True Names Dept + Why Walt went to London (Ontario)

Ed. here again. In my earlier post we left Walt and the South Park boys (Walt doesn't appear in the video) somewhere in Canada, after their City Airlines plane, piloted by Tuong Lu Kim, made an unscheduled landing. The boys wanted to see Canada's "new prime minister", Blackie McBlackface. Walt, however, wants to see what will happen to the forces of conservatism in today's general election in the province of Ontario.

Here at WWW we have a policy of not covering or commenting on regional -- state or provincial -- politics, unless there's some national or international issue involved. Walt insists the results of the Ontario election will show whether Ontarians, a pretty middle-of-the-road herd of sheep, are ready for real conservative politics and politicians.

The answer will have implications for the Conservative Party of Canada, which will in Sepotemnber choose yet another leader, from a slate of wannabes ranging from social conservative (Leslyn Lewis) to liberal (Jean Charest), with a pseudo-conservative (Pierre Poilievre) the current front-runner.

Ontarians are funny -- "funny curious", not "funny haha" -- in that they prefer having opposing parties in power federally and provincially. So it is that for the last century or so they send mostly Liberals to Ottawa and mostly Conservatives to the Pink Palace at Queen's Park in Toronto. The party known federallyn as "Conservative" is still called "Progressive Conservative" at the provincial level, and that oxymoron tells you all you need to know about the clever mugwumpery that has kept it in power for so long. As former premier "Brampton Billy" Davis used to say, "Bland works."

In 2017, after sitting on the wrong (read: opposition) side of the Ontario Legislature, the "Ontario PCs", as they now style themselves. to avoid using the dreaded C-word, chose a new leader, Doug Ford, who promised to move the party at least an RCH to the right of centre. 

He lied. Elected premier in 2018, he rode out the Covid "crisis" and other problems by the same old mix of big government, deficit financing and handouts to all and sundry, used by Liberal governments in Ottawa and (before Ford) in Toronto.

It worked. Mr Ford is now the odds-on favourite to be re-elected today, perhaps with an increased majority. The hapless Liberals (who lost official party status in 2018) are fighting it out with the socialistic Not-so-new Democrats for second place. 

Shown below, left to right are: Mr Ford, Liberal leader Steve DelDuca, the NDP's Andrea Horwath, and Mike Schreiner, leader of the Green Party. Mr Schreiner hopes to double his party's representation in the legislature from one (himself) to two. The other two are likely to lose their jobs and, in the case of Mr DelDuca, his own seat.  

This time, however, there are two new, seriously conservative -- socially as well as fiscally -- in the running. They are the Ontario Party, headed by Derek Sloan, and the New Blue Party (no kidding), led by Jim Karahelios. 

Both are disgruntled former "Conservative" MPs/MPPs, who feel (with reason) that real conservatives have been shut out of the traditional parties, betrayed by leaders like Mr Ford and former CPC leader Erin O'Tool, who campaigned from the right and governed from the centre-left. Both of the new parties are polling about 2%, just as Max Bernier's People's Party of Canada did on its first outing. 

Walt is in London (or somewhere near there), waiting to see if real conservatism has at last taken root in Canada's most populous (if not popular or populist) province.  

Well, I seem to have gone around the horn there, as Fred C. Dobbs would say. There's no room left for the True Names story I promised in the headline. I'll put that up later.