Wednesday, November 30, 2011 7:51 AM EST
McGuinty to replace top bureaucrat Shelly Jamieson
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is replacing his government’s top bureaucrat.
A senior government official confirmed a report on Tuesday that cabinet secretary Shelly Jamieson is departing after four years as the head of the Ontario Public Service.
Rumours about Ms. Jamieson’s future had been circulating since the province’s Oct. 6 election, but as recently as last week government officials insisted that a decision had not yet been made. On Tuesday, the Premier’s office suggested the decision was her own.
Ms. Jamieson was a surprise appointment in 2007, having spent only two years in the public service after a lengthy career in the private sector.
It’s widely believed within government that a bigger shuffle of deputy ministers will follow Ms. Jamieson’s departure. Peter Wallace, currently the deputy minister of finance, is the likeliest candidate to step into her job.
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Friday, October 21, 2011 7:56 AM EDT
Has McGuinty already doused the fire in his belly?
Unveiling their new cabinet this week, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals have made the same argument again and again.
The Ontario Premier, they say, won the Oct. 6 election on the strength of his promise to provide strong and steady leadership through perilous economic times. So that is what he will deliver, with a cabinet made up entirely of proven veterans.
What they are declining to mention is that there was a second pitch Mr. McGuinty made to voters – one that is looking a lot more shaky now than it did during the campaign.
At his public events, in interviews, and especially in his weirdly frenetic debate performance, Mr. McGuinty did not just make the case for stability. He rather convincingly gave the sense that, despite eight years in office, he had plenty of fire left in his belly – that he was, in fact, more energetic and more full of ideas than either of the younger leaders running against him.
Perhaps he will yet make good on this promise, as he grapples with the province’s massive economic and budgetary challenges. But it certainly wasn’t evident this week, as Mr. McGuinty presented a cabinet that seemed aimed more at consolidating power than at doing much with it.
Friday, September 30, 2011 9:37 AM EDT
Hudak cool to Bay Street cure for Ontario public service
Only one of Ontario’s opposition leaders seems interested in what a former bank economist has to say about reforming the province’s public services. And it’s not the opposition leader you might expect.
During a visit to The Globe and Mail’s editorial board on Thursday, Andrea Horwath – whose New Democrats have traditionally been highly suspicious of Bay Street, and fiercely protective of government services – sounded open-minded about the findings of the review headed by former Toronto Dominion chief economist Don Drummond. And she said she expects the finding of Mr. Drummond’s commission, which was appointed by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals and is expected to report shortly after the Oct. 6 election, to be “independent” of interference from whichever party wins power
But in a telephone interview the same day, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak strongly hinted that he would only be interested in Mr. Drummond’s recommendations if they “fall in line” with his party’s platform.
“If I have the honour of serving as premier, I’ll see how far along Mr. Drummond is,” Mr. Hudak said. “But I’d expect the recommendations he brings to the table will be consistent with the winning platform in the province.”
Mr. Hudak’s shot across Mr. Drummond’s bow would be less surprising if the PC Leader had a more robust plan to eliminate the province’s $14-billion deficit – part of it believed to be structural – at a time of major economic turbulence.
It’s not that he’s without ideas on that front, including a promise to annually cut 2 per cent of spending outside health and education (by far the two biggest ministries) and a vague intention to change arbitration rules to help lower public-sector wages. But few people familiar with the government’s finances believe that will be enough to provide long-term financial stability, especially considering he plans to concurrently offer billions of dollars in tax cuts and energy rebates.
Indeed, through most of the provincial campaign all three parties have avoided speaking about the tough financial decisions that the next government will face – seemingly with the tacit understanding that Mr. Drummond will do much of the heavy lifting.
By most accounts, the former Toronto Dominion chief economist is game. Sources say much of his commission’s early attention is being devoted to the sensitive subject of health care, which makes sense since flattening increases in health spending at 3 per cent annually is central to all parties’ budgeting assumptions. And he appears to have been given free rein to propose major changes to the way the broader public service functions, short of recommending tax increases or cuts to health and education (as opposed to cost containment).
Mr. Hudak’s skepticism likely owes to the Tories’ belief that Mr. Drummond, once a senior federal bureaucrat, is a Liberal partisan in an economist’s clothing. Certainly, many Tories don’t enjoy a warm relationship with him.
But nobody is suggesting that, if Mr. Drummond proposes things that are anathema to the Tories, they’d be duty-bound to adopt them. And if the Tories happened to like some of his recommendations, the fact that he was appointed by Mr. McGuinty could provide them with cover to do some controversial things.
Besides, it’s fair to say this fall’s campaign has not exactly been bursting with novel ideas for managing Ontario’s finances. One might have thought whoever winds up in power thereafter would welcome as many fresh perspectives as they could get.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 9:26 AM EDT
McGuinty borrows from Harper’s ‘strong, stable’ campaign playbook
Dalton McGuinty might as well have gone ahead and winked as he delivered the line.
It was in response to an inevitable question about minority government scenarios that the Ontario Liberal Leader, campaigning for a third term as premier, seemingly had a little fun. At a time of economic uncertainty, he said, voters would be wise to elect a “strong, stable, Liberal majority government.”
If those words sound familiar, it’s because if you delete “Liberal” and add “national” and “Conservative,” it’s the same phrase that Stephen Harper repeated at campaign stop after campaign stop this past spring.
In echoing it, Mr. McGuinty tacitly acknowledged that he’s making much the same case for re-election that the Prime Minister did a few months ago.
Much the same as Mr. Harper did, Mr. McGuinty is presenting himself on the campaign trail in a way meant to play on – some would say exploit – the palpable sense of nervousness about Canada’s recovery from recession.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 2:34 PM EDT
Horwath gets pride of place in Ontario leaders debate
Having long since established himself as the country’s moderator of choice, Steve Paikin knows a thing or two about election debates. And it didn’t take him long on Tuesday to pronounce, via Twitter, that a draw held that morning had given Andrea Horwath a big advantage in the Sept. 27 showdown between Ontario’s party leaders – a stage position directly between Dalton McGuinty and Tim Hudak.
For any opposition politician, that’s a prime spot – allowing more direct engagement with rivals, rather than having to talk over one of them. But it will offer a particular help to the NDP Leader, who really quite needs it.
For Mr. McGuinty, as for any incumbent, the debate will largely just be something to get through. Mr. Hudak’s strategists don’t think it’s the ideal venue for their candidate, and are downplaying expectations. But for Ms. Horwath, it will be her one big chance to get noticed by the broader public.
At the start of the campaign, a Nanos Research poll suggested that fewer than half of Ontarians knew who Ms. Horwath is. It’s doubtful the race’s first week did much to change that. And while she’ll find ways to make news between now and Sept. 27, including by releasing the parts of her platform she’s withheld to date, she’ll continue to play third wheel while Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Hudak duke it out.
Her best hope for making major gains in the election, or at least the one identified by her campaign team, is to come off as being above the fray. The NDP wants to use her optimism, her slightly disarming style, and (yes) her gender to strike an appealing contrast with the bickering boys.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 8:50 AM EDT
Platform procrastination helps Horwath compete in Ontario
In the first week of Ontario’s election campaign, one opposition leader furiously attacked Dalton McGuinty’s promise to provide employers with tax credits in return for hiring and training skilled immigrants. The other one was able to make a counterproposal.
Never mind that what Andrea Horwath came up with – a tax credit for employers who hire anyone for new jobs – raises a whole bunch of questions itself (most of them around how to prevent rampant abuse). The fact the NDP Leader was able to put it forward at all owes to some clever strategic planning in releasing her party’s platform.
Through the early stages of 2011, both Ms. Horwath and Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak were under pressure to start detailing their policies rather than just attack those of the governing Liberals. Mr. Hudak silenced that criticism in late May by releasing his entire platform, complete with a costing document that left him no room to add any other promises.
Ms. Horwath went a different route. In June, she released key planks of her platform – notably the pocketbook relief with which she’s hoping to reach beyond her party’s base – so that she had something to talk about other than Mr. McGuinty. But she held off on other components, including the costing.
That approach has its downside. The document Ms. Horwath presented in June had very little on the environment or social justice, allowing the Liberals to make the case that the NDP has abandoned its traditional supporters. When Ms. Horwath announced a couple of green policies later in the summer, including a proposed law to give cyclists more space on the roads, it gave the appearance (no matter how long she may have been sitting on it) of being slapped together to appease critics.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 11:57 AM EDT
A ‘date’ with Layton, his everyman appeal and the start of his climb
A lot of really thoughtful, poignant things have been written about Jack Layton since the news of his death on Monday morning. I won't try to match them. But a few personal memories have sprung to mind, and for what they're worth I'm going to share them.
* * * * *
Apologies if I've told you before about the time Layton and I were mistaken for being on a date; it's kind of been a go-to anecdote for the better part of a decade.
Very early in his leadership of the NDP, he and I went for dinner at a cafe on Baldwin Street, near his Toronto home. It was a cozy (and busy) little place that he'd suggested, and we wound up sitting rather close together at a corner table.
Jack was nothing if not gregarious, which made it somewhat unlike most dinners I've had with politicians. He ordered some appetizers for us to share almost as soon as we sat down, and shortly thereafter a bottle of wine. There followed, along with our meals, a good deal of animated conversation, in which he was fairly bursting with ideas for how the country should be run differently.
Eventually, when the time came to pay, there was a bit of a kerfuffle. The restaurant didn't take my brand of credit card, so I tried to duck next door to a cash machine, but he insisted on putting his card down. I finally relented, with the vow that I'd pay next time – at which point the waitress, who'd been waiting patiently through all this, offered that at least this meant we'd have to have another date.
I'd like to think that, if either of us were gay, we might have dated someone more age appropriate. Still, I can see how the waitress – who I'm pretty sure had no idea who he was – made the assumption.
Along with his considerable joie de vivre, Jack had an unusually unguarded manner of communicating with people. Not that he wasn't very careful, especially later in his career, to stay on script. But no doubt, he had fully turned on his considerable charm that night, and I'm sure we didn't look much like a politician and a journalist out for a working dinner.
I'd be lying, too, if I said that I wasn't charmed. Not in the way the waitress thought, mind you. But there are certain politicians who make you feel really privileged to spend an hour or two in their company. I can't think of many who did that better than him.
* * * * *
After his first year as NDP leader, in a piece that was mostly complimentary toward Layton, I noted that my grandfather couldn't stand him. It was a way of acknowledging that he rubbed some people the wrong way, and I didn't think too much of it.
The next day, I got a call from Layton's office. He had read the piece, and wanted to know if he might be able to visit my grandfather, sit down with him and try to change his mind.
For a variety of reasons, I felt compelled to turn the invitation down. And I don't want to seem naïve, here – it obviously would have been a bit of a stunt, aimed at getting me to write a follow-up piece that made Layton look really good.
Still, I'm hard-pressed to think of many other politicians who would have made that offer. It required complete confidence in his ability to go into an unfamiliar, potentially hostile situation, in which he might have been told off in front of a journalist – almost exactly the sort of thing most leaders spend their campaigns trying to avoid. (As it happens, my grandfather couldn't be more gentlemanly, but Layton and his staff didn't know that.)
To the extent that it was indeed a stunt, I'm not sure that reflects badly either. Here was someone who took over a party that had basically been irrelevant for three straight elections. Almost from the moment he did so, the NDP became impossible to ignore. And particularly in the early days, a big part of that was his willingness to do what it took to get noticed.
* * * * *
A couple of times during this year's federal campaign – once early on, and once on election night – I took cabs to Layton events in Toronto. Both rides, in retrospect, were enlightening.
The drivers in each case were recent immigrants. These were guys working long, thankless hours, and they came from places where politicians are viewed with strong suspicion. But as soon as they found out where I was going, there was all kinds of enthusiasm – both of them, if I recall correctly, referring to Layton as “my guy.”
I don't mean to overplay this; it was rather a small sample size. But it was perhaps relevant in light of the NDP's breakthroughs in places like Scarborough–Rouge River, a largely working-class riding in which the vast majority of voters belong to visible minorities.
Much has been made of the federal Conservatives' breakthroughs with immigrant communities, and rightly so. But the NDP's success on that front, after failing to capture the attention of generations of new Canadians, has gotten much less attention.
From my experience in those conversations – and what I've heard subsequently from people who worked the campaign on the ground – a good number of lower-income immigrants in particular felt like there was someone out there willing to stand up for them. If you're looking for evidence of his Everyman appeal, I don't know if it gets much stronger than that.
* * * * *
A final memory takes me back to Toronto's Exhibition grounds in January of 2003, the day Layton was chosen NDP leader.
It was a first-ballot win, so lacked some of the tension of other leadership conventions. But I recall some sense of excitement, of possibility, as Layton (if memory serves) was hoisted onto his supporters shoulders.
I also remember stepping out into the hallway and calling a friend of mine – a guy who'd grown up in Toronto, now lived in the United States, but had always liked the NDP and Layton in particular. He was excited by the news, and in a different way – despite not having political affiliation or a rooting interest – I guess I was too.
Bear in mind that, around that point, Canadian politics was in a pretty dull period. The two parties on the right hadn't yet merged, and the Progressive Conservatives were still going through a thoroughly uninspiring leadership campaign. The NDP hadn't been competitive since the 1980s. The Bloc Québécois wasn't going anywhere. Most of the drama, such as it was, came from Paul Martin's imminent takeover of the Liberals – a development that, before the sponsorship scandal and everything else that went haywire, was supposed to cement that party's hold on power.
Layton had the potential, at least, to breathe a little life into the whole thing. He was a big gambit for the NDP, up against more established candidates like Bill Blaikie, and he was charismatic and unpredictable and different. There was just enough energy in that room, at the moment his victory was announced, to suggest that something might really be happening.
For rather a long time, it looked like that potential might never be fully realized. Under Layton, the NDP made impressive gains – doubling its share of the popular vote – and played a big role in ending the Liberals' dominance. But it seemed to have hit its ceiling, around 18 per cent national support and perpetual fourth-place status in the House of Commons, by the time this year's campaign rolled around.
Needless to say, that ceiling turned out to be a whole lot higher. In fact, we still don't know how high Jack could have gone, and we never will. But that moment back in '03 feels all the more historic now, knowing what it was the start of.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011 3:30 PM EDT
Audacious Senate appointments are Harper’s gift to Layton
It seemed, at first blush, a peculiar strategy.
On several occasions during last month’s election debate, Jack Layton accused Stephen Harper of no longer being the same person he was back in his opposition days. Considering that the Reform-era version of Mr. Harper had rougher edges and much less mainstream appeal than the new one, having “changed” didn’t seem like much of a vulnerability.
But as others have subsequently noted, Mr. Layton was targeting a very specific audience. It wasn’t swing voters, or erstwhile Liberals who wound up switching to the NDP in large numbers. Rather, it was the populist crowd – particularly in Western Canada – that could potentially move from the Conservatives to the NDP if there’s a sense that Mr. Harper has become too entitled during his time in Ottawa.
There were few signs, on election day, that the message took. But Mr. Layton’s efforts are worth keeping in mind, in light of what the Prime Minister has done very early in his new mandate.
If Mr. Harper was looking to signal once and for all that he’s abandoned his populist roots, he could scarcely have done better than Wednesday’s Senate appointments. Little more than two weeks ago, Josée Verner, Larry Smith and Fabian Manning were all rejected by voters in their ridings – the latter two after biding their time with supposedly temporary gigs in the Red Chamber. Now, all three will have the opportunity to serve in Parliament anyway, at what is theoretically a higher level, courtesy of the leader who only a few weeks ago was still extolling the virtues of an elected Senate.
The Conservatives will no doubt brush off much of the ensuing outrage as just more of the usual white noise. And to some extent, they may be right. Certainly, it’s unlikely that these appointments will be top of mind for most Canadians four years from now, when we next go to the polls. (There’s a reason why governments get this sort of thing out of the way quickly.) And the Liberals – who by most accounts remain a big preoccupation of Mr. Harper’s, despite their diminished status – will be poorly positioned to capitalize on any residual anger given their own history of patronage appointments.
But for the New Democrats, this is a dream issue – and not just because it distracts from their own post-election foibles. It will give Mr. Layton, who has argued that the Senate should be abolished altogether, an opportunity to continue positioning himself as the outsider standing up for ordinary Canadians against Ottawa’s culture of entitlement – a message that will be key to any future success west of Ontario.
The Conservatives spent much of the recent campaign enjoying the NDP’s surge, because it mostly came at the expense of the Liberals. But for all that Mr. Harper might relish the prospect of his only national opposition coming from a party firmly to the left of centre, he might enjoy it a little else if that party starts challenging him on what was once safe Conservative turf. A few more announcements like Wednesday’s, and that might start to be a real concern.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 9:03 AM EDT
Elizabeth May’s win, the Green collapse and our broken electoral system
Coming down from the euphoria of finally winning a seat in the House of Commons, Elizabeth May is taking a bit of a kicking this week.
The Green Party, Margaret Wente wrote in Tuesday’s Globe and Mail, was the “biggest loser” in the May 2 election – its declining popular vote indicative of the declining political currency of the environmental movement. On the National Post’s website, Kelly McParland made reference to the Greens’ “catastrophic showing” outside their leader’s riding, accusing her of turning them into “the Elizabeth May Party.”
There’s some truth to these criticisms. But if we’re going to dwell on this subject, it’s only fair to acknowledge that the Greens’ result says as much about our electoral system as it does about Ms. May.
In 2008, her first election as leader, Ms. May ran a truly national campaign. She spent much of the time on tour, did her best to compete with the other parties’ communication efforts, and got lots of media attention. In so doing, she helped her party win nearly a million votes nationally – good for 6.8 per cent of the popular vote, up from 4.5 per cent in the 2006 election.
That vote total was also more than two-thirds of what the Bloc Québécois got en route to winning 49 seats. But because the Greens’ support wasn’t “efficient” – which is to say, it was spread broadly across the country rather than heavily concentrated in smaller areas – they were shut out of the House of Commons entirely.
Ms. May came into this year’s campaign knowing that she could not afford to be skunked again, if she ever wanted to make an impact on federal politics. So this time around, she essentially gave up on running nationally.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 5:56 AM EDT
Welcome to Canada’s two-party system
Jack Layton’s New Democrats have long dreamt of the day they would supplant the Liberals as the party of the centre-left. And Stephen Harper has shared that dream, believing it would allow his Conservatives to become the country’s natural governing party.
In this spring’s federal campaign, what once seemed quixotic came to pass faster than either Mr. Harper or Mr. Layton could have imagined. After Monday’s election, Canada has something approaching a two-party system. Now we’ll all take a deep breath and see if the new reality can survive a four-year break from elections.
Certainly, it doesn’t appear we’ll be headed back to a four-party system anytime soon. The Bloc Québécois has been virtually wiped off the map, and getting back onto it is going to be very difficult. As the Official Opposition to a majority government, the NDP will be able to maintain with little consequence the soft nationalist positions that have helped it become Quebec’s dominant party, leaving the Bloc very little room to work with.
But whether we’ve seen a permanent realignment in the rest of the country is a different matter. And for the Liberals, there’s perhaps a small silver lining for them in Monday’s result.
The Liberals came into this campaign determined to hold Mr. Harper to another minority. On election night, his majority was the closest they came to good news – because it gives them at least a faint hope of reversing their death spiral.
Radwanski Contributors
Adam Radwanski
Adam Radwanski is the Queen's Park columnist for The Globe and Mail. Previously a member of The Globe's editorial board and the Politics Editor for globeandmail.com, he was formerly the managing editor of Macleans.ca. He has worked as an editorial writer and columnist at the National Post and as a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and The Hill Times, and was the founder of Canada'a first online political magazine. Adam has also written extensively on the arts, doubling as the Post's music critic from 2004-06. He won the 2009 National Newspaper Award for editorial writing, for which he was also a finalist the previous year.
