Toronto – Premier Dalton McGuinty was breezing along without a care in the world, but now has a few that could keep him awake nights.
The Liberal premier had been relaxing, with opponents unable to lay a glove on him, after he won majority governments in two successive elections, which is rare in recent Ontario politics.
Now he has to worry because the province’s economy is sputtering like an engine running out of gas which, when it happened before, invariably hurt premiers.
Ontario has lost close to 200,000 jobs in manufacturing since the Liberals were elected in 2003. They have been replaced mostly by low-paying jobs, barely enough to pay basic needs.
Some of the causes, including the weakness of the U.S. dollar that forces that country to pay more for Ontario-made goods and failure of North American auto-makers to produce competitive, energy-efficient vehicles, are beyond McGuinty’s control.
He can be faulted for giving hundreds of millions of dollars to U.S. auto-manufacturers without adequate guarantees it would be repaid if they failed to maintain jobs.
Voters have a history of penalizing premiers when the province gets in economic downturns. Liberal Premier David Peterson called an election a year early, trying to get the vote over before a slump started, but voters also saw it coming and he lost the election and his seat.
New Democrat Premier Bob Rae was in government throughout a recession he had never been in a position to start, but many voters associated it with the New Democrats and hold it against them to this day.
Progressive Conservative William Davis, after compiling a more successful record, twice was reduced to minority governments during an economic slump and McGuinty could face the same erosion in popularity.
The Liberal government could face huge public wrath also over its shortcomings in tackling the infection C. difficile, which is believed to have killed at least 260 patients, and possibly many more, in Ontario hospitals since mid-2006.
This compares to 44 killed by the SARS epidemic of 2002-3, which produced alarms and investigations. The Conservatives have asked for a public enquiry, but the Liberals, who have been slow even collecting information, have refused.
It is difficult to think of a widespread, lethal problem that is so little known and the Liberals cannot bury it under a rug forever.
The Liberals have never explained how they came to invest and lose $100 million in shaky sub-prime mortgages in the U.S., which started the current world credit and financial crises, and at a time the public is more conscious of public waste, this can be revived to embarrass McGuinty.
McGuinty also has shown a tendency to get involved in issues he could and would be politically smarter to stay away from and some of his MPPs are warning him this cannot help their party.
The prime example was his proposal the legislature drop its recital of the Christian-based Lord’s Prayer at the start of its daily proceedings and replace it with something that more reflects the province’s diversity, which is prompting widespread protests.
This could not be called a revolt, but backbenchers know their communities and should be listened to. There was no huge demand to drop the Lord’s Prayer.
Previous premiers also have been unable to resist pushing personal ambitions. Conservative John Robarts, after learning from experience what the public will accept, said his philosophy had become `when in doubt, don’t’ and this could be a useful watchword for McGuinty.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
