Caesars Entertainment has apologized for a promotion it mailed to gamblers in Ontario.

The flyers encourage Caesars Total Rewards program members who live in Ontario to “make their presence known” at Caesars’ newest facility, Horseshoe Casino Cleveland. The flyers come with an offer of $5 free slots play in Cleveland.

“It was inappropriate for us to try and cannibalize Caesars Windsor,” Caesars Entertainment spokesperson Gary Thompson said.

A spokesperson for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation said the chair and chief operating officer of Caesars Entertainment also personally apologized for the promotion.

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan called the comps and promotion “a boneheaded move.”

He said Friday he instructed OLG to pass the message on to Caesars Entertainment, which manages Ontario’s casino in Windsor, Ont.

“No Caesars property will cross promote in the future without the consent of Caesars Windsor,” OLG spokesperson Tony Bitonti said.

Thompson said the promotion was “mishandled” and sent from Las Vegas, where Caesars owns 10 properties.

Opposition critical
In the Legislature earlier this week, Essex NDP MPP Taras Natyshak questioned the flyer, which was mailed out to some people in Windsor.

He also asked Duncan why the province closed slot machines at Windsor Raceway to protect jobs at Caesars, only to see the casino lay off 27 employees a week later.

“The fact that Caesars Windsor, which is owned by this government, is mailing a flyer to its patrons, encouraging them to take their entertainment dollars to the U.S., is salt in the wounds to the workers of our community,” Natyshak said.

“We need folks in Ontario to spend their dollars at gaming facilities not only in Windsor, but across the province,” Natyshak said at a separate media conference Friday outside Caesars.

Duncan said the “game playing that’s going on by people like Natyshak … needs to stop” because Caesars Windsor is promoted by Caesars Entertainment in other communities.

Natyshak later learned Caesars apologized and promised to stop the mass mailings and called it “a victory for local casino workers.”

Approximately 2,500 people work at Caesars Windsor.

Essex MPP Taras Natyshak speaks in front of the Caesars Windsor Casino Friday, May 11, 2012, in Windsor, Ont. commenting on job losses at the facility

A new poll suggests the New Democrats are widening their support across the country.

The Canadian Press Harris Decima survey indicates that the NDP have 34 per cent of popular support, compared to 30 per cent for the Conservatives.

With a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points, support for the two parties could be equally split.

Still, the poll indicates that the New Democrats have become competitive in traditional Tory areas.

Among rural Canadians, the poll suggests the New Democrats have 31 per cent support, compared to 35 per cent for the Tories.

The NDP appear to have the support of 36 per cent of urban and suburban men, a number that has risen steadily since February.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are seeing their support in that demographic appear to hover around 29 per cent, down from close to 40 per cent four months ago.

As well, the New Democrats appear to have supplanted the Liberals as the natural party among women, said Allan Gregg, chairman of Harris Decima.

“Remember this is a party that a decade ago, half the electorate said they would ”never“ vote for,” he said.

“To broaden their base as we see in these data is quite remarkable.”

Overall, the Liberals continue to hold steady at 20 per cent support, the poll suggests.

Just over 2,000 Canadians were polled for the survey in the last week of April and first week of May.

The period marked ongoing controversy of the price tag for fighter jets as well as the introduction of the Conservatives’ controversial omnibus budget implementation bill.

But it also saw the anniversary of the 2011 federal election which returned the Conservatives with their majority government.

The election resulted in the NDP surge into Opposition status thanks to a record number of MPs being elected in Quebec.

In that province, the party’s fortunes appear to be sliding following a spike after the election of new leader Tom Mulcair.
© Copyright

The leader of the federal NDP, Tom Mulcair, has claimed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s traditional backers are starting to reject the governing party.

“What’s starting to happen is even people who’ve been supportive, including some of the Toronto right-wing media — who’ve been very supportive of the Conservatives — are starting to turn on them because they realize they’ve reached a breaking point in terms of their respect for the very institutions that have given Canada peace, order, and good government for almost 150 years,” Mulcair said in an interview today at the Georgia Straight office.

The NDP leader noted that parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page recently pointed out that the government kept two sets of books for the F-35 fighter-jet program.

The public was told that taxpayers would pay $15 billion, including operating costs, but the real price was $25 billion.

“So this is not a rounding error—$10 billion,” Mulcair said. “That has to be done intentionally and it was done with intent to deceive.”

Whereas Liberal Leader Bob Rae has targeted his attacks over the F-35 fighter jets directly on Harper, Mulcair’s criticism was directed more generally at the Conservatives.

Mulcair also condemned the Conservatives for imposing closure 18 times in Parliament over the past year, which he characterized as “unprecedented by any government”.

That, he said, was in addition to the Conservatives holding committee meetings behind closed doors.

“One of the problems with all opposition parties over the years is this strong tendency to maybe cry wolf or play chicken little — use whichever image you want to use— but to affirm that the government sitting opposite is absolutely the worst thing in the history of the country,” Mulcair stated.

Then he paused before declaring: “It’s true. The Conservatives show no respect for the fundamental institutions of our democracy — are doing everything to break the parliamentary institutions of our democracy.”

He claimed this was true in the “in-and-out scandal”, where the party and senior operatives were found guilty of violating Canada’s election-expense law. Mulcair also said we’re seeing this pattern repeat itself in the robocall scandal.

“Think that through: Conservative agents paid to phone people in their homes to send them miles and miles away to another polling station, impersonating officers of Elections Canada, to break an election result and produce a different result,” he said. “That’s a breakdown of democracy. It’s a breakdown of law, and it’s something extremely serious. The facile goofball answers that they keep putting up in the House are pathetic. I’m reassured, nonetheless, to hear that the director-general of elections is working very hard on the case. I’m expecting prosecutions.”

Mulcair emphasized that the Conservatives are the only ones under investigation.

“What we’re seeing is repeat behaviour by the Conservatives where they believe that in their view, they’re serving a higher purpose — that they’re allowed to cheat,” he declared. “That is the essence of the Conservatives. They believe that they’re allowed to cheat on elections. And once they win, they just stand somebody up in the House to give these ridiculous answers that they prepare as talking points.”

Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.

Source: http://www.straight.com/

Stephen Harper has celebrated the first anniversary of his majority by reminding Canadians of the moral tone he offers his country.

A week ago, Mr. Harper announced Canada would examine “all options” as the 2014 deadline for pulling our troops out of Afghanistan approached. Since Parliament had voted unanimously for that deadline and for no other options, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair asked the Prime Minister when Canadian troops would actually be brought home.

Instead of responding to a reasonable question, Mr. Harper chose to play what an Ottawa Citizen reporter called “the Hitler card” (also handy in describing the menace of tax increases on the rich, as we saw last week). “Unlike the NDP,” the Prime Minister stated, “we are not going to ideologically have a position regardless of circumstances. The leader of the NDP, in 1939, did not even want to support war against Hitler.”

This was a rather brazen gambit from the ideologue who, as opposition leader in 2003, vociferously demanded the Chrétien government back George Bush’s war against Iraq. The Prime Minister’s strange tactic also brought back memories of him smearing Jack Layton for advocating negotiations with the Taliban, a position soon adopted almost everywhere. “Taliban Jack” was low enough. Hitler takes us to new depths.

The next day, two more MPs, both a low-profile Conservative backbencher and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, parroted the new party line almost word for word. This Foreign Affairs Minister simply won’t grasp that his responsibilities demand he be above the fray, not in the middle of it. “The NDP do not support sending troops abroad for anything,” Mr. Baird stated. “Let us look at what the former leader of the NDP-CCF said. ‘I would ask whether we are to risk the lives of our Canadian sons to prevent the actions of Hitler.’ It was the former leader of the NDP-CCF, J.S. Woodsworth, who said that.”

So few words, so much distortion. I try to conjure up the process by which the Prime Minster’s Office decided on this scurrilous attack. Did some zealous young Conservative researcher just happen upon that 1939 vote? How did the Harper communications team decide this shabby riposte would resonate 74 years after the event to which it refers? Who in the world – or who even among the precious Conservative base – would have a clue what it might mean? Who knows? Whatever the thinking, it was deliberately chosen to be the government attack of the day.

The real story happens to be one of the most moving and dramatic in Canadian history, a tribute to our democracy and to the House of Commons as it once was. Just for the record, for those who’d rather not invent their reality, Mr. Baird’s claim that “the NDP do not support sending troops abroad for anything” is completely false, as even the most cursory check of the record shows. The CCF, the NDP’s predecessor, in fact supported Canada’s declaration of war against Nazi Germany in 1939, and when a volunteer army controversially gave way to conscription, the CCF supported that as well.

The back story is a fascinating if, until now, largely forgotten slice of Canadiana. J.S. Woodsworth was a Methodist minister who was elected as an independent member of Parliament from Winnipeg in 1921, having been active on labour’s side in the historic 1919 Winnipeg general strike. Despite his obvious idealism – his biographer, Kenneth McNaught, called him A Prophet in Politics – he was determined to make a tangible difference, and in 1926 agreed to sustain Liberal prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s minority government in return for the introduction of old-age pensions. Mr. Woodsworth thereby set the foundations for this country’s welfare state – a monumental contribution to a better Canada.

When the socialist CCF party/movement was formed in 1933, in the heart of the Great Depression, Mr. Woodsworth became leader. Soon economic issues in Canada were being overtaken by the looming prospect of war in Europe. For his entire life Mr. Woodsworth had been a Christian socialist pacifist who believed all wars were the immoral product of capitalism and that war only begat misery and more war. Given the two wars he had himself lived through – the Boer War and the First World War – these were not unreasonable propositions. But as the march to war against fascism grew ever more inexorable, Mr. Woodsworth and his party slowly but steadily moved apart.

Hitler had to be defeated, and to this end pacifism had no contribution to make. After long, anguished debates, the leader failed to bring either the CCF’s national council or his caucus with him. In September of 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and Britain declared war against Germany. Mackenzie King summonsed the House of Commons to follow suit on behalf of Canada. In a riveting parliamentary moment, the CCF allowed its leader – ill, failing, demoralized – to present his lonely call for Canadian neutrality. But it was his heir-apparent and by then de facto CCF leader M. J. Coldwell who offered the party’s official and, with but one exception, unanimous support for the prime minister’s motion of war.

Repeating that war settles nothing, Mr. Woodsworth declared: “I rejoice that it is possible to say these things in a Canadian Parliament under British institutions. It would not be possible in Germany, I recognize that … and I want to maintain the very essence of our British institutions of real liberty. I believe that the only way to do it is by an appeal to the moral forces which are still resident among our people, and not by another resort to brute force.”

He alone rose to record his opposition to the declaration of war.

In the words of Tommy Douglas’s biographers Thomas and Ian McLeod: “This event is considered by many to be one of the finest moments in the history of the Canadian Parliament. Even as every other member of the House of Commons voted to declare war, Mr. Woodsworth was recognized for his courageous ethical stand and his commitment to his principles.”

Through two decades as independent MP and then as leader of the small CCF parliamentary rump, no one challenged the King government more profoundly than J. S. Woodsworth, constantly seeking the better angels of Mackenzie King’s nature. In the end, addressing his own historic motion for war, the prime minister said:

“There are few men in this Parliament for whom I have greater respect than the leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. I admire him in my heart, because time and again he has had the courage to say what lays on his conscience, regardless of what the world might think of him. A man of that calibre is an ornament to any Parliament.”

Premier Dalton McGuinty visits Kitchener-Waterloo on Thursday, where he must call a byelection within six months to replace veteran Progressive Conservative Elizabeth Witmer.

Liberal sources say McGuinty is not ready to call the byelection to replace Witmer, who last week accepted a government appointment to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she expects McGuinty will call the byelection fairly quickly in hopes of getting the one seat the Liberals need for a majority.

Horwath says the Liberals are so arrogant they believe they’ll win the riding Witmer held for 22 years, so she expects the byelection call to come sooner rather than later.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan says winning the extra seat wouldn’t change the Liberals’ focus on health care, education and eliminating the deficit.

Deputy PC Leader Christine Elliott says the Tories hopes McGuinty calls the byelection soon so they can get another Conservative in the legislature to replace Witmer.

The riding an hour west of Toronto is getting a lot of attention this week.

Conservative Leader Tim Hudak visited Kitchener-Waterloo Wednesday, while Horwath will be in the twin cities Friday.

© The Canadian Press, 2012

Postmedia News May 2, 2012

NDP leader Tom Mulcair says the government is not justified in allowing the “the British criminal Conrad Black” to return to Canada, while denying entry to other foreigners with criminal histories.

“There is obviously one set of standards for Conservative party insiders and another that applies to everyone else,” Mr. Mulcair said.

He compared Lord Black’s case to that of Gary Freeman, an American who has been denied re-entry into Canada because of a criminal record.

The 63-year-old was involved with the Black Panthers, and was extradited to the United States in 2008 and pleaded guilty to shooting a police officer in 1969. After serving a 30-day sentence, he was denied re-entry to Canada, where his wife and four children live.

“It is a clear case of a double standard, one for an American black man from Chicago, another for a British white man coming out of federal penitentiary,” Mr. Mulcair said.

Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae said he has no objection to the government approving Lord Black’s return given his “long attachment and association with Canada,” but expressed concern about the precedent this will set for other criminals seeking entry to Canada.

“In a sense the federal government is now, if you like, hoisted by its own petard,” he said.

“If they accept Black’s request – then obviously that’s something they’re going to have to apply in a lot of other cases and situations.”

© Copyright (c) National Post

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Mulcair+blasts+Tory+double+standard+Black+decision/6550790/story.html#ixzz1tubOPKqk

TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – May 3, 2012) – “McGuinty’s Liberals relied on the support of the NDP to pass the Ontario Budget and they will continue to rely on this partnership in the weeks and months ahead,” said OFL President Sid Ryan. “The vote this afternoon on labour law reform will be a test of the new relationship between the Liberals and the NDP.”

Bill 77, the Fairness for Employees Act, was introduced by NDP Labour Critic Taras Natyshak as part of a package that could begin the process of transforming Ontario’s outmoded labour laws to some of Ontario’s lowest paid workers and most vulnerable workers.

“Approving today’s bill for second reading will demonstrate whether the McGuinty Liberals are willing to work in partnership with the NDP to represent all the people of Ontario,” said Ryan.

The public gallery of Queen’s Park will be packed to day by the province’s union leaders to see how the Liberals handle this new relationship.