the liberals should really flip the issue over on the conservatives and start running ads against them that accuse them of wanting to take away the carbon rebate.

i want this to be a reality check.

i'm a low income canadian; i live on odsp, and while i wish i sold more of my art, my sole source of actual income is a $1300/month odsp check.

every four months, i get a $100+ check as a carbon rebate. last year it was $122. it should be ~$20 more than that this year. i don't have a car (i couldn't afford one, but i actually don't want one), and i'm smart enough to know that the inflation we're experiencing is not substantively due to the carbon tax.

those $100+ checks have actually dramatically improved my quality of life and have actually helped me deal with inflation. $500-600/year is very helpful when your income is very low.

now, we can debate whether this policy is actually effective, and i would actually argue it hasn't been and won't be. that's not the point right now.

right now, we're dealing with a demagogue in parliament trying to argue that the carbon tax is harming low-income canadians, and the reality check needs to be that the exact opposite is true, that this $500/yr top-up on my disability is actually exceedingly helpful to me and that i'm actually overwhelmingly in favour of increasing the carbon tax as much as possible.

now, i understand that this might be bothersome to middle-income canadians that make enough money that they can spend a lot on gas, but that's the point. the policy is intended to penalize polluters and incentivize them to change. what the demagogue is demonstrating is that the policy isn't working; it is exactly those middle-income canadians that most need to change that are organizing to resist it and polls suggest, at the moment, that they would have a good chance of winning.

however, the policy is in truth very beneficial to actual low-income canadians, who generally don't have cars because they can't actually afford it. don't listen to this guy try to tell you otherwise.

the liberals think they lost the last two elections because they were too left wing, which is a false analysis. i'm actually skeptical of the election results; i think there was massive fraud. yet, to the extent that the conservatives did swing some votes in the last two elections, it had to do with (1) doug ford being popular amongst immigrant communities because immigrant voters tend to like aggressive male politicians, which is the antithesis of the liberal party at almost every level of government and (2) the liberals not being left-wing enough, and bleeding both working class and over-educated voters to the ndp, who offered a more convincing left of centre vision.

i think this is all very frustrating because i actually supported the mcguinty-wynne government as they passed a lot of very good bills. i have not supported the trudeau government because they keep passing horrible legislation. yet, the quality of legislation being debated is not a primary election issue for a large percentage of voters.

i couldn't vote for the last guy; i thought he was awful, and he didn't even win his seat, which is something i predicted the day he was elected leader of the party.  mimicking stephen harper is not going to win the liberal party of ontario any votes.

the liberals are going to have to acknowledge that the demographic changes in ontario over the last 20 years have placed them as the least favoured party amongst a large plurality of new voters who want charismatic and dominant male leaders and are going to have to adjust to that. bonnie crombie's angle is that she can dominate the ndp and the liberals are going to have to understand that they are fighting an election against the left, where there are voters they can swing, and not against the populist middle, which is currently out of their reach.

the rule in the west is that the kids of the immigrants conform, and the liberals may have better luck with second-generation canadians than first-generation canadians, as soon as they exist and can vote. however, they type of migrants moving to canada in recent decades is dramatically different than the type that came here decades ago, and that might be a false projection. we'll have to see.

for right now, the liberals need to be focused on trying to swing new democrats and if they don't realize that then they're going to get squeezed and scrunched and may in the end just end up merging with the conservatives.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/ontario-liberals-propose-tax-credit-for-childrens-sports-after-school-activities/article_1746162a-e640-11ee-9044-ef20edb861c2.html