With just days to go before the writ is issued and the 2011 Ontario Election campaign officially begins, the Liberal incumbents are shoring up the immigrant Muslim vote. In the picture on the left Michael Chan, Minister for Tourism and Culture and my very own MPP, then Gerry Phillips and Bas Balkisoon on the right. What do these three have in common besides being Liberals? They all have substantial numbers of Muslim voters in their ridings and they are giving away money to a Muslim group. Not just any Muslim group, this one has some issues, but more on that later.
Just as the Liberals are pandering to the ethnic voter, the media, both local and national love pandering to the mainline parties.
Just last week I sent a letter to my local newspaper that was critical of the incumbent Liberals. A quick email response from the editor asked if I was "registered as a candidate?" "Yes," was the answer and I explained that my papers were not official yet. No matter, the letter was not published, too bad.
Of course in every recent edition of that newspaper was a story about the local incumbent Liberals doing this or doing that with tax dollars.
The Liberals have been high on OPM (other people's money) since they took office in 2003 and they have been assisted by the media. The print media in this area is dominated by a company called Torstar. Torstar produces the Toronto Star, often called the Red Star in my circles, and it owns the Metroland Group which coincidentally prints the local newspaper in my neighbourhood.
During elections, incumbent parties spend lots of their cash on ads in these local papers, my local paper has a Liberal ad on almost every page, thats OK, they are spending donations. But on those same pages are glowing stories of the good things that Liberals do and are doing, for this community with OPM, your OPM. My pitiful little letter may have swayed the entire election in my favour....right?
The national news papers are just as guilty of pandering to the main parties. Click this and it will bring you to an op-ed, conveniently placed with 3 days to go before the rules change, of the PC Leader giving his "prudent" plan for getting spending under control. He would slash spending by almost 1% by the end of his first term. Decisive!
Anyway, back to that Muslim group. Here is Ezra Levant on a bit of a rant (that rhymes!), on behalf of the new SUN NEWS channel which isn't exactly mainline media, yet:
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