The Ontario election just got real, chemical warfare style
By this time last year, Toronto’s election was busy wondering which titan of the left would replace Adam Giambrone, setting the crazy bar high for the coming year (and, boy howdy, it did not disappoint). Well, Ontario’s upcoming October election looks to be off to a fine start, with Dalton McGuinty taking an early lead in the “wild accusations that make the accuser look bad” sweepstakes. He’s accusing previous Tory governments of not telling workers about why Agent Orange is nasty stuff.
Take it, Canadian Press:
“We’re going to make efforts to ensure we uncover what happened during those years of Conservative government when there was the use of this harmful chemical,” McGuinty said in Barrie, Ont.
“Why is it that they did not disclose that in those years in terms of its dangers and who might have been affected?" New revelations that a second provincial ministry also used Agent Orange—which was used to strip the jungles of Vietnam in the 1960s—took his government by surprise, he said.
Smearing today’s Tories with the chemical abuses of previous Progressive Conservative governments is a pretty big reach, even for politics as usual—especially when, in other contexts, Liberal politicians have been happy to emphasize just how different the current PC party is from its Red Tory predecessors.
For the record, when the Canadian government outlawed the use of Agent Orange, Tim Hudak was 18. At press time, it is unknown what his views on Agent Orange were back then, though perhaps that’s when he began to form his strong opinion on buck-a-beers.
• McGuinty accuses Tories of hiding use of Agent Orange as probe widens [Canadian Press]
