Last Thursday, the six candidates running to replace Dalton McGuinty as leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario and serve, however briefly, as Premier, assembled in the TVO studios at Yonge and Eglinton for a "debate" which was moderated by Steve Paikin. I watched the entire hour and here's my take: First of all, there are three candidates who should really not be there at all as they just take away time from the other four. Charles Sousa, Harinder Takhar and Eric Hoskins, a few more of us know your names now but, honestly........ Of the four top tier candidates, Glen Murray impressed me the most. He seemed best able to speak from the perspective of the party and its need for a teamwork and a collective approach - regardless of who wins the leadership. The former Winnipeg mayor, former head of the Canadian Urban Institute and most recently the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities is a thoughtful and well-spoken urban affairs advocate and generally an impressive guy. I was trying to picture each of the four candidates up against Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath in a televised election debate and Murray looked to me like the one who would best handle that. I like Kathleen Wynne but, as a current and long time member of the government, she will not be able to distance herself from the McGuinty legacy in a credible way. Sandra Pupatello is aggressive and confident but I"m not sure that she can handle Hudak in a campaign. Gerrard Kennedy, after losing his federal seat to Peggy Nash last year, seems to want to apply for any and all available Liberal leadership jobs. He is a decent guy but looks like someone who would end up as opposition leader after Hudak wins a majority.
Regardless of who wins, it will be extremely tough for the provincial Liberals to win yet another election unless Hudak self-implodes with some crazy policy like having prisoners pick up garbage in chain gangs along our roads. Wait, he did that last time..... This time, I suspect that he will make no such radical promise and he and his party have done a good job over the past several months in releasing a broad set of policy directive "white papers" on a range of important topics. More recently, he has re-cycled the "beer in corner stores" idea and taken shots at the LCBO and their new fancy stores built at taxpayer expense. These messages play well. He pointed out that when you leave Ontario in any direction - to Manitoba, Minnesota, Michigan, New York or Quebec, you will enter a jurisdiction where you can buy beer and wine in corner stores and grocery stores. So, why not have this in Ontario too? I'm not sure that there is a good answer. The election in the spring is going to be Hudak's to lose. He is fully capable of doing just that but I'd be surprised not to see him as Premier before the summer. And as a Toronto resident, and depending on what happens with the mayor's office, the prospect of having Stephen Harper in Ottawa, Tim Hudak at Queen's Park at Rob Ford at City Hall is about as depressing a scenario as I can imagine.
Speaking of depressing, I did watch the entire Bills game yesterday. The defence could not get off the field on third down and also, here is a newsflash: we need a quarterback. With 3 games left, it's really about draft position now. The latest draft analysis I have heard says that there are, once again, several good quarterbacks available in the draft - although maybe not as highly rated as Andrew Luck or RG3 were. I just hope that Buddy Nix can pick the guy who will not be the second coming of JP Losman.
This weekend, we have the annual "who cares bowl" as the high-flying Seattle Seahawks (who beat Arizona yesterday 58-0) come to the Rogers Centre to play the Bills. The game will serve as the undercard for the halftime performance by PSY who will play a 10 minute version of Gangnam Style (I presume). Last week, I saw Leonard Cohen and Dave Matthews Band at the ACC so having the chance now to see PSY as well as an NFL exhibition game as an opening act is just about all I could ask for.
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