A leopard is a leopard

Jeff Green | Jul 17, 2014

The published photo of Kathleen Wynne greeting Dalton McGuinty at the Ontario legislature with open arms on the day of the swearing in of her new government, coupled with McGuinty being quoted as saying the recent election was a vindication of his time in office, was a bit hard to take.

After saying “I am not McGuinty; we are a new party, we will rule differently” from the day of her ascendance to party leadership until the day of the election 14 months later, Kathleen Wynne's smile in that photo had a Cheshire cat quality to it. Politicians are a cynical lot. They play a hard game of front page image control and backroom deals and counter deals, and Kathleen Wynne has turned out to be a master at that game.

All of us, the electorate, participated in the ruse, to be sure. We knew what had gone on under McGuinty and we knew Wynne was a loyal member of the cabinet that moved two gas plants, setting off a chain of events that resulted in a $1 billion loss to taxpayers. She sat at the cabinet table as the ORNGE air ambulance debacle unfolded. She was there all along and we know she was there all along. As his replacement, she profited from McGuinty's most cynical act, a prorogation of the legislature for a full six months after his resignation, for no other reason than to create distance for his party as they selected a new leader.

By all rights we should have chucked the Liberals out of power, but since the other parties, for different reasons, did not provide a safe haven for many voters, enough of us decided to swallow Kathleen Wynne's claim that the new Liberals would give us good government, keep up our social programs and somehow balance the books over the next four years.

Even so the decision to rehabilitate McGuinty right after the election came off as a slap in the face.

I recall another Liberal politician, one who in his heyday demonstrated toughness and a common touch in a bit of the way the Kathleen Wynne does, Jean Chretien. At one point he was asked about the Liberal party's past and all the miscues it made when governing in the 1970s and 80s, while he was a cabinet minister “I will not apologize for the past; I was part of it and I am proud of it,” he said.

Kathleen Wynne made a point of apologizing for the past during the recent election campaign. Now, if we ever had a doubt before, we know that it was the thinnest of apologies. In fact she was simply saying whatever she had to in order to give her party the best chance at re-election.

No wonder then, that voices as disparate as Susan Delacourt from the left-leaning Toronto Star and libertarian MPP Randy Hillier are now questioning the political party system. Hillier wants parties to respect the electorate by granting MPs and MPPs a greater role in all aspects of political decision-making, while Delacourt wrote about the idea of eliminating political parties altogether and running provincial and federal governments the way municipalities run, with independent representatives voting their conscience on every proposal that comes forward.

In the short run at least, neither of those things are likely to happen.

We live in an era of power politics. To the victor goes the spoils and Kathleen Wynne now holds all the power in Ontario in her own hands.