Lee Greenberg and James Cowan, National Post and CanWest News Service
MARKHAM — Premier Dalton McGuinty, lashed out at his Conservative rival Sunday, saying he would not have allowed the type of attack ad aired by John Tory’s campaign Saturday night.
“It’s never the kind of ad I would have approved,” Mr. McGuinty said yesterday. “I was raised to find a way to be positive.”
“It just runs counter to what I think Ontarians want to hear.”
Mr. Tory defended the ads saying the spots merely highlight Mr. McGuinty’s shoddy record in office.
“Any recitation of Mr. McGuinty’s record is bound to be categorized as negative because it is,” Mr. Tory told reporters after attending a church service.
Mr. McGuinty said he saw the ad Saturday Night while watching Hockey Night in Canada with his second-youngest son, Liam.
“When the ad came on at the beginning he would change it,” Mr. McGuinty said yesterday. “In a funny kind of way he was trying to protect me. I said ‘Hey, Liam, lemme see the ad will you?’ ”
The stripped down attack ad features (similar to previous PC Party ads found here) the ominous voice of a male narrator, who asks “Do you really want four more years of mismanaged health care? Four more years of Dalton McGuinty suing the parents of autistic children?”
As the narrator poses the questions, they are written over a black screen. The ad goes on to critique the Liberal leader for a shortage of family doctors and wasted tax dollars on “Liberal insiders”
“Do you really want four more years of Dalton McGuinty? Because if you vote Liberal on Oct. 10, that’s exactly what you’ll get.”
Mr. Tory said the ad raises legitimate concerns.
“I think people have to ask themselves if we want four more years of what we’ve seen: people without a doctor, children with autism not getting help, seniors not getting the care they need. I think these are legitimate questions for an election campaign and if it sounds negative, that’s because it has been and it will continue to be if we stick with the present leadersip.”
A senior McGuinty advisor yesterday fumed about the ad, calling it another example of what he said was the most negative campaign Canadian political history.
Mr. McGuinty said he’s chosen to do things differently.
“If you take a look at the kind of campaign we ran in 99 and 2003 and what I’m running on today in 2007, I think Ontarians are entitled to see a positive plan placed before them.”
But Conservatives disagree. They point to a union group that has actively campaigned against Tories in the last two elections. Conservatives allege the Working Families Coalition — a group that has used several key Liberal campaign strategists — is a front for the McGuinty Liberals and has launched a complaint with the province’s chief election officer.
One recent WFC accused Mr. Tory “and his neoconservative team” of voting “against children.” (Ironically, the ad appears to use the same narrator as Mr. Tory’s latest attack ad). The group’s 2003 ads using the memorable tagline “Not this time, Ernie,” are said to have been instrumental in the defeat of former premier Ernie Eves.
Mr. Tory yesterday accused Liberal “cronies” at the WFC of running “the most negative (ads) that I’ve ever seen in Ontario politics.”
Conservatives also point to the Liberal war room’s occasionally nasty online
campaign. (The latest example is below, the main site is at ToryTube.ca)
Videos posted online by Liberals include one poking fun at a language gaffe where Mr. Tory mistakenly asks a reporter, in French, to wait a few moments “par [sic] favor.”
Mr. McGuinty yesterday distanced himself from that online campaign.
“There’s a new element to all 21st Century campaigns that has to do with youtube and facebook,” he said. “But there’s only so much I can manage in terms of my campaign. We have a sort of corporate campaign that’s manifested in the kinds of ads we put on TV, the kind of ads we put on radio and in print, and I’d like to think that I’m taking the lead on that.”
Asked if he was distancing himself from his war room director, Liberal lobbyist Warren Kinsella, Mr. McGuinty replied: “What I’m saying is I’m running a strong, positive campaign.”
Ontario voters will elect a new government on Wednesday Oct. 10. According to the latest polls, Mr. McGuinty’s Liberals hold an 11-point lead over their Conservative challengers, who were hampered by their disastrous plan to fund religious schools.
Mr. Tory criticized the Liberals for focusing on that plan rather than discussing issues. “I think the handling of the education issue at the start of the campaign by Mr. McGuinty could certainly not be described as ‘positive’ and ‘constructive,’ ” he said.
The Conservative leader’s uplifting message during his visit to Rhema Ministry stood in sharp contrast to the negative tone of his party’s advertisements.
Addressing close to 1,500 congregants, Mr. Tory said he had entered public life to “make sure, on some Thanksgiving Day, not too many of us in Ontario can feel we can be equally thankful.”
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ctv.ca
McGuinty says he’s running a ‘positive campaign’
The Canadian Press
MARKHAM, Ont. — Premier Dalton McGuinty says he’s running a `positive campaign’ and would never have approved an attack ad like the latest one released by Progressive Conservative rival John Tory.
In it, the Conservatives slam McGuinty for mismanaging health care, suing the parents of autistic children, wasting tax dollars on `Liberal insiders’ and ultimately asks whether the public wants `four more years’ of the same.
McGuinty says he first caught the ad while watching Saturday’s hockey game with his son Liam and says his first thought was that it was not the approach he would take.
He says he was raised to always focus on the positives and in this campaign, that means what his government has done to reduce medical wait times and strengthen public schools where teachers haven’t been on strike in four years.
He deflected criticism that while his mainstream media ads may be positive, those on YouTube and other websites have been anything but.
McGuinty says there’s `only so much he can manage’ but that he’s the one giving direction when it comes to newspaper, radio and TV ads.
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Star
Party faithful thank Tory for defusing `mind bomb’
Reversal on school funding issue appears to have brought back Conservative supporters
Oct 07, 2007 04:30 AM
Robert Benzie
Rob Ferguson
Queen’s Park Bureau
Promising to fund faith-based schools has been a “mind bomb” that will likely cost the Progressive Conservatives the election, but reversing course on the scheme appears to have stemmed the bleeding of core Tory supporters.
Leader John Tory announced Monday he would put his $400 million plan to bankroll Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Christian and other religious schools to a free vote in the Legislature.
That move effectively kills the measure, because even some Tory MPPs would join Liberals and New Democrats in voting it down.
In dozens of interviews with Conservative incumbents, candidates and backers since the policy flip-flop, there is a palpable sense of relief among the party faithful.
Although polls show Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals poised to win a second majority government Wednesday, Tories insist the U-turn has given them a fighting chance in many ridings they might otherwise have lost.
“That helped. I certainly noticed a difference. It was hard to get our message out because of that,” Bob Bailey, Conservative candidate in Sarnia-Lambton, said yesterday.
“A lot of people who had doubts before came back to me and said to me, `Look, Bob, we wanted to vote for you all along and this helps us,’” said Bailey, who is running against Culture Minister Caroline Di Cocco.
Terry Flynn, a marketing professor at McMaster University who studies political communications, said Tory sabotaged himself and is paying the price.
“It doesn’t matter what he says now. The mind bomb has been dropped,” said Flynn.
“They didn’t understand the backlash it would create.
“They’ve impaled themselves on this.”
Tory incumbent Frank Klees, who is running in the new riding of Newmarket-Aurora, is a big booster of funding faith-based schools, and he blames the Liberals for stoking public outrage over the proposal.
“To John’s credit, he recognized that the misinformation was there, that people can’t come to a conclusion on this until they’ve had a chance to consider the real facts,” Klees said Thursday.
“There’s been a shift, there’s been a turnaround. We had a gentleman … who had been saying: `I am not going to vote for you over this issue.’ He came in (the office) this morning and not only did he say he was going to vote for us, he cut us a cheque to contribute to the campaign.”
Bramalea-Gore-Malton candidate Pam Hundal said Friday that “the whole faith-based thing was a smokescreen.”
“People had questions. Once I clarified it to them, then they moved on very quickly to what the real issues are in our riding like the closing of our hospital, Peel Memorial,” said Hundal.
At Pickering GO station on Thursday, Ajax banker Ted Clark, 38, echoed the concerns of many voters.
“Earlier on, I did not like (Tory’s) stance on opening up the public education to all religions and I wasn’t going to vote for him,” said Clark, who voted PC in 2003.
“But the fact that now he’s willing to consider it as a free vote in the Legislature, I am seriously thinking of bringing my vote back,” he said.
Asked yesterday if he wished he had changed his tune a week or more earlier than he did to salvage the election, Tory shrugged.
“I wish I’d been born a better looking man, but … the bottom line is that things are as they are,” the PC leader said in Sarnia.
“I am very happy that we’ve had this week, a 10-day period, in which we’ve been able to really talk about the other issues – autism, the doctor shortage, crime, the economy,” he said.
“Those who write this election off and say it’s over, I would say are misjudging the fact that there’s going to be a lot of conversations taking place over a lot of turkey dinners at a lot of dining room tables across this province, where people are going to be saying: do we really want four more years of Dalton McGuinty?”
Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound incumbent Bill Murdoch, the first to publicly break ranks with the party on the schools issue, said the debacle “took over the election.”
“I don’t believe John wanted it to be the main issue,” Murdoch said last week.
Tory strategists said their polling showed voters favoured the plan once they understood it was merely extending to other religions the same education now available to Catholics.
But that message got lost and, worse, revived memories within the PC party over the controversial 1984 decision by former premier Bill Davis – Tory’s friend, mentor and former boss – to extend full funding to Catholic schools.
“It’s a sore point in some parts of the province,” said John Snobelen, education minister from 1995 to 1997 under PC premier Mike Harris.
“You get down into the kind of battles that happened in (some) small communities when the Catholic education funding to high school came in; it was really bitter.”
Still, Snobelen, who canvassed in several ridings last week, said that since the policy shift, there’s “a different feel and there’s more volunteers and it’s a more affable group.”
“I do know that the party faithful is back in the fold and that’s great,” he said.
Randy Hillier, the rural rights activist and Tory candidate in Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, summed up the discomfort voters felt over religious schools.
“There was a little bit of a lump in some people’s throats … and they’ve swallowed and now people are feeling far more comfortable,” Hillier said Thursday in Kingston.
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Maynard pledges to not accept MPP pay raise if elected
Ross McDermott, LondonTopic.ca
October 6, 2007
With just five days left until Ontarians go to the polls, London-Fanshawe NDP candidate Stephen Maynard made a personal commitment to not accept a 25 per cent pay raised for Ontario MPPs, passed in eight days by the McGuinty Liberals last December.
He made the “personal commitment to the people of London-Fanshawe,” Friday (Oct. 5), while being flanked by several, former Liberal supporters who have pledged to vote NDP in the upcoming provincial election.
“While people earning minimum wage were told they would have to wait three years to earn $10 per hour, last Christmas the Liberals rushed through, in just eight days, a 25 per cent pay raise for MPPs. The Liberals and Conservatives have both voted for this. Only the NDP opposed it,” Maynard said.
His pledge is following the move by a majority of NDP MPPs who, instead of accepting the legislated pay raise, are donating that money, on a monthly basis, to not-for-profit organizations in their respective communities.
“I know what it’s like to try and make ends meet on minimum wage,” Maynard said, adding he will donate the 25 per cent to organizations in London, “to help those citizens who need our help the most, and I will continue to do this until Ontario’s working poor get a minimum wage of $10 per hour and until people on (Ontario Disability Pension) get a raise as well.”
Behind Maynard stood several citizens who all felt they were betrayed the Liberal government for which they voted during the last Ontario election.
Among those was Cynthia Boufford, whose son Jordan suffers from autism and was a victim of a Liberal broken promise four years ago.
“I voted for (Khalil Ramal) in the last election because he stood on his platform and said people like (her and Jordan) won’t have to wait for treatment for their children’s autism. Six months later my son was discharged and he waited three years to get back into service,” Boufford said.
Though she spoke with Ramal after her son was discharged, and carried out a personal protest against the actions of the McGuinty government, “Mr. Ramal always towed the party line that parents aren’t experts and the government was using their own experts.”
Boufford said she was impressed with Maynard’s honesty. “The Liberals can promise anything, but they don’t follow through on them.”
Jordan, 9, is one of the rare children over the age of six, who is back in treatment now. The Liberal’s experts, she explained, claim therapy doesn’t help children over six years of age but Jordan’s condition has improved immensely since getting back into therapy. She believes her outspoken protest and letter campaign to Queen’s park is the main reason her son is once again receiving treatment.
Maynard said many important issues have been ignored during this election campaign as too much focus has been placed on PC Leader John Tory’s stance regarding funding for faith-based schools.
“Important issues have been ignored. There are seniors – our parents and grandparents – sitting in urine-soaked diapers in long-term care homes,” Maynard said. “There are autistic children and parents still seeking the financial program support they need. The Liberals took those families to court rather than honouring their promises.
“Ontario,” he concluded, “has become the child-poverty capital of Canada.”
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Tory blasts McGuinty for ‘Bluewatergate’
By CHIP MARTIN, SUN MEDIA
2007-10-06
PC Leader John Tory was in Sarnia today where he blasted the McGuinty Liberals
over massive cost over-runs which saw the local hospital expansion project
balloon to $320 million from the original estimate of $276 million. With Tory
is local candidate Bob Bailey (CNW Group/John Tory 2007 Campaign)
SARNIA — Spiralling costs, lack of accountability and incompetence have made
Sarnia’s new hospital “ground zero” for Dalton McGuinty’s style of management,
Conservative leader John Tory said here today.
“The Dalton McGuinty school of mismanagement is closing down next Wednesday,”
Tory told a small group of supporters outside the troubled project.
Expansion of the Bluewater Health Centre, originally estimated to cost $140
million has ballooned to $319 million, raising a firestorm of controversy and
a political headache for Liberal Caroline Di Cocco. Di Cocco is accused of
knowing about cost-overruns in August but suppressing that information.
Conservatives have dubbed it McGuinty’s “Bluewatergate.”
With Di Cocco under fire, both Tory and NDP leader Howard Hampton have made
late-in-the-campaign stops to blast what they call Liberal mismanagement of
the project. They see Sarnia-Lambton as up for grabs.
“She has continued to delay, deny and obscure the facts,” Tory said in his bid
to bolster the hopes of Conservative candidate Bob Bailey.
Tory described as a “shaggy dog story” Di Cocco’s assertion she was unaware of
a letter sent her in August by the ministry of health advising the cost by
then had risen to $276 million.
He said local ratepayers who have wanted redevelopment of the hospital for at
least 15 years — and have raised $40 million for it — deserve better.
The facility is a partnership with the private sector, with prime contractor
EllisDon of London.
“Skyrocketing costs. Deceptive information. No results. This has become the
McGuinty mantra for health care.”
In North Bay, he said, a hospital project has ballooned from $221 million to
$551 million.
Tory said construction should proceed immediately and an in-depth audit
undertaken, involving the OPP, if necessary. And the province, he said, should
cover all the cost-overrun and not local citizens.
On his way back to finish his campaigning in the greater Toronto area, Tory
also stopped at a coffee shop in Strathroy where he posed for pictures with
seven-year-old Jonathan Sibley of Ilderton whose parents can’t afford the
treatment he needs for autism. He gave the youngster a tour of his campaign bus.
And Tory also heard the story of town resident Henry Twynstra, 73, who had to
sell his home to cover the $40,000 cost to remove a brain tumour in Cleveland
when he couldn’t receive timely treatment at home. A lifelong Liberal,
Twynstra said the health system is unfair and after meeting Tory said he plans
to vote for him.
Tory is planning stops in Burlington and Barrie before ending his day in Toronto.
