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Inside Queen's Park

This article was first published in Inside Queen's Park, which is published twenty-two times per year by GP Murray Research Limited. IQP offers widely respected analysis of, and insight into, the inner workings of Ontario government and politics. Its contents are copyright and reproduction, in whole or in part by any means without permission of the editor, is strictly forbidden.

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Dalton McGuinty at the cutting edge

Oct 242012

Canadian politics

If the Premier has resigned, why is he still here?

from Inside Queen's Park

IQP has written many highly complimentary things about Premier Dalton McGuinty (along with some bluntly critical things, as well), so we do not want the title of this item to be construed as a call for him to be frog-marched straight into the witness protection program.

But McGuinty, having chosen to depart by shuttering the Legislature, has put his government indefinitely beyond the usual parliamentary constraints on the executive. And that ploy has very conveniently blocked the committee hearing and contempt motion on gas plant costs and access to correspondence.

Dalton McGuinty resigns as Ontario Premier

Oct 172012

Canadian politics

Embattled leader exits just ahead of scandal.

from Inside Queen's Park, Special Edition

Dalton McGuinty resigns after 16 years as Liberal leader and 9 years as Premier

Dalton McGuinty's resignation as Ontario premier, announced early yesterday evening at a very unusual joint meeting of the Liberal Caucus and Queen's Park Press Gallery, was certainly a tactical surprise.

Elections Ontario kerfuffle continues

Oct 012012

Canadian politics

Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukianis exasperated with massive Elections Ontario breaches of personal information.

Voters’ information stored on unencrypted USB keys.

from Inside Queen's Park Vol 25, No 17

Ontario’s Information & Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, is not someone IQP would judge to be a scold, though she certainly often does speak directly and indeed bluntly when addressing the fundamental issues arising in the mandates within her jurisdiction.

The Commissioner’s exasperation was quite obvious in her July 17 news conference on the massive Elections Ontario breach of personal information. Though she lamented that failures to protect personal information left her “driven to distraction”, she told this reporter that EO’s Greg Essensa could turn the situation around if anyone could.

McGuinty lost his by-election gamble

Sep 102012

Canadian politics

NDP's K-W victory puts the party on a roll.

from Inside Queen's Park, Bulletin No 18 September 7, 2012

It was just 11 months ago, on October 6, 2011, that Dalton McGuinty's provincial government won its third consecutive election. But by contrast with 2003 and 2011, the Liberals failed to win with a working majority of seats in the 107-member Legislature.

Ontario by-election frenzy

Aug 222012

Canadian politics

from Inside Queen's Park, Vol 25 No 18.

by Inside Queen's Park

As you were ?
IQP has carefully mapped the outcomes of all Ontario provincial by-elections held from 1977 to 2011 — 48 in total. Do their outcomes illuminate the pair now being conducted?. The first thing to note is that the partisan stripe of the ridings contested in by-elections changed in only 14 of those contests (29 percent, less than a third) — which is to say that the seats in contention in the other 34 by-elections (71 percent, well over two-thirds) stayed in government or opposition hands just as they had started out.

Liberal popularity, NDP credibility

Jul 272012

Canadian politics

by Inside Queen’s Park

Amending budgets, threatening elections & slapping the other leader
What a dramatic time we’ve had at Queen’s Park ever since the McGuinty government fired the starter’s pistol nearly two months ago to unleash the legislative alchemy which transmutes the dross of a bill into the gold of statute law! One could almost see the wizards’ pointy hats and colourful robes and hear the sonorous orchestral soundtrack of Walt Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And for the past week or so, the Legislature corridors seemed to echo the clatter of brooms and buckets as the government party’s designated electoral wizard — Dave Gene himself (cunningly passing among ordinary mortals as a mere Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations in the OPO) — called Liberal MPPs with instructions to unwrap their wands and commit the 2012 campaign spells to memory.

Compromised voters’ information

Jul 242012

Canadian politics

Also: Hydro One rescues, "seat saver" decisions.

Compromising voters' personal information
We have yet to resolve a clutch of electoral glitches arising from the 2011 federal election, such as alleged robo-calling and the overturning of the Etobicoke Centre result. Now we have a big, fat electoral records screw-up at the Ontario level, where we don't yet have more than a rumoured by-election, let alone a province-wide contest.

The names and addresses of voters are of course deserving of the most careful protection by Elections Ontario or by any other official entity empowered to compile such highly sensitive private info.

Before we go any further, it would be worth recalling how much the ground has recently shifted in regard to handling personal information. Before the 1999 introduction of the Permanent Register of Electors, we used to nail up hard copies of polling lists on every telephone pole naming Mr & Ms Electorate and all the little Ballots, and giving their home address.

Horwath muscles McGuinty on budget

Apr 222012

Canadian politics

And: NDP support increases in Ontario.

by Inside Queen's Park

Adjusting the budget
In the British parliamentary system, taxation and spending in a given financial year (running from the beginning of April to the end of March) acquire governmental authority when legislators vote in favour of a motion "that this House approves in general the Budgetary Policy of the Government". Passage of that bland formulation at the end of the 12-day Budget Debate endorses both the Budget Speech and Budget Papers.

Electoral ranges

Mar 202012

Canadian politics

Volatile voting patterns mean fourth parties can have effects.

by Inside Queen's Park

Of votes and numbers
More than eight million Ontarians are eligible to take part in provincial elections, but in 2011 fewer than half of them turned out to vote. Of late, advocates for electoral reform, as well as many citizens of a pessimistic and some of an apocalyptic bent, have lamented the ceaseless downward trend in turnout.

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