They tell us that Premier Wynne is wondering why she has failed to connect with Ontario voters. She thinks she won the last provincial election as a politician. In truth, she was given a conditional go-ahead because her opponents fell on their faces. She won a chance to prove herself. She failed.
Andrea Horwath was leader of a party with nowhere to go. And she went nowhere. Timmy Hudak was a leader who said he would fire 100,000 people and paid the price. When you count the individuals and their extended families that he threatened, it adds up to more than 2 million voters.
And that left us with Ms. Wynne. Her challenge was to show us why she thought she could do more than her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty. He left her the legacy of the Mississauga and Oakville gas-fired electric plants that were needed to feed local electrical needs. The local NIMBY’s were so obstinate that they forced the government to move the plants to out near Sarnia and to near Napanee. The cost of bringing the power back to Mississauga and Oakville is shared by Hydro One electric distribution customers across Ontario.
The people who really looked stupid in this situation were the Mississauga NIMBY’s. That gas-fired turbine plant was what is known as a co-generation plant, it is noiseless, hardly polluting at all and, in addition to electric power, it can be a very useful neighbour in terms of providing low-cost, pollution-free heating and cooling for local office buildings, schools, apartment buildings and other municipal facilities.
But Ms. Wynne could do little to ease that problem and she was looking for other solutions for Ontario. There is always something that needs fixing.
That was when she looked at perennial problems such as pensions and beer. The pension problem was an easy one because all her government had to do was propose and the federal government agreed to take it over. It hardly made sense for two separate governments to provide Canada Pension Plan payments. Beer distribution has been a thorny issue for years and the Wynne Liberals thought it was time for beer in the better grocery stores.
But beer was her downfall. They had lots of media conferences, they had lots of grand kick-offs but the implementation program is taking years. It makes the government look silly. And Kathleen Wynne has hung herself as Ontario’s granny. Do nothing promptly, is her epitaph.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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