Former Ontario premier just talked and talked

TORONTO — Honest to Pete, Dalton McGuinty didn’t miss a trick.

As the ancient Pindar noted, “If one but tell a thing well, it moves on with undying voice, and over the fruitful earth and across the sea goes the bright gleam of noble deeds ever unquenchable.”

This is pretty much what the former Ontario premier set out to do during his appearance at the Standing Committee on Justice Policy, which is attempting to examine his government’s belated and expensive cancellation of gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga, the latter announced as a Liberal party campaign promise.

For the record, the figures are all over the map, with the Liberals and McGuinty claiming $230 million to cancel both plants and the latest best estimate at least $585 million.

McGuinty too wanted to tell his version well, so well that these decisions, for which Ontarians are going to pay through the nose, and perhaps even his legacy, might also have the cast of noble deeds.

Toward that goal, McGuinty invoked the spectre of asthma-suffering children gasping their way to school, poor wee lambs, in the shadow of a smokestack.

This was by way of explanation for his motivation in cancelling the two plants: Yes, he acknowledged, the asthma-suffering chil- dren were always there, wheezing about, and there were asthma-suffering kiddies in other places where the government did plop down similar plants (hello, York Region!) over much objection, but they were asthma-suffering young ’uns not in Liberal ridings, as New Democrat Peter Tabuns pointed out, so not “as high an issue” in McGuinty’s mind.

He agreed his government handled it all rather badly — put the plants in the wrong place in the first instance, were too slow in deciding to kill them off and “less than stellar” in getting the right numbers on the costs out to the public — but he, and it, meant well.

(He appears to have meant “less than stellar” in the sense that the Maple Leafs the other night were “less than stellar” against the Bruins.)

And yes, it all may have looked like a crass effort to save Liberal political skin, McGuinty said, but it wasn’t: It was the right thing to do, and his government had struggled with the issue “hard, sincerely, earnestly.” Therefore, went the intended inference, they were also sincere and earnest. You see?

There was no subterfuge, conspiracy or malfeasance at work, he said. He assured the committee of that. He said it twice; ergo, it must be so.

What there was, well, confusion, especially about how much stopping the plants, renegotiating the contracts and relocating them would cost.

(An aside, throughout McGuinty’s testimony, it struck me that this was exactly how I would sound if my banker ever asked me how it was that my house renovation cost what it did, lasted three years plus and where the hell was the paperwork, anyway, even a scrap of it?)

McGuinty said his office couldn’t have been expected to have “the capacity” to do that kind of figuring, he said, and didn’t.

Was there even an upper limit? the delightful New Democrat Taras Natyshak asked. Did the government have a number beyond which it would not go, a line in the sand, or was it to be “a moon landing, to boldly go where no government has ever gone before? Was the sky the limit?”

“For me,” McGuinty said, “it was about doing the right thing.” He said he was “not going to engage in speculation,” as late to that discovery as he was to childhood asthma.

Then he quoted himself, as he was apparently once quoted in the Toronto Star, “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”

And he had certainly not prorogued the legislature to take the steam out of the committee, which was then, as Natyshak reminded him, close to starting its hearings and getting documents.

Rather, McGuinty said, he had been stricken by the “level of rancour and dysfunction” at the legislature.

“I knew this was an opportunity for all to cool down,” he said, “to

For me, it was about doing the right thing DALTON MCGUINTY

enjoy the benefits of a time out.”

That’s right: The former premier of the province shut down the legislature because in his wisdom, he thought MPPs were misbehaving and needed a time out.

As others before me have said, I am not making this up.

McGuinty threw in a popculture reference, telling the committee early on that though he understands “there’s a certain narrative” at play, as “someone once said, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t try to outsmart the truth, should just let it breathe.’”

The someone he attempted to quote was the character Alfred Pennyworth, valet to Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman, in The Dark Knight Rises.

He mentioned his mom, Elizabeth, this as to why some of his senior staff were dispatched to muddle about in negotiations to cancel the Oakville plant.

Why yes, he exclaimed in reply to one of the big fat beach ball questions regularly lobbed in to him by one of his fellows, Liberal Bob Delaney, it was absolutely normal for his staff “to meet stakeholders” on many, many issues.

All they were doing was keeping open the lines of communication. Here, he quoted his mom Elizabeth, who told him on his wedding night, “Whatever happens, keep talking.”

Curses, but the 24th Ontario premier took her at her word. He talked and talked, and then he talked some more. He told the thing well, and dreamed of the bright gleam of noble deeds.