Issues
Flaherty's campaign was strongly critical of outgoing leader Ernie Eves accusing him of abandoning the "Common Sense Revolution" and arguing for a return to the policies of Mike Harris. A social conservative, Flaherty was perceived to be in favour of taking the party into a more right wing direction on social issues but said little of this during the actual campaign. John Tory's campaign hearkened back to the party's success under Bill Davis and argued that Ontarians were tired of divisiveness and polarization and that a more moderate direction was needed if the party was to succeed.
Tory, a former candidate for Mayor of Toronto, also emphasised the importance of urban issues and appealing to residents of Ontario's largest city which had shut the Tories out in the 2003 provincial election. He also argued against the privatization of crown corporations such as the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which had been advocated by his rivals. Klees ran as a grassroots candidate, arguing that the party had been the captive of unelected backroom consultants during the Harris and Eves years and had cut off not only party members but backbench MPPs.
Klees ran as a defender of the Common Sense Revolution but, unlike Flaherty, was not seen as a social conservative. He was the only candidate to argue in favour of "two tier" health care and privatization within medicare.
Read more about this topic: Progressive Conservative Party Of Ontario Leadership Election, 2004
Famous quotes containing the word issues:
“How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can’t stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn’t legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)