A Brief Comment by Doug Draper
Just when some of us began to think that the governing Ontario Liberals won’t win enough seats in the next provincial election to fill a broom closet, Gerard Kennedy has thrown his hat in the ring for the besieged party’s leadership.
Gerard Kennedy enters Ontario Liberal leadership race
Kennedy, who was a popular MPP and cabinet minister for the provincial Liberals until he left six years ago to win and later lose a Toronto area seat federally, might be the one individual who could keep the party from being reduced to a rump if he manages to replace outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty in a leadership contest scheduled for this coming January.
Unlike the other individuals who have declared their intention to run for the party’s top job, including recent Liberal cabinet ministers Charles Sousa, Kathleen Wynne and Glen Murray, and former cabinet minister Sandra Pupatello, who did not run in the 2011 provincial election to take a job in the private sector, Kennedy has been away from the provincial party scene long enough to put some distance between himself and the so-called “scandals” facing the Liberals over the costly cancelation of gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga, and such health care messes around eHealth and the ORNGE air ambulance service.
Kennedy has also proven himself to be one politician who has charisma. He can be a very attractive candidate on the ground. I covered a number of his visits to Niagara a decade or so ago as an education critic for the then opposition Liberal Party in the province and it was clear then that he had people in the audience listening to him with a good deal of interest. I recall overhearing people at the back of the room, people who said they had voted for the Mike Harris Conservatives a few years earlier, saying they would vote for him in nanosecond if he were leader of the party. But we got Dalton McGuinty instead.
And now more than a decade has gone by and one can only wonder how many would feel as enthusiastic about Gerard Kennedy as a party leader again. If the party faithful now choose him as leader, it would be typical of a party that picks what could have been the right leader at the wrong time.
As magnetic as Kennedy may be or has been, and as much as he at least says he opposes McGuinty’s recent prorogation (shutting down) of the provincial legislature, it is hard to believe that even he can put Humpty Dumpty back together again after McGuinty so smugly shoved the egg off the wall. Perhaps Kennedy has no illusion that, come next election, the Liberals would once again form a government. He may more realistically be looking forward to a four or five year rebuilding process, involving a younger generation of Liberal members that would replace the musty, aged cardboard that is there now.
In the meantime, a Kennedy win would likely be of most interest to the province’s NDP leader Andrea Horwath since he would more likely be competing with her for the more moderate and liberal voters. Hudak has already staked out his territory on the right side for those who wish to slash spending for public services see more corporate tax cuts for so-called “job creators.”
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Niagara At Large 
Why is this in the news so often??? It doesn’t matter who is running for the new Liberal leader…Is this Liberal mental conditioning to vote these crooks back in again? you can make Jesus Christ a Liberal leader for all I care. it still won’t change the fact that Liberals are by nature a “TAX AND SPEND” political party….Liberals are elected, expect taxes to go up sky high, expect tax money to go missing and expect scandal after scandal…..as the saying goes – “You can put a silk hat on a pig, but in the end, it’s still a pig”
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I don’t intend for this comment be be as abrasive as that posted earlier by Mr. Dorosh. Some of what he says is true – the Liberals are a “tax & spend” party.
For me, the real issue in Doug’s commentary is the suggestion that Gerard Kennedy as leader would keep the liberals from being decimated in the next election. I think Kennedy will perhaps help prevent a total rout — but as far as I am concerned, anyone elected as a Liberal to the Ontario Legislature in the last election should tossed out on their a$$.
If Kennedy becomes party leader, and can toss out the Takhars, Wynnes, Matthews, McMeekins, Pupatellos, etc and replace them with fresh candidates, he might at least be able to hold on to official party status.
If any of the current band of idiots run again, the Liberal party will deserve to be soundly humiliated in the next election.
Of all the declared candidates so far, Kennedy is probably the party’s best bet.
But he sure as hell won’t, nor should he, win the next provincial election.
The Liberal party in Ontario needs to do some deep, deep soul searching, just as their federal counterparts should. Will they do it? Time will tell.
But I am not holding my breath.
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Moving the deck chairs on the Titanic when the ship has already hit the iceberg is a lesson in futility, the Liberal brand is now toxic , we are not in the mood to stomach any more nonesense from th incompetants. Andrea Howath might be a better pick out of cast of wannabees , for Premier.or go for the Greens.
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I have no political affiliation, nor have had for over twenty years, and more…. having said that I think that Gerard Kennedy is one ambitious guy. When he couldn’t get the votes at the Federal Level, he pitched his votes to Stephane Dionne, a nice academic, a truly thoughtful man, who couldn’t win a race if he had to. Kennedy should wear that around his neck on every outing he makes, the albatross that it is.
There are people less charismatic, less ambitious who might be better choices. I really do not know.
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Mr. Jardine is quite accurate when he essentially states that electing a new leader isn’t really going to be able to save the Liberal ship since it struck the iceberg a few years ago. They’ve only been able to stay afloat barely since, but by this point, their best hope is to elect someone who can save the most souls before the ship sinks. (Whether many of them should be saved could be argued quite successfully. For example, Health Minister Deb Matthews who presides over one of the worst scandals of the past decade and does nothing about it until the media exposes it. Or who essentially threatens Welland and Port Colborne with no hospital period–if they don’t agree to the location of a make-believe hospital that’s a good decade or more from even getting on the books (being on the books, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re approved; just ask folks in West Niagara) if it ever does while completing ignoring the fact her appointed supervisor intends to strip Welland’s hospital of its services long before this make-believe hospital gets on the books.)
Of the names who’ve come forward to date, Kennedy likely is the one who could save the most souls–or in political terms, seats. A recent Forum poll seems to confirm this assumption. The reason, of course, is quite simple: he still carries some credibility as being a good education minister and because he jumped ship for the federal ship he unwittingly helped steer into a second iceberg (allowing Stephane Dion to become leader) he doesn’t wear the scandals or missteps of the last six years. On the other hand he carries the baggage of having ensured Dion became leader and not being able to hold his seat for more than one term. And while he’s going to have a challenge overcoming this baggage, its nothing compared to the scandal-plagued baggage the other candidates are carrying–and returning former minister Sandra Pupatello is no exception as she was still around the cabinet table when they decided to move a couple gas plants as part of a seat-saver sale prior to the last election as much as she’d like us to believe she knows nothing about it or Ornge. Pupatello’s other strike is her insistence on stretching out the prorogation of the Legislature until the spring at the earliest just so she can win a seat while trying to tell us she wasn’t comfortable with McGuinty’s decision to prorogue in the first place (which is it, Sandra? Take a position.)
But judging by past Liberal leaderships, they’ll probably pick somebody like Sousa or Hoskins who aren’t known inside their ridings let alone across the province and then collectively shake their heads on E-day when they’ve been decimated and wonder how it happened.
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You know what? Willie Noilles comments make a lot of sense to me. He’s a really tuned in guy. Nuff said. G. B.
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I say fire another round into the thieves and watch the ship sink and burn…they obviously are no good for the economy of this country…
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I would not call the Liberals a tax and spend party. They kept cutting taxes to their wealthy friends and throwing corporate welfare at them, well if that’s spending, maybe I suppose. But for low income people and even the middle class, it has been nothing but cuts, cuts, cuts… cuts to health care, cuts to social welfare (which will only cost us all more in the long run) and then proroguing legislature to hide it. I won’t vote the Liberals in even if they put Jesus Christ in as their new leader.
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