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Now that Doug Ford has convincingly won the “Trump tariff” election I am left wondering what he intends to do with his new mandate.  

The Progressive Conservative platform, published only days before the election and after people had already cast their ballots in advanced voting, is now required reading.

Some of Ford’s promises are, of course, total non-starters. There is absolutely no possibility that Ford can

“Deliver a new driver and transit tunnel expressway under Highway 401 to provide a new, faster route through Canada’s busiest and most gridlocked section of highway, helping thousands of daily commuters get where they need to go faster.”

It’s a non-deliverable $100 billion dollar commitment aimed at construction workers who are some of Doug’s most fervent supporters. 

More billions on health

On health – where he again promises to spend billions - will the Ford Government underwrite the cost of a new Southlake? Unless the Provincial Government’s longstanding policy is changed, the Province will not pay for the land acquisition costs for new hospitals. So that means Southlake has got to find the money for its second site out of its own resources – or rely on a benefactor. It is not as if the Province is short of money:

“A re-elected PC government will continue to deliver on its ambitious plan for hospital expansion, with more than $50 billion to build or upgrade 50 hospitals across Ontario.”

Ford says he will be

“Encouraging municipalities to also accelerate and bring forward billions of dollars worth of planned municipal public infrastructure project tenders for roads, bridges, water and other infrastructure builds and repairs to get more people working faster and improve our economic competitiveness.”

Streamline

And to help them spend all these billions of dollars Ford says the Government

“will further streamline Ontario’s environmental assessment process”. 

I wait for details on that one.

There are, of course, all sorts of measures that never rated a mention in the PC Platform but will be dumped on us out of a clear blue sky. What if municipalities don’t move quickly enough to deliver on Ford’s agenda? What will he do? Abolish them or force them into mergers with their neighbours?

Who knows?

Gallagher Murphy walks on water

Anyway... as we all now know Dawn Gallagher Murphy has been returned as our MPP in Newmarket-Aurora. 

She endured bad publicity but followed the old dictum: "Never explain. Never complain".

She took it all on the chin and it worked. 

She got 47.4% of the vote with Chris Ballard trailing on 41.9% – a difference of 2,425 votes (but down from her winning margin of 5,602 in the June 2022 election). 

By the time of the next election we shall have forgotten all about the racist banter, the bullying and harassment.

Squeezed

The NDP and Green vote was squeezed but it wasn’t enough to make a difference. The NDP vote dropped from 12.7% in 2022 to 6.3% yesterday. The Green vote went down from 5.6% to 2.5%.

The New Blue Party, which could have eroded the PC lead, took only 1.2% of the vote down from 3.6% in 2022.

Province wide, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives took 42.9% of the popular vote – up from 40.8% in 2022.

Non voters win

More people in Newmarket-Aurora didn’t vote in yesterday’s election than did. 

Turnout Province wide was 45.4%. In Newmarket-Aurora 44.6%. (Based on Elections Ontario unofficial figures)

First-Past-the-Post is brutally efficient in delivering majority governments from a minority of the vote. As the table shows, it takes 119,364 votes to elect a Green MPP and 27,460 to elect a PC MPP. The more concentrated the vote geographically the higher the seat count.

Celebration

Last night the NDP was celebrating its return to Official Opposition status getting 27 seats on the back of 18.5% of the vote. The Liberals got 14 MPPs with 29.9% of the vote.

It seems to me the Liberals and NDP have got to reach some kind of accommodation to stop both parties from running against each other in winnable seats, splitting the vote and letting the PCs in through the middle.

Easier said than done.

But not impossible.

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This latest poll from Mainstreet Research (26 February) projects Dawn Gallagher Murphy as the clear winner in tomorrow’s Provincial election in Newmarket-Aurora. 

I am not so sure. 

A lot will depend on turnout.

If people stay at home, believing the result in Newmarket-Aurora is a foregone conclusion, then Dawn Gallagher Murphy will win.

She has spent years courting every demographic under the sun, telling them what they want to hear. Putting on a face. She is relying on them to turn out.

Serfs

And yet, the same Dawn Gallagher Murphy has faced a blizzard of bad publicity for avoiding debates with other candidates and for her appalling personal qualities. She routinely bad mouths people. She treats her staff like serfs.

I simply don’t know if most people are aware of this. 

This has been a comatose election, called in the dead of winter, with all the polls predicting a third win in a row for Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives.

Lawn signs are virtually non-existent. One or two stakeboards on the major highways and that’s about it.

Polls influence elections

After the last election in 2022 which saw the lowest turnout ever in a provincial election, the province’s chief electoral officer controversially called for a ban on publishing the results of political polls in the two weeks before election day.

There is no chance of that happening any time soon (if ever) but it should start a debate especially if turnout tomorrow crashes through the floor. 

Tactical voting is key

Tactical voting can make the difference here in Newmarket Aurora if NDP and Green people vote for Ballard, the only candidate within striking distance of Gallagher Murphy.

And we know for a fact there are conservatives in our riding who wouldn't vote for Gallagher Murphy if you paid them.

So there is everything to play for.

I hope Chris Ballard does well tomorrow.

He has my vote.

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Details

The latest polling figures from Mainstreet Research (25 February) show support for Dawn Gallagher Murphy and Chris Ballard essentially frozen with a 4 to 5 point gap between them.

Without NDP and Green voters lending their support to Ballard on Thursday, Dawn Gallagher Murphy will be returned as Newmarket-Aurora’s MPP for the next four years.

It pains me to say it.

Machiavellian

I have never come across a candidate for public office who is so Machiavellian and so deeply flawed. Her own former employees denounce her as a fraud.

Indeed, Gallagher Murphy would have been in the dock this very morning at the Ontario Labour Relations Board had her former office manager, Teena Bogner, not settled her action against the MPP and signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement which buys her silence.

Gallagher Murphy’s acidic and unforgiving temperament would have been on full display.

Instead, we see a different version. A few days ago, speaking to the homelessness charity "Inn from the Cold" she promised money after the election:

“I am looking forward… coming on the other side of the election… making an announcement that will help finish the funding for that Inn from the Cold. So stay tuned to that great coming announcement.”

Why the dance of the seven veils?

Why didn’t she make the announcement before the election was called? 

Buying Votes. 

It is all part of a pattern.

Buying votes. Whatever the cost.

An Orwellian Gallagher Murphy last year praised Ford’s Finance Minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy, for “maintaining a path to a balanced Budget” while the provincial Treasury loses billions in revenue from axing licence plate fees and handing out, on the eve of the election, cheques for $200 a head for every man, woman and child in Ontario, regardless of their income.

It was a flat-rate giveaway. Financed by borrowed money.

Deficit Financing

Ford is now promising a $100 billion tunnel under the 401 but who is paying for this fantasy?  With no plans to raise taxes, deficit financing is the only answer. This is what the Progressive Conservatives now believe in.

The “balanced budget” for so long a loadstar to true-blue conservatives is out the window. Now everything goes on the Provincial credit card, paying billions in interest every year. Interest payments that dwarf spending on higher education and on the entire justice system.

And all this was before the threat of Trump’s tariffs.

Don’t expect a critique of any of this from Dawn Gallaher Murphy.

That is way above her pay grade.

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Update at 3.30pm: From Newmarket Today: Newmarket-Aurora incumbent under fire for allegedly campaigning at charity event

MainStreet Research: Projected share of the vote in Newmarket-Aurora

Details

With three days to go Chris Ballard is within four percentage points of Newmarket-Aurora's PC candidate, Dawn Gallagher Murphy. 

The chart below shows the projected support for the candidates as of today, on a three day rolling average.

This means Ballard is within striking distance of Gallagher Murphy.

There are easily enough NDP and Green voters out there to close the gap if they go for Ballard.

The choice here in Newmarket-Aurora is not between Doug Ford, Marit Stiles, Bonnie Crombie or Mike Schreiner.

It is between Ballard and Gallagher Murphy, denounced by her own former employees as a loathesome bully, racist and hypocrite.

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How the projected vote has shifted over the last week

Note: The margin of error for the latest Mainstreet poll is +/- 2.7% at the 95% confidence level. This means that Gallagher Murphy's support could be overstated (or, indeed, understated) by 2.7%. The reference to a 95% confidence level means we would get the same result 95 times out of 100. If Gallagher Murphy's support is overstated it follows that Ballard's support is likely to be understated. The Newmarket-Aurora poll is an extrapolation from polling carried out across the Province. There are no polls being conducted exclusively in Newmarket-Aurora.

Details

Seven months ago an employee at Queen’s Park emailed me with a long lists of complaints about Newmarket-Aurora’s MPP, Dawn Gallagher Murphy. I was told she is: 

“loathed in the PC caucus.”

and

“She has nothing good to say about anyone. What she calls the MPs and mayors is not worthy of repeating. She is a horrible person.”

I was shocked and taken aback. I had never come across anything like this before.

Dyed-in-the-wool

Here was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative approaching me out of the blue, in confidence, telling me Newmarket-Aurora’s MPP was a foul-mouthed, brutal and toxic individual who, behind the smiling face, gets satisfaction from putting people down and disparaging them – even if it affects their mental health. 

The person who contacted me gave details of Gallagher Murphy that only someone at the centre would have access to.

Then I heard from others who also wanted to remain anonymous, no doubt fearful of being branded a traitor to the cause. Their jobs too could be on the line. 

Then came the explosive revelation from Gallagher Murphy’s office manager, Teena Bogner, that she was bringing an action against the MPP at the Ontario Board of Labour Relations for bullying and harassment. The cat was now out of the bag. 

As it unfolded, the story was widely reported in the Newmarket Era and Newmarket Today. But, despite being roasted alive, the polls say Gallagher Murphy is cruising to a second victory. 

There are no polls in Newmarket-Aurora 

The polling organisations take samples from across the province and extrapolate the results to individual ridings taking past election results, demographics and a million other factors into consideration.

So, could the polls be overlooking the fact that the people who know Gallagher Murphy the best – Conservatives and former employees – are the ones who are denouncing her as a tyrannical fraud? 

Her only realistic challenger, Chris Ballard, is trailing second as the anti-Gallagher Murphy vote fragments. And he is running out of time to close the gap. He needs the support of people who would ordinarily vote NDP and Green.

What would persuade them to vote for Ballard?

The NDP and the Greens can’t win here. That is the unmistakeable reality.

Chris Ballard is authentic in a way that Gallagher Murphy isn’t. He has pledged to focus on big local issues such as Southlake, affordable housing and transport. He knows the climate change portfolio inside out.

Self promotion

By contrast Gallagher Murphy is a gadfly whose mission in life is self-promotion and becoming a local celebrity. Her spending on advertising and communications in 2023-24 was the 8th highest out of 124 MPPs. (The figures are from the Speaker’s Annual Report on Members’ Office and Support Staff Expenses. The figures for 2024-25 will be published in June 2025.)

Her ads are everywhere in the local press – again all funded by taxpayer dollars. 

Some of her more bizarre ads she saves for her Twitter account. In September 2023 she wished the Vietnamese community

 “a healthy and successful harvest in the year ahead”.

Every demographic in Newmarket-Aurora gets courted with a boilerplate congratulatory tweet or ad. I groaned when I saw her “honouring Scottish heritage” at a Burns Dinner last month. Burns is famous enough. He doesn’t need her.

Taxpayers' Dollars paying for her ads

In the “Office Operations” category her spending is 14th highest out of 124 MPPs. She charges her “free” BBQs to “office operations” so we are paying for those as well.

In the last election campaign she spent thousands of dollars covertly providing meals for targeted demographics (ie groups whose votes she wanted) in the category “meetings hosted”.

I noticed errors in her Statement of Expenses filed with Elections Ontario after the June 2022 election. An expense of $5,228.60 was listed under “Meetings Hosted” but in the supporting Schedule 6 the figure shown for the same “Meetings Hosted” amounted to $8,228.11. 

I contacted the auditors and was told that she had categorised some food expenses incorrectly.

She said these “meetings” were not fundraising events and, as such, she could spend whatever she liked on meals for voters so long as the overall amount was under the cap for total campaign spending (which applies to all candidates). In total Gallagher Murphy spent $122,025 getting elected in 2022.

The Face behind the Mask

Gallagher Murphy’s former employees know the face behind the mask.

But what about the rest of us?

Do we let these revelations just wash over us or do we do something about it?

If you are not outraged you have not been paying attention.

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