Why I Voted Against McGuinty And PR

Anne and I live in a small rural community in South Eastern Ontario, which is located about 45 minutes from Montreal’s West Island, and about an hour from Ottawa.

In terms of location, location, location – it’s perfect for us.

We moved to this area about 7 years ago to get away from the horrific politics of the province of Quebec, where all taxes are outrageously high, and the government feels compelled to intrude into the personal lives of its residents. Not to forget to mention Quebec’s unique brand of ethnocentric nationalism.

For us, a more Conservative Ontario was the answer. But we didn’t want to move too far away from our family, friends and medical support structure. So here we are.

Then all of a sudden Dalton McGuinty happened.

McGuinty is Ontario’s current Premier (equivalent to a US Governor), who is now running for reelection. He is a social micro managing tax hungry lying Liberal.

When one calls someone a liar in voice or in print, he or she better be very careful to be able to back up such a statement for fear of being sued for defamation. But in McGuinty’s case, I’m fine. He is a liar.

During his first election campaign, he actually signed a pledge not to raise taxes, which went out the window the moment he was declared the winner.

He set the stage to make Ontario a bilingual province (English/French), even though Ontario’s French speaking community numbers only 5% of the total population.

He has stood by like a silent dummy as Ottawa picked Ontario’s pockets to send our tax dollars to ethnocentric Quebec.

He has bloated the bureaucracy and sucked-up big time to the unions. And he has done nothing positive for small businesses. I mean nothing!

He has also introduced a new voting structure that would see our First Past The Post system, which we now have, combined to a Proportional Representative (PR) system similar to what exists in politically gridlocked countries like Italy and Israel.

Conservative leader John Tory, who is a relatively bland person without much apparent vision, leads the opposition. To his credit, he wants (or so he says) less government and lower taxes.

The thing about Tory that really sets me off though, is his stated policy of funding religious schools.

In Ontario, there are two school systems funded by public tax dollars. There is the public school board, which is void of all religious specific education. And there is the Catholic school board, which teaches Creationism through the Catholic Bible.

Tory wants to add all religious specific schools to the public purse.

To me, this is an outrage. I do not want one penny of my tax dollars going to teach a Moslem about Allah, a Christian about Christ, a Jew about Abraham, a Buddhist about Buddha or Hindus about Vishnu.

Because McGuinty is a liar and a micro meddling Putz, and Tory wants to mix religion and public money for education, I was compelled not to vote in this upcoming Ontario election.

But not voting is wrong. So I thought seriously about going to the polls to destroy my ballot. But I didn’t want to do that either.

I decided to vote. And this is how I arrived at my decision.

McGuinty is a liar and a micro manager. He gets his government involved in social engineering where none is needed. And he wants to bilingualize Ontario where the linguistic minority is so small that there is no reason for it at all.

John Tory wants religious specific education paid for by the public purse. But it already is, since the Catholics have their own school system paid for by all Ontario taxpayers. So, if the Catholics can be funded by the public purse, why not everyone else?

I cannot bring myself to vote for a meddling liar like McGuinty. And not to vote directly against him would perhaps be like voting for him. So yesterday, I bit the ballot (so as to speak), and voted for the Conservative John Tory in the advance poll.

I also voted in Ontario’s referendum on changing or keeping the government status quo between the existing First Past The Post, or a combination of First Past the Post and Proportional Representation.

I voted to keep First Past The Post.

As I see it, we already have too much government. We don’t need more. I also see this second option that includes limited proportional representation as confusing, ponderous and yet another way to create new stifling bureaucracies.

This combination of First Past the Post and Proportional Representation is a perfect example of a government that wants to become bigger. If we could cut our government size by half, that wouldn’t be enough.

There’s also going to be a real problem at the polls.

When we arrived (Anne and myself), we were the only people there to vote. We were asked for our voting card, and waited until they found our names on the master list.

They also asked for one piece of photo ID with an address, which they then examined and presented to the person who hands out the ballots.

The person whose job it is to hand out the ballots asked us where we lived, as she looked at the ID. Her job was to make certain that we knew the information that was on the piece of photo ID we submitted. Then we were given the ballots.

This process took several minutes each. Can you imagine what it will be like when several million people show up to cast their votes on Election Day?

Surprisingly though, the only question they did not ask, which they should have asked was: ARE YOU A CANADIAN CITIZEN since only Canadian citizens are allowed to vote in any Canadian election from municiple to national?

I write this because an American friend of mine, who is not Canadian, is on the voters list, even though she has repeatedly told those responsible to remove her name due to her nationality.

According to what Anne and I went through at the polls, this friend of ours would have been allowed to vote, since her driver’s license is Ontarian and her address is in the riding.

Instead of a referendum for Proportional Representation and a much bigger more complicated government, perhaps we should have a referendum on the need to have a voter’s ID card.

In conclusion: I won’t tell you how to vote. But now you know how I voted and why.