Liberal Re-Branding

The Liberal party of Ontario is desperately trying to rebrand itself under Kathleen Wynne before the electorate gets a chance to voice their displeasure with the multiple scandals that evolved under Dalton McGuinty.  There have been so many, and they have had such a huge impact that they are threatening to dominate his legacy.  They were beginning to overshadow even that of healthcare and education reform, which he felt were the most important to us and invested so much of our money in.

The inclusion of the word "new" with every reference to the government and the distribution of "style points" and "preferred phrases", may serve as marketing gimmicks to trick the public into thinking they have changed their leadership, but the reality of governing will wear them off very quickly.

Ms. Wynne is content to allow public scrutiny of the most recent  scandal to put some distance between herself and the former premier but she is failing to do that in the case of ONTC in northeastern Ontario.  One could argue that this region doesn't matter to her, since there will be no support in the next election here anyway, but that opinion fails to take into consideration the power of an election campaign. 

A recent poll shows the Liberals entrenching their support in Toronto, but the 1045 people on which that result is based, probably include a high percentage of people who only scratch the surface of political debate.  Most of those who responded to the poll are quite likely influenced by the fact the Liberal leadership convention gave more publicity to Ms. Wynne, than the other two leaders.  In the runup to an election, which could happen at any time between this spring and Oct 2015, the public becomes a lot more engaged in politics and tunes in to a much greater degree, because some of them will actually cast a vote.

It is at that point that the current strategy of letting the MNDM control the divestiture of ONTC will come back to bite Ms. Wynne.  The anger and resentment that paying lip service to a consultation process results in, will lead to an active campaign to highlight Liberal incompetence.  The links back to other Liberal missteps have not been completely severed by the new premier and it will not take much to pull them back into the spotlight, just in time for the electorate to review them.

The Auditor General report, due out this summer, will show without a doubt that the MNDM plan to save $269 million by 2014/2015 is so far off the mark, that the entire plan of ONTC divestiture must be based on some other premise.  The consultative approach of which Ms. Wynne is wholly supportive, will look like another gimmick to gain the confidence of the people, instead of something she truly believes in.  

There is a simple way for Ms. Wynne to test if MNDM is feeding her an ideological trap or actually starting the process for improvements in Northern Ontario.  We are now one third of the way along toward that 2014/2015 time target and the Northlander savings should have been accumulating since last Sept, so how much of that $269 Million have we saved?

It is not likely the ministry will release any of that information to anyone, other than the Auditor General and the Premier.  We will know from the AG in the summer after it is too late to reverse the decision to sell Ontera.  The Premier has the power to look at it now before it is too late.  Either way, the ability to shed the shackles of incompetence is within her grasp....the only difference is, if she does it now, she can change the campaign rhetoric later.