McGuinty gets back to business at Queen’s Park

Premier Dalton McGuinty will be tempted to govern as if he is some sort of conquering hero, but he would be smarter to throw in a dash of humility.

On Nov. 29 the Liberal premier will open the first session of the legislature since he won re-election with a bigger majority and left the battered opposition parties even unsure who will lead them.

McGuinty may fancy himself as Julius Caesar returning triumphantly from the wars towing his captives, and it is difficult to begrudge him some vision of glory.

Until he became leader, the Liberals had won only two elections in 60 years, and this generously includes one in 1985, when a Progressive Conservative government lost its majority and the Liberals had the second highest number of seats and the New Democrats helped install them in power.

McGuinty has enough MPPs to win every vote in the legislature, so he will be able to ensure it approves his policies, but he is nowhere near as popular with the public as his two election victories would suggest.

McGuinty was less admired than most premiers in his first term, particularly because he quickly broke a promise not to increase taxes.

In his second-winning election, McGuinty would not have increased his majority and may even be struggling to lead a minority government if Conservative leader John Tory had not upset voters by promising to fund private faith-based schools.

The Liberals until then were only a few percent ahead of the PCs in the polls, and these even continued to say throughout the campaign more voters preferred Tory personally as leader.

Many supported McGuinty only because he was not the leader who favoured funding faith-based schools and have no deeper attachment. Now that the PCs have renounced this policy, some of this support for McGuinty could erode rapidly.

McGuinty could start this off by sounding arrogant. He tried to appear humble in the election, conceding his party is not perfect and pleading with voters, “folks, here we are, warts and all – you make the choice.”

But since winning again, McGuinty has done some bragging, including claiming his party is formed of "idealists, optimist and activists" and the others defend the status quo.

The Liberals do not always live up to this flattery. As examples, they have spent much of the last year defending their failure to close polluting coal-burning power stations as promised and in recent days are still scrambling to prevent lottery ticket retailers stealing winning tickets, although news media exposed this years ago.

McGuinty could show humility by adopting some opposition parties’ causes such as Tory’s campaign to reduce bickering in the legislature and the NDP’s plea to speed up increases in the minimum wage.

McGuinty also could learn from the last Liberal premier to win a huge majority, David Peterson, who lost it and his own seat three years later.

Peterson lost first because he called an election too early and McGuinty will be unable to do this, because he has fixed election dates for early October every four years to prevent governments timing them for their own advantage.

Peterson lost also because he spent too much time on an issue many voters had lost interest in, national unity, and were more concerned about jobs.

Peterson also lost partly because he was seen living the "lifestyles of the rich and famous," boasting everything about his province was “world class” and appearing out of touch with ordinary people.

McGuinty is unlikely to make this mistake, because his idea of high fashion is to wear black shoes with his trademark dark blue suit and his idea of going out is visiting a school to be pictured reading to students.

McGuinty is not in imminent danger of being kicked out, but he does not have the huge cushion of support his election victories would suggest.

Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.