Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Politics: the art of double-speak

Dalton “Dad” McGuinty announces a special program that will provide a tax credit of $10,000 to employers to hire immigrants who are having difficulty gain Canadian experience and/or credentials. The program is limited to new Canadian citizens who have been in the country less than five years. Regardless whether one considers this good policy or bad politics the fact that the program is not available to those here more than five years, or the thousands of native born Canadians currently out of work in this province, clearly creates a different class of unemployed – a few get provincial help; most don’t.

His opponent, Tim Hudak, gets it and calls McGuinty out on this plan, calling it an affirmative action program for foreign workers that does nothing for the other unemployed in the province.

So far, utterly predictable for an election campaign. But it’s McGuinty’s response to Hudak’s challenge that shows just how contemptible politics has become. His retort? “In my Ontario there is no us and them, there's just us.” Say what? That one sentence is completely at odds with this policy which clearly treats some Ontarians (us) different than others (them). But Premier Dad is apparently okay with that; it’s just politics after all.

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