I was living in the UK for almost the entire time that Dalton McGuinty was Premier of Ontario. He unexpectedly resigned just after I moved back here, which I'm sure is just a coincidence. Even from afar you could tell that he wasn't doing a good job, but it was only when I got to see him on TV that I realized what a self-righteous, arrogant dolt he was.
A succession of wildly expensive boondoggles made his position untenable, and might have been expected to consign his Liberal Party to a long spell in the wilderness too. The fact that his successor, Kathleen Wynne, managed to win the provincial election is mainly a tribute to the ineptitude of her opponents on both left and right.
McGuinty is now trying to rebuild his reputation. He's published a memoir that, based on the extracts I've seen, is unlikely to trouble the Christmas bestseller lists*. And today the Globe and Mail has given him space for a column in which he purports to explain why going "green and clean" won't come cheap.
He's right about that, at least based on his own record. As the province's Auditor-General reported last week, the McGuinty-led push for green energy saddled Ontarians with $35 billion in unnecessary costs, with much more to come in the next decade. Notice, please: the $35 billion is not the cost of the green energy measures: it's the excess between what they actually cost and what they would have cost if the government had been half-way competent. It is, purely and simply, taxpayers' money down the drain.
McGuinty's self-apologia today is nauseating, but it's also important. Now that the Paris climate accord is in place, controlling the costs of the shift to cleaner energy is paramount. If there are many more Dalton McGuintys out there, voters and taxpayers will quickly rebel, however virtuous the underlying goal may be.
* Think I'm being harsh? Check this out!
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