Here are Andrea’s top ten progressive policies. Check out her fully-costed platform for yourself.
Don’t listen to Liberal smears and lies. They are trying to trick people into voting for them, instead of earning their votes.
$12/hr minimum wage indexed to inflation
Home care for seniors (in 2013 budget but abandoned by Wynne)
Dental care for low-income kids
Invest in re-training programs for workers over the age of 55
Post-secondary tuition freeze
0% interest on student loans
Day care: invest in safe and affordable childcare spaces
Eliminate HST on hydro and debt retirement charge (low- and middle-income families are getting gouged by endless Liberal hikes: 160% counting)
Help families install solar panels and make energy efficient retrofits
Reduce auto insurance rates by 15% (in 2013 budget but abandoned by Wynne)
Anyone who claims this kind of platform is a right-wing Margaret Thatcher platform is an outright liar. Anyone who claims this platform is to the right of Wynne’s platform doesn’t know what they are talking about.
If you want real progressive policies, Andrea is the only choice. Wynne has lied before about delivering on progressive policies. Clearly she won’t become suddenly honest by weaseling 4-years of absolute corrupt power.
Well Ron, if you believe that Horwath believes most of those points, or more importantly would deliver on them, then you are not a liar, just hopelessly naive. Point 1 is silly since it is only a few cents different from the Liberals. (A real progressive party would institute a minimum wage of at least 20$), Point 2 is only partly true, (the NDP may increase home care but it already exists and continues to exist - I know because I know people who continue to use it), Point 4 is typical NDP corporate talk (if they wanted to be really progressive they would give training money to Unions not use it for what would be a corporate run/concentrated training program.), Point 5 is hype, (they need not to freeze tuition but DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!, freezing tuition is like saying they are going to fight global warming by giving everyone an umbrella.) Point 6 is the same thing, Point 7 has been vague and remains largely meaningless because every party say that and do nothing, (lets see a real plan for government day care) Point 8 is the wrong issue (we actually have relatively low hydro rates - help low income users and invest the rest of the money in real alternatives.) Point 10 is simply rhetoric and would never happen, period.
ReplyDeleteOn paper the NDP is still left of the Liberals but in such remarkably minor ways it matters little. More importantly, people are responding not just to platform but to a change in mood of the leadership toward the right. And this arguably matters more than what is no paper because if Horwath actually became Premier her rhetoric suggests that she wouldn't be progressive at all to speak of.
I'm naïve to believe Andrea would keep her word? Actually Wynne is the one who broke all her promises in her 2013 budget. Voters would be crazy to trust her after that.
DeleteAndrea has no hidden agenda. The Liberals are the ones who campaign from the left to govern from the right.
Andrea, like Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair, represent the progressive center which the Liberal party abandoned 20 years ago for failed neo-liberal ideology. That's why Wynne pretends to be NDP but her actual priorities are to gouge struggling families while doling out absurd corporate tax cuts to the rich — $2.4-billion a year!
Hard-left socialists can complain that Andrea has moved towards the center. But Liberal supporters don't have a leg to stand on. The Liberal party abandoned its centrist, liberal values for naked power decades ago
That why we need an NDP government to put a stop to 30 years of Tough Tory Times that are eroding living standards, causing inequality and debt to skyrocket and destroying the economy.
Germany has the strongest economy in the West, and there the NDP-equivalent party is regularly part of government. After three decades of decline, it's time for a real change.