Liberals headed for Third Place If they Continue to Attack Teachers and Public Education.

http://ontarionewswatch.com/onw-news.html?id=302

I have never claimed to be clairvoyant in matters political but I predicted on Steve Paikin’s Agenda TV show that, if the Liberals in Ontario proceeded with a deep austerity budget that slashed the public sector, public schools for our discussion, they would come third in the next election behind a PC minority government and an NDP official opposition.

The part the Liberals can’t get through their thick heads, while they look at polls that show a slight majority of Ontarians (60%) favour austerity; is that most of that majority (40%) are dyed-in-the-wool Tories. This leaves only 20% for people who voted Liberal in 2011 AND support austerity. The NDP is in the Catbird’s seat to Hoover up the votes they already had plus all non-PCs who oppose a scorched-Earth austerity program - the 40% opposed to the Duncan budget.  

The poll sited above and the Graham Murray seat projections show just how ‘unpopular’ the Duncan budget is with Liberal voters and potential Liberal voters. The Angus Reid Poll shows 34% PC, (-1 since 2011 election)  31% NDP ( + 8 since 2011) and 29% Liberal ( -8 since 2011). This would yield seats of 53 PC, 28 NDP and 26 Liberal. Sweet justice would be served in that Dwight Duncan would be amongst the first to lose his seat to the NDP. Frankly this poll is early going. I expect things to get a lot worse for the Liberals very soon. If the NDP don’t pull the plug right now they may deeply regret in 2015 if they give the Liberals time to recover and start handing out the largess. The fact is that Hudak and the PCs have gained nothing since the election and the Liberals have lost 8% of the vote to the NDP.

Nationally, urban Ontario is the Alamo for Liberals. The Mulcair victory in the NDP leadership race forecloses Liberal growth in Quebec, they are dead in western Canada and the tiny Liberal cohort in Atlantic Canada is increasingly losing ground to the NDP and will quickly split between left and right as soon as it becomes clear to them that the Liberals are a spent force in all of the main power blocks in Canada.

In a nutshell, a third place finish in an Ontario brings on the existential question for the Liberals – who needs you anyway and for what?  A right leaning NDP and a centre leaning national Conservative Party has the Bob Rae Liberals in a vice and are squeezing the political life out of them. The loss of the Ontario government could be the coup de grace for the Liberals especially since their very conservative Liberal Party of BC is in the same downward death spiral miles behind a surging BC NDP and a resurgent BC Conservative Party.

This ought to give Sam Hammond and the Elementary Teachers of Ontario (ETFO) a real boost as they tell the increasingly irrelevant Education Minister Laurel Broten to get stuffed, they are not returning to the central bargaining table. It also ought to strengthen the hands of OSSTF, OECTA, and AEFO the teacher (and in OSSTF’s case education worker’s) unions.

They ought to soon join ETFO in the rejectionist camp unless the Ontario government admits they were totally wrong about every single issue, apologizes for putting everyone through the exercise, and fires at least Duncan and Broten from cabinet although the captain of this Liberal Titanic is named McGuinty.

It is time for everyone who opposes this budget to begin the clamour for an election and refuse any concessions to this rotten government of fair-weather friends.