When Dalton McGuinty is on the defensive, he speaks in a soft monotone meant to lull his critics to sleep. He's been doing a lot of that lately, or at least trying to.
Yesterday, the Ontario Premier emerged at an east-end Toronto school speaking very forcefully indeed. The tone of his voice fluctuated slightly as he delivered his talking points, making him sound vaguely like William Shatner offering a dissertation on education policy.
Mr. McGuinty, there to announce the details of his early learning plan, was plainly excited. And why wouldn't he be? More than anything else he's done in office, and more than anything else he'll do going forward, this was him leaving an indelible mark on his province.
For the most part, premiers write in removable ink. They have the misfortune of spending years painstakingly implementing their policies, only to watch their successors slowly (or not so slowly) undo them.
Mr. McGuinty is anything but immune to that fate. The incremental approach that largely characterized his first term makes him especially susceptible to it because increases to program funding or the stabilization of labour relations are the furthest thing from permanent. Even his bolder initiatives - the "green belt" around the city of Toronto that some of his advisers consider their greatest accomplishment, for instance - could be easily reversed. (In some cases, premiers even jettison their own policies - as Mr. McGuinty has partly done with his reduction of class sizes.)
But with full-day kindergarten, the initiative at the heart of the early learning plan, Mr. McGuinty has found his sweet spot - a policy that he desperately wants to be remembered for, and one that future governments will find very difficult to make Ontarians forget.
"It's not the only test," Mr. McGuinty said in an interview last month. "But one important test of public policy is, do I think that anybody would seek to undo this. I find it hard to see somebody seeking to undo this."
He has a point, although it's open for debate whether that's a question of public policy or public opinion.
It remains to be seen, a long ways down the road, whether the early education gurus Mr. McGuinty cited yesterday (among them Fraser Mustard and Margaret McCain) are correct that putting four- and five-year-olds in school for the entire day will pave the way for a brighter future. What's clearer is that it will make the lives of many working parents a great deal easier, and that very few of them are going to be clamouring for the government to make their lives harder again.
In an interview yesterday, Charles Pascal - the former senior civil servant who helped craft the early learning plan - compared it to universal health care. That's a big stretch; as Dr. Pascal conceded, it doesn't have quite the same revolutionary feel. But it may become an institution in much the same way. How many parties are going to run for office on a promise of less education?
That's an argument that, even as he calls for cutbacks to address the province's massive deficit, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak may be loath to make in Ontario's 2011 election campaign. If he does, he could help elect Mr. McGuinty to a third term. And if he doesn't, two years into a five-year implementation plan, it's fair to assume that nobody will do so after that rollout is complete.
For a projected annual cost of $1.5-billion, then, Mr. McGuinty has acquired a legacy. And because nobody wants their legacy to be half-assed, he has gone further than expected in adopting Dr. Pascal's recommendations - notably fee-based before- and after-school programs not just for kindergarten students, but (where demand warrants) for older children as well. After months of hints that the Liberals would stick fairly rigidly to their previous campaign commitment, which was just all-day kindergarten, some schools are going to look quite a bit like the community hubs Dr. Pascal envisioned.
No wonder Mr. McGuinty was in such a buoyant mood yesterday - at least to start.
As the announcement wore on, and reporters' questions turned from kindergarten to $25-billion deficits and declining poll numbers, the Premier's energy seemed to sap. His voice grew softer. The monotone returned.
Early learning evidently will not make all his problems disappear. But it will at least give him something to look forward to.
