Canada's Debate

April Reign wrote a few weeks back about a particularly odious man named Randy Hillier, and his potential impact on Ontario politics. Well, there’s a good editorial on John Tory in the Star this morning that is worth reading. Of note…

“People are always presenting this choice to me: `Well, John, clearly you’ve got to choose, it’s either Toronto or it’s not.’ I don’t accept that choice. I was elected as leader of the party to be leader for everybody in Ontario.” …

Still, Tory is mindful of the optics of having Hillier, the self-proclaimed “rural revolutionary” former head of the Ontario Landowners Association, run as a Conservative candidate in the new riding of Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox-Addington.

The Carleton Place electrician is known for inciting protests like tractor blockades on Highway 401, opposing farm marketing boards, and for emails portraying then-environment minister Leona Dombrowsky, now agriculture minister, as a dead deer.