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Star Editorial: Ontario Liberal MPs take us for granted

A

afransen TO

Guest
I've noticed the same thing. I wonder that Liberal MPs are unwilling to push for the constituents' interests, especially at a time when their grasp on power is rather tenuous and there is a real chance of them losing their power base in Ontario.


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With friends like these



At election time, they knock on your door, tell you they want to represent your interests in Ottawa, and ask you for your trust and support.

In the last election, voters in this province sent 71 Liberal MPs to Ottawa to ensure Ontarians' voices were heard and their concerns addressed in the development of national policy.

But are these Members of Parliament really looking out for you?

National policy, of course, involves a lot more than foreign affairs, airlines, broadcasting and national defence. Much of it has to do with directing how federal tax dollars are split up among the 10 provinces.

In this regard, Ontario is getting the short end of the stick, short of dollars to meet this province's needs in health care, education, public transit, immigrant settlement and other key areas.

That's why Premier Dalton McGuinty has launched a campaign to persuade Ottawa that Ontario isn't getting its fair share.

You would think the 71 Liberal MPs who represent Ontario in Ottawa would be keenly interested in what McGuinty has to say.

At the very least, you would think they would hear him out.

Yet, this week they rebuffed his request to meet the Ontario Liberal caucus to discuss this province's needs and its people's concerns.

It is outrageous.

Your premier asks your federal representatives for a meeting to discuss your needs, and they tell him they are not interested in what he has to say.

Can you imagine MPs from any other province treating their premier with the same disrespect?

Instead, the Ontario Liberal MPs told McGuinty to stay at Queen's Park and solve his own problems.

But when he tried to do just that a year ago by breaking a promise not to raise taxes, these very same politicians attacked him, fearing his tax increase would cost them seats as they headed into a federal election.

If these Ontario Liberal MPs don't think McGuinty should raise taxes or ask for their help in getting a fairer deal from Ottawa, they must believe he should be solving his fiscal problems by cutting spending for your health care, for your children's education, jacking up college and university tuitions and ordering cities to charge even higher transit fares.

Yes, these are the same people who last June shook your hand, said you mattered, and asked for your trust.
 
I'm seriously considering voting Green in my riding, provided the Conservative candidate stands no chance of election.
 
When I read this editorial myself I was pissed off by the end! That being said, Ontario will likely send the same Liberal members back if an election was called today.

Louroz
 
A lot of ridings were really close, with NDP being a thousand or so behind the Liberals in the last election. Stuff like this might push them over the top.

Joe Volpy is my personal scapegoat for fatcat federal ontario libraral who might as well be from baffin island. Such a loathsome person.
 
There was only one seat in the whole GTA in which an NDP candidate came second to a winning Liberal by less than 2,000 votes: Trinity-Spadina.
 
I could never figure out why Tony Ianno was so popular - he's a nobody in Ottawa, and comes across as brash and arrogant as well. And I also despise Joe Volpe as well - he's only a powerful cabinet minister because he was an early and loyal supporter of Paul Martin, and sure does not seem to be much help as political minister for both Toronto and Ontario, on anything.

There are some Liberal MPs that are much better for sure. Volpe and Ianno are the two I dislike the most.
 
Unless we vote NDP we will continue to see absolutely nothing from Ottawa (not that I would ever want to see NDP governing Canada, of course, but that's the only way the Ottawa cabal will start paying attention to us). The Liberals are absolutely convinced that the Ontario populace is completely spineless and mired in its paranoia of any politician west of Manitoba. Thus, ultimately we get what we deserve in terms of who's supposedly representing our interests.
 
^The thing is that I know what the NDP is "against." I really don't know what they are "for."

What we need are federal politicians who actually comprehend urban issues and urban realities. Toronto needs MP's who actually see how the city is taxed and getting virtually nothing back for it.
 
Funny, as there are many MPs and MPPs that were former city councillors - for many of them, city council was merely a step on the ladder to bigger careers, so they quickly forget, though they would be the most likely to get urban issues.

I wonder if Glen Murray would have been able to get through to the Liberal caucus if he was elected as MP in Winnipeg.
 
I emailed Bill Graham the editorial. Waiting on a response.
 
I wonder if Glen Murray would have been able to get through to the Liberal caucus if he was elected as MP in Winnipeg.
I'm pretty sure Glen's living in the T-dot now. I wouldn't rule out seeing him on the Toronto/Ontario political scene in the next few election cycles.
 
blixa442:
Unless we vote NDP we will continue to see absolutely nothing from Ottawa (not that I would ever want to see NDP governing Canada, of course, but that's the only way the Ottawa cabal will start paying attention to us). The Liberals are absolutely convinced that the Ontario populace is completely spineless and mired in its paranoia of any politician west of Manitoba. Thus, ultimately we get what we deserve in terms of who's supposedly representing our interests.

Voting for parties that are worse (as stated above, no offense, "not that you'd want to see them governing..."), just to get another party that "might be better after a spanking" is (nothing personal again, I just have a point to make) nonsensical.

And how would it cure the real problem of the Ontario feds and the rest of the Ontarios? McGuinty is a wimp and so is Miller. McGuinty thinks he can just politely ask the confederate feds for "oh, $4-$5 billion" of "Ontario's" taxes back, this mythical "Ontario thing again that doesn't exist for anything but ill against Toronto, the GTA and Southern Ontario (where all the money is made, where all the markets are, where all the taxes come from) in that order, when Miller should be demanding $5 billion of the $11 billion the City of Toronto proper paid out in taxes last year and never saw again.

That's still over half that the confederates get to keep and is pretty damned generous of us if I don't say so myself.
 

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