[URBAN NOTE] "Why an NDP veteran cut his party ties over tolls"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Martin Regg Cohn writes about why one Toronto NDP MPP left his party over its opposition to road tolls.

Politicians are like pretzels — easily twisted out of shape.

Until they snap.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are twisting themselves into cloverleafs over road tolls. But they’re not the only politicians clutching fig leafs.

The New Democratic Party is also twisting and turning in ideological circles over road tolls. And this time, the road kill is one of their own.

Paul Ferreira, a lifelong New Democrat, one-time MPP, and former chief of staff to two of Ontario’s NDP leaders, has quit the party.

Many New Democrats responded by telling him they’d “already taken a similar decision,” Ferreira told me, for the same reason: The party is being “fundamentally dishonest.”