A Rock and a Hard Place

A reporter recently contacted me for an interview about my views on the Ontario election. She was rude. I declined the interview. Since her agenda was flying like a neon flag, it was a no-win situation, so I didn’t play ball.

Since I made my position on the election clear – I don’t care who wins as long as its not a Conservative – I’ve been sniped at, called Miss Piggy and generally told that I’m a fake, a hypocrite, a liar.

It is a frustrating election. I’m frustrated. I bet a lot of you are frustrated. Every time Kathleen Wynn opens her mouth I cringe wondering what rubbish will come next. As for Andrea Horwath, she seems to not really be interested in the election.

I don’t like debt. You know that. I also know that personal debt and government debt are not the same thing. But watching the debt rise in Ontario scares me as much as the next guy… not so much for me, but for my kids. (Here’s a good article on ON’s debt.)

So this election has become, for me, a fight to make sure that the worst option doesn’t happen. For me, the worst option is Doug Ford. The whole #FordNation thing just creeps me out. These people applaud enthusiastically when Doug Ford declares:

not everyone deserves a livable wage,
women’s right to abortion needs to be re-opened,
LGBTQ has no business in the school sex-ed curriculum,
disabled people should not be seen nor heard,
transit funding is a waste of money,
rent control needs to be repealed,
market forces should drive everything,
global warming isn’t real and the environment will take care of itself, and
manufacturing is where we’ll find new jobs.

Oh for heaven’s sake. It’s like #FordNation has been living under a rock. How can anyone think that paying less than a liveable wage is okay? Once upon a time, bosses made 20 times their employees’ wages. Now they make 300 times what their employees make. But minimum wage is the problem?

How can anyone deny that LGBTQ people deserve to be recognized and referred to in a way that is comfortable for THEM. Remember when black people had to sit at the back of the bus? Why would we want to go backwards instead of forwards?

As the mother of an autistic child I am deeply offended by the “don’t let them out of the house” idea. My child not only shines academically (he’ll graduate from college this year on the Honour Roll) but he is a thoughtful, caring and honest man. I could not be more proud of him.

Global warming is real. Manufacturing is not coming back from the abyss.

Old thinking. That’s what all of the #FordNation malarkey is: Old thinking. We need new thinking, new ideas, new solutions to problems we’ve been facing for a long time.

Universities are taking heaps of money to graduate kids that can’t spell and don’t know grammar. Graduates can’t find jobs. Throwing more money at education, without changing the education paradigm, is ridiculous. Driving up debt to prop up old institutions is ridiculous.

But here’s the rub. If my options are Doug Ford and his right-wing cronies or one of the women who heads the other two parties, I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure it’s #NotFord.

When Doug Ford said he planned to save money by cutting funding to the CBC I could have died laughing (since CBC is federally funded, not provincially funded) if there weren’t so many people chanting his name and praising his BS platform. Those people scare me. No matter what crap comes out of that man’s mouth, his acolytes have his back.

I’m getting my house ready so that if I have to sell and move because the worst does happen in Ontario, I’m ahead of the game. I will not live in a province that elects Doug Ford as premier since, for me, it’s all downhill from there.

Perhaps the thing that disturbs me the most is the people who, trapped between a rock and a hard place, won’t vote. People want a change but don’t like any of the options. So they’ll stay home. If enough people do that, FORD WILL WIN.

If you don’t want that to happen, you have to vote strategically. That means voting for the candidate most likely to defeat the Conservative candidate in your riding. Regardless of whether it is a Liberal or NDP candidate, if you don’t want Ford, you must pick the one most likely to defeat Ford’s minions.

If you’re standing on the sidelines waiting to see how it all shuffles out, I’ve got a lovely house in Brighton that might be going on the market as soon as the election is over.