Can the NDP make any gain this time?

[Topaz]

Do any of you think that the Ontario's NDP can get more votes this time around?? I hear some people are thinking between the NDP and the Libs. They seem to stay away from Tory because of the Harris gov't and because Harper's not a help to the Tory's either . I think alot people want o vote for the NDP, but are afraid that their vote would be lost to a lack of votes for the party.

[marcinmoka]

To be honest, I hope not.

Although I feel they will gain a bit f (5-7 seats) rom worried blue collar workers and rich kids indoctrinated in ways of New Defecit Party economics.

I'm just counting on an effective campaign could do wonders to remind the electorate of the bitter taste left in their mouths after the last time they sided avec les gauchos! I hope Pavlov was correct in his teachings.

Edited August 22, 2007 by marcinmoka

[B. Max]

I doubt if people in Ont. have the bad taste out of their mouth yet from the last time the NDP were in power.

Edited August 22, 2007 by B. Max

[Charles Anthony]

The first two responses to this thread have repeated the Opening Post in its entirety with the quoting function. That is both unnecessary and a forum rule violation. Go back and edit that redundant quote out of your post.

Surely, there is no doubt that you guys are responding to the Opening Post.

Edit Post Notice and the

function, Please Review

----

Thanks guys!

Edited August 22, 2007 by Charles Anthony

[M.Dancer]

I think alot people want o vote for the NDP, but are afraid that their vote would be lost to a lack of votes for the party.

There ain't a chance in hell I will vote NDP. I may hold my nose and vote Liberal but depending on who is running in my riding there's a wee chance I would vote conservative. But considering I don't know who my Conservative cndidate is.....

[Evan]

I hope the NDP can come about. I know people who have names in the political world who have told me that it's the only party left that truly believes in Democracy. (who aren't NDPers themselves).

It's a shame that there's a bad taste in the mouths of Ontarians about the 'Rae Days'. Granted, Rae made his mistakes, it didn't help that he inherited a deficit and took the blame for it, or that the largest recession hit since WW2.

People have a bad taste about Harris, and many have a bad taste regarding McGuinty. So every party has it's history. But in the last decade, the PC and the Lib's have both had their turn to screw us over and now are looking much the same. So why not look at giving Howard Hapton a chance.

I mean, if you want to keep healthcare public, he's your only choice. PC set up the stage, and the Liberals started selling out already.

If you want a green energy plan, NDP are the only ones who are talking about renewable and not immensely multiplying our nuclear waste generation.

If you want to fight poverty, the NDP are the only ones offering to give 'working people' a wage which after an entire year of full time work, they are not living below the poverty line.

The other guys, don't seem to care about this stuff, and don't think they need to because it's going to be one of them anyways. I sure hope the NDP picks up seats and makes the Red's and Blue's pay attention to the people's real demands.

Edited September 3, 2007 by Evan

[Keepitsimple]

So why not look at giving Howard Hapton a chance.

I mean, if you want to keep healthcare public, he's your only choice. PC set up the stage, and the Liberals started selling out already.

If you want a green energy plan, NDP are the only ones who are talking about renewable and not immensely multiplying our nuclear waste generation.

If you want to fight poverty, the NDP are the only ones offering to give 'working people' a wage which after an entire year of full time work, they are not living below the poverty line.

The other guys, don't seem to care about this stuff, and don't think they need to because it's going to be one of them anyways. I sure hope the NDP picks up seats and makes the Red's and Blue's pay attention to the people's real demands.

Evan - you seem like a thoughtful person - my comments are not meant as a slight to you. I also think that Howard Hampton is a nice fellow - actually the most likeable of the three leaders. Having said that, the problem with NDP "democracy" has always been "how do you pay for it". They are always authors of policies that sound good on the surface, but are impractical to implement and in many cases, smack of sheer socialism - dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator and sucking the "will" out of people to better themselves. Perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement but with the NDP, there is always the tendency to move in the direction that government will solve everything.

Healthcare - we have been throwing more and more monet at healthcare every year and I believe it now consumes about 40% of all government revenues. We need to keep an open mind on whether some additional help from the Private sector might be beneficial. We can't continue to turn a blind eye by citing a Public-only mantra. Let's look at some successful European and Nordic countries who have a blended approach. And if we continue down the same NDP-approved path - who will pay?

Green Energy - if we don't use Nuclear and we close the coal plants.....well, I don't even want to go there. Let's just say that industry and consumers will have to pay enormous prices for fuel and power. Again, it sounds good, especially when people wring their hands and say "well, we have to do something!" Who will pay?

Poverty - sure we've got poverty - left-leaning activists say that 1 in 6 people are living in poverty. I've been all through the stats in other postings. First of all, stats are based on the dubious use of a Low Income Cutoff which Stats Canada themselves states should not be used as a poverty measurement figure. Secondly, the stats include people as young as 16 years old. If you don't count people who are 21 or younger - and accept that they are just starting out - then "poverty" rates start to read as 1 in 12 or even 1 in 15.......and that ignores exactly what "poverty" really means. In my mind, there's a big difference between living in poverty with no roof over your head or not enough food......and being "income-challenged" where you can't afford Cable TV or have trouble making car payments. But again - who is going to pay for the NDP approach?

Who is going to pay? Taxpayers - that's who - individuals and companies. And when individuals have to pay more tax, we have less to spend. And when we have less to spend, we can't buy things that drive the economy and create and sustain jobs. When companies - large and small - have to pay more tax, they also have less to spend. So they can't expand and create more jobs and again, the economy suffers. And guess what? When the economy suffers, less tax is collected - and yet we still have to pay for all the decisions that were made on Healthcare, Greening, and Poverty. That's how we end up with giant deficits.

So......be careful what you wish for.

Edited September 3, 2007 by Keepitsimple

[jennie]

Evan - you seem like a thoughtful person - my comments are not meant as a slight to you. I also think that Howard Hampton

is a nice fellow - actually the most likeable of the three leaders. Having said that, the problem with NDP "democracy" has always been "how do you pay for it". They are always authors of policies that sound good on the surface, but are impractical to implement and in many cases, smack of sheer socialism - dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator and sucking the "will" out of people to better themselves. Perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement but with the NDP, there is always the tendency to move in the direction that government will solve everything.

Healthcare - we have been throwing more and more monet at healthcare every year and I believe it now consumes about 40% of all government revenues. We need to keep an open mind on whether some additional help from the Private sector might be beneficial. We can't continue to turn a blind eye by citing a Public-only mantra. Let's look at some successful European and Nordic countries who have a blended approach. And if we continue down the same NDP-approved path - who will pay?

Green Energy - if we don't use Nuclear and we close the coal plants.....well, I don't even want to go there. Let's just say that industry and consumers will have to pay enormous prices for fuel and power. Again, it sounds good, especially when people wring their hands and say "well, we have to do something!" Who will pay?

Poverty - sure we've got poverty - left-leaning activists say that 1 in 6 people are living in poverty. I've been all through the stats in other postings. First of all, stats are based on the dubious use of a Low Income Cutoff which Stats Canada themselves states should not be used as a poverty measurement figure. Secondly, the stats include people as young as 16 years old. If you don't count people who are 21 or younger - and accept that they are just starting out - then "poverty" rates start to read as 1 in 12 or even 1 in 15.......and that ignores exactly what "poverty" really means. In my mind, there's a big difference between living in poverty with no roof over your head or not enough food......and being "income-challenged" where you can't afford Cable TV or have trouble making car payments. But again - who is going to pay for the NDP approach?

Who is going to pay? Taxpayers - that's who - individuals and companies. And when individuals have to pay more tax, we have less to spend. And when we have less to spend, we can't buy things that drive the economy and create and sustain jobs. When companies - large and small - have to pay more tax, they also have less to spend. So they can't expand and create more jobs and again, the economy suffers. And guess what? When the economy suffers, less tax is collected - and yet we still have to pay for all the decisions that were made on Healthcare, Greening, and Poverty. That's how we end up with giant deficits.

So......be careful what you wish for.

I think we have to stop looking at the short term costs of social services, and instead look at the long term costs of NOT addressing the developmental needs of children.

In this case, "a penny saved" is not "a penny earned" but sometimes just a dollar that has to be spent later.

some thoughts...

http://www.ccsd.ca/pubs/recastin.htm

My view is that without a discrete cut-off, any decision about a poverty line is based on how much inequality and downstream social costs a society is willing to tolerate. In determining the cut-off, two factors must be considered.

First, there is morality and social justice. How much inequality do people think is fair and just? How much do we want to help children living in poor conditions and circumstances not of their own doing?

Second, there is the weighing of the costs of doing something today to equalize opportunity against the later costs of not doing much. The lower the cut-off, the greater the inequality of outcome, and the larger the economic and social costs tomorrow as fewer children make successful transitions to adulthood. A dollar saved today by not maximizing opportunities is simply a dollar of spending delayed until later. (BY SOME ESTIMATES, $7 IN SPENDING LATER.)It is ironic that while we piously speak about the need and urgency to bring down the fiscal deficit because we do not want to burden future generations, we don't consider the "social deficit" we are passing on as services and programs, and social assistance benefits are slashed. One child in neo-natal intensive care costs the health-care system $8,400 a week. If the child is there because the mother was malnourished and the baby was low birth weight, how much money did we save by depriving the mother of a level of social assistance adequate to feed her properly during her pregnancy?

Our research using the statistics shows clearly that the 1.5 million children living below the LICO in 1996 are at a disadvantage. Their opportunity to succeed is signficantly lower than children in higher income families.

So what does it take to address this problem? The CCSD believes that it must become an important collective endeavour to better equalize the opportunities for children to succeed. To level the playing field. A child's chances for a successful transition to adulthood should not depend so heavily on family income.

I am not suggesting that we ignore the Low Income Cut Off. It is an important indicator of serious deprivation in Canada. But nor should we assume that once family income rises above the LICO, successful child outcomes are guaranteed.

We need to put together our practical knowledge about how kids succeed, with a study of the data which indicates why kids don't succeed. This means taking a good, hard look at the slashing and burning of social expenditures today, in light of a growing gap in income equality in Canada. We need to set the discussion of child poverty within the context of successful child development, and remove it from the context of how many grains of rice a day it takes to keep a body alive.

This is the approach that will help us to meet our collective responsibility. That is, to design a prosperous society in which downstream social, economic, criminal costs are minimized--and productivity, tax revenues, social cohesion and civility are maximized.

[Evan]

Evan - you seem like a thoughtful person - my comments are not meant as a slight to you. I also think that Howard Hampton is a nice fellow - actually the most likeable of the three leaders. Having said that, the problem with NDP "democracy" has always been "how do you pay for it". They are always authors of policies that sound good on the surface, but are impractical to implement and in many cases, smack of sheer socialism - dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator and sucking the "will" out of people to better themselves. Perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement but with the NDP, there is always the tendency to move in the direction that government will solve everything.

Healthcare - we have been throwing more and more monet at healthcare every year and I believe it now consumes about 40% of all government revenues. We need to keep an open mind on whether some additional help from the Private sector might be beneficial. We can't continue to turn a blind eye by citing a Public-only mantra. Let's look at some successful European and Nordic countries who have a blended approach. And if we continue down the same NDP-approved path - who will pay?

Green Energy - if we don't use Nuclear and we close the coal plants.....well, I don't even want to go there. Let's just say that industry and consumers will have to pay enormous prices for fuel and power. Again, it sounds good, especially when people wring their hands and say "well, we have to do something!" Who will pay?

Poverty - sure we've got poverty - left-leaning activists say that 1 in 6 people are living in poverty. I've been all through the stats in other postings. First of all, stats are based on the dubious use of a Low Income Cutoff which Stats Canada themselves states should not be used as a poverty measurement figure. Secondly, the stats include people as young as 16 years old. If you don't count people who are 21 or younger - and accept that they are just starting out - then "poverty" rates start to read as 1 in 12 or even 1 in 15.......and that ignores exactly what "poverty" really means. In my mind, there's a big difference between living in poverty with no roof over your head or not enough food......and being "income-challenged" where you can't afford Cable TV or have trouble making car payments. But again - who is going to pay for the NDP approach?

Who is going to pay? Taxpayers - that's who - individuals and companies. And when individuals have to pay more tax, we have less to spend. And when we have less to spend, we can't buy things that drive the economy and create and sustain jobs. When companies - large and small - have to pay more tax, they also have less to spend. So they can't expand and create more jobs and again, the economy suffers. And guess what? When the economy suffers, less tax is collected - and yet we still have to pay for all the decisions that were made on Healthcare, Greening, and Poverty. That's how we end up with giant deficits.

So......be careful what you wish for.

Thank you so much! I was hoping to find a good discussion of the issues here. This will take a minute, grab a coffee.

As for the question of who is going to pay for it. It's funny, just today I was starting a discussion of how we fight the myth that the NDP is a Tax and Spend party.

I'll begin by mentioning that a lot of the money to provide quality service in Ontario for the most part is already there. These programs can be paid for by not banking millions of dollars waiting for opportunities to privatize healthcare or saving for pre-election spending. It can be used by taking tighter control of the finances and making sure you don't have mishaps like a million dollars given to people who asked for a few thousand. It's by knowing what money you have, and not coming up at the end of the year saying, "Hey, look what we found!".

As for the healthcare privatization. Take a look at the witness accounts from the employees working in the now privatized Royal Ottawa Hospital. Where the tax payers are still paying for things like maintenance services, but now paying for wages which not only employ the workers but feed the pockets of the business running them. There is a divide within the workers who are no longer a team. Those who work for the province, and those who work for private industry. The level of care has diminished, and the provincial costs have gone up. Again, I'll urge you to take a look at the report released by the Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU) and see what the people in the thick of it are saying. http://www.opseu.org/bps/health/mental/P3R...ttawaReport.pdf

Healthcare can be improved by implementing more home care for one. Many people do not necessarily need to be living in hospitals to get the care they need. Caring for them at home 1) frees up more beds in the hospitals helping reduce wait times. 2) is actually more affordable than treating them in the hospitals 3) improves the quality of life for patients who would probably much rather be at home in their own bed than in hospitals.

When it comes to the environment. A plan based on Renewables and Reduced Consumption is the only plan which is forward thinking. The Liberals talked about reducing consumption but had higher consumption this year than ever before. A plan based on renewables is not only environmentally friendly, but is going to open thousands of jobs in Ontario. And if implemented properly is actually the most affordable option. Think about nuclear for a second. Right now the uranium mining is being scrutinized, while the Liberals and Conservatives want to implement a plan that will increase it 12 fold. When a problem comes along at a nuclear power plant, worst case scenario that land becomes unlivable for a million years. Yes, a million years, that's how long it takes for nuclear waste to become stable again. We still don't know what to do with it. Stick it in silos that might last 100 years if we're lucky, and hope our children might figure out the answer to the question which our current scientists haven't been able to answer for 20 years.

As for poverty. If one child goes a day without food, that's one too many. That's my opinion. I agree with the above points that by leaving people living in poverty there come other costs, such as health related. Or perhaps through the justice system, as poverty and street crime go hand in hand. How is increasing the minimum wage to a point which lifts thousands of Ontarians above the poverty line a bad thing? It increased the quality of life for those thousands of Ontarians, improves the economy by making more 'spenders' to support our commercial structure, and on top of that, makes thousands of people who were below the poverty line, tax payers to help pay for those other services which is where this whole rant started.

Edited September 4, 2007 by Evan