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- for immediate release -

 

Freedom Party of Ontario

  

 

Attn: Newsroom


Freedom Party Releases Election Platform: "The Right Direction"

OSHAWA, May 15, 2003 - With the election writ expected to be dropped within weeks, the Freedom Party of Ontario today is releasing its election platform, entitled The Right Direction. The platform can be downloaded by clicking here (.pdf file, 1 meg, Abobe's free Acrobat Reader software required to view document).

Free hard copies of the platform are available to the media upon request: call Party Leader, Paul McKeever at 905-721-9772 to receive your copy.

The platform is being released on the same day that the Progressive Conservative party is expected to release it's "The Road Ahead" platform at a go-cart track.

Party Leader Paul McKeever says "Mr. Eves apparently thinks the road ahead, for Ontario, should continuously take you where you have already been many times before. Constantly changing direction. Going around and around...and getting nowhere at all. The Freedom Party executive has been joking about how the Progressive Conservative 'road ahead' is a go-cart track. You can imagine our laughter when we heard that Mr. Eves, apparently, agrees."

From its opening passages, the Freedom Party platform takes direct aim at the PC platform, which is expected to make use of "wedge issue" promises in an effort to bolster sinking public support for that party: "This is no time to sell your vote for a few cheap 'wedge-issue' promises: your vote is a five year investment".

The Platform's closing message, directed at blue-Tories, discusses the federal right-wing realignment, and how it is now, of necessity, rippling into the provincial sphere. "It's Time for a Political Re-Alignment in Ontario" announces Freedom Party's role in accommodating blue-Tories whose agenda has been sidelined by the new, red-Tory management of the Ontario PC party.

Highlights from The Right Direction include:

 
  • school funding reform and educational choice: parents to pay tuition directly to the schools they choose for their children, rather than paying an education tax. Government financial support for families who cannot afford some or all of their childrens' tuitions.
 
  • introducing a voter card that will curb the current "honour" system's gross potential for voter fraud;
 
  • municipal revenue reform: replacing the property tax with a consumption tax (e.g., a sales tax), the rate of which would be set by each municipality. Possibilities, which would be canvassed with municipal governments, include allowing municipalities to add a municipal premium to the PST collected within their borders.
 
  • a detailed plan to deal with the looming electricity crisis, including eliminating the Eves-McGuinty 4.3 cent per kWh price cap and requiring public distributors to facilitate "net metering" (which allows home owners to offset their own consumption by generating electricity with wind and solar technologies, and feeding it back into the grid).
 
  • referendum on a constitutional "convention" against borrowing by the provincial government.
 
  • ending the provincial taxation of capital gains by introducing a capital gains exclusion from income;
 
  • cutting off provincial funding to private universities that intentionally discriminate on the basis of genetic make-up, religion, or peaceful lifestyle choices in the course of admissions, hiring, funding, promotions, or professorial tenure.

Paul McKeever (who will be running in the riding of Oshawa, against Sid Ryan and Jerry Ouellette) will be available throughout the holiday weekend to meet with media and to discuss Freedom Party's platform. You can contact him directly at ***-***-**** (cell).

Freedom Party is expected to run candidates in approximately half of Ontario's ridings in the coming election.

 

For further information: Paul McKeever, Leader, Freedom Party of Ontario.
Oshawa Office Telephone: 905-721-9772.
e-mail

Freedom Party of Ontario
Box 2214, London, Ontario N6A 4E3
1-(800)-830-3301 / (519) 681-3999
FAX: (519) 681-2857

freedomparty.on.ca
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