The small bugaboo

Politicans are great vanquishers of their enemies. If only they were more adept at dealing with the shenanigans of their allies.

Consider Kim Campbell, holding the rather tatterered legacy of Brian Mulroney much like she held her legal robes—at arm’s length. Or the Oliphant Commission that Stephen Harper was forced to set up to examine Mulroney’s brown-bagging activities. Harper survived; Campbell, and Mulroney’s reputation, did not.

Then there was Paul Martin, who in his haste to distance himself from the odious legacy of Jean Chretien and the Quebec sponsorship scandal, appointed the Gomery Commission, which came back to bite him big time; especially after Gomery’s “small town cheap” comments about Chretien’s government-funded golf balls resulted in Gomery’s findings concerning Chretien being set aside for bias.

And then there’s Ontario politics. The opposition is the least of Premier Kathlen Wynne’s problems, going about the business of shooting itself in the foot to save Wynne the trouble. Conservative leader Tim Hudak has chosen to play Barney Rubble to Rob Ford’s Fred Flintstone. ‘Toronto voters like their subways and already pay enough taxes,’ says Ford. ‘That’s right, Fred (chuckle chuckle),” says Hudak. And NDP leader Andrea Horvath is all for a tax on cars, but only if they are being driven by big corporations and not if ordinary taxpayears are at the wheel. Or something like that.

Were it not for a small bugaboo, Premier Wynne might be well on her way to re-election. That small bugaboo is the actions of her predecessor.

The cost of Dalton McGuinty’s decision to cancel the Oakville and Mississauga gas plants during the last election is, depending upon the source you read, at least $585 million and rising. It started out badly enough for the former premier. Cancelled the gas plants during an election, did you? Sounds like a play for votes. No, we just care about the lives of children, who represent our future. You didn’t care about them beforehand then? But it’s never too late to do the right thing. And incur a half a billion dollars worth of costs in the process? We didn’t know it would cost that much. What else don’t you know the costs of? How much of hospital cut did you say you wanted me to accept here in Picton; was it more or less than $585 million? And while we’re at it, tell me again why you prorogued the Legislature?

Then it got worse. The government persistently failed to produce complete documentation to the legislative committee examining the cancellations. Then the privacy commissioner found that two Liberal party staffers had broken Ontario law by deleting all their computer records. Nothing to hide, right? Purely coincidental that McGuinty decided to accelerate the resignation of his seat and got himself out of Dodge.

And on Monday, documents came to light that Bay Street superlawyer Robert Pritchard, hired by McGuinty to get him out of the Mississauga contract mess, had suggested celebratory drinks among the lawyers involved after reaching a settlement in just two weeks. Only slight problem was, the settlement paid project financiers twice the amount they were set to lend (not a bad deal: a 100 per cent return on your money, just for agreeing to hang on to it). So just what were they celebrating, because it sure as heck doesn’t seem like it was a victory for taxpayers?

So what does Premier Wynne do about this small bugaboo? She has already apologized—at least 11 times, by one person’s count—for sitting around the cabinet table and letting all this fly by her. But any way you slice it, she is leading the Liberal Party of Ontario, the same organization that was led by her predecessor. The way this accountabliity thing works, I think, is that even if the face at the top changes, the organization that commits the crime does the time. And there is only so much distance she can put between herself and the McGuinty government, because she was part of that goverment, meaning that if he was that bad, she must have been incompetent to have done nothing about it. Perhaps, on the cynical positive side, Premier Wynne now has some latitude to make announcemnts designed to win votes and justify them with a “well, it’s cheaper than what Dalton did.” She’s already done it for the horse racing industry: maybe we’ll hear similar announcements that have the effect of giving us back our hospital and taking away our wind turbines.

Better, though, to take the higher road, whatever that is. Poor old Nelson Mandela is in the news again as he nears the end of his incredible run. Now there’s an idea. If setting up a royal commission into the acts of your predecessor comes back to bite you, but you have to somehow distance yourself from his actions, why not do the noble sounding thing, address the small bugaboo head on, and forgive his sins in advance in exchange for a full confession. Yes, that’s right, set up an Ontario Political Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Catharsis: great for the soul, and perhaps not bad for votes either. On deck: Dalton McGuinty?

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca