Ontario Election

I still have not decided on whom to vote for. If Christine Elliot had won for the Conservative Party, I would have voted for her. I will not be voting NDP.

The left has learned nothing. Socialism just takes longer than communism to bankrupt a country. Andrea Horwath says that Hydro should be a public company, but being a public company is what got it into the mess it is in now. Going back to a public company is not going to fix our electrical bill.

Look at what happen in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez just gave money to the poor. This only helps in the very short term. What he should have done is provided education and infrastructure. Governments need to help people get jobs so that they can look after themselves and build an economy. Look at what happened to their oil company. The government ran it into the ground. Governments should be in the business of regulation. They should never be in charge of running a company.

Welfare does not work. Welfare is a trap. No one has left poverty because of welfare. Welfare takes money from productive people who are then less productive and gives to people who will never be productive. How you get people off poverty is education. In Ontario we still have poor schools in poor area. Schools in poor areas need more money than other schools. They also need to pay teachers in these schools more in order to get better qualified teachers.

I do not want to vote for Liberals and Kathleen Wynne as it is the Liberal party that got us into the electrical cost mess and has loaded Ontario down with an incredible amount of debt. We have stranded debt because stupid nuclear policies. Ontario is still encouraging people to put in solar panels even though we produce too much power during the day and must pay people to take our excess.

I am really worried about debt. Ontario is heavily loaded with debt. So are a lot of Canadian provinces and all sorts of countries. Our last recession was bad because it was caused by a financial crisis. No one is dealing with excess debt. Whether or not the Conservatives will deal with it is known. Wynne certainly does not seem to care about it. The next recession could be worse because of debt.

To me Doug Ford seems like a populist. I am not sure that I would feel comfortable voting for him. However, you have to be careful about political ads. They are often very misleading.

One thing I do care about is rent control. The liberals say that Doug Ford wants to do away with rent control. On the Conservative Party site, he says he will not take rent control away from anyone. See what he says here.

Yes, I think that landlords should be able to make enough in rent to cover their costs and rent should go up based on cost not on an inflation rate which may have nothing in common with their costs. Yes, I think that landlords should be above to get rid of undesirable tenant, especially ones that do damage and do not pay the rent. Landlords are not charitable organizations.

On the other hand rental units are where people live. People who rent do need some protection. Rental places must meet government regulations on the conditions of the rental buildings. Landlords should not be able to increase rents unreasonable. The last changes to the Landlord and Tenant Act came about because some unscrupulous landlords raised rents 50% to 100%.

A government cannot just cancel rent control. We have enough people already living on the streets. We do not need to have a bigger population living on the street. This is what will happen if people living under rent control have their rents pushed up to what is being charged to new tenants. Also cancelling rent control would produce a wind-fall profit for rental property owners. The value of any rental property is directly related to rents the property produces.

The only way I see to get out of rent control is to gradually bring rent control units up to market value over a number of years. However, I do not think we will get more rental units by ditching rent control. Developers make a lot more money and money quicker by building condos. This is not going to change. Also I should disclose that I am renting an apartment and my apartment is under rent control.

I am ambivalent about abortion. Women generally do not need to get pregnant if they do not want to. I must admit I got pregnant on an IUD. Birth Control is not 100%. However, most women that get pregnant accidentally do not need to. By now I had hoped abortion would go away because of birth control. The only thing I can find on Doug Ford is about abortion is that he thinks 16 year olds should get their parent’s permission. See a Star article here.

Abortion is traumatic. I know some women who have had them. A woman needs lots of support and good advice before taking such action. However, it seems from anything I have seen you can get advice from pro- or anti-abortionist only. This needs to change.

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