Dalton McGuinty: The Sun's Favourite Piñata

Keep swinging 'til the candy falls out.

The resignation of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has certain sections of the Ontario press all twitterpated, in the hope that Dalton McGuinty will also soon fall on his sword.

It’s a little early to predict a premature exit for McGuinty, but news yesterday that an arbitrator has sided with the Ontario nurses union and awarded them a 2 per cent annual wage increase over the next two years will not help. The optics for the Ontario premier are very bad here, because while he legislated a wage freeze for the province’s non-unionized employees, he “left things open with their unionized colleagues, hoping they would voluntarily accept a freeze too, just because they’re good guys,” writes the National Post’s Kelly McParland. This was a mistake, says McParland, because “(w)hen was the last time a union worried about anyone outside the union?” McGuinty’s in trouble because if he legislates a wage freeze for the unions too, he’ll face organized labour’s considerable ire at the polls next year. “Of course, showing some spine in the face of a $21-billion deficit might win him some admiration among people who aren’t employed by the government, but Mr. McGuinty seems disinclined to take that chance.”

You get the feeling McGuinty couldn’t win admiration among Sun Media columnists if he took a union leader out to the parking lot at Queen’s Park, stripped him naked and covered him in honey. Case in point yet another anti-McGuinty piece today by Christina Blizzard, in which she blames the premier for a slew of bad policies (some with good reason), but also takes him to task for a dubious pamphlet defending green energy’s high hydro bills, which was published by a lobbying company evidently unaffiliated with McGuinty's government. The logic is, presumably, that if the Liberals favour green energy, they’re responsible for the actions of anyone else who also favours green energy. That train of thought is as hard to follow as Blizzard’s tortured metaphor: “McGuinty’s well-oiled election express is off the tracks. It’s starting to look more like a gravy train — and the oil is turning to grease.” Or something.