Toronto – Premier Dalton McGuinty is looking for a new image – he wants to be known as The Family Guy.
The Liberal premier can hardly complete a sentence these days without emphasizing he is trying to help families or mentioning his own — his father, mother, wife, four children and even his grandmother.
McGuinty referred to his mother twice on the same issue recently, saying "she gave me hell" when he first proposed the legislature drop its daily recital of the Lord’s Prayer and substitute one that more reflects the province’s diversity.
Protests are mounting and McGuinty has now added "this is not an easy thing for my mother," a Roman Catholic, and he appreciates her concern, but his job is to represent all Ontario.
It does not harm a premier to show he has a mother and cares what she thinks and he looks even-handed when he says he has to serve the whole community.
McGuinty often refers to his late father, Dalton senior, also an MPP, particularly as having stirred his interest in contributing to public life.
The premier naturally is proud of his father, but it must be said the father had nowhere near the abilities or drive of the son.
When questioned about a pregnant 19-year-old, arrested as a material witness and held in jail for a week because police wanted to make sure she testified against a male friend accused of assaulting her, McGuinty drew a connection to his own daughter.
He went on, "I have a 26-year-old daughter. This is a 19-year-old woman. As a father, I think of her as still just a girl in some ways."
Despite his fatherly instincts, the premier said he could not second-guess a judge, but the publicity helped her get out of jail quickly.
The premier was asked what it means to be poor in Ontario and replied, "my grandmother grew up poor. She was a single mother with a limited education and five kids to feed."
Poverty for his grandmother meant lack of opportunity, he said, and for her children the way out was education and this is one reason he has focused on improving opportunities for schooling.
The leaders of the opposition Progressive Conservative and New Democratic parties were asked the same question and neither mentioned his own family.
McGuinty brought up all his children when asked what exercises he does and why. He said he works out not only for his own health, "but also because I’ve got four kids and it’s a habit I’d like to pass on to them."
The premier once mentioned five members of his family in a single breath, when he launched a campaign urging residents to switch off electricity to save that featured a slogan, FLICK, with its letters designed so it looked more like an obscene four-letter word.
McGuinty said his mother might complain, but such a sharp-edged appeal might reach out to younger residents like his four children in their 20s.
McGuinty had been set on becoming known as "the education premier," and his ministers often described him as this, because he increased funds for education and built up an amicable relationship with teachers that helped prevent strikes.
But recently he has talked much more of his aim to help families, working families and low-income families, who are a much larger group.
McGuinty designated a new annual statutory holiday, Family Day, saying time off together is the most valuable commodity families can have and ended night sittings of the legislature, partly to help women MPPs with children, and claims it is now "family friendly."
Most premiers have used their families to look human and win votes. Mike Harris said poignantly his two young sons wondered why he could not be home more often and Bob Rae said he worried more when one of his children was sick than over any affair of state.
William Davis featured his five photogenic children on most of his election literature and McGuinty is now throwing his family into the battle.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
