Ontario, Ontari-owe, Ontario-oh-no

Posted By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD

Updated 2 months ago

This week at Queen's Park reminds me of the old Quasimodo joke.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame walks into a bar and orders a Scotch.

"Bells OK?" asks the bartender.

"No need to get personal," responds Quasimodo.

The bells have been ringing constantly around

here, driving normally sane people if not to drink, certainly to distraction.

The Progressive Conservatives are constantly calling for votes, triggering 30 minutes of shrill bell ringing. There is no escape from the noise --even in the washrooms.

It's the last procedural tool left to the Tories. Ironically, when they were government they stripped the opposition of most filibuster tactics. The Tories walked out of question period on Monday, asserting that, as Premier Dalton McGuinty had not provided them with adequate answers to their questions on the harmonized sales tax, it wasn't worth their time continuing.

McGuinty has come out swinging against the opposition recently, suggesting that those who are opposed to an 8% tax hike on goods and services are somehow behind the times and not in tune with today's economy. He also suggested Tory leader Tim Hudak is being hypocritical in not promising to un-harmonize the tax if voters elect him premier next election.

Fact is, the deal the Liberals have signed makes harmonization binding for at least five years. Several questions arise: How effective will the Tories be in pinning this one on the Liberals, especially since their own federal kissing cousins support the HST and are donating $4.3 billion to sugar coat it?

Will the chief beneficiaries be the NDP --ironically the party that usually never sees a new tax they don't like? Will the Liberals simply spin their way out of this mess by 2011?

The HST isn't their only problem. This week, some bad legislation came back

to haunt them in the shape of former attorney general Michael Bryant's street racing/stunt driving legislation. Two judges -- one in Belleville the other in Newmarket -- have now tossed out charges, ruling the law unconstitutional. One judge ruled this week that the rights of a young driver had been "clearly infringed," because a penalty of jail time exists when the person doesn't have the right to put forward a defence.

Attorney General Chris Bentley said the government will appeal. I know police say the law saves lives. But couldn't some smart government lawyer have written legislation that doesn't trample the rights of the accused?

Much as we all want to stamp out stunt drivers and speeders, you can't do so with a bad law. Bryant was warned when he brought in the headline-grabbing law that it wouldn't stand up to constitutional scrutiny.

Still, it did what so much of McGuinty's legislation has done: Made people feel good without necessarily making a scrap of difference.

Another thorny issue -- Caledonia -- raised its ugly head recently, with testimony in a lawsuit in Hamilton, where a family is suing the OPP for failing to protect them from harassment during the native stand-off.

It became clear through testimony that aboriginal protesters were brutally intimidating the family. Yet since their original botched foray into the Douglas Creek development, OPP have done little to enforce the law. Asked if threatening tactics by the native protesters were criminal, OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino answered: "In normal circumstances, yes."

Just what we want. A province where honest people are taxed to death, threatened and intimidated in their own homes. And the cops do nothing.

It's a brave new world out there. And I'm not sure I like it.

christina.blizzard@sunmedia.ca