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Old Posted Oct 29, 2013, 11:33 AM
bornagainbiking bornagainbiking is offline
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Queen's Park (Local MPPs)

Hamilton East-Stoney Creek New Democrat MPP Paul Miller has been booted to the back row at Queen's Park by leader Andrea Horwath for what opponents made an issue out of in the 2011 election — his loud heckling.
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Old Posted Oct 29, 2013, 12:04 PM
thistleclub thistleclub is offline
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Going off a quick search of Hansard, MPP Miller has been called out by Speaker Levac eight times this month. Two standouts:

Ontario Hansard - 24-October2013
The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): If the member from Hamilton East-Stoney Creek didn't get the message the first time, he'll get it now. If you can tell, I'm not in a happy place at this moment. So if anyone wants to test, you'll lose.

Ontario Hansard - 08-October2013
The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Excuse me. I'd like to ask the member from Hamilton East-Stoney Creek not to heckle when your member is asking a question.
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Old Posted Oct 30, 2013, 2:15 PM
thistleclub thistleclub is offline
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NDP shouting match a he-said, she-said affair
(Toronto Star, Richard J. Brennan, Oct 30 2013)

Andrea Horwath says a yelling match on the floor of the legislature with New Democrat colleague Paul Miller was no big deal.

But the NDP leader said she simply got tired of not being able to hear herself think because of Miller’s incessant heckling — he has been warned more than all other NDP MPPs to tone it down by Speaker Dave Levac — in the row behind her. He has since been shuffled to the back corner for quiet contemplation.

“Paul has a way of talking a bit loud and it gets me off my game sometimes so I just moved him to a different spot,” Horwath told the Star. “He took my off my game a bit too many times.”

Miller sees it differently.

“This is not about my behaviour. This is her opinion. I am entitled to my opinion and we will see where it ends up,” he said.

A witness to the yelling match between the two Hamilton MPPs last Thursday said it was a big deal, and involved finger-pointing, profanity and unparliamentary language.

“That has been coming to a head for a while,” acknowledged one New Democrat, who asked not to be named.

It is not clear what has been simmering beneath the family-like facade, but it bubbled over into a full blown internecine squabble for all to see.

A neighbouring Tory MPP, who asked not to be named, said when he and fellow Tories were applauding a particular Liberal put-down of the NDP leader, Miller joked he was putting them all on his “blacklist.”

“She (Horwath) turned around and said, ‘You can’t threaten people’ and he basically said, ‘I can do whatever the hell I want . . . you can’t f------ tell me what to do’ and she turned around and told him to ‘shut up.’ They were having this spat right in the legislature. All the MPPs in the areas heard it.”
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  #4  
Old Posted Jul 25, 2014, 8:27 PM
markbarbera markbarbera is offline
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In today's Toronto Star:

Quote:
MPPs in commuter towns spending thousands on Toronto accommodations


MPPs living within relatively easy driving distance of Queen’s Park are spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars a year to live in Toronto.

Annual members’ expenses for travel and Toronto accommodation (2013-14) that were released Thursday show MPPs from places as close as Barrie, Hamilton and Cambridge are spending as much as $22,000 each a year on housing allowance so they don’t have to drive or take the GO train to work — the same trip that thousands of commuters do every day.
Who’s collecting a housing allowance
  • NDP Leader Andrea Horwath charged $22,237 for housing allowance.
  • Liberal MPP Ted McMeekin, now Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister, spent $22,237 on housing allowance. He has a car and driver available to him.
  • NDP MPP Paul Miller charged $21,237 for housing allowance.
  • NDP MPP Monique Taylor charged $20,833 for housing allowance.

This is obviously a sore spot for those of us regular Hamilton folk who also work in Toronto. We have to do the daily commute either by driving on that hell known as QEW/Gardiner or by taking the less-than-stellar GO Transit train/bus ride. Not only do we have to pay for our commute, we get to subsidize our MPP's cozy home away from home 70km down the road so they don't have to commute alongside the great unwashed.


Quote:

Liberal House Leader Yasir Naqvi said he looks forward to the legislature’s Board of Internal Economy discussing whether the allowance rule should be reopened. The board is responsible for money spent by the legislature and by the MPPs.

“Perhaps this issue will come up to be discussed.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath (Hamilton Centre), who has a Toronto apartment, noted that there are seldom night sittings, which was one of the reasons in past years to justify the home away from home paid for by taxpayers.


“I think it important to look at these things and see if they are still relevant,” she said.
I take it this is more than simple lip service, and Horwath will be refunding her housing expense claims and will be encouraging her other Hamilton colleagues to do the same.
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Old Posted Sep 10, 2014, 11:00 PM
markbarbera markbarbera is offline
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Ask not for whom the bell tolls...

As written last week in the Toronto Star:

Quote:
Remember Andrea Horwath?

She was the woman who would be premier, poised to lead the NDP to power by leapfrogging past the governing Liberals — ideologically and electorally — in June’s provincial vote.

Now, many in Ontario’s New Democratic Party have forgotten that fantasy. And want to purge any memory of the leader who peddled that dream, along with her team.

Next weekend, they will be pushing back against the hardball tactics that allowed Horwath and her henchmen — and henchwomen — to amass unprecedented power in the leader’s office. Ahead of a formal leadership review scheduled for November, Horwath will face the NDP’s provincial council this coming Saturday and Sunday to explain her controversial tactics — before, during and after the election.

“Andrea is fighting for her life,” says one long-time party worker who has sat in on the party’s internal machinations in recent months.
“Among a very large section of the activist base there is little more than contempt for her,” said the NDP loyalist, who requested confidentiality to speak candidly about the manoeuvres.

It’s not just Horwath’s public policy contortions in mid-campaign. Her internal distortions of the party’s procedures before the election will also be debated by the party’s decision makers, many of them still furious over what they call an extra-constitutional manoeuvre by Horwath’s team.

By sidelining the grassroots — and their representatives in the party’s elected council structure — Horwath cobbled together a hodgepodge campaign platform that was unrecognizable to most New Democrats in the last election: More centrist than the Liberals, out-Torying the Tories, she lurched rightward without first securing the support of her own party.

The rebellion is gathering momentum not just in Toronto, where the party was routed, but across Northern Ontario and the rest of the province. Horwath also faces unrest across most of the influential union movement after she ignored pleas to support progressive measures in the last Liberal budget, risked an anti-labour Tory majority, and bizarrely dropped her support for an Ontario pension plan.

Next November, delegates will hear Horwath plead her case. Next weekend, however, the party’s top council will first wrangle over how those delegates will be chosen, limiting the potential for Horwath’s allies to rig the vote by stacking the convention.
See the entire article here
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