Leadership Matters

Well, in the Ontario race for the premiership, that's the cogent slogan of none other than the provincial Conservative's namesake, John Tory. Isn't that quite delicious? John Tory, chuckle, chuckle. The name alone befits him to hold the post.

And let's face it, leadership matters, it most certainly does. Otherwise why aspire to become the leader of a political party, if not prepared to lead - with conviction, authority and belief in one's preparedness to lead that party out of its position of back-bench rage?

Of course, to be able to do so one must first persuade a very large percentage of a Tory-suspicious demographic in the largest city in the province. And isn't there kind of an unspoken rule in Ontario where, if the federal Tories are in, the provincial Tories can go twiddle their thumbs in exasperation at an electorate that figures two-of-a-kind is inviting trouble?

Still, leadership matters, and Ontario is truly fed up with the current leader of the province, the head of the Ontario Liberal Party. With good reason. Voters are tired of trite responses to their expectations gone down the drain. We had more than enough shoulder-shrugs from Jean Chretien, as Liberal prime minister of this country for far too long.

Premier Dalton McGuinty's time has come to step down. We fervently hope. Isn't it? He's untrustworthy, studiously retracts his promises. And fully expects exoneration on the tired old excuse that he was left with no other option, picking up the expensive slack from his predecessors.

He's proved himself to be monstrously hypocritical, he has failed to solve any of the problems currently facing the province, from smoke-stack employment slipping away, to insufficient education funding, to crime detection/prevention and a boost to the judiciary, to cracking a dent in the long waits for hospital admissions and procedures.

Let alone the plight of the poor, expressed in a growing number of homeless on our heartless city streets. The difficulties low-income families face in paying for fundamental necessities for their families, not helped at all by the imposition of a health tax premium falling more heavily on their bowed shoulders than those of wealthy Ontarians.

With that kind of record behind him, one might think his nearest competitor for the position would have it made. After all, the Progressive Conservative party put forward a credible enough platform promising additional resources to reduce hospital waiting lists, and best of all, that the health care tax would be history.

They'd put a good working patch on the present system of justice apprehended termed the "catch-and-release" system with too many violent criminals loose on bail. There were promises to fix all manner of vital civic matters. But John Tory thought he was ever so cleverly accommodating to a wide demographic when he vowed he would fund faith-based schools to match the current funding of Roman Catholic schools, along with the public system.

Too bad. He had the proverbial tiger by the tail and he just isn't going to live to tell the tale. It turned around and bit him. Most people in the province, aside from self-interested users of private faith-based schools don't agree that this issue is a priority, nor that they would like to accept Mr. Tory's thesis that this is fair. Is it? What about private schools based on certain ideologies, secular in nature? They're left out in the cold.

More to the point why would we want to further isolate people from one another by segmenting our school system so that children won't have the needed exposure to one another to promote a cohesive society for the future? What's to be gained by that, particularly in an increasingly heterogeneous society from all manner of backgrounds for whom a common education system can mean children will become informed and accepting of one another?

He was warned. People with political smarts, with their thumbs on the pulsing vein of needed reforms in this province informed him he would sink his own ship if he persisted with his campaign. But on he went, asserting that he was right, and leadership meant making the right decisions, and his determination to extend funding to faith-based schools was the right one and by gum, he had no intention of stepping down from that decision.

Then the barrage of questions aimed at campaigning politicians began to fly fast and furious, and polls began to indicate the vast displeasure of the electorate. Explanations ensued which were merely re-hashed points already made and rejected. People can be so, how shall we say, troublesome, when they're not accepting of what is 'right' and John Tory can attest to that. So he engaged in some truly last-minute frantic back-pedalling.

It would be put to a vote. Yawn. What's that tired old phrase of failure: Too little, too late.

But don't cry for John Tory. He deserves to stumble into political obscurity; he worked hard to attain to that position.

Cry for the province, left to struggle on under the continuing premiership of a self-satisfied, pompous, incapable pretender of whom we've had more than enough already. Sigh.

Ah well, it wouldn't have been me voting for the Conservatives, in any event. Nor the Liberals. My party is the perennial third-place conscience of the province destined to forever prod and pick away at all manner of administrative lacks, until through the pressure of public shame the ruling party agrees to implement face-saving legislation for the betterment of us all.