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dalton mcguinty resigns
This Liberal government appears to favour greedy U.S. hedge funds, well-connected gas plant owners and its friends on Bay Street, to Toronto's homeless and working poor. Well, I am glad the Wynne government has its priorities straight.
The McGuinty government was more concerned about its political survival than taxpayers' money. It should have terminated its contract with Eastern Power, well before cancelling the Mississauga gas plant. Instead, it hired a hired gun, with a strict mandate to make the hedge fund go away without a messy court battle.
Dalton McGuinty's sudden and unexpected resignation comes at a particularly turbulent time in Ontario politics. There is a minority Legislature, sagging poll numbers placing the governing party third behind the Tories and NDP, and a wave of inquiries and corruption allegations. In addition, there is brewing labour unrest with teachers, doctors, and civil servants over proposed wage freezes. In all this, the inevitable question is, with McGuinty's resignation in this turbulent environment, what is his legacy?
I'm not sure if mankind has yet devised a unit of measurement large enough to quantify the volume of editorials about the life, times, and future of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty that have flooded the Canadian press in the aftermath of his unexpected Monday resignation. It's almost enough to make one pine for the pine for the cautious restraint of Justinmania.
We take it for granted that we live in a democracy. That label for our political system is, however, no longer accurate. Premier Dalton McGuinty's decision to shut down the Ontario legislature until his successor is chosen (whenever that might be) is further evidence that our democracy is under constant threat, more so in fact by the powerful than by terrorists.McGuinty has employed the same tactic Harper used a few years ago, presumably to stop the opposition from further investigating the Liberals' roles in the Ornge affair and gas plant closures as well as possibly censuring one of his cabinet ministers. Has the Premier also forgotten how to walk and chew gum at the same time?
A man who did the right thing, not the easy thing. That's how I'll remember Dalton McGuinty's time in office. It is no secret that the province of Ontario is cash-straddled. Every province will be short on revenue in the coming decades as the cost of health care, in particular, increases. Yet Dalton McGuinty understood one of the key tenets of governance -- short-term pain for long-term gain.Yet it was not merely pragmatic decisions that characterized Premier McGuinty's tenure. Liberal values also defined his government, even after it was reduced to minority status. McGuinty said it himself the night he was elected to a third term as premier: Liberalism is still alive in Canada.
I got the chance to meet Dalton McGuinty in person on several occasions especially at the International Muslim Organization of Toronto, which is one of the largest Muslim centers and it is the hub of different ethnic communities from Muslim countries. He kept repeating himself that he was the son of immigrant whose ancestors came to this country as everyone else -- looking for hope and a decent life.
A bright outcome of Dalton McGuinty's decision to retire could be that he's persuaded to run for the leader of the federal Liberals. In my view, only a McGuinty candidacy could halt the Justin Trudeau bandwagon in an election next spring open to anyone in Canada.Like him or not, McGuinty has actually managed a huge enterprise, Canada's biggest province, whereas the biggest thing Mr. Trudeau has managed is a high school drama class and -- or so he insists -- a Twitter site with some 160,000 fans.
