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Toronto Notes

The St. Paul's by-election: a Liberal star vs. a rising Sun

While the provincial by-election in St. Paul’s riding (roughly, Forest Hill and the surrounding area) hasn’t officially been called yet, the just-announced candidates for both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties are already causing a bit of a stir.

First, the good news:
Though longstanding Liberal MPP Michael Bryant has left provincial politics to head up the city’s fledgling Invest Toronto agency, his former party’s choice for a hopeful successor is Dr. Eric Hoskins. You may recognize Hoskins from such foundations as War Child Canada (which he co-founded with wife Samantha Nutt) as well as his work delivering humanitarian aid in Sudan and Iraq and a little award called the Order of Canada. In the last federal election, Hoskins was the great white hope against Conservative education minister Diane Finley, but lost the Halimand-Norfolk race by a few thousand votes.

Next, the, uh… interesting news:
Attempting to wrestle St. Paul’s from the Liberal chokehold will be none other than anti-Miller Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy. According to the Toronto Star, neophyte PC leader Tim Hudak convinced Levy to step through her political theatre’s fourth wall and offer what the Sun is calling “Levy’s appeal as Jewish in the largely Jewish riding, as a strong fiscal conservative and recently-married gay woman.”  If ever there were someone to dispel the notion that Hudak’s Conservative party is a regressive one, it’s Levy.

Last, the bad news:
There’s nothing like a battle of proto-political personalities to turn a by-election into what could end up as an exercise in policy-void posturing and incessant mudslinging. The Star has already quoted an unnamed Liberal as saying, “it could be bloody.” The outcome in St. Paul’s — depending on who you are — will either be a test run for Hudak’s Common Sense Revolution 2.0 (and a new forum for Levy’s Miller-bashing) or an assessment of Dalton McGuinty’s fitness for continued premiership (this business about a harmonized sales tax is bound to come up) or a waste of time (the next provincial election is only two years away).

In any case, we think that this by-election is going to be a fascinating one to behold. Stay tuned for lots more coverage.

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Toronto Notes

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