This is not to complain about John Fraser’s performance as interim Ontario liberal leader at Queen’s Park. John has been doing his usual good job without much resources. It is just that the sooner we can have a new leader in place at Queen’s Park the better. We have to ensure that Ontario lives up to its liberal heritage.
And it was that liberal heritage that built this province. It was my relative Oliver Mowat, who was a Father of Confederation and who served as liberal premier of Ontario for almost 24 years at the end of the 19th Century. It was his determination that strengthened provincial rights in those early years. From the Upper Canada Rebellion onward, it was the early liberals who pushed to create the open and progressive type of government that liberalism offers Canadians today.
It is why I was so disappointed with Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie’s opening salvo in the current liberal leadership contest. She actually complained about the McGinty – Wynne years in the premier’s office in Ontario being too left wing. If either Dalton McGinty or Kathleen Wynne were left wing, then I must be a butterfly.
Sure, the last two liberal premiers at Queen’s Park did some things that might have come across as progressive, but in balance they were certainly not aggressive lefties. McGinty might have moved us forward on the Greenbelt and ended the era of coal-generated electricity in the province but I got the feeling from him that if we did not go along with his concern for the environment, we were in for a spanking.
And as a lefty, Kathleen Wynne was a joke. I could never think of her approach to beer and wine in grocery stores as anything more than a yawn. That was not only silly the way she did it but it made progressiveness a joke.
And if any other politician ever concedes an election before the polls close, they should be pilloried for the rest of their lives.
There was some good young talent running to replace Kathleen Wynne, but the powers-that-be in the liberal party hand-picked Steven Del Duca to replace her—which was a really dumb move. He never went back to Queen’s Park, he never talked like a leader and he never looked like a leader.
This time, the party has a chance to pick a real leader. I think there are a couple good possibilities in the race already.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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