Well, not really.

With the Tory campaign up and running, we here and John Tory watch want to run down John Tory’s agenda from the past week.  

Day 1:

Begin campaign. Insult Ontario university and all of its students and alumni.

Day 2:

Visit school. Tell media that if you’re elected you’ll allow creationism to be taught in public schools.

Day 3:

Hold press conference. Mangle the french language.

Watch this…..

John Tory’s campaign has been a mess from day one. We can’t believe it….but, rest assured that we’re loving it.

We got a comment today from a concerned reader:

This isn’t going to do any good unless you update the site frequently. It’s September 5, and nothing’s been posted since August 21.

Good point. We apologize but we feel that John Tory has been doing our work for us recently. It seems that if he’s not slagging down our great Ontario universities, ol’ Johnny boy seems to be bringing up the idea of teaching creationism is public schools. What is this guy on?

Point taken good reader. We shall update the site more regularly for all of our enjoyment.

With the way John Tory’s campaign has been going so far, we think that we’ll probably have a lot to talk about.

Wow. John Tory is a well of great, spectacular ideas that will benefit Ontarians.

The evidence is here. Free booze in casinos! Three cheers for Johnny Boy!

No wonder the Ontario PCs are falling fast in the polls.

Teachers Vote Liberal

TORONTO – Conservative Leader John Tory has some serious work to do if he’s going to win the votes of Ontario teachers come the Oct. 10 provincial election.

The president of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario says it was a conscious decision not to invite Tory to its annual general meeting this week because he wouldn’t likely be “warmly received.”

Emily Noble says she’s encouraging her 70,000 members to vote for people who support public education, and suggests Tory isn’t “on the right track.”

Noble praised Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, who received a standing ovation after her speech to the union today, and says it’s important she be re-elected in her Toronto riding.

Tory is vying for the same riding.

This time, Ben is hot on the case of the missing figures from John Tory’s platform.

For the record, it has been 62 days since John Tory released his platform without any costing. John Tory promised that he would have the numbers once the auditor general reported back. Well, the auditor general has reported back and yet, still, no numbers attached to his platform.

And, this is the guy that wants to run the province?

Is it little wonder that promising to rip $500 million from public education and handing it over to private religious schools would bring such heated criticism? John Tory is simply not up to the job…..

Tory’s plan pure folly
Tuesday August 7 2007

It is with alarm to learn John Tory is espousing full funding to all faith-based schools. We, as a nation, should be encouraging our immigrants to embrace the Canadian mosaic through inclusion in a fully-funded public school system, not excluding our youth by this less than visionary proposal.In fact, rather then encouraging this vision, Tory should be championing a single public school system and leave faith-based teaching to the church.

This would seem to be some kind of ill-conceived proposal solely intended to secure the vote of our burgeoning multi-cultured immigrant base. Our current education system is woefully underfunded and the reality of this proposal would be the need to re-direct funds from other initiatives such as health to fund this proposal. This is a Pandora’s Box of unimagined consequences.

This folly is further exacerbated by the appointment of William Davis to “spearhead” this initiative. The only qualification Mr. Davis has on this topic is his personal experience in the last disaster in which full funding was given to the Catholic School system; an act upon which the Conservative government of the day (in which Mr. Davis was the leader) had absolutely no mandate to do.

This one act led to the oblivion of the Conservative Party at the next election in which the populace on Ontario emphatically declared their opposition to faith-based education.

I am continually amazed how our “leaders” ignore important issues and then declare their support for ill-conceived initiatives that suggest they will say anything to secure the vote. If John Tory is looking for one issue on which to lose an election– this is it.

Gord Gibbons, Brampton

The Ontario Health Coalition is taking John Tory to task for his vision of private, for-profit health care in Ontario:

“There is an election coming up on October 10, and we want to make the issue of health care a priority,” said Louis Rodrigues, who is touring the province with the horse. “Privatization is a big part of (Conservative Party leader) John Tory’s agenda. He would like publicly funded health care provided by private operators. That means the taxpayers pay and private companies reap the profits.”

John Tory: bringing private health care to Ontario one step at a time. Do we really want to go there?

You know that your idea is bad when your own MPPs are criticizing it:

“I would say it’s not something that would be popular…” (Norm Miller, MPP, Parry Sound-Muskoka, Parry Sound North Star, August 1)

I guess Norm Miller is too smart to promote an idea that would rip $500 million from the public school system and cause the firing of 6,300 teachers. Now, if John Tory were as smart he would abandon his scheme to steal money away from the public system and hand it over to private schools….but, in the end, it appears that he isn’t.

And….here’s today’s news with Ben Chin.

The news is no so good if you’re John Tory though.