News from the Campaign Office of Liberal Leader and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne
June 1st, 2014 – Leaked documents obtained by the Ontario Liberals indicate the inspiration for PC Leader Tim Hudak’s radical 100,000 job cut platform: the extreme-right Republican movement.
The private schedule for Hudak’s April 2012 trip to Washington, D.C. was leaked by a PC insider unhappy with Tim Hudak’s hard-right turn. It reveals a series of meetings with leading Republican and Tea Party strategists
While Hudak did disclose to the Toronto Star last year that he had consulted with the Republican firm, Greener and Hook; he failed to disclose that he traveled to their office for a full-day of media training. And Hudak never went public with the other meetings on that trip.
A few weeks after the visit, Tim Hudak began his party’s march to the extreme, advocating large-scale privatization, right-to-work legislation, and finally, cutting 100,000 public servants and slashing vital health care and education services.
Hudak’s secret Washington meetings included meetings with these right-wing radicals, on the far-right fringe of the U.S. Republican Party:
Grover Norquist, Americans For Tax Reform – Mr. Norquist has famously said his goal is to shrink government “down to the size where he can drown it in the bathtub.” (NY Times, April 21, 2011) Norquist is the author of the book Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives. Even many American Republicans consider Norquist too extreme for their party; in 2012, longtime Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf on the floor of the House of Representatives said: “Simply put, I believe Mr. Norquist is connected with and has profited from a number of unsavory people and groups out of the mainstream.”
o James Sherk, Heritage Institute – opposes increases to the minimum wage and a large supporter of right-to-work legislation
o Chris Edwards, CATO Institute – In Downsizing the Federal Government, Chris Edwards writes extensively of support programs that should be terminated, cut or downloaded onto other levels of government.
o David Sackett, The Tarrance Group – Former Regional Political Director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The Tarrance Group did work for American Crossroads during the 2012 U.S. election cycle
o Greener and Hook lists members of the Tea Party caucus as clients, including Michele Bachmann.
The undisclosed meetings are coming to light after Tim Hudak announced his mathematically-flawed platform. The platform was apparently largely authored by Tea Party economist Ben Zycher. A firestorm of controversy engulfed the platform over the last week, as one economist after another eviscerated its basic math flaws conflating person years with actual jobs. Even Zycher would not back up Hudak’s mathematically-impossible contention that person years equalled full time jobs.
It’s worth remembering that last election, former Premier Ernie Eves cautioned Ontarians that the Hudak’s PCs were fast becoming “the Tea Party version of Ontario politics”. These documents show that the far-right, radical Republican agenda is now calling the shots in the PC Party.
(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
I don’t want Ontario to turn into the 51st state. Hudak’s extreme right-wing policies such as a 30% tax cut for corporations (but no new jobs!), privatizing health care, cuts to minimum wage and convicts in chain gangs would make this province look like Alabama. Gonna hold my nose and vote Liberal, at least they’re Canadian!
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Many of the named American Radical institutions are monetary supporters of the Fraser Institute whose policies the Fifth Estate brought to light during the documentary “The Corportation” This Canadian think tank includes the likes of Mike Harris, Brian Tobin and Preston Manning. The very right wing Koch brothers are ardent supporters of the Fraser Institute, an institution that claims association with over 80 think tanks throughout the world.
Conservative parties throughout Canada have relied on the Fraser Institute for their Right Wing dogma for several decades and their platforms seem right out of the Fraser Institutes handbook of “Right to Works policies, Smaller Government, no Gun Control and Deregulation of all controls on the Free Market plus a host of other right wing B.S. to bolster and increase the gap between the rich and the poor.
The surprising thing is that the Tea Party and its supporters hold Ronal Reagan up as their God Yet under Reagan the Government of the U.S.A grew in size and the American Debt load tripled. So much for “the Gipper.”
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Hudak sickens me but I’m afraid that stupid people who don’t study the REAL issues & agendas behind party policies will split the vote & let this A-hole slide up the middle in a government by default like our federal government.
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It’s precisely “those people” who may create a split vote to allow the incumbent to slide up the middle and finish off Ontario. All the name-calling and paranoia may indeed bring about the rotten fruit you’re looking for on June 12th. If people looked at the real issues, then they would know enough not to return to the deceptions and wasteful practices of the current government. That’s what sickens me.
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