two sentences in the platform on the gai.

but, what we've seen from the ndp is better encapsulated in the following part of the platform:

"The focus of the social assistance system should be helping people overcome barriers, get out of poverty and participate in society. "

that is what you're going to actually get from them. and, as such, i don't really trust them to follow through on a ubi; it's not really consistent with their ideological positions.

the tendency of "progressive" parties to push producerist policy is just typical calvinist bullshit: what they support is using the government's resources to send people to work, which in the end is just a process of trying to maximize profit for investors. it's this idea that the government is a human resources department for capital, and that, ultimately, it is work that sets us free. perfectly backwards. perfectly orwellian. you might naively point to religion as some kind of force of purity, but it was marx himself that made the point that religion is the tool that capital uses to brainwash workers with, and this is the analysis that any leftist would utilize - but progressives have never been leftists, they've always been conservatives.

i happen to seek freedom from labour, i don't need or want the government to help me to find a job, i want to abolish wage slavery. as the liberals are a bourgeois party, the focus on calvinism or producerism is less, and so they do seem to appeal more to the interests of artists.

i flipped through this, and my immediate take is that most of this just isn't going to happen, or is being presented sort of bizarrely. for example, they do state in the platform that their pharmacare plan only covers 125 drugs, but then they repeatedly refer to it as "universal pharmacare", which isn't really true. the liberal plan covers less people, but offers coverage for thousands of drugs for the people it's covering.

i sent my ndp mpp an email about getting estrogen covered under odsp once and he didn't reply. it's nice to see the promise, but i wouldn't bet on it. and, i'd be better off with the gai, if i have to choose.

i also don't think their claim that the liberals have pushed through deep cuts to health care is factually accurate; they actually brought in a special health tax. i spend a lot of time in the health system, and my only complaint is that the doctors seem to be too socially conservative. i've never faced unreasonable delays or experienced any of the things that the ndp are talking about.

at the end of the day, these are specific changes that will benefit specific people, so it's less about whether one health care plan is better than the other, and more about whether you're in a specific target group. if you're in the group that the liberals are targetting, you're obviously better off with a drug plan that covers thousands of medications; if you're not, the very limited coverage being offered by the ndp is better than nothing. it's something similar with the child care. so, it's a weird election on that level - there isn't really an objectively correct choice, not even over traditionally determined demographic groups.

nobody is offering universal plans, so it comes down to who you're being targeted by. and, that's a prescription to split the vote....

i don't get the same kind of personal commitment from horwath that i get from wynne; this is almost the exact opposite of what she told us four years ago, so it's feeling like she's just making shit up to get elected. it comes off as shady, slimy & opportunistic. i'm more inclined to believe that the 2014 version was the real andrea horwath, and so i'm left to conclude that you should be expecting her to govern on her right. at least the liberals have a record you can consult to understand where they sit: horwath just tells you what she thinks you want to hear, and changes her views as quickly as she realizes it isn't.

again: i don't want a change of government right now, and i'm uneasy about believing what the ndp is telling me. i don't think that voting ndp right now is a good idea. and, i think you should read this a bit more carefully, and compare it carefully to the 2014 platform, if you're convinced that it is.

https://www.ontariondp.ca/sites/default/files/Change-for-the-better.pdf