Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Minorities Everywhere?!


Minority governments that is - at least if you live in Ontario and believe the polls that Ian Urquhart believes. (An aside: everyone goes on and on about how polls are untrustworthy and how they ignore them, and yet millions of column inches are devoted to reading the polling-data entrails.)

If you do buy into this whole thing, it does bode well for moderately progressive politics in Ontario. Unless there is some unexpected change in the political landscape, it would be almost certain that the NDP would hold the balance of power in a minority. Suddenly Cheri DiNovo's minimum wage bill isn't a maverick stunt by a rookie, but rather something that could actually go somewhere if a minority government needed NDP support.

Moreover, the same article suggests that John Tory is eager to cast himself as "a new type of Conservative leader, a Progressive Conservative leader" in the words of his campaign boss. This may be hype of course, since this is still the party of people like Frank Klees, but it does seem like the province is turning away from Mike Harris' style and policies.
Picture: Cheri DiNovo might still get her way at Queens Park

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