Unusual circumstances are combining to give Premier Dalton McGuinty the most comfortable ride of any Ontario premier in three decades. Sometimes he must feel he is running the province from the back seat of a Rolls Royce.
There also is not much sign of a bump in the road or that the opposition parties will get the same help they received from an unexpected source the last time a premier was so dominant.
McGuinty is able to relax first because the main count against him he raised taxes and broke promises has almost vanished since he won a second majority government in October.
Other issues have taken over, particularly McGuinty’s opposition in the election to funding private faith-based schools, and this slate is almost wiped clean.
Many are concerned at job losses, but the Liberal premier has deflated this by investing money to prop up some companies and advising not to panic. Big labour unions in the public sector are not agitating, because they have been given such huge pay raises they almost are government allies.
McGuinty is winning a reputation for standing up for Ontario against federal finance minister Jim Flaherty on the complex issue of which government has the more appropriate tax polices, which many will simplify by conceding the frail looking McGuinty has backbone.
McGuinty has been given a huge gift in the Progressive Conservatives’ uncertainty over leadership after John Tory led in the election and failed to win a seat, which normally would have sent a party scurrying for a successor.
The public has heard successful arguments for keeping Tory based more on faith than reason, none of which has exactly weakened the Liberals.
The Conservatives for six months have had a leader who has no seat in the legislature, the only forum, apart from the TV debate between leaders in elections, in which an opposition leader can confront a premier face to face, ask questions that embarrass, outshine by comparison and be reported by news media always watching.
The legislature is a theatre that inspires a leader to do better and one deprived of it is like an actor without a stage on which he can strut his stuff.
Substitutes are not listened to as much. Conservative House leader Bob Runciman made the best speech in the legislature since the election and no newspaper in Toronto published a word.
Tory is making statements outside the legislature, but they basically have been reactions to government, worth noting but not introducing new information media crave.
Conservative premier Mike Harris had moments of almost unbridled power in the 1990s, but was always dogged by highly vocal groups, particularly unions.
The last premier as comfortable as McGuinty was Conservative William Davis in the early 1970s, after he strolled to a huge majority leading a party that already had been in government three decades.
Some news media then declared they would be the opposition and quickly unearthed cases of ministers involved with land developments that could have brought them huge profits and government giving favours to businesses that donated to the party and steering lucrative contracts to its backroom advisers, and this helped prevent Davis winning majorities in his next two elections.
The media can find such scandals now only if they exist, of course, but they are nowhere near as aggressive. The opposition parties seemed to have a good issue going for them with the discovery McGuinty lost $100 million investing in the U.S. sub-prime mortgage fiasco, but most Toronto media ignored it.
Two Toronto newspapers that normally support the Conservatives now spend more time sniping at Tory, because he is too moderate, and the media do not appear about to bring McGuinty’s bandwagon to an abrupt stop.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
