Dalton James Patrick McGuinty Jr. (born July 19, 1955) is a Canadian former politician who served as the 24th premier of Ontario from 2003 to 2013. He was the first Liberal leader to win two majority governments since Mitchell Hepburn nearly 70 years earlier. In 2011, he became the first Liberal premier to secure a third consecutive term since Oliver Mowat after his party was re-elected in that year's provincial election.
McGuinty was born in Ottawa. He studied science at university, but ended up taking a law degree and practiced law in Ottawa. His father served as a Liberal member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) from 1987 until his death in 1990. A provincial election was called for later that year and McGuinty successfully ran in his father's seat, though the incumbent Liberal government was defeated. After party leader Lyn McLeod resigned due to her leading the Liberals to a second defeat in the 1995 election, McGuinty was elected leader in the 1996 leadership election. McGuinty lost the 1999 election to Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harris, but won a resounding majority in 2003.
From 2003 to 2007, McGuinty's government increased spending for health care and education. He won another majority in 2007, though his second term was deeply affected by the 2008 financial crisis, which saw government revenues plummet. In addition, a scandal developed around a new plan to update health care records called eHealth Ontario. Just prior to the 2011 election, another controversy developed when McGuinty's government cancelled gas plants that were located in key Liberal ridings and were widely opposed by the local residents. The cost to cancel the projects was close to $1 billion and the move was seen as pandering to the electorate in a few electoral districts. The scandal caused the Liberals to be reduced to a minority government.
McGuinty continued as premier for another year and a half, but the continuing gas plant issue refused to go away. He prorogued the legislature in October 2012 before being succeeded as Liberal leader and premier by Kathleen Wynne in February 2013. McGuinty resigned his own seat in June 2013. Shortly after leaving the legislature, he was named a senior fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Early life McGuinty was born in Ottawa, Ontario. His parents are politician and professor Dalton McGuinty Sr. and full-time nurse Elizabeth (Pexton) McGuinty. The son of a Francophone mother and an Anglophone father, McGuinty is bilingual. McGuinty is the second Roman Catholic to hold the premiership.The first was John Sandfield Macdonald, who served as the first premier of Ontario from 1867-71. His father was of Irish descent, and his mother of English and French Canadian ancestry. His maternal grandfather immigrated to Canada from England. He has nine brothers and sisters. His younger brother David has represented the riding of Ottawa South in the House of Commons of Canada since 2004.
He is an alumnus of St. Patrick's High School in Ottawa, earning a B.Sc. in biology from McMaster University. He then earned his LL.B from the University of Ottawa before practicing law in Ottawa.
Since 1980, he has been married to high school girlfriend Terri McGuinty, an elementary school teacher. The couple have one daughter and three sons.
Member of Provincial Parliament McGuinty's father, Dalton Sr., served as Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for Ottawa South until his death in 1990. Dalton Jr. won the Liberal Party's nomination for his father's former riding for the provincial election of 1990 and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
The Liberal government of David Peterson was defeated by the social democratic Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) in that election. In opposition, McGuinty served as the Liberal Party's critic for energy, environment and colleges and universities. He was re-elected in Ottawa South in the 1995 provincial election without much difficulty. The Liberals maintained their status as the official opposition amid a provincial swing from the NDP to the Progressive Conservatives.
Provincial leadership McGuinty's supporters in his 1996 leadership bid included John Manley, Murray Elston, and Bob Chiarelli. He was elected leader at the party's convention December in a surprise victory over front-runner Gerard Kennedy.
Kennedy, a former head of Toronto's Daily Bread food bank, was popular on the progressive wing of the party, while McGuinty built his core support on its establishment and pro-business right-wing. McGuinty was fourth on the first and second ballots, closely behind Dwight Duncan. He then overtook Duncan and Joe Cordiano on the third and fourth ballots, respectively, receiving the support of their delegates to win on the fifth ballot over Kennedy. Critics called McGuinty "Harris Lite", but his supporters argued that a right-leaning leader like McGuinty was necessary to compete against the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (PC Party) of Premier Mike Harris.
Opposition leader
McGuinty's first term in opposition was difficult. The governing Progressive Conservatives played up McGuinty's low profile by defining him as "not up to the job" in a series of television advertisements. His internal management of the Liberal Party was also criticized by some.
McGuinty's performance in the early weeks of the 1999 provincial election was widely criticized in the media, and he was generally regarded as having performed poorly in the election's only leaders' debate. In response to a question by late CITY-TV journalist Colin Vaughan, he described Mike Harris as a "thug" who is lying to the people of Ontario.
McGuinty's Liberals won support from progressive voters who had supported the Ontario New Democratic Party, and now hoped to defeat the governing Conservatives by strategic voting. The Progressive Conservative Party was re-elected, and McGuinty rallied his party in the election's closing days to draw 40% of the popular vote for the Liberals, their second-best performance in fifty years, which increased their seat total in the Legislature from 30 to 36. McGuinty himself faced a surprisingly difficult re-election in Ottawa South, before defeating his Conservative opponent by about 3,000 votes.
During McGuinty's second term as opposition leader, he hired a more skilled group of advisors and drafted former cabinet minister Greg Sorbara as party president. McGuinty also rebuilt the party's fundraising operation, launching the Ontario Liberal Fund. In preparation for the 2003 election, the party adopted a platform that emphasized lowering class sizes in schools, hiring more nurses, increasing environmental protections, and "holding the line" on taxes. McGuinty also made an effort to improve his debating skills and received coaching from Scott Reid who also trained United States Senator John McCain.
McGuinty's chances of forming government were improved by a number of controversies involving the governing PC Party, including the fallout over the shooting death of native protester Dudley George at Ipperwash, the deaths of seven people from tainted water in Walkerton, and the decision to provide tax credits to parents who sent their children to private schools.
Harris resigned in 2001 and his successor, Ernie Eves, received a short boost in the polls from his attempts to move the PC Party to the centre.
2003 election campaign
The 2003 North America blackout gave Eves increased exposure and rallied some support for his party. He called an election immediately after the blackout, and polling showed that the previous Liberal lead had narrowed to a tie in the first week. The rise in Tory support was short-lived. The Liberals took a commanding lead in the campaign's second week, and remained in that position until election day.
The Progressive Conservative government accidentally distributed a press release which described McGuinty as an "evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet". Eves later stated that this was obviously meant as a joke, but acknowledged its inappropriateness.
McGuinty undertook a series of choreographed events, including signing a taxpayer protection pledge not to raise taxes. He appeared on the popular sports show "Off the Record", where he received an endorsement from Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm.
McGuinty was able to maintain his party's standing in the polls in the last stages, preventing Eves from making up ground during the leader's debate. On election day, the Liberal were elected to a majority government, winning 72 of the Ontario Legislature's 103 seats. The PC Party fell to 24 seats, while the NDP lost official party status in the legislature.
Following the election, the McGuinty government asked former Provincial Auditor Erik Peters to examine the province's finances. Peters revealed that the out-going Progressive Conservative government had left a hidden deficit of at least $5.6 billion. The Conservatives questioned Peters' methodology, and suggested that the McGuinty government was overstating the province's financial difficulties to break or delay some of its campaign spending promises.
Premier of Ontario (2003–2013) First term (2003–2007)
First year McGuinty took office as Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs on October 23, 2003.
The new government called the Legislature back in session in late 2003. The government brought in auto insurance reforms (including a price cap), rolled-back a series of corporate and personal tax cuts that had been scheduled for 2004, passed legislation that enshrined publicly funded healthcare into provincial law, hired more meat and water inspectors, opened up the provincially owned electricity companies to Freedom of Information laws and enacted a ban on partisan government advertising.
On May 18, 2004, Provincial Finance Minister Greg Sorbara released the McGuinty government's first budget, the first year of a four-year plan focused on tackling four deficits the Liberals claim the previous Tories left behind: the "health deficit", the "education deficit", the "infrastructure deficit" and the "fiscal deficit".
This budget was focused on health care. At its core was a large infusion of new money into hospitals specifically to shorten wait times in key areas: knee and hip replacements, cancer treatment, cardiac treatment, cataracts, and MRI and CT scans. The government also brought in free immunizations for children, 150 new Family Health Teams to improve access to physicians, almost 100,000 new home care spaces for Ontario's elderly, almost 4,000 new long-term care beds, and $200 million more to improve public health and fight potential outbreaks like SARS and West Nile fever.
To pay for this plan, the Liberals imposed a controversial new Health Premium of $300 to $900, staggered according to income. This violated a key Liberal campaign pledge not to raise taxes, and gave the government an early reputation for breaking promises. The Liberals defended the premium by arguing that the previous government had a hidden deficit, and McGuinty claimed he needed to break his campaign pledge on taxation to fulfill his promises on other fronts. His own finance critic of the time, Gerry Phillips, had predicted that the Tories' projected balanced budget would in fact result in a $5 billion deficit in a meeting of the Standing Committee of Estimates of the Legislature on June 3, 2003. Liberal MPP Monte Kwinter also predicted a $5 billion deficit.The Globe and Mail, August 12, 2003, p. A7: "We are really in a fiscal morass where, at the end of the day, the people of Ontario are going to be left with a deficit that has been projected by Standard & Poor's, Dominion Bond Rating Service [and] TD Bank at anywhere from $2.2 billion to up to $5 billion. That just doesn't make any economic sense."