The Depressing State of Ontario Politics

Since I live in Ontario its hard for me not to be depressed over the sorry state of provincial politics. With the economy sinking fast, McGuinty's government has done nothing but criticize Ottawa. No tax reform, no major economic stimulus packages (something Liberals love), no spending cuts, only complaining about how Ottawa takes our money away. As a result, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Ontario is on the highway to 'have not status'.

In the last election, as we all know, barely 50 percent of Ontarians bothered to vote, confirming that politics here is in very bad shape. The governing Liberals literally have a free hand to do nothing. The opposition parties are no better. After the disastrous election campaign the PCs are in worse shape than before the election, and the NDP is being reduced to a tiny fringe group in the corner.
This brings me to last year's election campaign. John Tory could have easily increased the PCs seat count from 24 to 40 (not 24 to 25), and if they ran an effective campaign similar to Harper's, and Dumont's in Quebec, they could have won the election. Instead, the campaign was hijacked by the religious schools fiasco. We all know that this threw a life jacket to McGuinty and destroyed not only the PCs campaign, but the NDP's as well. It would have been better for Tory to promise to allow private health care instead (the Liberals would have attacked it in a similar fashion to what Chretien did to the Canadian Alliance), but at least it would have energized the base (or most of it), and is more popular than religious schools! So now Ontario is left with two ineffective opposition parties (the down and out PCs, and the tiny NDP) and an ineffective government.
My advice to the PCs: adopt new, more 'Harris' style policies, and change the party's name from the oxymoron 'Progressive Conservatives', to something like the 'Ontario Conservatives'. That will surly get the media's attention (and the voter's attention), oh, and pay more attention to the grass roots next time!