Ontario Premier McGuinty has crawled into bed with Russian Prime Minister Valdimar Putin – both steadfastly refusing to give up power – Putin by naming his successor and then reneging on it and McGuinty by suddenly resigning as premier and on the way out the door proroguing the legislature indefinitely.
This surprise announcement comes only hours after Progressive Conservative Leader of the Opposition, Tim Hudak accused McGuinty and other senior members of the Liberal government of lying to MPPs about the full disclosure of all documents related to cancelled gas-powered stations in Mississauga and Oakville. The Liberals claimed that they had turned over all relevant documents the previous month. Not so. Thousands more documents were released later.
McGuinty’s Liberals claimed that “there was no deliberate attempt to provide incorrect information to the legislature. The proroguration will result in the cancellation of committee hearings on the already cancelled gas plants. Politicians on all sides of the aisle are squirming realizing that there may be a political bombshell in the offing.
The only guaranteed result of McGuinty’s action is to neutralize opposition attacks on his politically driven cancellation of the two gas-fired generating plants, at a cost to taxpayers of at least $230 million – and perhaps ten times that amount.
Recently, Energy Minister Chris Bentley announced that the government’s main electricity agency, the Ontario Power Authority had successfully negotiated the Liberals out from under the government’s breach of an estimated $1.2-billion contract to build a 900-megawatt gas plant in Oakville. To get out of the deal, in the face of popular opposition, the plant will instead be built in Bath, Ont. The cost of the breach of contract and the move was originallly said by Bentley to be only $40-million.
Full details of this fiasco may never be known.
But at what cost. With the legislature prorogued there’s no more Question Periods, no longer a finance committee to raise inconvenient issues and press for documents, and no worrisome contempt hearing for Energy Minister Chris Bentley. McGuinty’s ill-fated action killed several unfinished bills and will leave the people of Ontario no way to keep the provincial government accountable.
The Globe & Mail’s Gloria Galloway said that McGuinty’s decision to prorogue has provided some discomfort for the federal Liberals where Parliament has been twice prorogued in the past four years by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Once in
2008 to prevent a coalition from topling his minority government and in 2009 in what federal Liberals decried “as an abrogation of democracy.” I guess it depends on whose ox is being gored.
To a wily politician, like McGuinty or Harper, prorogation is like dying and going to Heaven. It clears all bills and motions on the order paper, including the pending motion on the Liberal government’s contempt of parliament. McGuinty is acting on the advice of his political advisors who have convinced him that he is within his right to prorogue as a political tactic. Sure, the move was both constitutional and legitimate, but that doesn’t mean he was right to use it to avoid being held accountable.
Furthermore, how can McGuinty make a public announcement that he is resigning from the Premier of Ontario’s job and carry on ordering his ministers to resign from the cabinet if they are planning to campaign to replace him as Liberal leader? Is McGuinty trying to resign without having to give up power? Or is it possible that Premier Dalton McGuinty is not going to really resign from office until some of the impediments to him leaving office has been resolved in his favour? I think the answer could be in seeking career advice from Russian Premier Valdimar Putin, who has been hanging around a long time too.