MPP Randy Hillier Considers Resigning While Trying to Create Another Walkerton Tragedy

See how clever that headline was? Unrelated video with Hillier promising to contemplate his resignation, while the story is about his interference in municipal matters.

Seems like Hudak and Harper have Randy Hillier and Scott Reid well trained in the school of Leo Strauss. Divide and conquer politics that pit residents against each other, while they pick off their core support.

Dean Del Mastro did this, using our funds to put citizens of Peterborough in conflict. Helena Guergis caused an uproar when she announced an indoor soccer field for a private religious school.

This divisive style of politics is part of the neo-conservative strategy. In the case of Reid and Hillier, they use our money to send out 'surveys' ... comb through them looking for the rednecks, and then start soliciting them for campaign funds.

They also know how hard they can drive "hot button" issues and keep things stirred up to ensure their supporters vote, while turning others completely off the process.

Great strategy if it wasn't tearing this country apart.

Ballots distributed in Lanark Highlands despite County Council's opposition
November 26, 2009
By Chris Must

EMC News - The solution to Lanark Highlands' polluted wells being promoted by MP Scott Reid and MPP Randy Hillier was tried in the 1980s and didn't work, the township's deputy mayor told the EMC this week.

In a letter accompanying a mail-in ballot sent to township residents by Reid and Hillier, the federal and provincial representatives argued that well remediation should be carried out immediately by installing filters in private wells which have been contaminated by leakage from neighbouring septic systems.

The letter also takes aim at the estimated cost of the proposed $28.5 million municipal sewer and water system, which is the solution township council has chosen to address the problem ....

Tim Hudak and His Gang Are Making Complete Fools of Themselves

I don't know if they think these ridiculous tactics will work, but I can't believe the horrendous display that Tim Hudak and his gang of misfits are putting on in the Ontario Legislature. Who does he think he is? Mike Harris?

If I ever contemplated voting PC in Ontario again, the actions of these thugs would convince me not to even consider it. They are Reformers to the bone. Hudak used to belong to a group called "Canadians for George Bush". Enough said.

Coyle: Disgraceful show put on by PC caucus
By Jim Coyle Queen's Park
December 2, 2009

There are two lines that appear in most speeches by Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak. Among the values he purports to cherish are "respect for the rule of law." When he talks about his immigrant grandparents, he extols those who "play by the rules." This week, as Hudak led his caucus in a disgraceful show of contempt for the Legislature and its rules, those words were revealed for empty rhetorical boiler-plate.

Heir, as he is, to the legacy of former premier Mike Harris, it's unsettling to many to imagine what a Tim Hudak Ontario might look like – especially since a Hudak PC caucus looks like something right out of Trailer Park Boys, an outfit where yahoos rule and where rules, when inconvenient, are to be defied and mocked. This week, Hudak did himself considerable harm. He let his party be defined by its least credible and most ridiculous MPPs – bumptious contrarian
Bill Murdoch from Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, and renegade libertarian from eastern Ontario, Randy Hillier.

A bunch of goons. Mike Harris all over again.

Tim Hudak is Far Too Immature to Run This Province. It Will be Mike Harris All Over Again

If you closed your eyes while listening to Tim Hudak, you would swear it was Mike Harris when he was younger. Same rhetorical nonsense. Tough on crime. Lower wages for public servants. Allow police to manhandle Native protesters. Been there, done that.

Ontario cannot afford another Mike Harris.

That doesn't mean we should condone the actions of the McGuinty government, but Hudak is dead wrong on the HST. It's a political game, nothing more. Even most in his own party support the HST, they just no longer say that publicly. And let's not forget that MPP Christine Elliot is married to Jim Flaherty, the man who bribed the provinces to adopt the HST in the first place.

The vote in Parliament only paves the way for the provinces to be allowed to adopt their own tax measures. Harper set them up. However, while Hudak opposes Native protests, he turned the Ontario legislature into a romper room, while clearly losing the control of his caucus. The provincial Conservatives chose the wrong leader, because the veterans have already turned their backs on him.

Coyle: Hudak and the Tory sit-in bring to mind Wile E. Coyote
By Jim Coyle Queen's Park
December 7, 2009

For novice PC Leader Tim Hudak, his party's protest over the Liberal government's proposed harmonized sales tax produced a couple of unforeseen outcomes. The first was his own loss of face when a caucus member apparently defied the boss's wishes in a stunt that spun out of control. By most accounts, the sit-in that saw two PC members expelled indefinitely from the Legislature was intended to involve only Owen Sound-area MPP Bill Murdoch.

As it unfolded, eastern Ontario MPP Randy Hillier hopped aboard, apparently ignoring instructions from caucus elders that he leave the Legislature when ejected by Speaker Steve Peters. Hillier's defiance of not just the Speaker but his own leadership raised embarrassing questions as to who was running the PC show.

Worse for Hudak were the justifications he offered once the standoff ended for why his MPPs flouted Legislature rules, blatantly defied the Speaker, and usurped
the seats of other members. Hudak said that, irrespective of rules, sometimes "extraordinary measures" are warranted. With that utterance he undercut his own law-and-order positioning and his credibility on long-running issues of civil disobedience. What Hudak essentially did was give licence to civil disobedience any time anyone feels sufficiently aggrieved to arbitrarily take "extraordinary measures."

How will he stand, for instance, against any future native highway blockades in support of land claims? How can he say his right to extraordinary measures trumps anyone else's? How can he go to Caledonia, say, and denounce native blockades and occupations there that his own caucus members have long railed against but, in essence, mimicked? The ominous message of the PC protest was that might makes right. One of the remarkable scenes when the protest began was the way in which several of the larger male MPPs surrounded Murdoch to prevent the sergeant-at-arms from removing him.

If he can't even control his own caucus from outlandish behaviour, how can he possibly run a province?

Randy Hillier Takes a Stand: Is Tim Hudak Losing Control of His Caucus?

Several years ago my husband and I stayed in Peterborough, as part of a mini-vacation. When leaving our hotel we noticed a rather large rally where demonstrators, carrying signs "This Land is Our Land", had lined the drive.

We honked believing it to be a native protest, but soon realized that there were no native faces in the crowd.

When we returned later that day, the protesters were still in full force but had been moved across the road and several police cars now guarded the hotel entrance.

I asked the girl at the desk what was going on and she explained that there was a hockey tournament in town that weekend and there was an aboriginal hockey team staying at the hotel. These people were protesting native land claims.

Why was an out of town group of young men, who only wanted to engage in a sporting event, being targeted by a rather large and noisy group of angry white "landowners", I wondered. When I posed the question to the hotel clerk, she rolled her eyes and said that "they were nuts" and did stuff like that all the time.

This Peterborough group soon became part of a larger organization, when an umbrella group was created in 2005, called the Ontario Landowners Association. Their first president was Randy Hillier, now Tim Hudak's MPP for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington.

Hillier had originally headed up the Lanark Landowners Association, whose motto was “This Land is Our Land: Back off Government”. They had become notorious for stunts though Hillier would refer to it as civil disobedience.

This "civil disobedience", included blocking highways, barricading government offices, staging illegal deer hunts, and publicly breaking laws that the Landowners regarded as unjust. This was primarily done as a tactic to draw media attention to perceived injustices, and thereby to pressure the provincial government to amend the laws. Hillier has explained the illegal actions of the Landowners as follows: "I believe in non-violent civil disobedience. I believe when a law or rule is blatantly wrong it is a part of our democratic process to challenge that law. At times civil disobedience is used to illustrate and further bring attention to the absurdity." (Wikipedia)

"I sent [Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty an email containing] a picture of a dead deer saying the people of Lanark County were removing nuisance deer because the Liberal government had revoked those licences [for farmers to shoot deer that were eating their crops]. I did it four years ago... and I would do it again ... " (1)

His group scored a victory on the illegal out-of-season deer hunt, fuelling their cause and in April of 2004, launched a large protest on Parliament Hill. Stephen Harper attended the rally and addressed the crowd, promising to make property rights a priority if elected prime minister. It was pretty clear that he was not only trying to woo the theocon vote, but was also trying to draw in the right-wing fringe groups.

You would have thought that he would have learned his lesson after the problems this imposed for the Reform Party. They had passed a motion at their opening assembly to allow extremist groups to join the party. When the question was posed, even Doug Christie? someone in the crowd spoke up. "Ah, leave him in, we may need him later". (2) Christie was leader of the Western Canada Concept, a Party pushing for the Western provinces and territories to split with Canada and form their own nation. Stockwell Day's father was a member of this group.

Eventually the extremists all but took over the party, necessitating a reinvention, though many of them are still around. Stephen Harper handles them by silencing them, but in a democratic country, elected officials should never be "silenced". It flies in the face of democracy.

Randy Hillier and the Religious Right

Once the Ontario Landowners Association was established, Hillier decided that instead of simple acts of protest, to move the group into the mainstream, by attempting to infiltrate government and implement changes from within.

So with the endorsement and help of his group's members, he successfully won a seat in the Ontario Legislature in 2007. Hillier not only endorsed "land rights" but backed a social conservative agenda, bringing him to the attention of Tristan Emmanuel, a controversial leading member of Canada's Religious Right.

Emmanuel backed Randy Hillier's bid for leadership of the provincial party, and though a long shot he became a kingmaker for Tim Hudak, when he threw his support his way:

Landowner leader Randy Hillier brokered a deal with former PC leader John Tory to avert the possibility of Landowner candidates. It is widely believed this resulted in the inclusion of anti-environmental clauses in the PC Party’s platform in 2007 and Hillier’s own candidacy for the PCs in Lanark.

Hillier’s leadership run last year was fueled by the Landowners, and Tim Hudak’s anti-Human Rights Commission positioning was designed to broker a deal with the Landowners and other radicals. Hudak will need to come to terms with these Landowners if he doesn’t want a problem on his right ... (3)

However, when you sell your soul you have to expect that eventually those who hold the lien are going to expect payment, and I think that Randy Hillier is beginning to become a problem for the Mike Harris protege Hudak.

We first saw this with the sit-in at Queen's Park in December:

For novice PC Leader Tim Hudak, his party's protest over the Liberal government's proposed harmonized sales tax produced a couple of unforeseen outcomes. The first was his own loss of face when a caucus member apparently defied the boss's wishes in a stunt that spun out of control ... As it unfolded, eastern Ontario MPP Randy Hillier hopped aboard, apparently ignoring instructions from caucus elders that he leave the Legislature when ejected by Speaker Steve Peters. Hillier's defiance of not just the Speaker but his own leadership raised embarrassing questions as to who was running the PC show. (4)

Now Hillier is once again challenging the authority of his leader, by posting a column on the handling of the G-20 security.

Instead of a choosing a more controlled and less populated location that would not be such a powerful magnet for the few juvenile anarchists, Stephen Harper agreed to host the G20 in a location that he had to have known would draw the greatest opposition and most violent response, therefore justifying an outrageous expenditure of public dollars and creating an army of police equipped with a siege mentality.

Both the provincial and federal governments now attempt to shirk responsibility for their actions by shifting blame to one another and to the police, who were acting under political orders ... .They both use the common theme that upholding law and order required usurping our civil liberties. Any elementary school student knows these are not mutually exclusive — in fact, they are wholly interdependent. As numerous failed dictatorships have proven, you cannot have law and order without civil liberties. (5)

His column was a direct contradiction to one inked by Tim Hudak, where he placed all the blame on the protesters and backed the police action. How Hudak will handle this is any one's guess, but I think he is learning the hard way that once you court the Religious Right, they hold all the power. Stephen Harper is now learning this and while bringing in fringe groups for support, both leaders are facing the problem of knowing what to do with them.

I think this will end badly for citizens who only elect officials to govern, not appease right-wing factions.

Sources:

1. "Debate one last swipe before vote", Napanee Guide, October 5, 2007

2. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6

3. Tests and double tests, By Andrew Steele, Globe and Mail, February 5, 2010

4. Hudak and the Tory sit-in bring to mind Wile E. Coyote, By Jim Coyle, Toronto Star, December 7, 2009

5. Opinion: G20 crackdown reeks of tyranny, By Randy Hillier, Toronto Star, July 12, 2010

It's Not About Faith Based Schools But Hypocrisy

Murder, Gun Control and Stepsons

On May 28, 1975; 16-year-old Michael Slobodian entered the Brampton Centennial Secondary School armed with two rifles in a guitar case, with the intention of killing his physics teacher, who had given him a failing grade. Michael wanted to go to medical school, and with those hopes dashed, he felt he had nothing left.

The teacher was not available, so he entered the boys' washroom and opened fire. The first to be killed was his friend John Slinger. Slobodian next entered an art classroom, killed English teacher Margaret Wright, and wounded 13 students. He then stepped out into the hallway and turned the gun on himself. The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes. (1)

Witnesses to the carnage were the two daughters of then Ontario premier William Davis.

At the time, Canada's gun laws were pretty lax, but Davis was determined to change that. So he had his attorney-general, John Clement, who had only been on the job for a few months, to connect with the federal government to see what could be done.

Armed with a petition bearing thousands of names of Brampton residents, demanding better gun control, Clement met with federal Justice Minister Otto Lang and Solicitor General Warren Allmand to review possible amendments to the Criminal code. (2)

Mr. Clement would not win the next election, but the wheels were set in motion. Pat and Berwick Slinger, parents of the murdered boy who was described as Slobodian's only friend, testified at the inquest.

As a result Bill C-51 was passed in 1977, and came into affect on January 1, 1978: The two biggest changes included requirements for Firearms Acquisition Certificates (FACs) and requirements for Firearms and Ammunition Business Permits. Other changes included provisions dealing with new offences, search and seizure powers, increased penalties, and new definitions for prohibited and restricted weapons. Fully automatic weapons became classified as prohibited firearms unless they had been registered as restricted weapons before January 1, 1978. Individuals could no longer carry a restricted weapon to protect property. Mandatory minimum sentences were re-introduced. This time, they were in the form of a 1-14 year consecutive sentence for the actual use (not mere possession) of a firearm to commit an indictable offence. (Wikipedia)

John Twining Clement's political career would only last from October 21, 1971 to September 17, 1975, but it would have more of an impact than the duration would suggest. Not only did he help to create tougher gun laws, but he also met Carol Panayi, a single mom who was employed as a secretary to Ontario MPP Bill Hodgson. (3)

The couple would be married in 1979 and Carol's only child Anthony, would take his stepfather's name. And not long after, that stepson would set out to destroy everything that Bill Davis stood for, though it would be a decade and a half before Tony Clement was in a position to enact real change, when he joined the Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris, that turned out to be neither common nor made much sense at all.

Continued: Fate Brings Anthony Panayi to Canada With Fateful Consequences

Sources:

1. Teen-ager takes own life after killing 2, wounding 13, The Bulletin, May 29, 1975

2. Another school shooting, Thoughts From up Here, March 22, 2005

3. Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution, By John Ibbitson, 1997, ISBN: 0136738648, Pg. 31

Fate Brings Anthony Panayi to Canada With Fateful Consequences

Tony Panayi arrived with his parents to Canada when he was just four-years-old. Of Middle Eastern descent, his father a Greek Cypriot and his mother a Canadian. This was 1965 and by 1972, his parents had separated, and he would spend the rest of his childhood in a high-rise apartment in Toronto.

He cut his political teeth campaigning door to door with his mother for her boss, Ontario Tory MPP Bill Hodgson. However, he was never a Progressive Conservative at heart, and in fact his political beliefs were what is now called neoconservative.

"What I saw on the front of Time magazine, which I read religiously every week, was this failure of the American democratic impulse," he remembers. "Around us was the fall of Vietnam, the emasculation of American power, Watergate .... What I remember was the frontal assault on American power, and the encroachment by communism all over the world. And in Canada, there were the failed experiments of Pierre Trudeau. His economic experiments were a shambles, his anti-Americanism wasn't getting us anywhere, the increasing role of the state in all aspects of our lives was, in my view, creating more problems than it was solving. And then in 1978 you had this woman named Margaret Thatcher, who proved you could turn back some of the awful things done by socialism and set things right again. And then in 1980 you had this guy Ronald Reagan. They showed you could have conservative principles and still win." (1)

Unfortunately, Clement was misguided by his heroes. Margaret Thatcher was a train wreck:

When Margaret Thatcher was elected I started my first year at university. Very quickly in the face of her Reagan-inspired "hard economics" and austerity treatment I saw every possibility of employment at the end of my course evaporate. 3.3 million were unemployed with no hope of a job. The economy went into recession and the dole was being withdrawn unless you could "prove" you were actively searching for work. It ruined millions of people's lives and put millions more into unproductive boredom and hardship. It cost the country £40b in lost productivity and the only thing Margaret did was make it worse. (2)

And Ronald Reagan, while he preached small government, actually expanded the government and his horrible economics made the rich richer and created the most homeless people in the history of the United States. (3) He also increased the debt by two trillion dollars, while increasing federal spending and federal staff. (4)

Nonetheless, Panayi "... arrived at the University of Toronto in 1979 filled with missionary zeal to bring the faith of Thatcher and Reagan to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario ..." (1)

But he also arrived with something else ... a new name. His mother had just married former MPP John Clement, and though already an adult more or less, Tony decided to take his stepfather's name, reinventing himself as Tony Clement.

The same year, 1979, another young man would enrol at the University of Toronto, but would only stay for two months, opting to move to Edmonton to take a job in the mail room at Imperial Oil, the company his father had worked for. This would be his only real job outside of politics. Also an avid fan of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, Stephen Harper would go on to help found the Reform Party, lead the Alliance Party and eventually become the movement's first prime minister. (5)

It's unlikely that Clement and Harper met at the school, but Tony did find willing accomplices in fellow students Alister Campbell, Tom Long and Mitch Patten, all sharing the same ideology.

"At a time when the rest of the country was enchanted with the charismatic prime minister [Trudeau] and his vision of Canada, simply being a Conservative was an unusual choice. To be committed to the neoconservative agenda of Thatcher and Reagan during this period was nothing short of suicidal, politically speaking." (6)

And yet this small group of young radicals were able to take over the campus Conservatives, increasing it's membership from being almost nothing to 500, with gimmicks (Clement once dressed in a penguin costume), and aggressive marketing. Did they change minds? It's difficult to know, but they presented a platform that was anything but the status quo:

They believed that governments needed to cut taxes in order stimulate spending and increase individual choice, that they needed to balance their budgets in order to escape the trap of escalating deficits, that they needed to get out of most economic regulation in order to let the market reward winners, punish losers, and generate wealth for everyone. Most important, governments needed to abolish most of their social programs, which took money from people who earned it and gave it to people who hadn't. Such a doctrine was anathema to moderate Conservatives, who felt, as former federal leader Robert Stanfield argued, that the market should not be trusted more than was necessary. (7)

And not content with simply drawing in the conservative minded they also sought to change the views of the left:

Eventually the young PCs at the University of Toronto also decided to take on their left-wing enemies on campus, launching a campaign against a proposal to double the compulsory fees levied against each student in support of the Ontario Federation of Students. The Tories accused the federation of wasting money on a bloated administration, and of worrying more about helping the Sandinistas than representing student interests. (Among other things, the Tories put up a sign in an Engineering building proclaiming "Three dollars will get you the Ontario Federation of Students or seven beers at the Brunswick House. Take your pick.") They won a referendum on the issue in a landslide. (7)

They quickly became a force to be reckoned with:

By the early 1980s, as Mike Harris was first finding his feet as a young MPP, the neo-conservative youth were an increasing power within the provincial Conservatives. Long—a bit older than most of the others, passionate and uncompromising—led the troops. "There were huge fights over who was going to control the campus wing of the party," Long remembers. "That got settled in the late seventies, and for about ten years or so my faction controlled the campus wing." In 1982, Long managed the campaign that secured control for the neo-cons of the executive of the Progressive Conservative Youth Association. Both the campus and youth wings of the party were now firmly led by ideologues of the far Right. These wings were important to the party, both for the influence they wielded at leadership conventions, and for the legions of indefatigable volunteers they supplied during campaigns. (7)

But they would soon move on to bigger challenges as they steered toward taking over not just a university campus, but an entire province.

Why Do Neoconservatives Hate Nelson Mandela?

Sources:

1. Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution, By John Ibbitson, 1997, ISBN: 0136738648, Pg. 30

2. 1979: Looking back at the Thatcher era, By Mike Rumfitt, May 4, 2005

3. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2

4. Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy, By Will Bunch, Free Press, ISBN: 978-1-4165-9762-9

5. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3

6. Jeffrey, 1999, Pg. 164

7. Ibbitson, 1997, Pg. 31-32