A Brief by Doug Draper
If you are a political junkie like I am or you know some political junkies – one of whom informed me in this case – sometime early this Monday evening, October 15, Dalton McGuinty announced his intention to resign as premier of Canada’s largest province.
McGuinty’s announcement reportedly took many, even in the more inner circles of his Liberal Party, by surprise even though the walls appeared to be closing in on him over a number of controversies. The most recent of those controversies swirled around accusations that his government blew more than $200 million moving plans for two gas-powered energy plants out of Liberal-held ridings in the Oakville and Mississauga areas because large numbers of people in those ridings didn’t want the plants there.
McGuinty’s sudden announcement ends a nine-year reign as Ontario’s premier and 16 years as his party’s leader. It also accompanies another announcement by him that is already reportedly enraging members of the Conservative and NDP opposition. That announcement is to prorogue provincial parliament for an unspecified period of time, possibly until his Liberal Party – now a minority government – chooses a new leader and may be in a position to more strongly contest an election if and when the opposition Conservatives and NDP pull the plug on it.
Proroguing the elected legislature as any of you who remember Prime Minister Stephen Harper doing it federal a couple of times at the federal level within the past few years, means that the legislature’s business – the business of the people who elected the MPPs who sit there, if you will – shuts down. And that may go down for many Ontarians as a reprehensible move at a time when the province has many challenges to face around a $14.4 billion deficit, energy costs, health care questions affecting the people of this Niagara region and others across the province, the current dispute with teachers and other public sector workers over planned wage and benefit freezes, and on and on.
Our elected representatives should be in their seats at Queen’s Park tomorrow and for as many days, weeks and months that it takes to resolve these issues – not shut out because McGuinty has decided to quit and has possibly thrown a bone to his party that he will not leave it vulnerable to being defeated before it grooms a new leader that might have a chance of keeping what are left of the government’s fortunes alive.
The opposition leaders, Andrea Horwath for the NDP and Tim Hudak for the Conservatives, have pulled the usual lines that come with times when profile political leaders announce they are quitting around thanking him for his years of public service.
That is a respectful way to respond although Hudak, in particular, may be the biggest loser. He has done such a job of making McGuinty the devil in Ontario, rather than criticizing the McGuinty policies in general as Horwath has more often done, that McGuinty’s departure may take much of the gas out of his balloon.
Niagara At Large will have more to report on this developing story later. In the meantime, share your views below, remembering to do your best to keep your comments civil and to share your first and last names with your views or will not post them. We only do town hall dialogue with people who share their names here. Hope to here from you on this one.
Niagara At Large 
I too am a politcal junkie, but the closer I get to the process the more it reveals itself to be a process so far removed from serving the public good. On the one hand apathy frustrates me, how can people just sit on the sidelines and let this kind of stuff happen? On the other hand, when a Premier resigns and prorogues parliament for strictly political reasons, it makes me want to turn my back on the system too. The people that don’t let the system’s failings worry them are getting about just fine, why shouldn’t those of us still invested in this process just join them?
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Because we’re in this situation precisely because most of us just let our governments get on with it and concentrated on other things. And our governments continued to get more corrupt because we didn’t hold them accountable. We weren’t paying attention. And now things are in a state of collapse, and we wonder why. Well, we reap what we have sown.
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I can’t blame the apathetic, I am not ready to give up on the system, but sometime our government has to address the disengaged voters. The party that won the last election in Ontario would have been the non votes in every riding. I remember at one point taking my wife’s grandma with us to vote and she got dressed up in her Sundays best, nowadays, even the people who helped build Ontario from her generation are joining the discouraged ranks of the non-voters. All three party leaders have their flaws, so instead of McGuinty bashing the other leaders should stop acting like they wouldn’t make a “strategic” play like McGuinty and look at strategies instead on how to re-engage the public and restore the waning faith in our system and government.
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Tuning in to CBC radio and television later this evening, I learned that the expenditure on the power plant fiasco could run as high as $650,000,000—although the Liberals initially put the figure at $40,000,000. I guess those “overlooked” 20,000 pages of documentation that came to light on Friday contained some interesting information.
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I am a political junkie too, but one that just returned from such a thing as a benign choir practise, to find out about this event. Like Dockstader, I am so bloody disappointed in all things political —municipal, regional, provincial. federal. What a mess.
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One down …. one to go! I have been saying for the last several months that Ontario cannot begin any kind of renewal until BOTH McGuinty AND Hudak are out of the picture.
On Monday, McGuinty did what he should have done about three years ago – resigned.
Now it is time for Tim Hudak to step aside and let someone who is not so far out on the right take over as Ontario Conservative leader.
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Dalton McGuinty reminds me of the Captain of the Costa Concordia, after running the ship onto the rocks he is the first one to leave, and everybody for them selves, Dalton and his crew make me ill.!!!
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If McGuinty prorogues parliament, now would be the best time to shut the province down by all of us who truly own it (taxpayers). Set the shut down of the workers/buyers across Ontario and let it be known that when parliament stops so do we. In Ontario, No one work, No one buy. Watch how quickly our jackass MPPs get back to work. Use the Bank of Canada to create the money and watch our debt (without inflation) evaporate.
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Thank goodness. COMRADE McSquinty is gone. His band of socialist liberals is in tatters!
Let’s look back on this dufus and his track record:
1) Ran huge deficits buying votes from public sector workers only to reverse that trend to the huge detriment and stability of this province.
2) Despite huge deficits, he introduced full-day kindergarten and used overpaid teachers to oversee nap-time to the tune of billions of dollars.
3) Purchased seats by cancelling controversial projects to the tune of 100’s of millions of hard-earned tax dollars. Imagine the hospitals that could have funded.
4) Created the Greenbelt, effectively stripping land control rights away from taxpayers to satisfy the Green Toronto voters. All of this without any compensation to the landowners adversely affected. This resulted in one of the largest land expropriation scams this country has seen in its history.
5) Thought that paying 10X the market rate to microfit and fit electricity suppliers only to turn around and pay someone to take it off our grid made good economic sense.
6) Introduced .05% BAC vehicle impound and license suspension legislation. Now I am not a proponent of DWI, but how many people do you know slept over at someone’s house only to drive home in the morning only to get pulled over, lose their vehicle, forced to go to some stupid course, face increased insurance costs and for what. How many people do you know that pop into the pub for a quick beer or two after work only to get pulled over. This legislation is so laughable that BC repealed it (if only we had the guts in Ontario to stand up to MADD) and the police I know are not fans of enforcing it because they are just as guilty of this kind of behaviour as the rest of us and realize you don’t get blurred vision after one or two beers as the MADD (an organization bent on prohibition) commercials depict.
7) Throughout all of the above MPP wages and benefits have remained untouched in fact bonusses were standard practice.
This cowardly response to the mess he has created truly shows his true colors. I am just sad that it took this long. Much of the damage has been done. The impact of which will be with us for the next decade.
Just sayin…..
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An interesting coincidence – the U.K’s Meteorological Office (the Met), one of the world’s leading agencies monitoring climate change has just recently determined that there has been on appreciable rise in global temperatures for almost 16 years. So it would appear that McGuinty’s government had based its ruinous energy policies on the flawed premise of anthropogenic warming. And instead of governing, he politicized the basic welfare of the people of Ontario, polarizing urban vs rural, white colar vs blue colar, Bay Street vs Main Street, and so forth. In demonizing CO2 to follow an ideological command & control model, he mismanaged the fate of the province into have-not status, impoverishing the people who depended on his leadership. Mr. McGuinty did not so much resign as declare bankrupcy.
There is this myth that there is no silver bullet to fix what ails our province. But actually there is – affordable energy. And jurisdictions that understand this enjoy sustainable growth. Had he not embarked on fulfilling his suicidal energy vision, perhaps the province could afford a funcional health system. And the Welland Hospital? Blowing in the wind.
It is interesting that some would actually consider him to be a strong contender for leadership of the federal Liberal party. Can these people be serious? Have these people spent the past 9 years under a rock? Like Fiona says, we have not held McGuinty accountable. We reap what we have sown.
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I hope McGuinty enters federal politics. It will cinch the demise of the Liberal (socialist) party. Imagine the Liberal leadership card; Trudeau – nothing but a name, 0 credentials, 0 experience, 0 common-sense and McGuinty – nothing but a bad rep and track record that few could deny or overlook.
I personally welcome the entrance of these two incompetents.
Ooops on a second thought I should be careful for what I wish for given that this country is made up largely of people who don’t have a clue and who wouldn’t think twice about voting either one of these jokers into power.
Yikes the prospect of that is kind of scary….
On a side, one has to wonder why the RCMP has not launched an investigation into the Liberal seat buying scandal. Would seem to me that there is a conflict of interest there. The decision to nix a billion dollar project to the tune of 100’s of millions in wasted tax dollars in return for a chance at a majority government. Aren’t there any laws to protect the beleaguered taxpayer from this type of wanton fiscally irresponsible behaviour?
Just sayin….. Just askin…..
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There are two laws, one for the unwashed citizens of Ontario and another for the guys at Queens Park, no cop is going to put those imbeciles in jail or chase them. The cops beat up peaceful protesters sitting on the grass at Queen’s Park. Fascism is staring us in the face. Harper has put in new laws against protesters. The jack boot era is on it’s way.
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