Toronto – Premier Dalton McGuinty will go a long way for his province, but he may have gone too far.
The Liberal premier has been to more countries than any previous premier, visiting China (three times), Japan, India, Pakistan, Britain, Italy, Switzerland, the United States and Mexico, some of them places premiers have not trodden before.
The only business in Ontario doing well in the current economic slowdown may be McGuinty’s travel agent.
McGuinty has gone mostly to promote Ontario businesses and products and persuade business there to invest here, which is a genuine role all premiers have pursued, although often they have combined it with trying to win votes.
McGuinty, before the 2007 election, went to parts of Asia that have sent Ontario the most immigrants in recent years and they naturally were impressed he took time to visit their former homelands.
The premier was in China in August trying to persuade international sports officials attending the Olympic Games to choose Toronto as the site of the 2015 Pan Am Games, which also was legitimate, because these Games would boost construction and spending by visitors.
The legislature, where he has a responsibility to be, answering questions, was not sitting at the time. In any case, it sits only half the year, which gives a premier a lot of leeway to travel.
In October, when the legislature was sitting, the premier started an emergency debate on the deterioration in the economy, which has cost tens of thousands of better-paying jobs, and was the most important debate in many years, and called on Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats to contribute.
But the next day he left for Mexico, again to lobby for the Pan Am Games. Conservative interim leader Bob Runciman fumed the premier was sipping margaritas in the sun, while Ontario’s economy burned.
A few days later, while the debate on the economy was still going on, the premier was off again, this time for two weeks in China to promote trade and investment.
The day he returns, the legislature will start a week’s adjournment to enable MPPs to spend time meeting their constituents in less romantic places and then resume for less than a month before recessing until late February.
McGuinty will have spent a lot of time avoiding having to answer embarrassing questions about why he adopted a nonchalant attitude there was not much to worry about and failed to do more to protect jobs and restrain spending and prevent running a deficit he promised to avoid.
The opposition parties also would like to ask the premier why so many people are being shot dead in Toronto by repeat offenders allowed to roam freely.
The only business in Ontario doing well in the current economic slowdown may be McGuinty’s travel agent.
They can ask McGuinty’s ministers, but their answers do not carry as much weight as those of the premier, on whom the whole of image of government is focused.
McGuinty is on a valuable trip this time selling “green technology” that uses newly developed, non-polluting sources of energy to provide power. Having the premier along impresses the host nation and encourages business leaders to make the journey.
But any deals arrived at are negotiated by hard-headed business people and government officials usually before a premier leaves home. For example, within a day of arriving in China, McGuinty announced a company there had agreed to build a power station here fuelled by agricultural and forestry waste that clearly was planned in advance.
McGuinty could have stayed home to deal with the economic crisis and sent Sandra Pupatello, a minister he recently freed from other duties so she could focus entirely on promoting international trade and investment.
It could be argued Pupatello does not carry the same heft as McGuinty, but what is a minister of international trade and investment for, anyway, if not to go other countries and consummate deals?
Alternatively, McGuinty could have gone on part of the mission and left the rest to Pupatello, but he prefers to be away until the heat dies down.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
