First Ontario MPP abandons sinking ship

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This article was published 22/11/2010 (5523 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — A trickle has started of MPPs who say they will not run again for the legislature in the October 2011 election, but it could turn into a flood.

The exodus will be mainly because the Liberals, who have held a majority of seats since 2003, have plunged dramatically in polls, including one that suggests 76 per cent of voters want a change of government.

These are odds that will discourage some, particularly long-serving Liberal MPPs, even ministers, from wanting to stay, watching opponents passing legislation they disagree with, endlessly asking questions that rarely get answered and with less pay and perks.

Only two MPPs have said publicly they will not run again. Steve Peters, the legislature’s Speaker, whose main job is presiding over its unruly sittings, said after 11 years in the legislature it is time he changed his career.

Peters is felt by all parties to have treated them fairly, which not all previous Speakers have done, and probably is leaving mainly because he has lost some faith in his own.

Before a majority of MPPs chose him Speaker, he was a cabinet minister in two portfolios, but was dropped by Premier Dalton McGuinty for reasons not apparent to outsiders.

If McGuinty wins, the less likely scenario, there is no reason to think he would reinstate Peters in cabinet. If McGuinty loses, Peters would face four years in the mostly thankless role of opposition backbencher.

Neither prospect is enticing for an MPP who twice ran major ministries, once ran the operations of the legislature and was host to every head of state who visited the province.

The other who has said he is leaving is Progressive Conservative Gerry Martiniuk, MPP for Cambridge since 1995, a lawyer, less known because he worked mainly pushing for benefits for his riding, including a school of architecture and more doctors, which can be a valuable role.

He said at 73 he wants to spend more time with his family and had an interesting exit line, that governing parties, including his own under under premier Mike Harris, often prevented their MPPs from voting according to their conscience.

MPPs have to be wary of leaving believing their party will not win an election and the Liberals are the best examples.

Before the 1985 election, when the Conservatives had been in government four decades and most felt they would win again, Liberal MPPs Sheila Copps, Albert Roy, Don Boudria and Eric Cunningham switched to run federally, where Liberals had more more chance of getting in cabinet.

All were competent and ambitious and would have been assured of senior cabinet posts if they had stayed provincially and the provincial Liberals were elected.

Copps and Boudria won federally and had notable careers in Ottawa, but Roy and Cunningham lost and their careers were over.

In Ontario the durable Conservative premier William Davis, meanwhile, retired and was succeeded by the less popular Frank Miller, who was ousted by the Liberals under David Peterson and the Liberals who switched federally and lost were left wishing they had stayed.

Today’s Conservative MPPs are more likely to run again in the 2011 election, because the polls suggest they have better prospects of winning and getting cabinet posts and the power that goes with them.

Are today’s Liberals running scared? New Democratic Party house leader Peter Kormos, who was an MPP when the governments of Liberal Peterson and NDPer Bob Rae fell, told the legislature “the signs are clear. When you walk past the Liberal caucus room, you can smell the fear.

“You see the Liberal backbenchers in their seats and you can see the anxiety and apprehension.

“You go to the shelf in the library on resume preparation and there’s not a single book in its place. They’ve all been taken out.”

The New Democrat is not exactly non-partisan and inclined to be melodramatic, but some Liberals will be expressing their views with their feet.

Eric Dowd is a freelance writer who

covers Ontario provincial politics.