Just The Right Thing To Do

CP/Chris Young

If there was ever something that former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty knew to do, thanks to the examples set him by his parents, and his Catholic background, it was to recognize the right thing to do, and to unfailingly practise it. His family was devoted to public service, holding it in highest esteem, and so too was he devoted to the free choice of politically recognizing right from wrong, and always choosing the right thing to do.

He was also always quite appalled and remains so to this day, at the conscienceless partisanship of those of his counterparts who are all so wedded to the ideologies of their particular parties. His party members are not like that; they are people of conscience and determination, like himself. He should know. And it is just too bad, a real public shame, that not all politicians are as devoted to the public weal as he has so obviously been.

He would prefer that no one make inconvenient references to some of the issues he had to deal with to the benefit of all Ontarians. Among them the standoff at Caledonia, when first-nations warriors felt free to behave like thugs and threaten homeowners on disputed land, while also destroying public property. Then there's the ehealth fiasco and the billion lost there, and while we're at it, the unfortunate Ornge scandal, among other issues poorly dealt with and costly to the taxpayer.

His focus was on improving the province's health and education systems, and he succeeded admirably, he'll inform anyone who is interested in hearing, first-hand, from the source. His interest in and devotion to the environment also set him apart from all the others. He made it his personal mandate to explore alternative energy sources, to shut down coal-fired sources, to campaign for wind, solar and hydro energy, and proceed cautiously with nuclear.

Quality costs more. People simply had to become accustomed to the need to be more responsible, to be prepared to pay more, far more, for the things that mattered. The annoying way in which the opposition at Queen's Park and the public keep returning to the cancelled gas plants, linking those events to the 2011 election, is scandalous in and of itself. Yes, there was a penalty to pay, but he listened to the good people of Oakville and Mississauga, didn't he?

He listened, and he did the right thing; responded by cancelling the plants, so that nothing like that would stand next to a public school. He has no regrets. What, after all, is a $600,000-million loss when we're talking quality of life? And he really has no time to spare for the all-party legislative committee grilling him over the issue of deleted gas plant records.

"I accept responsibility for that. I should have found some way, at some point in time, to say, 'You know that bill? Somebody's got to be on that", speaking of the very Archives and Record-Keeping Act that his own administration brought in, for greater accountability. And which, in the end, turned out to be so tediously inconvenient for his chief of staff and that of the energy minister to adhere to.

"All the key people who were involved with this (gas plant cancellation file) cleaned out all their records. That's suspicious", commented NDP MPP Peter Tabuns, a probe committee member. As for private citizen McGuinty's plaintive complaints about partisanship, many hold him personally to have exemplified that particular popular political trait at Queen's Park.

And, as Mr. Tabuns later remarked, partisanship is "just the way this place functions. It's no more biased than a court of law", since all parties have a voice and the opportunity to be heard, leading to a situation where the "jury (voters) can figure it out". Destroying the track record, important government documents simply isn't on; any nitwit could recognize that, let alone high-paid executive officers.

While Privacy Commissioner Anne Cavoukian testified earlier that she felt she had no platform to believe Mr. McGuinty had actually ordered former Liberal aides to delete emails related to the cancellations, or was aware that they were engaging in that kind of (partisan) misfiling stupidity, it was extremely suspect that no email records to such an important file remained, she affirmed.

"It's truly an incredible occurrence that not one email can be found." The act, after all, she said acerbically is named "the Archives and Record-Keeping Act, not the Record-Deleting Act."