Marin says ‘enough is enough’
Former provincial ombudsman to run for Tories in byelection
OTTAWA — Former Ontario ombudsman André Marin wants to run for the opposition Progressive Conservatives in the upcoming Ottawa-Vanier byelection, driven into elected politics by anger over petty tweaks to electricity prices announced in the latest throne speech.
“You have an institution, which is parliament, and the speech from the throne is reserved for some pretty big stuff. Policy directions, big changes,” Marin said in an interview Friday. Instead, Premier Kathleen Wynne used the Sept. 12 speech to tout a hydro rebate equivalent to provincial sales tax and a plan for more daycare spaces.
“It’s a teeny weeny, itsy-bitsy hyperpartisan speech and I said to myself, enough is enough. Hydro rates are soaring through the roof, people are paying $1,000 a year more on hydro since the Liberals are in and now we get thrown this bone. Kathleen Wynne’s world is like Alice in Wonderland. It’s this blue-sky world and we’re worrying about our grandchildren when we can’t pay today’s bills,” Marin said.
He contacted the Progressive Conservatives and said he wanted in. Leader Patrick Brown welcomed him with open arms.
“There’s a saying in Ottawa-Vanier that all you need to get elected is to be a donkey with a red bowtie. I think those days are over. The riding has been Liberal since 1971, which is the year the Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup, the year Pierre Trudeau married Margaret Trudeau. It’s been way too long. The people of Ottawa-Vanier have been taken for granted,” Marin said.
(The Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967. Though that was the year Tory Jules Morin last won the seat for the Progressive Conservatives. He held it till 1971.)
Marin’s career includes stints as a Crown prosecutor, director of Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit that examines serious injuries and deaths involving police, and the federal military ombudsman. Marin now teaches part-time in the University of Ottawa’s law faculty and writes a column for the Sun newspapers in Ottawa and Toronto. He’s a father of six children.
As Ontario’s ombudsman, he denounced government carelessness and malfeasance, issuing reports with eye-catching visuals — he commissioned an artist to draw Hydro One as a pig gorged on money with plugs for trotters for a report on the utility’s billing practices — and giving take-no-prisoners news conferences. He issued fiery reports on prisoner abuse in Ontario’s jails, on crowd-control tactics during mass protests, on slack oversight of home daycares.
“I was always a champion for the little guy,” he said.
He was also a self-promoter who campaigned openly for more powers, was the subject of labour and human-rights complaints by his staff, and billed hundreds of thousands in expenses related to living in Ottawa while working in Toronto. When his last term was due to expire a year ago last May, he organized a Twitter protest demanding that he be reappointed.
He got a short extension, just long enough for the government to settle on a different successor: Former federal taxpayers’ ombudsman Paul Dubé. Dubé is much lower-key and believes a less confrontational attitude than Marin’s gets better results. In a late-evening Twitter venting just the other day, Marin called him a doormat, Marie Antoinette and a village idiot.
He was defending himself, he said Friday. If he’s occasionally gone farther than he should have, he still feels good about his public persona overall.
“I’ve been my own boss all my life. Of course it’s a different transition and I fully accept it. But I believe in the leader of the Progressive Conservative party. He’s fiscally responsible, socially progressive, and that pretty well describes me. I will be a good party player,” Marin said.
Asked what issues need particular attention in Ottawa-Vanier, Marin returned to electricity prices — “the issues that are affecting everyone across Ontario. We are creating a new league of poverty over hydro rates,” he said.
Marin lives in south Nepean, well away from Ottawa-Vanier, but he said his years studying and now teaching at the University of Ottawa give him a strong connection. Plus all the time and money he’s spent in ByWard Market restaurants, he joked.
The timing of the election is in Wynne’s hands; she hasn’t called it yet. The Liberals convinced U of O law dean and civil-rights advocate Nathalie Des Rosiers (the head of the law faculty where Marin teaches now) to seek their nomination in Ottawa-Vanier. The New Democrats have nominated Claude Bisson, a retired civilian RCMP executive and brother of their house leader Gilles Bisson.
University of Ottawa education professor Cameron Montgomery also declared he wanted to run under the Tory banner but will switch to challenging Liberal cabinet minister Marie-France Lalonde in Orléans in the next general election instead, the party says.