INDEPTH: DALTON MCGUINTY
Dalton McGuinty
CBC News Online | Updated October 24, 2003
Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty's swearing-in as premier on Oct. 23, 2003, marked a high-water point for the 48-year-old's political career.
Dalton McGuinty
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He became the province's ninth Liberal premier and just the second since the end of the Second World War.
"I'm humbled by the result," said McGuinty after winning the Oct. 2 election. His party took 72 of 103 seats in the Ontario legislature, leaving just 24 for the Conservatives and seven for the New Democrats.
It was a moment to savour for McGuinty, and hardly the outcome many could have foreseen when he became leader of the Ontario Liberals in 1996.
Indeed, the Ottawa MPP's ascension could hardly have been less auspicious: a compromise candidate who came fourth on the first ballot, he won a gruelling convention
mainly by virtue of not being Gerard Kennedy, a Toronto leadership hopeful and marginal frontrunner.
It only got worse for McGuinty when he arrived at Queen's Park as leader of the official Opposition.
Then-premier Mike Harris came across as alternately folksy and stiff, but he was positively vibrant compared to McGuinty, whose expressions were decidedly more wooden.
But McGuinty proved his durability. Despite a disastrous campaign in 1999 in which NDP Leader Howard Hampton publicly declared McGuinty looked like Norman Bates (the deranged killer played by Anthony Perkins in the film Psycho), the Liberals managed to increase their share of the popular vote and improve their standing in the legislature.
Beyond being durable, McGuinty also proved to be someone who could learn from his mistakes. In the first campaign, he was woefully unprepared for a televised debate in which he was literally speechless when asked to defend a series of first-term gaffes. Reporters also recall that the Liberal leader appeared unfamiliar with his own party's platform just weeks before the election.
But in 2003, the Liberals came out swinging with policies of their own – some of which were promptly swiped by Harris's successor, Ernie Eves – and capitalized on Tory tumbles in the months leading up to the election.
Still, Eves posed a real threat to McGuinty during his first year in office as premier. Seeking to distance himself from the increasingly unpopular policies of the Harris years, Eves pushed his party away from the tough-love policies of the past. He began to enact social spending and policy reversals that seemed lifted from the Liberal playbook.
Along the way he took some extraordinary swipes at McGuinty, at one point referring to his "sharp, little pointy head." Earlier in the campaign, a Progressive Conservative news release called McGuinty an "evil reptilian kitten eater."
In the end it may be one of Eves' policy reversals that ensured his undoing in the end. In May, he took a hard turn right and unveiled an election platform harking back to Harris's Common Sense Revolution. It meant the Liberals – with McGuinty at the helm – were suddenly alone in the vote-rich middle of the political spectrum.
McGuinty's election promises
Education
- Add another $1.6 billion to school system
- Move away from private school funding and invest further in the public system
- Reduce class sizes
Taxes
- Maintain current tax rates
Social
- Build 20,000 affordable housing units over four years
- Re-vamp tenant protection
Health
- Make two-tier health care illegal
- Stop privatizing MRI/CT clinics, and open more public clinics
For more on the Liberal Party platform see INDEPTH: Party Platforms
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Dalton McGuinty: A life in politics
July 15, 1955: Born in Ottawa. After studying biology at McMaster University and law at the University of Ottawa, McGuinty starts a law firm with his brother.
1987: Liberal candidate Dalton McGuinty Sr. elected to the Ontario Legislature as the member for Ottawa South.
1990: The elder McGuinty dies of a heart attack at age 64. Dalton Jr. wins the Ottawa South seat in a general election later that year.
1995: McGuinty re-elected in Ottawa South, but the Liberals under Lyn McLeod are soundly defeated by Mike Harris's Conservatives. Two months later, McLeod resigns as party leader.
December 1996: After placing fourth of seven on the first ballot, McGuinty slips past frontrunner Gerard Kennedy on the fifth ballot at the Liberal leadership convention.
June 1999: Liberals fail to topple Tories in a bruising general election. During the campaign, McGuinty refers to Tory premier Mike Harris as a "thug" and NDP leader Howard Hampton compares the Liberal leader to fictional killer Norman Bates. Despite a disastrous performance in a TV debate, McGuinty is generally credited with improving the Liberals' share of popular vote (to 40 per cent) and seats in Legislature (up five to 35).
Oct. 2, 2003: McGuinty and the Liberals win the Ontario election with 72 of 103 seats.
Oct. 23, 2003: McGuinty is sworn in as the 24th premier of Ontario, and the ninth Liberal to make it to the top office.
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