Going ... Going ... Gone!

It was his Catholic heritage, steering him in the right direction, morally and ethically. It was his father's sterling example as someone who dedicated himself to the public weal. Could his sons do less? Particularly that son named after him? Ottawa's Dalton McGuinty went to Queen's Park and made it his very own pulpit from which to preach social McGuintyism. He knew what was best for Ontarians and meant to guide them firmly into the direction he selected for the province.

Under his watch the province grew poorer, very much so. A situation he ascribed to global influences beyond his management, as smokestack industries and long established manufacturing gradually vanished to take root elsewhere, in developing countries where wages were more 'reasonably' affordable for manufacturing to thrive. And unemployment rose in Ontario, and the province became a "have-not" province.

Ontario, once recognized as the engine of the Canadian economy brought low. Under Dalton McGuinty's watch. Well, it was Alberta's fault, not much Premier McGuinty could do about the high dollar as a result of the oil patch wealth. He was no Bill Harris, presiding over a thriving province. He was, though, an affable, unflappable Wiley Coyote. A survivor, who piously intoned he was committed to doing the "right thing".

If that meant taking the energy file and altering the status quo so dramatically that voters who kept returning him to power groaned under the weight of steep rises in energy costs while the province had a glut of 'clean-sourced' power that couldn't be used, so it was sold below cost and even given away, so be it. He was doing the right thing, for he had a conscience.

Nor was it his fault that the province lost almost a billion dollars in funding an eHealth initiative that never got off the ground, while the chief executioner of the project was handsomely rewarded; just one of those things that happened while the premier was doing the right thing.

And when the province's Ornge air ambulance service was being drained of funds to pay the handsome salaries of its chief functionaries, and kickbacks became the order of the day, and inadequate aircraft ordered, due diligence in oversight was one of those unfortunate victims of doing the right thing, too.

The cancellation of the Mississauga and Oakville gas plants seemed like the right thing to do to save Liberal seats during the provincial election that returned the Liberals to an almost-majority government, third time around, but the backlash must have surprised the normally unflappably avuncular premier who informed taxpayers that the penalty costs would be minimal, and cancelling the unwanted plants was simply the 'right thing to do'.

And then the price tag edged up beyond $600-million in penalties and it didn't seem so much like the right thing was done, even though Dalton McGuilty avowed he would do it all over again because he did the right thing; people protested, didn't want the plants where they were planned, and that was that; he listened and did the right thing.

Because he's such a humble man he declared himself prepared to step aside as premier. In so doing, throwing his Liberal party a lifeline to continue as the province's guiding light. And he'd be happy to sit out his term usefully as a member of the Legislature. And then, oops, revelations that all the emails pertaining to the waste of almost a billion dollars of tax funding were routinely deleted; no records, no proof of what, exactly went down.

Not his fault, he hadn't ordered their extinction. But he would do penance and step aside from the Legislature, go back to private life, sigh, having done his bit for the ingrates of Ontario.