After this weekend, Ontario will have a new Liberal party leader, and a new premier.
Dalton McGuinty had some final words at the Toyota plant in Cambridge earlier this week.
He mostly defended his party’s progress in education.
McGuinty says when the Liberals came to power nine years ago, Ontario’s schools were struggling, and now they are among the best in the English-speaking world.
He says test scores have gone up six points, and graduation rates are up 14 points.
About the battle with the province’s teachers over Bill 115, McGuinty says it shows the health of our province’s democracy.
He says people in other countries give up their lives to be able to express themselves publicly.
McGuinty also defended the deficit, saying the government borrowed money during the recession to keep people working.
He says they’re doing the right things now, during a period of economic growth, to pay down the deficit – adding that sometimes means making hard decisions, like freezing public sector wages.
McGuinty says Friday night will be a chance for the Liberals to celebrate what they’ve accomplished together as a party.
The leadership convention is being held in Toronto this weekend where a new party leader and premier will be chosen.
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So McGuinty and the Liberals are celebrating their accomplishments. Let’s just review those accomplishments. The two largest tax increases in Ontario’s history, in the form of the health tax and HST. A billion dollars spent in eHealth with nothing to show for it. Scandals and hundreds of million of wasted taxpayers dollars on cancelled power plants and Ornge. They haven driven Ontario from the engine that drives Canada to a “have not” province in a matter of years. They have made our education system unsustainable through overly generous salaries and benefits to teachers and costly, unnecessary endeavors like full day kindergarten, which is nothing more than publicly funded daycare. Well done Liberals, that’s a real reason for celebration.
Talk about going out down in flames! Not a bad premier for the first years, but what happened in the last 12 months? This guy and his ministers (Laurel Broten) are committing political suicide.