Everywhere
in the Canadian news this week you see headlines about Dalton McGuinty’s
Monday-night resignation as Ontario’s Premier and Liberal Party Leader and his
prorogation (suspension) of the provincial legislature until further notice.
These front-page events deserve equal prominence in my Printing Blog, because
without doubt they will also result in new opportunities for printers in 2013.
Here
are two big reasons why:
OPPORTUNITY
# 1:
A
general provincial election is brewing in Ontario, although we don’t know
exactly when. The provincial Party’s constitution requires the Liberals to pick
a new leader within six months.
The latest predictions say that at the earliest it will be late January
2013 before the Liberals schedule their leadership convention for this
purpose.
Afterwards, Mr. McGuinty has left the decision of when to recall the legislature up to the new
leader. Whenever it happens, the
ensuing sequence of events will likely be: (a) a throne speech, (b) a budget, and (c) another
prorogation to allow for a general election. So by my estimate, even if the next Ontario election doesn’t
fall in 2013, multiple candidates from all 107 ridings province-wide will be
gearing up hard for the vote by the end of the year.
Accordingly, my message to printers is: start doing your research and promoting your services now to attract your share of all the many printing projects--signs, bumper stickers,
campaign and polling-station collateral, or who knows what else—that will become rife as
Ontario leads up to election day.
OPPORTUNITY
# 2
An
election will also mean you have another precious opportunity to review each
provincial political party’s stance on issues affecting your Ontario company
and lobby anyone who wants your vote for constructive change.
For
instance, yesterday on LinkedIn I broadcast PrintAction’s breaking story about the fact that after over 30 years,
Columbia Finishing Mills of Cornwall, Ontario, a
small 12-person operation, has lost the contract to produce Canadian passport
covers to Ottawa's Canadian Bank Note, a company that will reportedly outsource the production of the passport covers to Europe.
http://www.printaction.com/News/20121016-passport-cover-printing.html
Although passports are a federal matter, note that before Ontario’s last general election on 6 October
2011, a similar issue of requiring Ontario tax dollars to be spent inside the
province was one pillar of the provincial New Democratic Party (NDP)’s platform
on small business. For further
details, see page 32 of my
September-2011 column at: https://www.box.net/s/q9slysu8421k04sgdyl4
Now
it seems that, although Ontario usually holds its general elections four years apart, you will have another opportunity unusually soon to grill
your local candidates—not just the NDP but candidates from all parties--to
determine whether their policies on business are the approach you need to help
your company prosper and grow.
Can anyone think of other
pending bumper opportunities besides the two I’ve mentioned here? If yes, please record them below so
then we’ll all know.
PS: In case you live outside of the
province/country or haven’t had time to follow the headlines, here’s a sampling
of the latest skinny on the McGuinty Liberals:
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