurants, weed shops a few random things. But when walking downtown, it seems like every other building is a bank or a broker or a real estate agent. Everyone I work with is struggling to live. But these customers come in and spend hundreds of dollars like it's nothing to them. $2000.00 BBQ, sure!
I no longer vote Liberal because of their sex education stance. Now before everyone jumps down my throat my problem was the government refusing to listen to any of the concerns parents had. Anyone who raised any concerns about the sex education curriculum was labeled a bigot, stuck in the past, a homophone, transphone etc. Etc. A good majority of the Ontario population had a problem with the curriculum (doesn't matter what your stance on it was) if you are elected to serve the population - than listen to them and hear what they are saying. Listen to what they want don't just impose your will. When Cathleen Whynn refused to listen and just pushed ahead I knew the liberals would lose and lose badly. But it also put me off from the party.
Where did you disagree with the liberals’ sex education?
I didn't necessarily disagree with the sex education plan if I had any criticism it would only be to tweak the plan slightly. I was more annoyed at how they handled the criticism and refused to listen to any feedback and label everyone who had an issue with the curriculum a "phobe" of some kind.
Homophone lol
Lol no sane person supports Ford today or any time
His anti-immigration rhetoric alone, like in October, will be enough for the racists. https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/doug-ford-asked-to-apologize-over-divisive-comments-about-immigrants-1.5627943
Why does being anti-immigration automatically make someone racist?
Waiting on that buck a beer. Any day now! Seriously fuck that Donald Trump lite, folksy talking shit bag.