Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario Leadership Election, 2004 - Candidates

Candidates

  • Jim Flaherty is the former provincial Minister of Finance under Mike Harris, and Eves' Minister of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation. He was the runner-up to Eves in the 2002 leadership election. Flaherty is a social conservative, whose 2002 campaign focused on law and order and neo-conservative wedge issues.
  • Frank Klees is the former Chief Government Whip in the Harris government, and Minister of Tourism and of Transportation in the Eves government. His campaign has criticized the Harris-Eves government for its reliance on unelected advisors, and has promised to return the party to the grassroots. He also argued for health care reform, particularly the introduction of private health care for those who can afford it.
  • John Tory is former principal secretary to Bill Davis, who was Ontario Premier from 1971 to 1985. Tory is the former CEO of Rogers Cablesystems. He ran a surprisingly strong campaign for Mayor of Toronto in the 2003 civic election. His campaign leaned more to the political centre and appealed to Red Tories.

Read more about this topic:  Progressive Conservative Party Of Ontario Leadership Election, 2004

Famous quotes containing the word candidates:

    “The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal—that you can gather votes like box tops—is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.”
    —Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)

    “In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
    —Walter Wellesley (Red)

    “I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates ... as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)