Sandford Borins

I’m trying to come to terms with the disappointing results of the Ontario election by crunching numbers, which is better than drinking. The first thing I noticed is that, after three weeks of stasis, in the last week of the campaign the PC Party’s predicted share of the vote was increasing towards 40 percent, the…

Because there has been so little change in the public opinion polls since the Ontario election campaign officially began early this month, I think it is possible to speculate about various outcomes. The Conservatives have consistently polled around 35 percent of the popular vote, the Liberals 27 percent, NDP 23 percent, Greens 6 percent, and…

With the Ontario Conservatives holding steady in the polls with around 35 percent of the popular vote, and the Liberals, NDP, and Greens at around 55 percent of the popular vote, several groups are urging strategic voting to deny the Conservatives the legislative majority that opinion poll aggregators (The Toronto Star, The CBC) are predicting.…

The question pundits always ask about political debates is “who won?” Who had the best lines, especially the best put-downs? I don’t watch debates for this purpose, but rather to understand how the candidates construct their arguments, which might provide some insight into how their minds work, their character, and how they will govern. With…

Pre-campaign, the Conservatives and NDP have been trying to depict Steven Del Duca as Kathleen Wynne’s incompetent and corrupt right-hand man. Now that the campaign has begun, Del Duca has finally started to tell his own story. He tells his story in five short videos on the Ontario Liberal Party YouTube channel, grouped together as…

There are a number of new polls out, which you can see on The Toronto Star’s poll aggregator, that show that the Liberals are now firmly in second place. Here is what my political intuition tells me is happening. Personal disclosure: I support the Liberals, so I admit that my bias may be affecting my…

Government budgets must be understood incrementally. Well over 90 percent of last year’s spending will be repeated this year. The thing to look for is changes at the margin, because they reflect shifting government priorities. This is especially true for an election budget such as this. The budget’s title – Ontario’s Plan to Build –…

I’ve posted two new election messages on YouTube. The first attacks the Ford Government’s abolition of licence plate fees with the “billion-dollar hole in the budget” and “driving is a privilege, not a right” arguments. I suggest using the money for social change, not private consumption. The social change I want is the defeat of…

I’ve done it. I’ve launched my YouTube channel and I’ve posted three political messages. They are all minute-long attacks on the Ford Government, my own attack ads. It’s a start. The first criticizes Ford’s environmental record. The second criticizes the Ford Government’s record on science and research. The third criticizes the Ford Government’s authoritarianism, its…

As I foreshadowed in my recent post about the licence plate refunds, Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy spoke at The Empire Club of Canada yesterday. The speech was entirely political. Bethlenfalvy started by discussing why he recently got into politics, which led into a comprehensive attack on the Wynne Government. After completing his attack, he…

When I wrote my blog post about the Ontario licence plate fee refund, the cheque was in the mail. Last Monday it arrived. Studying it carefully revealed a few things about how this goodie was implemented. Doing the Math The covering letter says that the “cheque refunds your licence plate renewal fees from March 2020…

One of the major pre-election goodies the Ford Government has recently rolled out is free auto licence plate renewals, which will save drivers in southern Ontario an annual fee of $120 (and drivers in northern Ontario $60) and cost the Treasury approximately $1 billion. There is more than meets the eye here. How it Works…