Buying Your Vote

We at the Nickel Belt Riding Association take pride in being positive and remaining above the usual political mud-slinging. No name-calling, no blame-laying, and no snide "Oh yeah…how you going to pay for that?!"

Refraining from that last is proving hard…real hard. I have bitten my tongue so many times while listening to the traditional parties campaign that it is now nothing but scar tissue!

What's got us so riled? The crassness of it all. Every one of the mainstream leaders are making pie-in-the-sky promises. Not one is talking about costs or effectiveness, it's just spend, spend, spend!

Half-baked schemes are not going to pull Ontario out of debt! Pouring good money after bad won't do it either. But still politicians continue…buying your vote.

The current government is in the midst of a lavish spending spree. Promising billions today, tomorrow, and down the road. The opposition parties aren't much better, touting what all they'd do if elected and it too involves massive spending.

Why do they do it? Because it works. Voters want certainty and politicians give it to them in a slick, photogenic package. Public policy isn't about what is best for the province anymore but what "tests" well. Focus groups and advertising executives streamline the parties' messages into a catchy sound byte, one with all doubt removed.

"Trust us," they say. "We can fix it." Conveniently forgetting their role in causing the problem in the first place!

It falls to party hacks to identify the issues: Traffic problems in the GTA? Job losses in the auto industry? High electricity prices? Pollution? You name it and the leaders have the solution: More money.

The hard truth is that no amount of government spending will fix Ontario. Our problem is the government. No one knows how to protect the public purse.

That's the taxpayer's money they're throwing around—your money, my money—and the government cannot seem to spend it fast enough.

We at the NOP know how hard you work. That's decimal point on a provincial spreadsheet is in reality hours or days worth of income for the average Ontarian. How is it our province's debt skyrockets and yet MPPs keep getting raises? Why do politicians get cozy pensions while thousands of working Ontarian's see their supposedly "secure" nest-eggs going to stockholders?

The system is broken but the traditional parties want to just keep pumping more money into it.

The Northern Ontario Party doesn't have easy answers. Despite what our opponents polished ads tell you—there are no easy answers. Unlike them we will admit the hard truths…even if it costs us the election. Voters may prefer the sweet taste of lies but we believe they deserve honest answers.

We'll leave the traditional parties their tried-and-true tricks of the trade, we want to offer something new: treating voters like our equals.

Come out and see what we're all about. Ask questions, share your thoughts, and help us get to the province's underlying problems. Maybe together we can find some ideas on how to address our home's issues. Ontario deserves better.