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Thursday, October 11, 2007
  More Thoughts on the Ontario Election Results
What Lessons Can Learned from the Provincial Election?

Ontario voters are conservative in nature

I was shocked at the result of the electoral system referendum... This clearly shows that the average Ontarian citizen either didn't understand the question, didn't understand MMP or is just uncomfortable with changing the status quo. There were so many good reasons to make the change. The current electoral system was designed at a time when people who lived in a particular geographic area shared similar concerns... When you look at the popular vote and the spread of vote within ridings that is clearly no longer the case. Therefore, it makes so much sense that if a particular party - Green for instances, gets 8% of the popular vote, shouldn't they be entitled to 8% of the seats in the parliament? Instead they get 0 seats..., while the Liberals who rec'd 42% of the popular vote get 71 seats (66% of the 107 seats), how does that make any sense?

As a result, we're stuck w/ Liberals despite the constant attack on McGuinty and his broken promises. This begs the question... Given the situation, what, exactly were citizens they voting FOR?

Clearly McGuinty can't be trusted to do what he says he is going to do, which means that essentially most people were voting AGAINST John Tory's "Faith-based Education" fiasco... Meanwhile, McGuinty DOES still fund a faith-based school, it's called the CATHOLIC SCHOOL BOARD.

Some interesting links & facts & figures regarding education funding

The latest census reports available on the web (2001) show that of the 11.2 million citizens of Ontario, 3.9 Million are Catholic, that's 34% of the population. (as an aside only about 13,000 self-described as Agnostic, Atheist or Humanist).

The 2006-07 Ontario Budget has 11.7 Billion dollars for Education... Want to know where that's going? Yikes, take a look at this web page -> it's a disclosure of all 6 figure salaries in the school boards, that's a big freaking scroll down isn't it? 3,001 staff all together! Not too shabby... That's over $300 million...

Ontario Schools fall into 72 district school boards, of which 35 are Public and 37 are Catholic. That's right, just over half are Catholic, to support 34% of the population...

4,002 Elementary schools and 884 secondary schools.

Looking at a detailed breakdown of funding (amazing how much info is available on the web!) on a school board by school board basis, and analyzing the public and catholic school boards of Toronto, finds these interesting stats:

06-07 Estimates
Toronto District School Board
Total Funding: $2,263,415,354 (yup, 2.2 billion)
Total Students: 248,544
$/student: $9,106

Toronto Catholic District School Board
Total Funding: $794,992,770
Total Students: 86,631
$/student: $9,176

Well that's fair, that gets back to the Education Funding Formula, at least there is parity there, and we're not paying MORE to fund the smaller school boards...

You'd have to wonder, though, if there wouldn't be some more economy of scale, and/or consolidation of administrative functions by consolidating the public & catholic school boards...

Being married to your ideas

Looking at John Tory's Funding for Faith-based schools, I guess you can give the guy credit for trying to stick to his guns, but when everyone (even some of his more honest fellow party members) are telling you the idea stinks, LISTEN! It's so dangerous when people get married to their ideas and then completely ignore contrary opinion. I recently learned about Cognitive Dissonance, if you've never heard of it, read this article, it explains a lot about human behaviour...

Leaders seemingly unwilling to admit mistakes and admit bad news

I was really frustrating hearing the various political people being interviewed on election night, in particular Conservatives, NDP and Green Party folks, who all should have been miserable, frustrated, disappointed, angry at the results, both of their own parties relatively poor showing and the failure of MMP and yet they all seemed to be living in a dream world, going on about how pleased they were, how they'd fought so hard and made good progress and blah blah blah bullsh*t. Tory should have stood up and admitted that he'd completely f*cked up w/ his faith-based school initiative (if he was smart, he would have done this a month ago). I think people are smart enough to be able to forgive people for mistakes. Admit you were wrong, you're allowed to change your mind (especially when you're WRONG!). Move on! No sense putting blinders on and ignoring the evidence.

52% voter turnout - worst ever = apathy

Seems voter apathy is at an all-time high... Generally speaking when things are good, people can't be bothered to make a change, and dispute McGuinty's mistakes, things generally do seem to be going pretty well... If I were a Green candidate, I'd be knocking on doors and the first question I'd ask would be, are you planning to vote? If the person says No, that's a person to spend time with... If you could convince some of those people, who don't really have a strong opinion to bias them, I think you're on the road to victory as opposed to trying to change the minds of people who already have them made up and will likely just dismiss your arguments.

Review of Statistics of Popular Vote - Green

Despite not having won a single seat, I suppose Green does have something to be positive about, their considerable growth in popular vote. I suspect this # would be even higher if anyone thought they actually had a shot of getting into power, and I suppose that similar to the NDP, you need to hit a certain critical mass before people start taking you seriously... Looking at this table from Wikipedia:

Party Party leader Candidates Seats Popular vote
2003 Dissol. 2007 Change # % Change
Liberal Dalton McGuinty 107 72 67 71 +6.0%
42.2% -4.2%
Progressive Conservative John Tory 107 24 25 26 +4.0%
31.6% -3.0%
New Democratic Howard Hampton 107 7 10 10 -
16.8% +2.1%
Green Frank de Jong 107 - - - -
8.0% +5.2%
Green Party actually show the large % gain in popular vote, +5.2% from 2003. If you look at the #'s a different way, looking at the actual # of votes that Green rec'd... In 2003, they rec'd just 126,651 votes out of 4,497,244.

In 2007, 4,421,628 votes were cast, with Green getting 8% of the vote, that's approx. 353,730 votes, or a 358% increase! So if they can continue that momentum heck they'll quite possibly overtake the NDP next time around... To be honest though, I hope they recruit a better leader, I can't say I was overly impressed by De Jong...

Ok, this is the most time and energy I've spent on politics in my life! I think I'll get back to doing something useful, like playing FIFA 07 on my XBOX... :)
 
Comments:
Interesting post. And I must say upfront I am very happy to see you taking a bit more of an interest in politics. Voter apathy is something we should be ashamed of as a society (and yes I have been guilty of it myself from time to time).

Anyway - a couple of comments on your thoughts. I found it interesting you feel MMP was defeated because the average Ontarian citizen either didn't understand the question, didn't understand MMP or is just uncomfortable with changing the status quo.

I don't disagree - I think it was overwhelmingly because people didn't understand it.

But there were some of us out there that did understand the question and who are not happy with the status quo but who still voted against it.

I am all for electoral reform - we need to make some changes to move towards more proportional representation. However I didn't agree this proposal was the right solution. I was bothered by the idea of so many provincial legislators who would have no constituents to answer to. I was also bothered by the idea that most parties would surely fill their potential List Member lists with people who were already running in ridings so that if they lost their riding they could still 'win'. I think while this was not the intent of the Citizens' Assembly's recommendation is would be an unfortunate side affect.

I did struggle with the decision because we do need change. However I decided not to vote for change just for the sake of change (which would surely shelve the electoral reform debate for a decade or more).

I was disappointed however that the general consensus since its defeat is that we all must be happy with the status quo. Seems the debate may be shelved anyway.

Unfortunate. But I hope we continue to use the Citizens' Assembly > referendums.
 
Definitely good to see you into politics. I was impressed by your stats. Removing the Catholic based education should be a huge priority for Ontarians but people with power (the Catholics) are not likely to give up that power and have the system they run be folded into the main public system.

I agree with Richard Dawkins that religious schooling is child abuse and by having 34% of kids raised catholic that helps maintain the tax-free status of the church. Argg!
 
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