| "Time For Action |
By Thomas S. Saras
Editor-in-ChiefWe must develop the brainpower and we must find ways to give access to our tradesmen and professionals, engineers and doctors, who are driving cabs and delivering pizzas in the cities of Ontario..
|
Dalton McGuinty Portrait of the Politician Dalton McGuinty was born in Ottawa on July 19, 1955 into a family with a long tradition in Ontario Liberal politics. His father, Dalton James McGuinty Sr., held the Ottawa South riding before passing away in 1990. His mother, Elizabeth McGuinty, currently resides in Ottawa where she works as a nurse. After graduating from St. Patrick's High School in Ottawa, McGuinty worked as an orderly at Rideau Veterans' Hospital. His experience as a caregiver would later form the basis of his values about health care. McGuinty went on to complete a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology at McMaster University in Hamilton and a law degree from the University of Ottawa. Before entering politics, McGuinty practised law and founded the law firm McGuinty and McGuinty. He also taught business law at Carleton University. |
Following in his father's footsteps, McGuinty won the Ottawa South seat in the 1990 election. McGuinty served as Opposition Critic for Energy, Colleges and Universities, and Native Affairs. He was also chair of the Caucus Committee on Resources Management, and served as chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. An active MPP, McGuinty also introduced several private member's bills, two of which are now law. One of his bills made it toughter for kids to get hooked on cigarettes, the other helped increase donations to Ontario food banks.
His dedication and commitment to public service resulted in his election on December 1, 1996, as Leader of the Ontario Liberal Party and Leader of the Official Opposition.
Sooner after becoming leader, McGuinty struck a task force on children's issues. In February 1998, McGuinty produced his plan to improve the lives of our children, called First Steps. It contains 41 recommendations, including calls for giving mothers and their newborns the right to stay in hospital for at least 48 hours after childbirth; providing job-protected, unpaid family leave for medical emergencies; setting up on province-wide home visiting program for new mothers and their babies; and restoring junior kindergarten.
McGuinty and his wife, Terri(nee Taylor), a schoolteacher in Ottawa, were married in 1980. They have four children, Carleen, Dalton Jr., Liam and Connor.
|
Q. The elections are now over, I expected
to be interviewing the Premier, but I am
interviewing the Official Leader of the Opposition.
Can you tell me what went wrong? A. Well Tom, it would have been a pleasure to be able to speak with you today in a different capacity, but apparently I am going to have to wait until 2002. We did not succeed, but we laid down the strongest foundation that we have had in our Party here in Ontario in ten years. Mike Harris received 45% of the vote; we received 40% of the vote. When we went into the elections we had 1/5 of the seats now we hold 1/3 of the seats and we picked up 9 new members. This is more new members than the other two parties combined. On top of that we just had our Annual General Meeting in Ottawa. It was our best attended Annual General Meeting in the history of our Party. The media were going around asking me, "...we are trying to figure out Dalton, did you win or lose the election? Why is everybody here so enthusiastic?", |
Q. Today, we can say that the economy of Ontario is moving well and things seem to be improving. The main problem that anyone can claim, is that we left the little guy out there alone. In our preoccupation to improve the economy or improve the administration of the Province, we left the average citizen behind. Do you have any plans to push the cause of the working Canadian?
A. Let me tell you from my perspective what it means to be a Liberal. A Liberal means that you fight for everybody to ensure that they find everything they need to be successful. As a Liberal I never say, " I owe you a job", or to a young person, " I promise to get you employment". I never say that, what I say is, "I will make sure that you have good healthcare, that you have good education, and if you are a parent and you need help with a child with special needs, I will make sure that you have everything you need". My message to Ontarians is this: life is a race, and it is a competition, let us not pretend it is anything different. I want everybody on their feet and in the race. I want you competing and doing the very best that you can. I want you to be successful; I want you to look after yourself and your family. If you can't because you are poor or you are sick, or you're disabled, or if you're just a child or if you're old and frail, as a Liberal we feel the responsibility to make sure you get whatever it is that you need. So as Liberals, our focus is to ensure that we are all moving forward together. I do not know if I told you this story before Tom, but when we were growing up, my mother used to say to me because when I was sixteen, I had a two year old sister and a three year old brother and mother used to say to me, "you are walking to fast, you can see your sister can't keep up, your brother can't walk that fast." Well, I said, "why should I, I am bigger, I am stronger, I am faster". She always used to say, "because this is a family and as a family we stick together, in a family nobody gets left behind and in a family, if just one of us is in trouble that means we are all in trouble". I see Ontario as one big family and right now some of us are in trouble. I think we all have a responsibility to help. It is very easy to get caught up now in some of the traditional economic indicators. According to the banks and the economists, this economy is doing well, but on the other hand we have never had more poor people living in Ontario than we have today. We have never had more people living on the streets than we have today; we have never had more families living in shelters than we do today. We have never had such a high incidence of ambulances being turned away from emergency wards than we have today. We never had our teachers so demoralized in Ontario, as we have today. Those things are real problems, those are challenges affecting all of us, it does not matter what your position in life is, I think you have a responsibility to help.
Q. You just mentioned the disabled. I would to ask you one question regarding people with disabilities. There was some action of the government in order to help these people. It is the opinion of the Premier that his government has done whatever they could for the disabled. Today every disabled person receives an allowance of about $500 a month. If this person goes out of his home to work in order to show that he is able to contribute to society and he works about 160 hours per month, at times he will receive $165 per month for 160 hours he puts in. The government then deducts $10.00 from that person's allowance. This reminds me of slavery, do you not think this is a form of slavery? Someone who works 160 hours and receives $165 in pay then gets punished with a deduction of $10.00 from his living benefits he is receiving. This is just unbelievable, what are your comments on a situation like this?
A. Mike Harris has now been given five full years to prove that he has a genuine interest in advancing the cause of the disabled community in Ontario and in helping out their families. Over the course of the last five years he has done absolutely nothing. It is true that he introduced a bill at one time, but it was hollow, it was gutless, it was toothless, it had no real meaning whatsoever in terms of helping out the disabled community and their families. What we have done, is we first put forth a resolution in the House, which was passed by the House. Steve Peters tabled the private members bill, which would commit the government to moving forward over a specified period of time and helping out people in a real way. We have got to be able to find ways Tom, to enable our disabled people. We should not be punishing them for showing initiative and ambition. Do you know what it would be like if everyone in Ontario said to the government, you are not helping me I cannot look after my child anymore? Here is my disabled child. This one is three years old, but someone else will say here is mine, he is forty-nine years old, my wife and I are too old we cannot pick him up and move him in and out of the bed. You are not giving us enough help. If all the Ontario families stopped loving their children and caring for their children and turn them over to us, we could not cope. I think our responsibility is to help those families and to help those young people.
Q. We face basic challenges in the structure of the economy. We do not know how the economy will change in 10 to 15 years from today. Do you think as a Province, as a Government we have to take specific actions to ensure our position in the future society?
A. Absolutely, and if we are not taking those steps right now which means we are vulnerable to economic barriers. We can't have economic barriers for stituations taking place in the Far East, which like the virus can travel across the ocean and infect our economy and suddenly find that we have rising unemployment. Yes I agree, but, there are certain kinds of actions that we can take to shelter ourselves, to inoculate ourselves against those external economic diseases. First of all we have to be able to understand that today we have to invest in our people. We have to make sure that we are giving them the best possible skills and education so that we can compete at the highest levels. We cannot afford to compete at the lowest, because there is always going to be another country, another jurisdiction, where they will not care about environmental restrictions, not care about labour laws and pay people much much less than we do. So we have to invest in our people, we have to invest in our post-secondary institutions, which today are in a real state of crisis. They are the lowest funded today when it comes to public systems, we rank 48 out of 50 jurisdictions (including the states and provinces). We cannot lead from the back of the pack. Let me give you an example. Ireland was the basket case for Europe until about ten years ago. My ancestors came from Ireland, the only thing you bothered to do when you lived in Ireland was get the hell out, because there was no opportunity there and there was all kinds of fighting. Well now they have the fastest growing economy in Europe. One of the reasons why, is because the education is free, your university or college is free. Suddenly they are developing the brainpower. Now we have Canadian businesses which are setting up plants in Ireland because of the brainpower that is available there. Do you know the other thing we must to do, Tom? In addition to grooming our own people making them strong and educated and skilled? We have to start tapping into all of the people who come here from other countries whose education has been financed by taxpayers living in other jurisdictions. These are gifts here for us and we are not realizing that potential. So one of the things I have been working very hard on, is making sure that we can find ways to give access to our tradesmen and professionals who are engineers and doctors, and who are driving cabs or delivering pizzas in the cities of Ontario. We need engineers right now; we need doctors almost in every community it seems these days in Ontario, especially family doctors. So lets start capitalizing on our existing brainpower and lets make sure that we cultivate our brainpower in our young people and in people who need re-skilling because their employment sector has been shut down with this evolving economy.
Q. In the current session of the Assembly and the new legislation that will be introduced, do you think there will be any change of the previous philosophy of the government?
A. No, as far as this government is concerned it is steady as she goes, only this time they are more dangerous because they feel that since they have been given a second term, that everything they have ever done in the past has been supported. They have been vindicated, saying I got into the government again that must mean we are supported, they forget the majority of Ontarians were against Mike Harris. 55% of Ontarians said to Mike Harris, No, I do not like what you are doing. The problem is that Mike Harris is missing that part. And what we see today in our government, is a government that is very very arrogant. Which makes Mike Harris even more dangerous. What did he do when he was first elected? He doubled the size of his personal staff and gave them all a 30% pay raise. Now he shows up one day a week for a question period. We seat four days a week, he shows up one day every week. That is just is an example of the kind of things he has been doing.
Q. Within the framework of our institutions, do you think you have the power and the ability in the Assembly to face the government and bring them down to reality to show them what happens exactly outside the walls of this building?
A. I have as much power as I need and the power comes from the people. I did not get into politics to represent the interest of the strong. They are very capable and very successful of representing their own interest. This is not the reason why I got into politics. I got into politics to represent those people who need the help of government and there are a lot of them. I see them everyday and they are telling me, keep fighting for me, I cannot climb up and down the stairs, but you help me sir. My daughter cannot afford to go to university, it is too expensive, I am a single parent and I cannot afford it. Yes, I can help you. I can bring all those issues to the legislature and I will go to the business community, I will talk to the strong and say, you know it is not right to satisfy the demands of the strong at the expense of the needs of the weak. That is what is happening today. What makes me feel good Tom, is inspite of this negativity coming from this government, the overwhelming majority of Ontarians have a heart and they want to do the right thing. They do not feel right about much of what has been going on. So we will continue to fight for the people who continue to need our help. You heard it here first; we are going to win the next election.
Q. As we are approaching the new century, politics are going to change, the face of the international community is changing, Ontario is part of the international community in the global village. Can you give us your vision of the politics of Ontario towards the 21st Century?
A. As we move into the 21st Century I believe that Ontarians are going to start to sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with the path we are travelling down together. They are going to say I never signed on for a growing number of people to be living on the streets, I never signed on for emergency wards that are so full that I cannot get my mother admitted when she had a heart attack. I just read, in Halton, a fairly prosperous community, they can not afford junior kindergarten. People are going to say that this is not what I signed for. Not only is our physical infrastructure deteriorating and being neglected, but also I am, especially, concerned about our social infrastructure. So I think people are going to say, listen, there has got to be a better way for our province to enjoy prosperity, we have got to be able to enjoy prosperity in a way that everyone can move forward. It bothers me, I go to work everyday on Bay Street making $280,000 net per year, but I do not like it when people have to sleep on the streets. So I believe that people are going to say, I am going to listen to what my father and mother used to tell me, I think they are going to say, there is just more than just me in this world, there is all of us. I think there is going to be a greater sense, a greater appetite for a real community strength in looking after each other.
Q. The interview will appear in our January issue, do you want to give our readers a message?
A. Yes please, to all the Members of Greek-Canadian community I want to wish you the very best for this new millenium. I want you to continue to make the magnificent contributions that you have made so far to our society. If I had one special request, it would be to the parents. I would like for you to continue to ensure that your children cherish the Greek culture, the Greek language and the Greek history, because if you lose sight of that, we lose a very special dimension here in Ontario because nobody can replace the Greek influence in Ontario. If your children do not keep this alive, we will lose something that makes us strong.
Q. Thank you very much and I wish you all the best.
A. Thank you, the same to you.