i learned something at the bar last night: kathleen wynne needs to step down.

the person i was talking to would not be likely to self-identify as belonging to the left, but the liberals in canada are not the left-wing party (the ndp is.) and require at least a little bit of support from red tories and soft centrists. they need far more support from small-l liberals; they need to lean to the left. but, they have to restrain themselves, too. i'm a strong advocate of a three party system and have already made these arguments repeatedly.

the liberals in ontario are delivering to their voters far better than the federal government is. it's easy to be cynical about vote-buying. but, we need strong government interference in a broken and corrupt market, right now. in my view, they're doing almost everything right. the ndp are not offering me a reason to support them over the liberals, right now - and the liberals are not giving me a reason to vote against them. the only really strong point of disagreement i have with them is their privatization of the energy sector, but this actually doesn't affect me directly, and the reality is that this is baggage from previous premiers, both dalton mcguinty and mike harris. the root cause of the rise in electricity costs was harris' privatization, but mcguinty contributed to this by signing a lot of bad contracts (based on the assumption that we'd be using electric cars by now). if we owned the generating capacity ourselves, we wouldn't have to sign contracts with private producers, which are who is actually gauging consumers. and, as strange as it might sound, the way to decrease costs is actually to use more energy.

if i took control tomorrow, i'd just nationalize the lot of it and let the courts figure out compensation costs. i don't expect the liberals to do that...

the first complaint is something that the liberal party needs a pr strategy for. i need to clarify before i start that the entire situation is ridiculous. this person makes $16/hr - one dollar more than the minimum wage increase that is coming - working as a student labourer for chrysler. she thinks she ought to be making well over the minimum wage, and opposes the increase on those grounds. to begin with, i don't just disagree that she should be making well over the minimum wage, i actually think she ought to be making a student wage that is less than the minimum wage (and that tuition should be free). but, i don't think she should have that job in the first place. the real scandal here is that chrysler is hiring students. that job should be unionized, with benefits, and held by an adult with a mortgage and a family. rather than complain that other people are getting a raise, she should be fighting for a raise herself; she won't, though, because she's a student, and she's planning around getting an even higher paying job. 

who could possibly take her side in this? it's the definition of privilege. her position is unsupportable. it's not even ideological. it's really just clueless class privilege: she thinks she's better than the plebs and resents anything that might make them better off.

so, i don't have a lot of empathy on this point. but, the government needs a strategy to reach out to voters that are now going to be just over the minimum wage barrier, especially young ones with wealthy parents, and feel like they're being pulled down into the working class. these children of the bourgeoisie, complete with quasi-objectivist tendencies, are actually an important voting demographic for the liberal party. they basically run the federal party. they may be too socially liberal to lean towards the conservative party, but they will retreat to their class interests, like frightened animals, if they feel threatened by wealth redistribution.

the second complaint came across as a talking point, and while i'm not sure of the source, i found this article at the star, which has a reputation for being left-leaning but which any leftist will label a sounding board for banking interests:
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/01/01/ontario-hydro-rebates-start-in-january-but-so-do-carbon-taxes.html

her complaint was that gas prices are going up because kathleen wynne has introduced a carbon tax. this is actually false on multiple levels, but we can see how the media is playing into it.

ontario does not have a carbon tax. further, it was the federal government that has mandated carbon pricing, not the provincial one. while gas prices are increasing, if you want to blame a politician, the politician you should blame is justin trudeau.

...but, even that is fuzzy thinking.

the article complains that the court order should have put a separate item on the bill for a "carbon fee". but, in doing so, it is presenting a false understanding of cap and trade as a tax levied by the government on consumers, which is precisely what the court ruled is false. that journalist should be fired. cap and trade is nothing of the sort: it is a punitive fine leveled against corporations by the state. if the corporation then chooses to pass that cost on to customers, it may do so, but it is correct to list that as an increase in delivery charges, as it is the corporation that is charging the consumer, and not the state. the purpose of the policy is not to raise prices or generate state revenue, but to create an incentive for corporations to generate less pollution. the actual person you should blame is yourself, and the thing you should do is use less carbon - whatever that means, to you. if you don't want to create less pollution, you have a social responsibility to pay for the pollution you're creating.

so, i don't have a lot of empathy for this complaint, either, despite being fully aware that carbon pricing will not reduce pollution so much as it will create a lot of whiners that don't want to take responsibility for their destructive behaviour. we need a different approach if we're going to reduce pollution.

but, the government, at the least, needs to make sure that people actually understand what is happening, and do not fall victim to right-wing propaganda about tax increases. there is a subset of low information voters that the liberals will never swing or control; they get their information from sun newspapers and facebook feeds and are just beyond any concept of reason. this person was not that, she was a young professional that was misinformed and may have very well been misinformed by the toronto star.

these are substantial obstacles for the government to overcome. but, she seemed to be angry at kathleen wynne, particularly. when i explained that the policy came from trudeau, her tone changed: she was not nearly as hostile towards him as she was towards her.

it was absolutely clear to me last night that they're going to need a new spokesperson if they want to compete in the next election - and that if she does not step down very soon, we're going to have to cut bait and throw our full support behind the ndp.