Malvika's Ramblings

It’s the Ontario general election day today and the air is electric with excitement. People are voting to elect members of the Legislative Assembly (Members of Provincial Parliament, or MPPs) of the Province of Ontario, Canada.

It’s interesting to see what elections in Toronto mean. What is it that the candidates promise to the public?

Health Care is turning out to be a huge issue in Canada with people complaining about wait times in hospitals and the fact that each citizen does not have a family doctor. It astounds me as I compare this to India where certain places, especially in the Himalayas, don’t have even 1 doctor for miles and miles.

Clockwise from top left: Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty, Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory, Green Party Leader Frank De Jong and NDP Leader Howard Hampton.

What I did notice is that in 1 month of living in Toronto, the manifesto of each candidate is very clear to me. That is something that did not happen in 20 years of my life in India. In India, elections meant a lot of jeeps, flags and noise. Call it bad general knowledge on my part, but I never really knew what each party was proposing. In Toronto they make sure you KNOW. It is so clear that a 5 year old child can tell you that the Liberal Party candidate wants to fund public schools and discourage faith based religious schools.

The agenda of every candidate is clear as each party has made commercials that are shown on TV like regular ads. A lot of finger-pointing there.

There are other ads encouraging people to vote, saying that ‘Don’t let someone else speak for you’. Effective advertisements with a good dash of humour!

I saw similarity between Canadian and Indian voters when a pizza joint man wryly commented – “I have to decided which crook to vote for.”

The 3 main candidates are

Dalton McGuinty – Liberal Party

Howard Hampton – NDP

John Tory – PC

McGuinty says ``We plan to hire 9,000 more.Today, we're not only measuring wait times, but those wait times are slowly, but surely, coming down. Half a million more Ontarians now have a family doctor. And we have a plan to get family doctors for 500,000 more.`

He focuses on

1 Directing health tax to provide medical facilities

2 Clean water laws

3 Publicly funded schools.

John Tory promises

1. Relief to low income people from health tax

2. Public housing

3. Reducing doctor shortage

4. Integrating skilled immigrants fully into the workforce

5. Fixing the justice system

He mainly says that he will fix all the problems created by the previous Premier, Dalton McGuinty. He keeps repeating the fact that McGuinty did not fulfil his promises towards autistic children, instead he took the parents of these children to court. I don’t know what’s the story behind that. Check it out yourself.

Howard Hampton says his party will

1. Provide a health tax rebate of up to $450 for everyone making less than $80,000.

2. Raise the minimum wage to $10 per day.

3. Reduce post secondary education fee

4. Make sure all kids get the education they deserve.

5. Reduce hospital waits.

6. Protect our environment.

7. Establish a right-to-know law that ensures families know what toxins are in our food, air, ground and water. Our plan to fight global warming would meet Kyoto targets by shutting Ontario's biggest polluter (Nanticoke coal plant) by 2011, invest in energy efficiency not nuclear, and fast-track public transit expansion.

Dalton McGuinty says that he would continue the good work. He needs support to complete his plans which are on the verge of success.

John Tory attacks McGuinty. He was supporting faith based schools earlier but had to move away from that when the electorate didnt seem too happy about his idea.

Howard Hampton promises many new positive steps.

Who would you have voted for ? If I was part of this, I would have chosen by elimination. I would NOT have voted for John Tory who supported faith-based schools. Just like how i would not have voted for BJP after the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Lets see which issue is close to the hearts of Torontonians. I’ll switch to catch the updates on TV now. The magic number is 54. A party needs 54 seats to win!

Will post the election result as a comment.