MURRAY CAMPBELL
mcampbell@globeandmail.com
June 24, 2008
Dalton McGuinty got the keys to the Ontario premier's office for another four years by campaigning on the slogan "change that's working." Based on what we've seen so far, we're going to have to take his word that this is the case.
As the spring legislative session came to a merciful close last
week, the government was doing its best to counter criticism that it
had fallen into second-term complacency. "We have had a very active
session," said government House Leader Michael Bryant, noting that 13
bills had been passed.
The opposition leaders see it differently. Both New Democrat Howard
Hampton and Conservative John Tory believe that Mr. McGuinty has done
little more than watch as job losses in the manufacturing and forestry
sectors mounted.
"An arrogant and incompetent leader," thundered Mr. Tory while Mr.
Hampton went him one adjective better. "Week, arrogant and indecisive
leadership," he said of the Premier's performance.
There is a little bit of truth on both sides of the argument. While
it's unfair to characterize Mr. McGuinty's second-term team as a
caretaker government, neither can it be said that it is as visibly
active as it was in the first term. Indeed, at times, it seemed as if
the session were dominated by the utterly marginal issues of whether to
scrap the Lord's Prayer and whether to have Question Period in the
morning or the afternoon.
The Premier's office argues that waiting times in emergency rooms
have gone down, that more people are finding family doctors and that
more high-school students are graduating. It may be true, but progress
in these areas is uneven. For example, waiting times for MRI exams have
declined only marginally and success rates on the Grade 10 literacy
test for students with special needs are worse than in 2004.
The government argues that it is doing things to combat the impact
of higher oil prices and a weak U.S. dollar. One cabinet minister
argued that it's like an iceberg in that 90 per cent of the activity is
below the water - stuff is going on that won't bear fruit for many
months. Prime examples of this are a new $1.5-billion
long-term-training program for workers laid off in the past year, a
$1.15-billion fund to help create green-tinged jobs and the plan to
kick start a 20-year, $26-billion nuclear renaissance program by
building new reactors at Darlington.
But Mr. Bryant is being a bit disingenuous about how activist the
past few months have been. Yes, 13 bills were passed, but none of them
was particularly major. For a start, one bill merely implemented the
budget while another met an appeal court's objections to
adoption-disclosure legislation passed in Mr. McGuinty's first term.
One measure sent striking Toronto transit employees back to work, while
another refashioned an existing community college in Algoma into a
university. There was legislation to limit speeds on highway trucks and
to catch up to administrative reality by giving legal status to TFO,
TVOntario's French-language sister. The remaining bills go some way to
justifying opposition cries about a nanny-state government protecting
people from themselves. There are now bans on trans-fats in school
cafeterias, the sale and use of cosmetic pesticides and on smoking in
vehicles where children are present.
Thankfully, there has been no ban on ridicule.
"Let's have a ban on walking into oncoming traffic," said
Conservative backbencher Peter Shurman. "Or maybe we can have a ban on
standing under trees on golf courses in lightning storms or maybe we
can have a ban on eating yellow snow."
We wait with bated breath new initiatives when the politicians return in September.