It was dress down day for Dalton today when the Premier of the Province — who was tieless to promote the new “cool clothing campaign” he launched this morning, breezed into The News to unofficially launch his re-election campaign.
He was renewing acquaintances with the regional press that is deemed a lot friendlier by his handlers than those scofflaw reporters at Queen’s Park who shout rude questions and cut off Mr. McGuinty’s recitations of his party’s accomplishments over the past four years.
While no one interrupted his various infomercials while he was in the newsroom, it’s safe to say that the Premier’s words were not exactly taken at face value.
There was a marked contrast to the last visit McGuinty made to The News, in the campaign lead-up to the Oct. 10, 2003 vote in which he beat Mike Harris and the Tories. Counter-punching from the Opposition benches is, needless to say, a much easier position to assume than defending a government record that inevitably includes missteps.
If you were describing the style of McGuinty’s responses this morning, the phrase, “Float Like a Butterfly, Baffle Like a Bee” would come to mind.
Even more than many in his profession, Muhammad McGuinty has mastered the Alley Shuffle, as in, let’s lead them up the ‘we’re-doing-way-better-in-health-care-and-education-than-we-were-before’ alley and see if they notice I didn’t answer the question.
Queries about the financial struggles of our school boards, the fact that Peel is falling behind on the “Fair Share” issue, the continuing burden of social services downloaded by the Mike Harris regime onto the municipal tax base, difficulties dealing with growth issues at our hospitals, etc. were prompts for the Premier to plead that voters look at the big picture.
McGuinty wants to take everyone back in his time machine to the fall of ’03 when 26 million learning days had been lost to strikes, hospitals had been closed and merged, nurses laid off, meat and water inspectors fired, etc. etc.
Asked about his government’s failure to live up to its promise to review and fix the school funding formula, the Premier responds with figures about the enrolment increases at local school boards and the funding increases from Ontario (15.4 per cent enrolment hike for Peel, 43.2 per cent more in funding; 3.3 per cent enrolment hike for Dufferin-Peel, 27.9 per cent more funding.)
Running against ex-leader Mike Harris last time worked for the Liberals, so it looks like they are going to try it again.
To be fair, the government has made significant advances — in starting to reverse municipal downloading, phasing out GTA pooling, increasing post-secondary funding, expanding enrolment in colleges and universities and stabilizing the education system.
McGuinty wants us to know that, under all that rhetoric, there’s a nice guy trying to get along with everybody and get himself re-elected. Or as he put it, “We are not the repository of all wisdom. One of the most important things that the provincial government can bring to the table is good will and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
Is that good enough to earn another term?
Much will depend on how John Tory and the Progressive Conservatives position themselves for this race and whether or not the Liberals can pin the Harris legacy to Tory’s coattail. We’ll find out a lot more about that this weekend when Tory reveals major planks in his party’s platform at its Toronto convention.