{"id":4155,"date":"2012-10-16T18:14:26","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T22:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=4155"},"modified":"2012-10-16T18:14:26","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T22:14:26","slug":"dalton-mcguinty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=4155","title":{"rendered":"Dalton McGuinty"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A toast to McGuinty or a toast to his departure?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every pundit, commentator, and Joe Schmoe with a Twitter account has weighed in on Dalton McGuinty’s legacy today. The range of opinions is vast, as you might expect for any leader who has been in power for nearly a decade – even one as bland, centrist, and pragmatic as Dalton McGuinty. I’m sure we’ll see the same spectrum of analysis when Stephen Harper finally decides to call it a career and focus all of his energies on finishing the hockey book.<\/p>\n

While I found McGuinty a bit too risk-averse for my liking during his first term, I’ve grown rather fond of the man since moving to Ontario, so I won’t pretend to be unbiased in my assessment. I do think you can objectively say he made tangible improvements to Ontario’s education system, and struggled to get the province’s financial house in order during a recession that hit Ontario especially hard. <\/p>\n

Faced with the downturn, he did show boldness bringing in the HST and trying to get civil servant contracts under control. I think those moves were for the better, others will feel they were for the worse (including many Liberals), but you can’t say he did them as a cynical vote grab – those were gutsy decisions, taken to dig Ontario out from under a mound of debt. To me, they elevate McGuinty beyond being merely a political autobot programmed to hold power, into a true leader who is worthy of adoration or hate. That’s why we’re seeing the full gamut of emotions today.<\/p>\n

On the whole, voters themselves likely passed the fairest judgment on the McGuinty legacy. He was given a rare third term after a campaign in which he ran hard on his record<\/a> – but it was far from a resounding endorsement. So, “good but not great<\/em>“…which is better than voters will say about most politicians.<\/p>\n

There was obviously a lot more to Dalton McGuinty’s time as Premier than that, but how you view his legacy will depend largely on your political stripes. Personally, I feel both the Liberal Party and Ontario benefited from McGuinty’s time in power, and will be worse off with his departure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every pundit, commentator, and Joe Schmoe with a Twitter account has weighed in on Dalton McGuinty’s legacy today. The range of opinions is vast, as you might expect for any leader who has been in power for nearly a decade – even one as bland, centrist, and pragmatic as Dalton McGuinty. I’m sure we’ll see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[55],"tags":[1001],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4155"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4168,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4155\/revisions\/4168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}