Premier McGuinty resigns

I'm watching P&P, and they cut away to his announcement - my jaw dropped. First we get rid of Charest, now McGuinty. A good day. I hope the provincial NDP in Ontario really gets moving now - anything to stop Hudak.

I think McGuinty wants a low profile now because there's a huge scandal brewing.

I wonder what the chances of him running for the leadership of the LPC are?

On CTV: Both Hudak and Horwath highly critical of the prorogation - completely unnecessary. Horwath suspects it's because of the contempt motion - or whatever it is - over moving a gas plant - something I know nothing about.

CTV's Power Play is covering this right now.  George Smitherman is a guest.

I don't know - when the federal Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats, there was a level of visceral hatred amongst the electorate I just don't see here. The level of corruption in Dalton's gov't looks like the usual sort you see after a party has been in power for long enough.

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ctrl190 wrote:

Some potential leadership candidates that come to mind:

 

Gerrard Kennedy

Glen Murray

Kathleen Wynne

George Smitherman

Yasir Naqvi

Chris Bentley

Deb Matthews

Bob Rae??

peterjcassidy wrote:

ctrl190 wrote:

Some potential leadership candidates that come to mind:

 

Gerrard Kennedy

Glen Murray

Kathleen Wynne

George Smitherman

Yasir Naqvi

Chris Bentley

Deb Matthews

 

Bob Rae??

I'd love that, Andrea Horwath vs. Bob Rae.

I hope this also means Dalton runs federally and brings his scandals with him.

I am annoyed though that this means no spring election.

This is also bad news for Hudak, it gives the Tories a chance to dump him.

I really didn't think Dalton would do anything this crazy as resigning as Premier during a minority.

And Progueing is just rotten, basically abaddoning Ontario to fend for itself, the Gods hope that no major crisis happens in the mean time.

Use it to remind people of Harper.

Stockholm wrote:

I hear Michael Bryant needs a job - perhaps he can run!

Some pundit on CTV speculated about Bryant running last night.  Wouldn't surprise me if he was considering it - he's been going to a lot of trouble to rehabilitate himself in the public eye, and I can't imagine he'd bother unless he was planning to get into politics again at some point.  According to this pundit, Bryant is still attending high-powered Liberal events.

Anyhow, I don't think much of McGuinty proroguing Queen's Park for a Liberal leadership election.  Pretty sad.

But it's really amusing watching all the apoplectic Conservative pundits and politicians whining about it.  Hypocrisy knows no bounds with Conservatives - I'm sure they had no problem at all with Harper when he did it twice.

There is some speculation, notably by Warren Kinsella, that McGuinty may run for the federal Liberal leadership.

This seems quite improbable to me for any number of reasons:

1. Why wd he want it?

2. Trudeau seems to have a lock on it.

3. McGuinty will be seen as abandoning Ontario politics beseiged by scandals and with his tail between his legs.

4. Poor French ability.

I am not certain about the latter but have no memory of him ever speaking French in public. can anyone comment on his French ability?

Someone asked on FB if the Speaker (or someone...) would actually grant McGuinty the prorogation.

I think the NDP can seize the agenda too, but a lot depends on how the Liberals position themselves.

Things DO have to improve for the province. With the legacy of Bob Rae not far from peoples' minds, the Provincial NDP is in the same boat as the Federal NDP. People are starting to realize that the NDP is the only party that's looking out for working people. But the same people have bought into powerful myths about "fiscal conservatism".

If the NDP can come up with a credible way to get the budget back on track (not even balance it), they can seize the agenda. A real alternative to austerity. François Hollande is showing a credible way forward, although France is not Ontario, and the Eurozone is not Canada.

janfromthebruce wrote:

BB, love your pic you posted.

And don't forget this one

adma wrote:

janfromthebruce wrote:

BB, love your pic you posted.

 

And don't forget this one

I think even Dalton would see the humour in,this pick.

I really don't get Dalton, he was never a good,Premier, but his achievements were peace with unions and to give the provincial Liberals a green sheen,,yet once he gets into,a minority he decides to set fire to what little legacy he had and then quiting as Premier in a minority, I mean who does that?

So the general consensus seems to be that McGuinty pulled a Sarah Palin because something big is coming down the pike that would have forced him out anyway. Either that, or McQuitty (as his admirers at the Sun dubbed him) voluntarily leaving Queen's Park is nothing more complicated than him planning a grab at the federal Liberal leadership. Or possibly a little from Column A. and a little from Column B.? Who can say? If this is just the latter point, I think he must be seriously deluded. The man is hardly what you'd call popular or well liked, and dumping Ontario like so much garbage the nanosecond something shinier came into view won't exactly endear him to the country at large. Will it?

Junkyard Dog wrote:

So the general consensus seems to be that McGuinty pulled a Sarah Palin because something big is coming down the pike that would have forced him out anyway. Either that, or McQuitty (as his admirers at the Sun dubbed him) voluntarily leaving Queen's Park is nothing more complicated than him planning a grab at the federal Liberal leadership. Or possibly a little from Column A. and a little from Column B.? Who can say? If this is just the latter point, I think he must be seriously deluded. The man is hardly what you'd call popular or well liked, and dumping Ontario like so much garbage the nanosecond something shinier came into view won't exactly endear him to the country at large. Will it?

Any time I've seen his picture on TV, I've always thought, "wipe that smirk off your face you arrogant fool."

The idea that just because provincial wing in Ontario does well that federal wing will do poorly there is pure superstition, people assume because it often played out that way in the past it will now, ignoring the context and the players invovled. As long as Andrea Horwath doesn't piss off voters, which I don't think she will, Mulcair will be fine. In fact breaking the Liberal mentality in Ontario will do wonders for Mulcair, so Dalton government crashing and burning is a good thing, especially if it does mean a spring election and JT embarrasses himself again as he did in KW. Another golden nugget http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/cracks-show-in-ontario-libera... http://warrenkinsella.com/2012/10/strategy-questions/ I love the smell of liberals fighting each other in the morning :D

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Boom Boom wrote:

Rex Murphy said he heard from unions that McGuinty in their opinion was worse than Mike Harris (!!!).

Anti-poverty activists have been saying this for years... just not on [i]The National[/i].

What McGuinty has done by passing that legislation about collective bargaining goes further than Harris and even Harper's anti-labour legislation.  It has threatened collective bargaining itself.

Basically, that law says that unions and employers can negotiate contracts.  But then they have to submit that contract to the government, and they can change it in any way they like and give it back, gutted.

That is not collective bargaining.  That is the absolute opposite of collective bargaining, especially in cases where the government is an interested party in the negotiations (as they are in any public sector negotiating).  And that's what this supposedly "liberal" government has done.

Also, my understanding is that in real dollars (taking inflation into account), social assistance rates are now lower than they were in 1995 AFTER Harris cut social assistance by 21%.  And this is when McGuinty has had 9 years to fix that travesty.

Instead of fixing the rates, he brought in a crappy little Ontario child tax credit (which is fine, but doesn't go nearly far enough to fix the damage) and then lied about this tax credit "ending" the clawback of the Canadian Child Tax Benefit from the cheques of social assistance recipients, when in fact, they still had their cheques reduced by the amount of the original CCTB.  (Parents on social assistance were supposed to be grateful, I guess, that McGuilty didn't claw back the marginal increase in the CCTB over the original amount, when he should have made it so none of it was clawed back.)

Lies, corruption, and attacks on workers.  That's the legacy of the McGuilty Liberals.

Boom Boom wrote:

I can't imagine how any other government could possibly eclipse Mike Harris on the evil scale.

The Liberals simply had a different job to do in the service of the ruling class. By the end of the Harris/Eves era a good chunk of the public was sick of the social unrest, making it difficult for the Tories to get away with further cuts. The Liberals were brought in, not to reverse the Common Sense Revolution, but to consolidate it. The liberal class was able to let down its guard, satisfied merely by the literal fact that Dalton McGuinty was not Mike Harris.

When the Liberals finally got around to raising social assistance rates, the first increase was barely above inflation - nowhere close to what would have been needed to make up for Harris' 22% cut. All subsequent increases were at or below inflation. Add in the decimation of the Special Diet Allowance and the cut to the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit (I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting), and you have a province where poor people are worse off today than we were under Harris.

And what makes McGuinty worse is that he makes it possible for such an increase in poverty to go largely unopposed. Early into his first term, I helped organize a community forum to try and kickstart a campaign around social assistance rates. There was a huge turn-out. People were pissed-off and fired-up about the campaign. Then a prominent and influential disability activist took to the floor and announced that our local MPP had given him assurances that a substantial social assistance increase would be in the next budget, and that the Liberals were committed to a yearly increase that would - at he very least - keep pace with inflation. If he had said the Harris government had made those promises, people would have called bullshit and not let their guard down until the money was in their pockets. But since we were now dealing with the "more moderate" Liberals, many in of those in attendance were placated by his certitude that the poor of Ontario had reached our nadir, and that things would never get any worse under McGuinty. Well... the "substantial" increase was not all that substantial, and subsequent increases have not kept pace with inflation, but McGuinty managed to oversee this attack on poor while avoiding the public unrest of the Harris years.

[i]That's[/i] why anti-poverty activists will tell you that McGuinty has been worse than Harris.

[cross-posted with Michelle]