Next Premier of Ontario?

[newbuyer]

...won't be Dalton McGuinty. He is a tax grabber, and a lousy policy maker. Nothing more.

I though I can start this thread since we have "Next Mayor of Toronto" already.

Who you would like to see as the next Premier?

 

[GraphicMatt]

You are technically correct. Dalton McGuinty will not be the next premier of Ontario as he is the current premier of Ontario. The next premier of Ontario will be the guy who takes office after him.

I think there already is a thread for this around somewhere...

 

[CodeMonkey]

Anyone other than the Mike Harris clone

 

[salvius]

...won't be dalton mcguinty. He is a tax grabber, and a lousy policy maker. Nothing more.

bwahahaha!

 

[newbuyer]

You are technically correct. Dalton McGuinty will not be the next premier of Ontario as he is the current premier of Ontario. The next premier of Ontario will be the guy who takes office after him.

I think there already is a thread for this around somewhere...

well, lets revive the thread again since he came up with his genius HST plan in this time of economy.
That's why we need to make sure we don't vote for the wrong ones to put him again in the next term.

 

[GraphicMatt]

well, lets revive the thread again since he came up with his genius HST plan in this time of economy.
That's why we need to make sure we don't vote for the wrong ones to put him again in the next term.

You mean the HST that the Conservative Federal Government strongly suggested he adopt? The HST that was adopted because the Federal Government gave Ontario a big lump of cash?

Do you think Tim Hudak and the Ontario PC party will stand up against our current Federal Government?

 

[Hank]

I agree with the HST plan as well as most of the other things that McGuinty's done. He's doing a great job, in my opinion, and I think it's pretty much a given that he'll be elected again.

 

[afransen]

You mean the HST that will reduce expenses for businesses and make it easier for them to compete with imports?

 

[GraphicMatt]

It's hilarious that Hudak is making the HST his main issue - going so far to refer to it repeatedly as the "Dalton Sales Tax" on his Twitter. I understand that the HST will mean marginally higher taxes on some items, but does he really think our sales tax going from 13% to... 13% can be some kind of magic wedge issue that will turn the electorate?

 

[unimaginative2]

McGuinty looks like he's going to serve out his full term, so the next premier of Ontario will be either him or Tim Hudak. God help us all if it's Tim Hudak.

McGuinty's been a good premier and has done an excellent job of cleaning up the mess left by Mike Harris. He's been hampered by the parlous state of the finances he inherited and he's been sideswiped by the international economic crisis, but he's had some major accomplishments. In planning/transportation alone, he brought about the first serious GTA plan in two decades, he introduced the toughest greenbelt plan in North America, and he is spending more on transit than any Ontario government in history. I'm happy to see, judging by his massive lead in the polls, that Ontarians are realizing this and aren't buying the ridiculous darts the Tories are trying to throw.

 

[Whoaccio]

Why Hudak is focusing on the HST is beyond me. It is such a dumb issue, why not focus on the McGuinty governments undue/idiotic bent towards economic interventionism (what was Bryant's line about Ontario definitely being able to pick winners?) which could provide more than enough grist for anybody even remotely fiscally conservative.

More importantly, why not focus on healthcare? That is by a longshot the biggest line item (~40%) in the budget and it is only going up, one would imagine something could be improved somewhere. Why not some kind of health care savings program? Its pretty clear that a big chunk of the population will be moving into its' peak healthcare consuming years, why not start funding these costs now as opposed to paying while we go?

 

[kEiThZ]

It's hilarious that Hudak is making the HST his main issue - going so far to refer to it repeatedly as the "Dalton Sales Tax" on his Twitter. I understand that the HST will mean marginally higher taxes on some items, but does he really think our sales tax going from 13% to... 13% can be some kind of magic wedge issue that will turn the electorate?

Although I support merging the taxes, I can see how it can galvanize the electorate if somebody is adept at pointing out all the things Ontarians will now be paying tax on that they didn't before.

 

[unimaginative2]

Limited forms of economic interventionism make sense. It's pretty clear that free market fundamentalism is far from a recipe for unmitigated success. In any free market system, there are winners and losers. That's true on a national or provincial level as well as a personal level.

Canada, the United States, Japan, Germany, and South Korea were built on economic interventionism. Argentina relied on the genuinely free market. Remember that Argentina in the 20s was the second-richest country in the world.

 

[jn_12]

To me, McGuinty has pretty much been as good of a Premier as you would want. If he can survive the health care premiums then he can easily survive the HST. People need to start realizing that taxes can be good rather than automatically evil.

In terms of planning related issues, I agree with unimagintive2. On transportation and municipal issues, this government has been great. And as much as the Smart Growth plan was initiated in 2001, the greenbelt plan has this government's fingerprints all over it, and it could be something we're thankful for in 50 years from now.

For me personally, if not for Mcguinty's work on the post-secondary education front, I probably would have struggled to financially get through my undergrad. After the education mess that Harris left, he cleaned it up fairly nicely.

 

[Hydrogen]

You mean the HST that will reduce expenses for businesses and make it easier for them to compete with imports?

And the one that will bump up condo fees by five to six percent on average? Screw those nasty property owners some more.

By the way, some of us call those properties "homes."

You'll figure it out one day.