Rose-tinted glasses at McGuinty portrait reveal.
McGuinty’s full portrait can be rather shadowy
Ain’t no flies on Dalton McGuinty. Just over t hr e e years since he scurried from the Ontario Premier’s Office with cartoon stink clouds chasing behind him and copies of his toe- curling apologia at No. 6 on Amazon’s bestseller list of Ontario- related biographies, he was back at Queen’s Park Tuesday evening for the unveiling of his official portrait.
“Tonight you bear witness to the fate that awaits all of our premiers,” he began, having been welcomed warmly by his successor, Kathleen Wynne. “First they paint you in warm and glowing tones. Then they frame you. And then they hang you.”
There were gales of laughter from a big happy Liberal family. Former premier David Peterson was there, as were former cabinet ministers Gerard Kennedy and George Smitherman, and McGuinty’s former principal secretary, Gerald Butts — who now serves in that role to some acclaim for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — and scores more besides.
“Together we did not passively preside,” McGuinty said of his Liberal compatriots. “Our government was proudly activist.
“Our schools are better. Our health care is better. Our air and our water are cleaner. And our economy, battered as it was by the great recession, keeps growing stronger.”
Some readers will likely roll their eyes clean out of their sockets. Full- day kindergarten is more a matter of question marks than exclamation points. Electricity prices have skyrocketed. The provincial debt is, at the very least, a significant concern. The McGuinty legacy remains a work in progress.
But there are much more immediate concerns. McGuinty’s f ormer chief of staff, David Livingston, and his deputy, Laura Miller, are due in court Wednesday on charges of breach of trust and mischief over a bewildering alleged plan to wipe computers in the premier’s office clean of incriminating emails about the nakedly political and shockingly expensive cancellation of two gas- fired power plants in ridings the Liberals probably would have won anyway.
As ever, on Tuesday McGuinty played up the inherent virtue of his government — its firm resolve to do the right thing at all costs ( including, say, $ 1 billion here or there). And he pointedly extended his thanks to his staff for “their tireless efforts in support of me and … the welfare of the people of Ontario.”
“I make no exceptions in this regard,” he said. “My praise and gratitude are for all my staff — each and every one a person of good character with whom I had the honour to work.”
And if Livingston or Miller are found guilty, what then?
The McGuinty portrait arrived on an unusual timeline. Frank Miller and John Robarts were the last premiers not to wait at least four years; Peterson waited nearly a decade. Bill Davis was the last sitting premier to see the portrait of a predecessor from his own party unveiled. Let’s just say John Robarts was rather less an anchor on his fortunes than McGuinty is on Wynne’s.
This week, the Toronto Star ran an editorial cartoon in which McGuinty’s portrait eyes bear down on Wynne. “It’s kinda creepy how his legacy seems to follow you,” she thinks. ( We get it. Yeesh!) McGuinty faces no criminal charges and was never subject to any police investigation. But if Wynne were running a compellingly different operation, his legacy, and particularly the way it ended — prorogation, an ever- worsening gas plant fiasco — would still be a serious obstacle for her to overcome.
Yet Wynne has her own problems. Lots of them. Gerry Lougheed was doing her bidding when he allegedly dangled jobs in front of a Sudbury, Ont., candidate the party didn’t want around anymore, in furtherance of winning one byelection. The idea that a predictable recent Liberal loss in Whitby- Oshawa would undermine her leadership is laughable — yet the resources the party expended trying to win it, with ridiculous ads accusing the Tories of wanting to relight coal plants and a melodramatic Wynne-Trudeau rally in the dying days of the campaign, suggest this win- at- all- costs mentality might only have intensified with the transition of power.
McGuinty was at his hard- t o- hate best Tuesday, looking no more than three- quarters his 60 years. His adorable wee grandson, seated in the front row and clearly quite a handful, was most intent on visiting his granddad on stage. He threw a minor fit when initially denied, but eventually got his way at the close of business as the strings played O Canada. Exasperating and misguided and selfdeluded as I have always found Dalton McGuinty, I have never thought there wasn’t a reasonably decent, well- intentioned person in there.
But his portrait is a bit odd. “He’s a tall guy and he wasn’t quite comfortable. I hope people don’t notice,” the artist, Istvan Nyikos, told the Star. It’s tough not to notice. Nyikos makes the preternaturally composed McGuinty look uncommonly ill at ease, nervous and vulnerable. History may or may not prove it a deft portrayal.