Monday, June 16, 2008

Attempts at Feigned Interest in Ontario NDP Leadership Race

Wow! The NDP leadership race is heating up! And holy crap, it’s gonna be a clash of the titans. Will Nash make a splash? Will delegates say no-no to DiNovo? Who will win?

Can anyone else stand the suspense, or is it just me!

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posted by calgarygrit at 6:43 p.m.

19 Comments:

  • Requiem for a decent man...

    Also, what is with my riding producing leadership candidates... George Drew represented it... Mike Harris was born there... Annamarie Castrilli ran for Liberal leadership in 1996, and was defeated (she became a Tory) in 1999 by Gerard Kennedy, who has run for federal and provincial Liberal leadership...

    (Tony Clement also ran here for city council and lost, while David Miller was our city councilor)

    By Blogger french wedding cat, at 2:10 a.m.  

  • I, for one, endorse the Inanimate Carbon Rod for NDP Leader.

    Though the Alberta Liberals will also soon be looking for a leader ... perhaps The Rod could make a splash with them.

    By Blogger sir john a., at 10:36 a.m.  

  • Is the Rod not the current leader of the Alberta Liberals?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:46 a.m.  

  • Apparently David Miller is also interested. I think he's got a fair shot at winning if he does run.

    Hampton gets credit for doing a good job in the post Rae days (no pun intended...well maybe). But he had a pretty unconventional style. Time to campaign like its at least 1990 because campaigning like its 1970 wasn't working for the NDP.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:31 p.m.  

  • Hopefully for Toronto taxpayers, David Miller gets in the race.

    By Blogger Darryl, at 1:42 p.m.  

  • Miller would definitely add a bit of oomph to the race and you have to imagine he'd be the odds-on favourite.

    It's debatable how much of an appeal he'd actually have with regular voters though.

    By Blogger calgarygrit, at 1:51 p.m.  

  • "It's debatable how much of an appeal he'd actually have with regular voters though."

    Nobody has a broader appeal than the Mayor of Toronto. Noooooo-body. Oops, wrong one.

    Can we throw Hargrove into the mix, or is he a Liberal now? It's so hard to keep track these days. Maybe Rae will come back. Afterall, he's got experience governing.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:23 p.m.  

  • I think Hampton was a decent man, but a lousy politician. Yes, Bob Rae was the worst premier in Ontario's history (Mike Harris is disliked - and loved - by many because of his priorities were outside the ideological mainstream; Rae was just plain incompetent).

    Rae still managed 21% of the vote in 1995, which is close to the NDP average. Hampton won 13, 15 and 17 (in '99, '03 and '07, respectively).

    Despite record high energy and car insurance prices, he could not sell his two major lifelong policy commitments (public auto insurance and public power). Moreover, in Dalton McGuinty he faces a fairly weak Liberal leader, who is a lousy campaigner, and who hardly has an ironclad record of success as Ontario premier.

    Hampton is a throwback to the old days of the NDP - when their base was within factory workers and miners. As much as Hampton is a far better man than the likes of Jack Layton, the NDP's future is urban.

    By Blogger french wedding cat, at 5:51 p.m.  

  • CG, Miller is a terrible mayor. That didn't really come out in his race for re-election, because he was challenged by losers (the very right wing Jane Pitfield and Stephen Ledrew) but he has a very vulnerable record. The deficit has ballooned, crime has spiked, property taxes are up, and it is hard to find an area where he has some accomplishments he can point to.

    The Ontario NDP is largely screwed because it has survived mostly because it has good constituency MPP's, not because it is capable of running provincial campaigns.

    By Blogger french wedding cat, at 6:02 p.m.  

  • The deficit has ballooned, crime has spiked, property taxes are up, and it is hard to find an area where he has some accomplishments he can point to.

    Municipalities can't run deficits, crime is more or less where it's been for the past few years (whatever the Sun might say), property taxes are still lower than in Durham, Peel, or York, and if Miller's only accomplishment is to restore a sense of seriousness to the Mayor's office, that will be enough. He compares well with his predecessors... who include such grand success stories as Mel Lastman and June Rowlands. Oh well - at least Miller cannot find himself usurped by a few hundred people in Rosedale and Forest Hill, a fate that has befallen the Mayor of Vancouver.

    By Blogger JG, at 6:40 p.m.  

  • On deficits I was referring to this:
    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2007/08/10/toronto-budget.html

    And for all his craziness, Mel Lastman's tenure had none of the problems I listed. "Looks like a mayor" is about all Miller has going for him.

    The Crime rate dropped every year Lastman was mayor except 2001. Property taxes were kept low (the media blames him for the budget crisis, but the real problem is how fast Mayor Miller has been spending - he increased spending by 1.5 billion dollars). Lastman was a great mayor, but of course, the chattering classes could never accept that a crass (and sometimes nutty - and oh his wife...) salesman could be a better mayor than the progressive, patrician Miller. Lastman made three gaffes (the Olympics remark, the WHO remark and the Hells Angels thing), and that became his legacy, because the chattering classes are too stupid and lazy to look at the statistics.

    By Blogger french wedding cat, at 4:09 a.m.  

  • Crime dropped almost 6% from 2005 to 2006 in Toronto. See here (p. 13), and the homicide rate in Toronto is still lower than Winnipeg, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, and Saskatoon.

    As for Lastman, he was a moron, and was evidently so well before he was ever elected mayor of the Megacity. Your comment about spending and taxes is pretty short-sighted - last summer when Miller proposed cuts to deal with the deficit (after council had cowardly deferred new taxes and levies that they eventually passed regardless), there was a great outcry - the very notion that people have to pay for services.

    Tell me, why should residential property taxes in Toronto continue to be markedly lower than those in the surrounding municipalities? Lastman is not wholly to blame for the budget crisis - the botched amalgamation combined with provincial transfer cuts are the major causes. James Bow wrote a good summary of Lastman's time in office. And Miller too.

    By Blogger JG, at 3:52 p.m.  

  • I am reminded of Von Mises' notion that the mark of an educated man is that he does not rely on newspapers to form his opinions.

    Check the Toronto Police crime statistics. In 2003 the homicide rate was 2.5 (per 100,000 I believe, possibly per 10,000). It fell slightly in 2004, then rose 25% in 2005, fell a bit in 2006, and rose 20% in 2007.
    http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/publications/files/reports/2007statsreport.pdf

    There are many factors to blame for this - but the cultural shift from broken window policing to community policing (eg. the replacement of Fantino with Blair) of must take part of the blame.

    As for property taxes... First, property values rose considerably through the 90's and early 00's. My parent's house at least doubled in value. Values in the suburbs grow more slowly.

    In 1999 (I couldn't find anything earlier, and I know the tax freeze stopped in Lastman's second term) Toronto had 5.6 billion in revenues. In 2004, 6.65 billion. Does a 19% increase in revenues over 4-5 years sound like the onset of a budget crisis to you?
    http://www.toronto.ca/budget2004/index.htm

    Secondly, the notion that urban areas get or require less in government services is largely overstated. One of the major services urban citizens do have is public transit. However, user fees cover a larger percentage of TTC costs in Toronto than in any other city (of course it is nice in a city where bus-drivers can make >100,000/year, and token collectors make $27/hour, to have a mayor that says "how high sir" to the transit-workers unions when they go on illegal wildcat strikes).

    By Blogger french wedding cat, at 9:00 p.m.  

  • Check the Toronto Police crime statistics. In 2003 the homicide rate was 2.5 (per 100,000 I believe, possibly per 10,000). It fell slightly in 2004, then rose 25% in 2005, fell a bit in 2006, and rose 20% in 2007.
    http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/publications/files/reports/2007statsreport.pdf

    There are many factors to blame for this - but the cultural shift from broken window policing to community policing (eg. the replacement of Fantino with Blair) of must take part of the blame.

    Let me get this straight - the number of homicides fluctuates year-over-year, and you're trying to attribute this fluctuation to "cultural shifts" or a change in police leadership? There were 67 in 2003, 64, 80, 70, and 84 in subsequent years. That would be five datapoints, nowhere near enough to draw any kind of conclusions regarding the cause, and there's no way a year-over-year change can be seen in this case as anything other than a random variable. Anyhow, on a year-to-year basis, homicides are already down this year so far, something that may yet change. Of course it they remain below 2007 in 2008, it won't really mean much.

    By Blogger JG, at 11:07 p.m.  

  • This can't succeed in reality, that is what I think.

    By Anonymous www.muebles-en-leganes.com, at 3:18 a.m.  

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