Kathleen Wynne's days as Ontario's Liberal leader were always numbered. She came at the end of a long Liberal run. And familiarity breeds contempt. Wynne had an ambitious agenda. Martin Regg Cohn writes:
Wynne put forward a bold new Ontario public pension plan, forcing Ottawa and the other provinces to improve the outdated CPP. She emphasized the environment by building mass transit while embracing cap and trade carbon pricing. She liberated beer from the grip of the big brewers who owned the Beer Store, delivering it into supermarkets. She achieved her promise of a balanced budget (until the auditor general, with peculiar pre-election timing, moved the goalposts). And she appointed a new minister of Indigenous affairs to foster reconciliation.
But she refused to raise taxes to pay for her program and instead decided to sell off a considerable chunk of Hydro One to pay for it. That was a bridge too far:
Wynne called it “asset rotation” and “broadened ownership,” but she got all tangled up.
People confused Hydro One with the defunct Ontario Hydro. Outdated hydro poles were conflated with electricity strategy, even though Ontario Power Generation (OPG) was never on the auction block.
It was Wynne’s undoing. Instead of demonstrating her open-minded approach to practical problem solving, the public took it as proof of the premier’s betrayal of provincial values of public ownership.
And, so, Ontarians sent the Liberals into the wilderness. We will soon learn what, if anything, they have learned in exile.
Image: The Toronto Star
