Setting The Record Straight About Doug Ford

As Ontario nears its next provincial election, the political establishment is working itself into a panicked frenzy.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Liberal Party are so unpopular that it seems a near certainty that she'll lose on June 7, and will be replaced by the Progressive Conservative Party headed by Doug Ford.

Both Doug and his late brother Rob were the subjects of unprecedented media attacks while they served as elected officials in Toronto, Rob as mayor and Doug as a City Councillor and his brother's right hand man. Those attacks involved media stalking the Fords, inventing lies about them, and writing columns so histrionic that they did more damage to the credibility of the news outlets which published them than they did to Doug and Rob. The main motivation behind the attacks was that the Fords were populists committed to serving the actual public and not the city's well-heeled establishment and the special interest groups with which they work hand-in-glove.

Doug himself has been accused of being part of the 'elites' he decries. Indeed Doug Ford does come from an affluent family, but it was recent, self-made wealth by Doug Ford Sr. The Fords were never part of Toronto's established Old Boys Network. The business that Doug Sr started was built up to a huge, transnational success by Doug, who established a branch in Chicago as well as the home base in Etobicoke that is one of the continent's major label manufacturers.

I've come to know Doug pretty well in the last few months and I've come to consider him a friend. He's spent time at my home and we've had long talks about political philosophy, the direction Ontario, Toronto, and the country has been and is heading, the role of media, and all sorts of topics.

The establishment is worried to the extent that they're pulling out all the stops and spreading every lie they can think of to slander Doug before election day. And hearing those lies being told about a friend is somewhat upsetting, so I think it's time to set the record straight on a few of them.

An astroturf group which implausibly denies links to Kathleen Wynne's Liberal Party has been dishonestly implying, and in cases outright lying, about Doug being antisemitic and homophobic.

These are blantanty false accusations which are the opposite of the truth.

One incident, which I only recently recalled, is a particular example of how Doug went out of his way to fight antisemitism in Toronto when almost all of his then-City Council colleagues were too cowardly to do anything about it.

A few years ago, back in 2011, I was in contact with Rob Ford's office about the proposed use of city property to host an antisemitc hate fest known as Al Quds Day.  That annual event was created by Iran's despotic, homicidal Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to promote the genocide of Israel's Jews. These al Quds Day rallies routinely feature calls to violence against civilians and expressions of antisemtic hatred.

While most of City Council sat on their thumbs in fear of offending the Islamists behind Toronto's al Quds Day, Doug stepped up to the plate without a moment's hesitation. Fighting the City's bureaucracy, which contains a few unsavory, pro-Islamist people who are armed with a spool of red tape big enough to color the CN Tower crimson from top to bottom, Doug nonetheless did all he could to have the al Quds Day fanatics prevented from using a taxpayer-supported facility to spew their hate.

In the end, because of opposition by some of the entrenched, NDP-linked bureaucracy at City Hall, Doug was unsuccessful at getting the al Quds Day event removed from the City facility, but much to the Islamists' chagrin, had Toronto Police send an officer from the Hate Crimes Unit to monitor their malevolent jamboree, which forced them to moderate from their usual vicious bile.

Doug stood up for the Jews when the so-called 'progressives' at City Hall enabled or cowered in silence in the face of antisemitism.

As to Doug's supposed homophobia, the 'proof' offered by an asinine propaganda website operated by anonymous trolls relates to the complete distortion of something Doug said about an incident that occurred when a few protesters crashed a Ford Fest, a  big, multicultural barbecue put on by the Ford family every year. One of the anti-Ford protesters carried a sign upon which was printed '#1 Ford Hater." A couple of the protesters were wearing rainbow flags. The anti-Ford protesters were confronted by some Ford supporters and among the back and forth, regrettably, there were some anti-gay comments made by a couple of people.

In the aftermath of the kerfuffle at Ford Fest, Doug, who said and did nothing homophobic, and who was not in the altercation, nonetheless apologized for what those few Ford supporters did to the protester. He also reasonably noted that if people go to an event, even a sporting event, for the purpose of taunting people as the protesters did, the result, far from being surprising, is more likely exactly the attention the protesters wanted.

At the time, Doug observed, "you can't show up at a Yankees game with a Red Sox hat on" or in that instance, it's absurd to come to a Ford party for the purpose of trashing the Fords, and expect no trouble. That's just obvious logic. Characterizing that as homophobia by Doug, as the anonymous trolls at notdoug.com attempt, is a sleazy lie, just as disseminating sleazy lies and intentionally deceptive mischaracterizations is the purpose of that website.

As it happens, Doug has many friends in Toronto's gay community, has reached out to help them when they were in need, and had even donated $4000 of his own money to Toronto's Pride Festival. These are hardly the hallmarks of a homophobe.

From a long career in different aspects of media, including a major Hollywood production company which has won multiple Academy Awards, experience has taught me that the personalities of public figures as they present on TV are rarely precise representations of them in real life. But there are exceptions.

My friend Tarek Fatah is one who is very much in private the way he comes across in media, he's passionate, excitable, and deeply committed to the causes about which he speaks. Doug Ford is another case where the private and public person are basically the same.

The ways that the private Doug and the public one differ is that Doug's great sense of humor, his politeness, and the touch of shyness that is about him don't fully come across on TV. But the essence of the man is there and what you see with Ford is what you get. If he says something he means it, which contrasts with the politicians we're used to, and who spend more time trying to avoid telling us what they really think than they do in being straightforward. He's absolutely committed to doing good for his community and the people. Unlike just about every other politician I've ever met, Doug does most of that good without seeking publicity for it, taking satisfaction in having helped out the people who needed his assistance.

One of the reasons Doug is running for Premier which he and I have discussed is that he believes in the rights of individuals to be respected as individuals. The government takes money from us in the form of taxes, and taxpayers have a right to expect government to be accountable to them and treat them fairly. We have a right to be treated as individuals, not members of a collective.

The Liberals cynically play the identity politics game pitting communities against each other while completely disregarding individuality or accountability. That was in plain display recently when Kathleen Wynne spoke about telling young voters that they have to vote to prevent old white people from deciding elections.

Compare that with Doug, who in explaining why he opposed al Quds Day fanatics from using City property to demonize Israel's Jews said he doesn't "believe city facilities should be used by one community to denounce another."

There's a stark choice in this election. Continuing with Kathleen Wynne's disastrous fiscal policies and cynically divisive Identity Politics from a Liberal government that believes it should be able to control every aspect of the lives of Ontarians. Under her administration, the overriding philosophy is that the people should be accountable to government.

Alternately, we have Doug Ford, who respects individual rights, and who believes that government's role is to protect people's freedom, and not to take it away from them. Doug will make sure government is fully accountable to the people, respects all of us, and will ensure that public servants are there to serve the public, not the other way round.

Take the chance to meet Doug if you can in this time leading up to June 7th. The real Doug Ford is not the person that most of the establishment media portrays. He's a good, decent, compassionate man and he will be a great, much needed Premier for Ontario.

Ontario's Nanny State Food Nazis

Democracy doesn't seem to exist in Ontario anymore

TORONTO - Witness 73 testified at the committee probing the gas plants cancellations Tuesday.

If that sounds a tad Orwellian, it’s nothing compared to the perversion of democracy that’s happened in this province.

Witness 73 is Premier Kathleen Wynne, who returned for a second time to tell the committee she knew nothing, and was not briefed before she signed a “walk-around” order cancelling the Mississauga gas plant in October 2011.

You thought you elected a government to make rational decisions?

h/t Marvin W

The tree that was killed so you could read a Toronto Star editorial was smarter than the person who wrote it

By producing oxygen, the trees killed to produce print copies of The Toronto Star contribute far more to society than the nitwits who currently write editorials for that egregiously biased newspaper.

Apparently the trees are also more intelligent.

In The Huffington Post, Mitch Wolfe rips apart al Starzeera's latest display of idiocy in which they try to compare the Wynne/McGuinty Liberal government's cancellation of much-needed Gas Plants for political purposes to Ford's cancellation of the unwanted LRT in order to get a much-needed subway extension in Scarborough.

The most ironic part of the al Starzeera editorial is the way in which the tax-and-spend socialists who head up that rag have miraculously transformed into fiscal conservatives when the issue is a small property tax increase to fund essential infrastructure.

There is one sentence in Mitch's column in The HufPo I do do find puzzling, however.

He concluded with: "Ironically, the more the Star goes after Ford, the more its reputation for fairness and objectivity is undermined. "

At what point in this decade did al Starzeera have a "reputation for fairness and objectivity"?

We live in a time of the most corrupt, incompetent provincial government in Ontario`s history

It would be hard to imagine a report more damaging to the credibility of Ontario's Liberal government than the one released Tuesday by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk on its decision to cancel the Oakville gas plant.

First under former premier Dalton McGuinty, and later, under Premier Kathleen Wynne, the Liberals estimated the cost of cancelling this plant was $40 million.

Lysyk found it will cost up to $1.112 billion, with the most likely final figure being $815 million, after future savings and cost add-ons are factored in.

Even more devastating to Liberal credibility, Lysyk found that despite McGuinty's insistence he had no idea of the costs of cancelling the Oakville plant, his office was directly responsible for decisions that dramatically increased those costs.

"On cancelling the Oakville plant, the Premier's Office assured TCE (TransCanada Energy Ltd.) that it would be compensated for the full financial value of its contract for the Oakville plant," Lysyk found, "instead of relying on protections in that contract that could have minimized the damages paid to the builder following cancellation."

In other words, the Liberals were so desperate to cancel the politically unpopular Oakville plant leading up to the 2011 election, they wasted hundreds of millions of public dollars in order to do so.

More HERE 

Attention whore Sarah Thomson writes about her fantasy sexual encounter with Rob Ford

Failed mayoral and provincial Liberal canidate Sarah Thomson has written this week about a fatasized sexual encounter with Toronto's mayor Rob Ford.

I'm not kidding.

The same Rob Ford she publicly accused of groping her posterior, despite eyewitnesses who claimed not only was she lying, but that she boasted she intended to "set up" the mayor.

It`s here at her vanity publication The Women`s Post.

In the most recent volume of her publication Thomson wrote:

" I kept telling myself he’s an addict have sympathy. The next thing I knew his hand was on my butt.... I turned back to him and he had the same salacious grin on his face I’d seen once before. All the worries I’d felt then came rushing back to me.  What if a video of it appeared online? Would it look like I “liked” it. I was after all smiling for the camera’s. How would the press spin it? Would they frame it as a secret tryst between us? " 

Woodrow Wilson once said, `I  have always been among those who believed the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking."

Thomson titled her fantasy piece My nightmare about Toronto's mayor.

A worse nightmare would be in the horrible author of that piece were ever to have a position of authority over other people. Thank God voters have seen enough sense to keep that nightmare from happening.

h/t Matthew Lau

Champagne Communist

From the Canadian Metal band Helix..

This is the official video for their latest song:



h/t Matthew Lau

Kathleen Wynne's Ontario - Idle No More lawbreakers get a free pass from prosecution

 

TORONTO - In a rare move for a police chief, OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis says he "disagrees" with a decision by the Napanee Crown attorney to not bring to trial charges against several First Nations protesters in January's Idle No More rail blockade near Marysville.

"A thorough investigation was conducted by our criminal investigators," Lewis acknowledged this week. "They felt strongly that grounds to charge a number of the key protesters criminally existed, particularly given that this blockade was more than a brief inconvenience to a few people."

But, sources told the Toronto Sun, even with a police decision to lay charges the Crown rejected the notion.

Ontario's Premier dissembles: Wynne tries to distance accused child pornographer Levin from her Sex Ed agenda

Ontario's OISE Premier Kathleen Wynne today tried to distance herself and her controversial sex education curriculum from Benjamin Levin, the accused child pornographer who ran the Ministry of Education while she held that portfolio as Minister.

“Ministers and deputy ministers do not write curriculum,” said Wynne, a former education minister whose revamp of sex education was kiboshed by ex-premier Dalton McGuinty in 2010 after some religious groups complained it was too risque....So you know, any suggestion that there was that kind of interference, it just demonstrates a lack of understanding of how curriculum actually is written,” the premier said.

Premier Wynne must hope that the public really does have no understanding of how government works. Of course Ministers and Deputy Ministers do not write curriculum. But they are also responsible for the ones introduced in their Ministries. But more significantly, they appoint and have great influence over the advisors and "stakeholders" chosen to formulate those policies.

Accused child pornographer Ben Levin 
with Kathleen Wynne in June 2013

Is Kathleen Wynne seriously saying that she and her chosen Deputy Minister did not fully approve of a highly controversial Sex Education curriculum which their Ministry introduced and which she and Levin were fully responsible?

No, Levin and Wynne didn't personally write the curriculum through which pre-pubescent children would have been exposed to its graphic accounts of masturbation, anal sex and more. It was written for them by others selected by them.  Levin and Wynne were the ones trying to impose it.

And only an imbecile would think that Wynne and her underling Levin would impose a controversial curriculum that did not have their full support and guidance.

As Kathy Shaidle pithily wrote in Taki Magazine, "it would be so damn funny if the incriminating “evidence” on Benjamin Levin’s confiscated computer turns out to be copies of that explicit sex-ed curriculum he and his fellow “educators” wanted to shove down thousands of young throats."

Michael Coren on The Levin Factor

Yesterday evening, I was discussing some of the aspects of the proposed Ontario Sex Education curriculum with a friend who is a mother of a 13 year old boy. I mentioned a couple of the subjects that Kathleen Wynne and Ben Levin, her Deputy Minister of Education who was arrested on child pornography charges this week, wanted introduced.

This woman, who has immaculate credentials as a "progressive leftist," was appalled that I even mentioned the subject titles around her 13 year-old. I did it with with no further information other than the titles and mentioned far less salacious ones than Michael Coren did in his article in Today's Toronto Sun linked below.

The point is, if just describing the actual subjects scandalized a liberal-minded parent of a child two years older than the age at which Wynne and Levin wanted to teach such graphic sexual material, imagine how disturbing it would be to parents for their pre-pubescent children to get the full, hard-core indoctrination.

Michael Coren's article The Levin Factor in Today's Toronto Sun provides important facts about the agenda that Kathleen Wynne and the institution where Ben Levin was a senior academic, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), wanted to impose on public school children in Ontario.

"...tremendously unsettling is that Levin was a major player in an educational establishment that gave us 2010’s radical and extreme sex education curriculum; it was postponed due to public pressure, but Premier Wynne has promised to reintroduce it.

The sex education program in question proposed that 11-year-olds focus on gender identity, homophobia, personal satisfaction and learning about their bodies through masturbation and vaginal lubrication."

N.B. The very first time I appeared on Michael's show The Arena on the Sun News Network, almost two years ago, it was to draw attention to the deplorable approach to education being taken by OISE.

Hopefully, the one positive thing that will come from the events of this week is that people concerned about the state of affairs in education will finally take notice and push for the University of Toronto to clean house there.

Oh, what a difference a month makes! Ford up, Wynne down

Wasn't it only about a month ago that the Editorial Board of the Toronto Star were walking the halls of One Yonge Street with semen stains on their trousers, a result of their turgid excitement at the anticipated demise of Toronto's fiscally conservative mayor, Rob Ford?

The Kool-Aid they were drinking must have tasted as if it were spiked with ambrosia as they basked in certainty that unproven allegations by a tabloid website and two Toronto Star reporters of the existence of a video, purporting to show the mayor smoking crack cocaine, would spell a sudden end to Ford's term of office.

The Star was trying to invoke a politician they idolized, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, to accelerate Ford's removal and even got her to imply that she might take extraordinary measures to help remove him.

Repeated shots at Ford by the liberal media and the left beholden to entrenched special interests had failed to hit their mark. A law suit had Ford ordered removed from office for an insignificant matter related to funds he raised for charity on city letterhead, only to see that reversed on appeal. They failed in other attempts at proving a conflict of interest in which Ford acted not for himself, but in the interests of the city. But this time, there was no way they could lose!

How could the prissy conservative base of Ford Nation not finally turn their collective back in revulsion at the thought of Ford smoking drugs!?

Then some funny things happened. The first thing to deflate the angry leftist nabobs was the outrageous revelation that at least half the city thought the Toronto Star reporters were lying.

Then add to that the inconceivable shock that even in the event that Ford had been smoking crack, his support base didn't seem to care very much.

Then, leaving egg on the faces of the mob of Ford haters, the video never materialized, even after $100,000 was amassed to pay the drug dealers who supposedly possessed the mythical beast.

Amid all that, Ford's approval rating actually went up.

Accused child pornographer Ben Levin with Kathleen Wynne and Justin Trudeau
less than two weeks ago

Now, to the dismay of Ontario's Liberal establishment, there's a new sort of licentious stain that needs to be scrubbed off them. This week, one of Kathleen Wynne's closest advisors and colleagues has been arrested on an array of charges related to child pornography.  Ben Levin was Deputy Minister of Education during almost the entire time Wynne held that portfolio as Minister. He was instrumental in their attempt to introduce a controversial Sex Education curriculum that met widespread condemnation for exposing young, pre-pubescent children at an inappropriate age to graphically sexual material.

The charges against Levin are before the courts and unproven. Even so, it does not look good for someone who was once the current Premier's top man, who along with her was pushing for kids to be exposed to sex at an early age, to potentially have an insidious motive for sexualizing children.

Add to that new revelations about the Ontario Liberal government's lying about information related to their politically-motivated cancellation of two gas plants which effectively stole half a billion dollars from the province's taxpayers.

Suddenly, Rob Ford, who had 15,000 people turn out to support him at his Ford Fest in Scarborough last weekend, is in the driver's seat. He is pushing forward with a proposal to extend subways to Scarborough, and with the Liberals facing a handful of impending by-elections, Wynne is sheepishly following his lead, fearful of antagonizing voters in ridings she hopes to maintain for her party.

The beauty of democracy is that governments need the consent of the governed. Deceptive media outlets  like to pretend that they are the arbiters of that consent, but even unscrupulous politicians, like so many in government at Queen's Park, know which way the wind is blowing. Lacking Ford's conviction and his interest in serving his constituents more than party interests, it's no surprise that it is Ontario's Premier and not Toronto's mayor who has been forced to bend.

UPDATE (11/7/13 3:56 pm) : A Rob Ford crack video has finally materialized!

OISE professor/Kathleen Wynne advisor arrested on kiddie porn charges

Police have arrested a University of Toronto professor and member of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s transition team on several charges, including making child pornography.

Benjamin Levin, 61, was arrested Monday and charged with two counts of distributing child pornography and one count each of making child pornography, counselling to commit an indictable offence and agreeing to or arranging for a sexual offence against a child under 16.

This disgrace, if true, is only one of the many ways that child abuse is perpetrated at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

The school that produced Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne usually just sticks to finding ways of screwing with the minds of children, but this latest development is not a great surprise, given the other goings-on there. 


OISE is the ideological fountain from which the worst practices at the Toronto District School Board spring. Blazing Cat Fur has a TDSB watch list.

UPDATE: "In a CP24 video from the recent PRIDE celebration, Levin is seen sitting beside federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, Premier Kathleen Wynne and former federal Liberal interim leader Bob Rae." More here

.

McWynnety's F-you message to Toronto: "Raise taxes"

Kathleen Wynne's Provincial Liberals have reneged on a promise which the Globe and Mail had reported verified in a letter to the City of Toronto, to maintain annual transfer payments until 2018.

The clear reason is to punish the city for electing a capable fiscal conservative who highlights Wynne's inept, unmandated government's incompetence.

The incredibly biased Toronto Star, which inserted a gratuitous crack cocaine reference in its article, reports:

“Relationships involve more than one party,” Wynne said curtly Tuesday.

Her comments came after the mayor’s tumultuous one-hour meeting Monday with Finance Minister Charles Sousa at Queen’s Park.

Ford left saying he was “furious” at a change in funding arrangements that will leave the city with a $50 million budget hole to fix next year.

“He told me to increase taxes. This was a complete waste of everyone’s time today. I’m very disappointed,” a visibly seething mayor said afterward.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's inept Liberals determined to screw over Toronto to punish city for electing Rob Ford

TORONTO — Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says he’s furious that the province won’t reconsider its decision to make funding changes for Toronto’s social programs.

He says the changes will mean cuts to vital services that affect the city’s most vulnerable residents.

The conservative mayor was fuming as he left his meeting with Finance Minister Charles Sousa, saying the province is trying to make him raise taxes.

Ford says he’s being punished for running an efficient government, while the governing Liberals continue to spend in the red.

Sousa announced last week that the province is ending a special “pooling” arrangement for Toronto to pay for welfare and disability support programs.

More at The National Post

Incompetent Ontario Premier Wynne set to punish Toronto for electing Rob Ford

...[Kathleen Wynne's] government plans to make up the cash it needs to sustain the Sunshine List lifestyle the public sector is accustomed to.

Within seconds of seeing this disgraceful sight came word from the provincial government that it will be cutting Toronto’s funding thanks to their incompetent money management.

But it was more of a direct shot at Mayor Rob Ford personally — on the backs of Torontonians but designed to hurt his chances of re-election.

The message was made disgracefully clear by, in essence, sending the message, “So you want to be fiscally prudent, eh, fat boy? Watch this.”

How Ontario's Liberals ripped off taxpayers for $585 Million

McGuinty/Wynne Liberals broke law in Gas Plant cancellation cover-up scandal

Art by Blazing Cat Fur

TORONTO -- Opposition accusations that Ontario's Liberal government intentionally deleted emails to cover up the cost of cancelling gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga were given more fuel Wednesday by the province's privacy commissioner.

Top Liberal staff in former premier Dalton McGuinty's office broke the law by deleting all emails related to the cancellation of the two gas plants, Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian reported after conducting a special investigation into NDP complaints.

"It truly strains credulity to think that absolutely no records ... responsive to the Speaker's ruling were retained," Cavoukian wrote in her special report called "Deleting Accountability: Records Management Practices of Political Staff."

"It is difficult to accept that the routine deletion of emails was not in fact an attempt by staff ... to avoid transparency and accountability."

It will be interesting to see if The Toronto Star undermines its now almost non-existent credibility by minimizing the corruption in the Ontario Liberal provincial government, which effectively embezzled half a billion tax dollars for political purposes, while obsessively pursuing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford over an unproven personal matter that cost taxpayers nothing. 

Fearful of a Conservative victory in Ontario, unions urge NDP to rally behind Great Leader Wynne

Art by BlazingCatFur

Coles warned of the possibility of a harshly right-wing Conservative government, if the budget was defeated and a premature election is called.  “Tim Hudak’s vision for Ontario is divisive and destructive, and he is even challenging the right of unions to exist.  We must not give Tim Hudak the chance he is looking for.”

Related: Nearly half of Ontario's citizens think Wynne's government is corrupt

Pro-Israel passion from an unusual suspect at Toronto celebration

Fossils and ancient relics were part of the Yom Ha'atmaut (Independence Day) celebrations held last Tuesday by Israel's Consulate General in Toronto. No, I'm not talking about former Canadian Jewish Congress boss Bernie Farber, although he was there too. This year's party took place at the Royal Ontario Museum in the central gallery adorned by shining Medieval suits of plated armor, enormous dinosaur bones and Egyptian funeral artifacts.

Royal Ontario Museum

The party happened last Tuesday night and a line stretching from the Museum entrance on University Avenue extended almost half a block up to Bloor Street as the invited guests slowly filed into the party. Security was tighter than in previous years, but the Boston Marathon bombings the day before made people patient and sensitive to the need for caution.

Inside, almost a thousand dignitaries, diplomats and assorted other guests filled the air with pleasantries while noshing on deserts and sipping on some very palatable Israeli wines.

I bumped into Richmond Hill MPP Reza Moridi, who was, as usual, warm and engaging. We'd met previously at a gathering at the home of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center CEO Avi Benlolo, whom, along with his charming wife, was also at the Yom Ha'atmaut party.

I also ran into the beautiful Natalie Weed, who had been the Mistress of Ceremonies at last year's celebration, but has since moved on to become a regional press secretary for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. That was a very clever move on Tim Hudak's part, as it finally gives people a reason to look forward to hearing something from him.

The party was the first for newly appointed Consul General DJ Schneeweiss, who delivered a fiery speech extolling Israeli achievements and his nation's close relationship with Canada combined with an unapologetic assertion of Israel's right to self-determination.

The venue of this year's party was, while aesthetically interesting, was functionally less satisfying than last year's. The room was much smaller and it was difficult to move about among the crowd. But worse, there were only two bar stations, which made getting access to wine a frustratingly prolonged process.

After moving through a lineup that progressed with a tortoise's gait, and loaded up with as much wine as I could entice from the bartender, a felt a slight brush against my side. I turned to see that I was standing shoulder to shoulder with none other than Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Readers of this blog will note that I am a huge fan of Ms Wynne, who was awaiting being called to deliver her speech. I tried to get The Jewish Tribune's ace reporter Joanne Hill, who was laughing at me,  to get a picture of the premier and I together.  Joanne refused, probably fearful that she might become persona non grata at such events if such a picture ever emerged.

Moments later, the Premier was flanked by her entourage, which among others included MPP Moridi and my own representative, Dr. Eric Hoskins. Taking to the podium, Wynne delivered a speech which passionately lavished praise on Israel and boasted of her government's increased cooperation between the two jurisdictions. The speech sounded sincere and heartfelt, which will come as a bitter disappointment to her alma mater, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where some politicized programs make activism towards elimination of the Jewish state part of their curriculum.

Curiously, Premier Wynne's government continues to push educational policies that encourage a type of narrow-minded, Marxist-based ideology that is anathema to liberal democracies like Israel and to the capitalist structures her government encourages. Whether this is an internal ideological conflict within the Liberal Party or if politicians are lazy and ignorant of what is happening under their watch are equally probable explanations.

But in any case, Yom Ha'atzmaut's celebrants in Toronto proved something that is painful for the fanatics sitting atop unions and institutions such as CUPW, CUPE Ontario and OISE. Because like it or not, acceptance for and affinity with the advanced, liberal bastion of democracy that is Israel is part of a mainstream discourse that leaves its bitter, radical opponents on the outside.

NDP front group issues `cease and desist` letter against Tim Hudak for calling them a Liberal front group

Working Families Ontario, which is funded by the same labor unions closely affiliated with the New Democratic Party has issued a `cease and desist` letter against the Ontario Progressive Conservatives for an advertisement that depicts the advocacy group as a ``Liberal front.``

This is a rather worrying trend about Hudak`s PCs. They don`t even know which opposition groups are doing what. At the very least, they should give credit where it is due.