A tale of two endorsements

McCallion praises Liberal MPP, then says party needs Ford’s fixing

A regular collection of tales from the campaign trail.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. So it would appear with former Mississauga mayor “Hurricane” Hazel McCallion, who endorsed local Liberal MPP Charles Sousa and Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives Thursday.

“Charles is a strong leader who delivers for Mississauga,” McCallion said. “He has fought hard to protect our waterfront, expand our hospitals and enhance public transit. We need him.”

A few hours later in an online video, as Ford was dealing with accusations of a questionable party nomination in Etobicoke Centre, McCallion took aim at the debt the Liberal government racked up during Sousa’s tenure as finance minister.

“The Liberals have admitted everything hasn’t been perfect in Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario. Well, that’s one way of putting it,” she said. “Doug has committed to fixing Ontario’s finances.”

Atale of two economies

Kathleen Wynne invoked Victorian author Charles Dickens during a campaign stop at the modern downtown Toronto offices of Wattpad, a website where writers post their work to be read and critiqued by other users.

“When I came in … the first thing that came to my mind is t that this is what Charles Dick- ens did in terms of writing chapters and capturing people’s imagination,” she said Thursday, adding that the 1800s model of publishing novels in instalments was one of Wattpad’s models, “one of the inspirations. It’s a beautiful connection from a very old economy to a new economy where we are doing things differently, finding new opportunities.”

Wattpad is used by about 65 million people around the world, “writing, reading, edit- ing, commenting — and that is aan amazing business that we couldn’t have imagined even 20 years ago,” Wynne added. No comment on whether the Liberals think these are the best — or worst — of times.

Atale of too much red tape

Millionaire businessman Doug Ford businesslike says he will discipline bring some to Queen’s Park. He said if the Progressive Conservatives are elected June 7, the province will offer a new “customer service guarantee.” That will mean a “single window” access point for all provincial approvals to launch a business.

“For every ministry and every agency, there will be one phone number and one website that you y can access in order to get all of the approvals you need to create jobs — no guesswork orf expensive lobbying required,” Ford said in Tillsonburg.