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McGuinty emerges as Davis’s heir apparent
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The Toronto Star-Robert Benzie
Dalton McGuinty was working his way to the front of the Liberals’ chartered campaign plane last month when he spotted the photograph on a reporter’s laptop screen.
“Hey, it’s Bill Davis,” McGuinty exclaimed, his eyes lighting up at the iconic black and white picture of the former Progressive Conservative premier chomping triumphantly on a cigar.
“Where’s my photo?” he asked.
After McGuinty’s Oct. 6 victory, making him the first winner of three consecutive Ontario elections since Davis in 1977, it’s a fair question.
Like William Grenville Davis, who governed from 1971 until 1985, Dalton James Patrick McGuinty, Jr., in power since 2003, has artfully locked up Ontario’s political centre.
Neither ever inspired passions or provoked resentments the way former premiers Mike Harris, Bob Rae, and David Peterson sometimes did.
They are inoffensive, low-key lawyers with impish senses of humour who delight in constantly defying the expectations of others. Indeed, McGuinty emulates Davis, the wily tactician whose mantra was “bland works.”
During the recent campaign, Tories grumbled when the Liberal platform booklet included a testimonial quote from Davis extolling the government’s full-day kindergarten program.
During the Sept. 27 televised leaders’ debate, McGuinty slyly cited Davis while scolding PC Leader Tim Hudak for “running down Ontario.”
Then on Oct. 13, in one of the earliest acts of his third term, the premier quietly invited his Tory predecessor, who led minority governments from 1975 until 1981, for a discussion on coping with such electoral realities.
McGuinty, who calls Davis “a fountain of wisdom,” clearly took something from their chat — the naming of John Milloy as chief government whip was a Davis-ian stroke of genius hailed by both opposition parties.
“He’s got strong listening skills. I want a guy in there representing us who can keep the temperature down and find some common ground,” the premier said of Milloy after Thursday’s cabinet swearing-in.
Tory House leader Jim Wilson praised Milloy as “a kind man” with “a great mind,” and NDP House leader Gilles Bisson said the appointment was “a signal . . . this government is prepared to work as a minority government” because all three legislators are “not partisan hacks.”
This new spirit of cooperation among House leaders — all agree there will be daily meetings to ensure the Legislature operates smoothly — harkens back to that more collegial era when Davis presided.
For six years during some challenging economic times, his Conservatives survived politically by mostly relying on support in the House of then NDP leaders Stephen Lewis and Michael Cassidy.
Progressive rent control and labour legislation was enacted thanks to Davis shrugging off ideological constraints, and his willingness to compromise.
He believed Ontarians want their government to shift from right to left as circumstances demand — a sentiment echoed Thursday by McGuinty
“We will judge an idea not on the basis of where it originates, but on where it can take Ontario,” the premier said at the cabinet ceremony.
Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said it was “very shrewd” of the premier to meet with Davis “because it undercuts the Conservatives even further.”
“It’s giving Davis’s imprimatur to McGuinty,” said Wiseman, noting many Red Tories were more comfortable with Hudak’s predecessor, John Tory, a Davis protégé, than with the current Conservatives.
“Davis is a really good party man. He would never speak against the (PC) party, but, boy, he’s been so lukewarm . . . .”
From the sidelines, a slightly defensive Hudak insisted last Friday he was “glad” McGuinty was seeking the counsel of a Conservative eminence.
“I had a chance to talk with premier Davis . . . about the situation we’re in,” the PC leader told reporters.
Still, one prominent Tory had a one-word response to the photo in the Star of Davis and McGuinty laughing it up like old friends: “Ouch.”
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