Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty resigns
2Cdo @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 8:58 am
Lemmy Lemmy:
Proroguing means 100+ bills that the Liberals tabled are now defunct. Who won? Who got what they wanted out of this, the Liberals or the Conservatives?
It also halts all the different investigations towards Liberal Party misdeeds.
jj2424 @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 9:06 am
I thought prorogation was a crime punishable by death . Well at least it was just a couple of years back.
Where's the uproar? Where's the protest rallies and the facebook pages?
OnTheIce @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 9:11 am
Lemmy Lemmy:
Proroguing means 100+ bills that the Liberals tabled are now defunct. Who won? Who got what they wanted out of this, the Liberals or the Conservatives?
The biggest winner here is McGuinty, Energy Minister Bentley and the Liberal 'brand' in Ontario.
Proroguing the legislature shut down the government committee looking into the Ornge air ambulance affair. It also means the gas-plant contempt motion died on the books.
Conservatives and the NDP got nothing out of this. Dick all.
BeaverFever @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 9:14 am
$1:
Examining McGuinty’s legacy
By Steve Paikin, Ottawa CitizenOctober 16, 2012
Yvonne Berg/Ottawa Citizen files
Photograph by: Yvonne Berg, Ottawa CitizenThere’s not a chance he’d remember this, but 22 years ago, I sat down to lunch with the only new Liberal MPP elected in the 1990 election.
It was an otherwise awful time for Ontario Liberals. They’d just been crushed at the polls by Bob Rae’s New Democrats. The party was adrift, having lost an election they should have easily won, and their leader, David Peterson, lost his seat.
So you can imagine my surprise when that one new Liberal MPP told me he was interested in being the leader of his party some day. I thought to myself, is this guy kidding? He barely knows where the bathrooms are in the legislature, and already he’s talking about the leadership? Count me among the many who at one time or another underestimated Dalton McGuinty over the years.
Six years after that lunch, McGuinty did in fact become Ontario Liberal leader. He was in fourth place on the first ballot. He was in a worse fourth place on the second ballot. And yet, somehow, at the end of it all, which was around 4:30 a.m. the next day, McGuinty found himself on top of the leaderboard on the fifth ballot, having defeated Gerard Kennedy.
McGuinty’s first election as leader in 1999 wasn’t memorable. He wasn’t particularly good. Provincewide campaigns are hard for first-time leaders, and it showed. Mike Harris won a second consecutive majority.
But McGuinty showed enough to capture 40 per cent of the total votes cast, and managed to keep his job, despite a strong “Dump Dalton” movement.
Four years later, McGuinty was a better leader, going up against a rookie in Ernie Eves. This time, victory was his.
One of the first things he did was significantly raise taxes to pay for the service improvements he promised during the 2003 campaign — despite signing a pledge that he wouldn’t. And yet, four years later, McGuinty won again, this time over PC leader John Tory. He told his caucus after the election: “See! You can raise taxes and still win an election.” It was another lesson in the perils of underestimating this guy. (True, the PCs helped mightily by promising full public funding for religious schools. But McGuinty capitalized on his opponents’ mistakes and campaigned well.)
But those who underestimated McGuinty weren’t done underestimating him. A few months before the 2011 election, I found myself chatting with a group of Conservatives who assured me that Tim Hudak was about to become the next premier. No premier had ever come back from such appallingly low approval ratings, they said, and McGuinty wouldn’t be the first. Furthermore, no government had ever survived after implementing the kind of massive tax reform the Liberals had brought in. Remember the HST? Remember what happened to the federal Tories after they brought in the GST? Well, that fate was waiting for the Grits as well. McGuinty was done. Toast. History. They assured me.
Except he wasn’t. His experience as a terrific campaigner came to the fore yet again. And, again, a rookie leader wasn’t ready. McGuinty erased a 15-point deficit in the polls and captured a minority government, just one seat shy of a majority.
So the electoral record is clear: McGuinty led the Liberals to three successive election victories, a feat not accomplished by another Liberal premier since Oliver Mowat did it 128 years earlier.
McGuinty pledged to repair Ontario’s public services, which he believed were degraded after eight years of Conservative rule. And by all objective criteria in both health care and education, he’s done that. He’s had a big vision of a province with a healthy, well-educated populace, leading the way on clean, green energy. Whether or not you agree with his vision, he did succeed in moving Ontario closer to it.
Now, for the other side.
No one elected McGuinty’s government in 2011 because of pledges of austerity. And yet, after 2011, that’s precisely the agenda he’s tried to pursue. Relations with his closest allies — the public sector unions — have gone into the toilet. He commissioned economist Don Drummond to offer a pathway back from the deficit cliff, then proceeded to ignore several of Drummond’s key recommendations, which would have helped get us to a balanced budget.
Ontario’s financial statement was released Monday (lost amid all the news of the premier’s resignation). The numbers show a province still operating with massive deficits. In fact, the forecasts for next year suggest Ontario will run a higher deficit than Canada. That’s just shocking.
It’s also true that the longer you stay in power, the more the barnacles you accumulate. ORNGE. EHealth. The power plant cancellations in Oakville and Mississauga. The refusal to provide documents about those cancellations to the legislature. A motion of contempt against the energy minister percolating its way through the legislative process. None of that looks good on McGuinty. So you will also hear metaphors about the captain abandoning a sinking ship.
So the decision to prorogue the house, in an attempt to avoid the hangman’s noose on contempt, will also be part of the McGuinty legacy. On the one hand, it speaks well of McGuinty that he’d go to such extraordinary lengths to protect his energy minister, Chris Bentley, an essentially decent guy who’s had to carry the can on an embarrassing volte face by the government. On the other hand, proroguing is a blunt tool that Liberals screamed bloody murder about when Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried it (twice) to avoid a similar fate.
So that’s the record. If you liked McGuinty, you’re impressed with his consistent ability to overcome those who underestimated him and make progress. If you can’t stand him, you’re glad he’s gone and you shudder to think of how we’ll ever pay off all the debt we’ve accumulated during his nine years in power.
And one last thing. Although he probably won’t admit it, Tim Hudak is probably the happiest guy in Ontario today. Given what we know about how hard it is to win a first election as a rookie leader, Hudak will go into the next campaign as the leader with experience. It’ll be the Liberal leader who’s the rookie. And we’ve seen over the past 41 years how hard it is for rookies to win their first time out.
Steve Paikin is anchor and senior editor of The Agenda on TVO. He blogs at theagenda.tvo.org, where this article first appeared.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/Examining+McGuinty+legacy/7399469/story.html
By Steve Paikin, Ottawa CitizenOctober 16, 2012
Yvonne Berg/Ottawa Citizen files
Photograph by: Yvonne Berg, Ottawa CitizenThere’s not a chance he’d remember this, but 22 years ago, I sat down to lunch with the only new Liberal MPP elected in the 1990 election.
It was an otherwise awful time for Ontario Liberals. They’d just been crushed at the polls by Bob Rae’s New Democrats. The party was adrift, having lost an election they should have easily won, and their leader, David Peterson, lost his seat.
So you can imagine my surprise when that one new Liberal MPP told me he was interested in being the leader of his party some day. I thought to myself, is this guy kidding? He barely knows where the bathrooms are in the legislature, and already he’s talking about the leadership? Count me among the many who at one time or another underestimated Dalton McGuinty over the years.
Six years after that lunch, McGuinty did in fact become Ontario Liberal leader. He was in fourth place on the first ballot. He was in a worse fourth place on the second ballot. And yet, somehow, at the end of it all, which was around 4:30 a.m. the next day, McGuinty found himself on top of the leaderboard on the fifth ballot, having defeated Gerard Kennedy.
McGuinty’s first election as leader in 1999 wasn’t memorable. He wasn’t particularly good. Provincewide campaigns are hard for first-time leaders, and it showed. Mike Harris won a second consecutive majority.
But McGuinty showed enough to capture 40 per cent of the total votes cast, and managed to keep his job, despite a strong “Dump Dalton” movement.
Four years later, McGuinty was a better leader, going up against a rookie in Ernie Eves. This time, victory was his.
One of the first things he did was significantly raise taxes to pay for the service improvements he promised during the 2003 campaign — despite signing a pledge that he wouldn’t. And yet, four years later, McGuinty won again, this time over PC leader John Tory. He told his caucus after the election: “See! You can raise taxes and still win an election.” It was another lesson in the perils of underestimating this guy. (True, the PCs helped mightily by promising full public funding for religious schools. But McGuinty capitalized on his opponents’ mistakes and campaigned well.)
But those who underestimated McGuinty weren’t done underestimating him. A few months before the 2011 election, I found myself chatting with a group of Conservatives who assured me that Tim Hudak was about to become the next premier. No premier had ever come back from such appallingly low approval ratings, they said, and McGuinty wouldn’t be the first. Furthermore, no government had ever survived after implementing the kind of massive tax reform the Liberals had brought in. Remember the HST? Remember what happened to the federal Tories after they brought in the GST? Well, that fate was waiting for the Grits as well. McGuinty was done. Toast. History. They assured me.
Except he wasn’t. His experience as a terrific campaigner came to the fore yet again. And, again, a rookie leader wasn’t ready. McGuinty erased a 15-point deficit in the polls and captured a minority government, just one seat shy of a majority.
So the electoral record is clear: McGuinty led the Liberals to three successive election victories, a feat not accomplished by another Liberal premier since Oliver Mowat did it 128 years earlier.
McGuinty pledged to repair Ontario’s public services, which he believed were degraded after eight years of Conservative rule. And by all objective criteria in both health care and education, he’s done that. He’s had a big vision of a province with a healthy, well-educated populace, leading the way on clean, green energy. Whether or not you agree with his vision, he did succeed in moving Ontario closer to it.
Now, for the other side.
No one elected McGuinty’s government in 2011 because of pledges of austerity. And yet, after 2011, that’s precisely the agenda he’s tried to pursue. Relations with his closest allies — the public sector unions — have gone into the toilet. He commissioned economist Don Drummond to offer a pathway back from the deficit cliff, then proceeded to ignore several of Drummond’s key recommendations, which would have helped get us to a balanced budget.
Ontario’s financial statement was released Monday (lost amid all the news of the premier’s resignation). The numbers show a province still operating with massive deficits. In fact, the forecasts for next year suggest Ontario will run a higher deficit than Canada. That’s just shocking.
It’s also true that the longer you stay in power, the more the barnacles you accumulate. ORNGE. EHealth. The power plant cancellations in Oakville and Mississauga. The refusal to provide documents about those cancellations to the legislature. A motion of contempt against the energy minister percolating its way through the legislative process. None of that looks good on McGuinty. So you will also hear metaphors about the captain abandoning a sinking ship.
So the decision to prorogue the house, in an attempt to avoid the hangman’s noose on contempt, will also be part of the McGuinty legacy. On the one hand, it speaks well of McGuinty that he’d go to such extraordinary lengths to protect his energy minister, Chris Bentley, an essentially decent guy who’s had to carry the can on an embarrassing volte face by the government. On the other hand, proroguing is a blunt tool that Liberals screamed bloody murder about when Prime Minister Stephen Harper tried it (twice) to avoid a similar fate.
So that’s the record. If you liked McGuinty, you’re impressed with his consistent ability to overcome those who underestimated him and make progress. If you can’t stand him, you’re glad he’s gone and you shudder to think of how we’ll ever pay off all the debt we’ve accumulated during his nine years in power.
And one last thing. Although he probably won’t admit it, Tim Hudak is probably the happiest guy in Ontario today. Given what we know about how hard it is to win a first election as a rookie leader, Hudak will go into the next campaign as the leader with experience. It’ll be the Liberal leader who’s the rookie. And we’ve seen over the past 41 years how hard it is for rookies to win their first time out.
Steve Paikin is anchor and senior editor of The Agenda on TVO. He blogs at theagenda.tvo.org, where this article first appeared.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/Examining+McGuinty+legacy/7399469/story.html
Jonny_C @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 3:59 pm
Lemmy Lemmy:
Jonny_C Jonny_C:
What I was getting at is that political parties are not in the business of doing their opponents favours.
There's nothing else they can do at this point. When you're licked, you're licked.
Stop characterizing it as a gift. It's a capitulation at best, IF it benefits the opposition as you say it does.
Lemmy Lemmy:
Jonny_C Jonny_C:
Characterizing the whole thing as a gift to the Conservatives is a little odd.
But that's exactly what it is. It clearly IS in the Conservatives' benefit.
It could be, and I stress could.
But you're totally wrong in the way you characterize it. Here's what you said:
Lemmy Lemmy:
This prorouge is to GIVE THE CONSERVATIVES WHAT THEY WANT. The purpose of the prorogue is to give in to the Conervatives' demands for a broader wage freeze on government employees. This prorouge is something Conservatives WANT.
And also:
$1:
BOTH prorogues are for the Conservatives' benefit.
The prorogue may be to the Conservatives' benefit but McGuinty didn't call for it in order to do it for the Conservatives' benefit. Maybe you just need to choose your words more carefully.
If you really mean "for" instead of "to" then you're totally wrong. The difference between the two is not splitting hairs, so please don't come back with that.
It doesn't matter how you try to parcel out the "benefits". The resignation and the prorogue are nothing more than an attempt at damage control and are wholly self-serving for the Liberals. Things were getting tighter and tighter for McGuinty and the Liberals (for reasons already stated here) so he was looking for the best of a set of bad choices.
Lemmy @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 5:05 pm
Of course it's damage control for the Liberals. Of course it's a capitulation. But that doesn't change the FACT that the Liberals are giving in to what the Conservatives have been asking for. Therefore, Conservatives should be happy.
And you can jam your condescending tone in your ass, newb.
ShepherdsDog @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 5:50 pm
Lemmy Lemmy:
Of course it's damage control for the Liberals. Of course it's a capitulation. But that doesn't change the FACT that the Liberals are giving in to what the Conservatives have been asking for. Therefore, Conservatives should be happy.
And you can jam your condescending tone in your ass, newb.
And you can jam your condescending tone in your ass, newb.
RUEZ @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 5:59 pm
Lemmy Lemmy:
And you can jam your condescending tone in your ass, newb.
What's wrong with being a newb? New members are good, even if you don't like their tone.
Lemmy @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 6:02 pm
Not a thing is wrong with being a newb. Yes, new members are good even if I don't like their tone.
Jonny_C @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:09 pm
Lemmy Lemmy:
Of course it's damage control for the Liberals. Of course it's a capitulation. But that doesn't change the FACT that the Liberals are giving in to what the Conservatives have been asking for. Therefore, Conservatives should be happy.
And you can jam your condescending tone in your ass, newb.
And you can jam your condescending tone in your ass, newb.
Not much of an answer - none as a matter of fact to my main point, which remains valid.
"Out of order? I'll show you out of order!" Famous movie quote. Would I be condescending to say you probably know it?
As a veteran of this forum don't you think you should have developed a thicker skin by now?
And no, I don't accept that there's a condescending tone to my remarks. But there is an unnecessarily nasty tone to your reply, I'll give you that.
Lemmy @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:15 pm
You don't figure this is at all condescending?
$1:
Maybe you just need to choose your words more carefully.
You put your words in my mouth, then told me how wrong I was. So, yeah, I was a little nasty over that.
Jonny_C @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 8:10 pm
Lemmy Lemmy:
You don't figure this is at all condescending?
$1:
Maybe you just need to choose your words more carefully.
OK, maybe just a little.
But I'm having a hard time figuring out how I could have said it differently
$1:
You put your words in my mouth, then told me how wrong I was. So, yeah, I was a little nasty over that.
I said what I thought you might have meant. I was leaving it to you to agree or disagree.
Either "That's what I meant - "to" instead of "for".
or
"No that's exactly what I meant."
Anyway, I'm sorry I riled you up. That wasn't my intent.
Lemmy @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 8:16 pm
I never said that I viewed the prorogue as a “gift”. I never said that. I never implied that. I said it was a “surrender”. You suggested it was “at best capitulation”. Yeah, capitulation... that’s kind of what “surrender” means.
I also never said that McGuinty did this with the intention of helping anyone but himself. You put that in my mouth, then told me it was wrong. You accused me of saying it but I didn’t. I said the result (public sector wage freeze) was what the Conservatives have been asking for.
Then you took the “for” and “to” business totally out of context. You again tried to make it seem that I was suggesting McGuinty did this FOR the Conservatives’ benefit. I never implied any such thing.
But apology accepted and please accept mine as well.
Jonny_C @ Wed Oct 17, 2012 8:24 pm
We seem to see the exchange a little differently, but I'm happy to leave it on a more cordial note.
OnTheIce @ Thu Oct 18, 2012 6:55 am
Lemmy Lemmy:
You again tried to make it seem that I was suggesting McGuinty did this FOR the Conservatives’ benefit. I never implied any such thing.
$1:
This prorouge is to GIVE THE CONSERVATIVES WHAT THEY WANT. The purpose of the prorogue is to give in to the Conervatives' demands for a broader wage freeze on government employees.