Former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has kept a low profile since leading her Liberal Party to a crushing defeat in the Provincial election last June. She resigned the leadership of the party right after the vote, leaving the rump Liberal caucus -- seven members, not enough to claim official party status -- under the temporary leadership of a nonentity whose name I can't even be bothered to Google. However, Wynne suddenly emerged back into the political spotlight this week, and mostly not in a good way.
Early in the week, Wynne put on her mother-knows-best garb to introduce a bill in the provincial legislature to improve safety on school buses, mainly through the mandatory use of seatbelts. Hard to argue with that, though one might wonder why, if it's such a good idea, Wynne and her predecessor Dalton McGuinty didn't quite get around to it during the fifteen years they were governing the Province.
Without seeming too cynical, it looks very much as if Wynne chose this timing for the bill so as to receive at least a few favourable headlines in the media, because the rest of the week was a lot less kind. The Ford government has been running hearings (kangaroo court might be a better term) on the alleged wasteful spending of the Wynne regime. Wynne herself was called upon to testify about her Fair Hydro scheme, a pre-election goody aimed at appeasing voter anger over soaring energy prices.
The rise in energy prices largely relates to a poorly-designed clean energy plan, devised by McGuinty but enthusiastically continued by Wynne. Wind turbines have sprung up all over the Province, compelling the construction of all kinds of backup facilities because wind is an unreliable power source. Hydro, gas and (whisper it) nuclear capacity already in place can in fact easily supply all the Province's needs, but wind power has "first to the grid" rights. A lot of cheap hydro power is regularly spilled, and a whole lot of surplus power routinely sold at knockdown prices to US utilities.
Wynne's "solution" was to extend the amortization term for fixed power assets in order to borrow money against said assets to keep prices down in the near term. This of course just pushes the burden onto future power customers, but that's not Wynne's problem, at least as she saw it. What was her problem was that the added borrowing would increase the deficit at an awkward time -- so the power utility was instructed to carry out the borrowing, keeping it off the Provincial books.
Wynne gave as good as she got at the hearing, which was made easier by the fact that the Tories have not reversed the Fair Hydro scheme, having no better idea of their own. Still, Wynne was forced to admit that her own civil servants had been aghast at the scheme, but she had carried on with it anyway despite their concerns.
Next came the Provincial Auditor-General's report. The A-G and the Wynne government were perpetually at loggerheads and the report reflects that. It contains a veritable litany of mismanagement, overspending and duplicity. Needless to say the Ford government is making hay with it, and will doubtless use it to justify the spending cuts that are clearly coming when a full budget is tabled in the spring.
It would be gratifying to report that things are different under the new Ford regime, but that's not even remotely true. Ford and his cronies are quickly building a rap sheet of their own. One of the government's first moves was to fire the CEO of the part-privatized Hydro One utility, whom Ford had dubbed the "six-million dollar man" because of his exorbitant salary. It turned out that firing this worthy cost a whole lot more than six mil' -- and this week the cost ballooned way higher. Hydro One had been planning to buy a US utility, Avista, but the deal has been nixed by US regulators because of the demonstrable risk of political interference. That leaves Hydro One facing a drop-dead fee in excess of $100 million, which will presumably be rolled into the rate base and picked up by consumers.
There's more. Ford unilaterally cut the size of Toronto City Council, in the middle of an election campaign, without ever having mentioned such a plan during his own election campaign. He has engineered the appointment of a long-time crony as Ontario Police Commissioner despite the fact that the gent in question never rose above the rank of Superintendent during his active policing career. The Province's chief auditor (not the same as the A-G) has resigned rather than sign off on the Finance Minister's wildly-overstated estimate of the fiscal deficit inherited from his predecessor. And so on.
Comparisons between Ford and Donald Trump become easier to make with each passing day. Ford loves rallies, craves adoration and clearly thinks that his position as Premier means that the rules, whether of politics or of simple common decency, just don't apply to him. He is starting to make noises about ambitions in Federal politics. We're probably safe until after next October's Federal election, but if current Tory leader makes a hash of things, the rest of Canada may have to start bracing itself for the Doug Ford experience.
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