Tag Archives: Caroline Mulroney

Politics

Anal Tax and Sex Carbons

The Ontario Conservatives Know How to Entertain

✎  Wayne K. Spear | February 27, 2018 • Politics

I WATCHED THE ONTARIO PC leadership debate last week, and while I found it a touch dull, there’s no denying that the Conservatives understand, and can deliver, entertainment. The entertainment value of the race to replace former leader Patrick Brown, for example, benefitted early on, with the entry of the up-and-coming political neophyte, Patrick Brown. He’s a fresh face, and he’s never governed, but, according to various rumours, he once had a leadership role somewhere but stepped down, or maybe didn’t. It’s not clear. No doubt we’ll learn more about this mysterious Mr. Brown from the papers, should he decide to re-enter, or re-re-enter the race. Or wherever we’re at now.

Hot Anal Sexleft to right: Anal Sex Woman, Too Sensible for Ontario, That Mid-Level Drug Dealer, Has A Famous Dad

The Ontario PCs are the most diverse of the provincial political parties. There’s something for everyone at the Conservative salad bar: the faux-populist entrepreneur, with mid-level experience in the retail pharmaceutical trade; the fresh and photogenic outsider with the famous last name; the family-values Puritan; the polished and informed candidate far too sensible to ever be elected by Ontario voters. And possibly Patrick Brown, who, if he re-re-enters the race, will distance himself from the theatrics of the previous Ontario PC leader, as well as of the previous leadership candidate, Patrick Brown, and Patrick Brown.

CommosJust say OhNos! to Commo-fascisms

Far and away, the top issues in the 2018 Ontario election are anal carbon and sex tax. If you watched the first debate, you heard the words carbon and anal quite a lot, just as you have over the past eight years, in your local church and grocery store. Every man, woman, and child is talking about these things. That’s because there’s hardly a citizen who is not daily imperiled by anal carbon and the sex tax. The build-up of carbon in the anal cavity is not only messy, but painful and dangerous, and it makes sitting for long periods, or passing waste, excrutiating. Anal carbon is said by some to effect the climate negatively, especially bovine anal carbon, but although anal carbon is taught in the schools, the evidence of its effects on climate is inconclusive. That, and the fact it encourages our children to hoard carbons, is why all the Ontario PC candidates repudiate the teaching of anal carbon in the classrooms, describing it as “making parents uncomfortable.” Whether it’s man-made anal carbon or mixed couples.

As for the sex tax, sex used to be the only fun thing you could do in Ontario, other than maybe stealing shopping carts, without spending money. And now the government is making sex expensive by taxing it. (The Ontario puritans are ruining everything. At this rate there will soon be liquor laws!) The HST, having sex tax, is highly unpopular in Ontario, as was the Great Sex Tax, or GST, before it. That’s why, wherever you go in Ontario, people are forever talking about sex taxes and anal carbon, unless they are talking about anal tax and sex carbon, which are also very common topics of discussion in the coffee shops of this province. You see, the principal concerns of all the people that live in this part of the world center on a single tetravalent chemical element from the periodic table, basically a lump of coal, and on the hole in their ass. That may be the best way to understand this leadership race, and why it may end with Ontario getting a lump of coal and an asshole.

Politics

The Once and Forever Candidate

If Doug Ford runs for everything, one day he just might catch something

✎  Wayne K. Spear | February 8, 2018 • Politics

DOUG FORD’s run for mayor had already started when a path to Queen’s Park appeared, and if Ford loses in June who doubts that October will coax his return? The man is always running, or teasing about running, as if there could be a doubt. The only variable is the destination. In the past five-or-so years, Doug Ford has imagined himself the succesor of Stephen Harper, Tim Hudak, Rob Ford, and now Patrick Brown. And in between he has run, or has said he would run, for municipal council and the provincial parliament. Doug Ford, the once and forever candidate, always ready to run everywhere for anything.

Doug Ford

The Etobicoke Kennedys, we locals sometimes call the Fords, and not entirely with irony. They are now a three-generation political dynasty, if you include nephew Michael. And before you dismiss this comparison as too generous, remember that the Kennedys had a more-than-passing familiarity with intrigue and pills and thuggery, and that the flattering myth of Camelot was just that. Doug lacks even an interest in the mechanics of charm, and his style tends more toward resentment. But resentment is a cheque that someone will eventually cash if only you carry it around long enough. The populism of Mike Harris enjoyed scant currency until Bob Rae had made the 905 sufficiently angry. For seven years, from 1995 to 2002, Harris’ nonsense was Common Sense. The voters didn’t want a government, they wanted a wrecking ball. Has Kathleen Wynne brought them back, yet, to this point? She seems to have been trying.

Doug Ford took a third of the vote in the last Toronto election. One in three voters, over 330,000, endorsed his message of rampant insider corruption and gravy-train elitism. He’s only ever had one message, of outgroup anger and burn-it-to-the-ground populism. Folks, he hates the people that you hate, and he’ll poke them in the eye. For you, folks. The Doug Ford myth is reverse Camelot, where the rotten elites are inside drinking Chardonnay and have locked all the good people out. Reverse Camelot isn’t a myth about public service or even ideology—it is an appeal to the tribe, a call to charge the gate, a war of cultures. That’s why Ford has been able to survive when his claims—such as being an ordinary outsider, rather than a wealthy and well-connected member of a multi-generational political family—turn out to be objectively false. It’s not about Doug Ford, it’s about the people and the things that Doug Ford hates and will endeavour to confound.

I’ve lived in Ontario long enough to know that phony populism, of the kind peddled by Doug Ford, goes around and comes around. He’ll tell you he’s running for Premier because it breaks his heart, folks, to see what’s happening to his beloved province, not because he was raised on the mother’s milk of political ambition. He’ll tell you he’s just like you. He’ll tell you he’s going to Queen’s Park to clean things up, not because he craves the power of office, of any and every office. He’ll tell you only he can fix what is broken, and that only he can drive out the elites. Maybe this time it will work. If it doesn’t, he’ll be back, running the path towards another office. When Doug Ford arrives at a fork in the road, he takes it, hoping that eventually it will come with a meal.