| Jayx1 |
What a hypocrite. I think he owes an explanation to all the schools that have lost substantial gym equipment money thanks to the banning of pop in schools.
I cant wait to vote these asses out of office.
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EDITORIAL: Dalton burned by Pepsi
Question: What do Michael Jackson and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty have in common?
Answer: They've both been burned by commercials for Pepsi.
Everyone remembers Jackson's hair catching on fire in that infamous 1984 incident. But for McGuinty's Liberal government, it's really more a case of "liar, liar pants on fire".
On the one hand, it says to children not to consume soft drinks and has banned them from Ontario's elementary schools out of a professed concern for their health.
But on the other, it has partnered with Pepsi in developing a government website -- Campsite24.ca -- clearly aimed at getting kids (and their parents) to visit provincial parks.
Featured at the bottom of each of the hundreds of web pages available at the site, is Pepsi's corporate logo, which in turn links to pepsi.ca. Isn't this a tad hypocritical, premier?
Leah Casselman, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, thinks so. She was the first to point out this very odd couple last week. Casselman is also ticked that the Grits cut 226 summer jobs for students and seasonal workers in the parks this year, a 19% reduction from 2005.
"If Mr. McGuinty really wants to promote healthy food choices and an active lifestyle for children, as he claims, he's got a strange way of going about it," she said.
Uh ... yeah.
While we would have preferred McGuinty to be Ontario's point man on this one, that task fell to a poor flack for the natural resources ministry who did give it the old college try. He said Pepsi is featured on the government website not to promote its soft drinks, but to recognize its "major contribution" to developing the site. He argued Pepsi sells other products, like juice and water, but conceded that when most people see the Pepsi logo they think of ... Pepsi.
From our free-market perspective, the fact Pepsi co-sponsors this site is really no big deal.
Then again, we're not Nanny McGuinty.
Perhaps he should set up a new Ontario website to highlight government bloopers like this one. Call it "stupid.ca."
Oh, wait. That's his government's anti-smoking website. And the last time we looked, by the way, McGuinty's government was still accepting revenues from tobacco taxes.
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