Hang in there, Tory urges party workers

Tory is certainly right. Once he brought up the faith-based school funding issue it took on a life of its own pushed by the opposition and the media. How much this mattered though will always be moot. No doubt fear of a return to Harris type policies also played a role even though Tory attempted to portray himself as a moderate. Perhaps the Tories will no do quite as badly as the present polls show.
The last projection from the Democratic Space shows the NDP doing a bit better.


Hang in there, Tory urges party workers

RICK MADONIK/TORONTO STAR
'I never had control of the message,' says PC leader

Oct 09, 2007 11:43 AM
Richard Brennan
Staff Reporter
Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory ranted against his rival Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty in his 11th hour frenetic campaign sweep through the GTA today but stayed well away from mentioning faith-based school funding.
Even in Thornhill, where the PCs are hoping to get the large Jewish Community onside, Tory did not refer to his controversial election promise – albeit watered down – to publicly fund religious schools at a cost of $400 million.

“He should mention it, absolutely,” said Yirmi Cohen, of Thornhill who was there to greet Tory along with a couple of dozen supporters at Progressive Conservative candidate Peter Shurman’s campaign office.

Late last month, Tory announced that if he formed a government he would put the issue of faith-based school funding to a free vote in the Legislature, a sharp departure from his earlier promise to faith-based school supporters that it would happen.

Gila Martow, of Parents for Equality in Education Funding, told reporters she can understand why Tory might be a little gun shy because of all “this fear mongering from Premier McGuinty.”

“Maybe election time, with all the rhetoric and all the fear mongering, isn’t the time to have a healthy debate,” said Martow, a mother of four, all of whom went or are going to Hebrew school.

“I think there were a lot of minority cultures and religions that have absolutely no idea that they were living in an intolerant province.”

Martow said her entire optometrist’s salary goes to sending her children to private school, while her Roman Catholic colleagues get their children’s s schooling paid for.

During the whirlwind tour of the GTA, Tory said he still hopes voters will turn their back on a the Liberal legacy of “dishonesty” and “cynicism.”

“There are still a million people without a family doctor, the emergency rooms are still in chaos, 150,000 people have lost manufacturing jobs in the last two years, the community safety issue is still with us, the housing in so many communities … is well below any standard we would accept and that is after four years of Dalton McGuinty,” he told supporters in the riding of Scarborough-Guildwood.

“And that isn’t mentioning the broken promises and the low standard of integrity and honesty that we’ve seen over and over and over again for four years.”

With less hours to go before to the election, Tory urged party workers not to give up, reminding them that former premier Ernie Eves only won his first election in 1981 in Parry Sound by six votes, emphasizing he believes there are some close races, including in his own in Don Valley West riding.

The tired looking 53-year-old said in an earlier radio interview he could not believe voters are willing to set the bar so low by returning Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty to office for four years.

“It’s as if the people are saying it’s ok to have a low standard of behaviour for politicians,” Tory said on CFRB this morning as he tried to explain how his campaign got derailed and how the Liberals “dishonesty’ trumped his effort to change the tone of politics in Ontario.

Two polls released yesterday show the Liberals walking towards a majority government and his PC Party finishing a weak second.

“People are going to have to decide, do they want a higher standard of integrity in politics or not, do they want a higher standard of honesty or not. If they want politics as usual, which they say everyday they don’t, then they should be prepared to vote for a different standard,” Tory said.

“You get a bit discouraged … because I’m not sure people really want to change it because if they are going to vote this guy back in, if they are going to take four more years.

Tory said he regretted the Progressive Conservative’s proposal to publicly fund religious schools dominated the first three weeks of the campaign and overshadowed the Liberal record of broken promises, particularly bringing in the so-called health tax when the Grits promised in 2003 election not to raise taxes.

‘I never had control of the message,” he said, later acknowledging at a CityTv interview that even a focus group three years ago rejected the idea of funding faith-based schools.

During the radio show he blamed the media in part for focusing on one small section of his 52-page platform, which dealt with several issues including extending help for autistic children, promoting public transit and phasing out the health care tax over four years, among other things.

“Did I say it was the issue of the campaign? Never once.”