Shedding light on backroom politics
Those who benefit from tax and spend Liberal-style government have been the most rabid in its defence. That isn’t really a big surprise. However, the methods they have adopted are definitely outside the accepted bounds of public debate in Ontario.
The last two Ontario elections have been marred by substantial advertising campaigns aimed at any Progressive Conservative suggestion to reduce the size of government.
As we run up to the 2011 election, and it is obvious that big government is unsustainable and must be scaled back, a number of public sector unions and construction trade unions are again gearing up an advertising campaign under the guise ‘Working Families’, a secretive group dedicated to siphoning more money from taxpayers and putting it in the pockets of already well paid people working in the broader public sector or benefiting from public infrastructure contracts.
While I would be the last person to demand any reduction in free speech, evidence suggests that Working Families are working quite closely with the Ontario Liberal Party. In fact many people believe that the Ontario Liberal Party is using Working Families as a way to circumvent existing election financing rules. They also see the Liberals as funnelling their more negative advertising through Working Families so the actual Liberal Party can appear to remain clean and above the dirty political fray.
For more information you can see www.workingfamilieswatch.ca
Certainly since Working Families entered the political arena the McGuinty Liberal government has passed union friendly legislation, provided teacher unions with very generous raises, spread millions in tax dollars in various grants to Working Families affiliates and stepped up construction spending in Ontario.
Working Families has spent more than $7 million on anti-conservative attack ads in the last two elections. As the biggest beneficiaries of a Liberal government they will spend more this time around.
The whole thing stinks.
Flouting campaign finance laws, providing a dirty tricks front for the Liberal Party and maintaining a grip on your wallet - it is time this group and their tactics were exposed.
Sure, we could fight fire with fire. But that isn’t right. It isn’t in the spirit of open public debate, nor is it something my colleagues and I could support in good conscience. So we will take the more difficult route, and do something by trying to shed light on this shameful chapter in Ontario’s electoral history while hoping that our fellow citizens pay attention.
I remember former British Prime Minister Edmund Burke’s observation that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to stand by and do nothing.
-30-