Pamela Taylor sending mixed messages

Pamela Taylor, the Toronto Centre PC by-election candidate, said today that voters in the riding should "send a message."

But what messages are Pamela Taylor and the Hudak PC's sending to voters in Toronto Centre?

Taylor says she cares about job losses in Ontario, but she is running for the Hudak PC's, who have flipped flopped on the HST, which according to noted economist Jack Mintz, would create 591,000 new jobs. Columnist Andrew Coyne has described the PC's strategy on the HST as being one of "calculating that the voters are too stupid to understand the arguments" and "a numb devotion to the status quo, no matter how grotesque; and an appeal to the ignorant fear that any change must, by definition, make things worse", and that PC legislative protests against the issue were "beneath contempt".

Furthermore, Pamela Taylor, who in 2007 ran on a platform of "compassion and inclusiveness", described herself as a "proud Torontonian", by simple virtue of her length of time living in the city, a slap in the face to the 49% of the city who was not born in Canada, and the majority of citizens who were not born in Toronto. If Glen Murray, who has not only lived in the city for several years, but played an active role in Toronto civic society (serving as a Fellow at University of Toronto's Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Design, a lecturer at Massey College, as well as sitting on the boards of Artscape, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research and the Toronto City Summit Alliance Greening the GTA task force and the Toronto District School Board) is not a "proud Torontonian", what is the PC message to recent immigrants and new Canadians in Toronto?

How is attacking proud Canadians who have been attracted by the multicultural and dynamic make-up of Toronto as not being proud of the city showing "compassion and inclusiveness"?

Pamela Taylor is sending mixed messages to the voters of Toronto Centre. She presented herself as a socially tolerant, truly progressive conservative in 2007, now she has flip-flopped to the hard-right to support the anti-jobs, anti-human rights agenda of the Tim Hudak PC's, whose vision of urban politics is firmly and proudly looking backwards.

Glen Murray offers the voters of Toronto Centre a wealth of experience in front-line politics, deep ties with civil society/NGO's, a progressive social values. Pamela Taylor offers flip-flops, broken agendas, and mixed messages.