Your very own MPP, Kathleen Wynne (Liberal, Don Valley West) cast herself as Ontario’s personal guardian and creator of all things good when she addressed her party’s convention on Saturday afternoon. Ms.Wynne made a play for seniors, those hard-case Conservative voters by telling them that Stephen Harper didn’t care about them. The Premier interspersed her remarks with shouts of “that’s right” to reinforce her wisdom. It was inexplicable, she said, that Mr. Harper would not take care of struggling old folks who have been thrown out of the middle class by retirement. He was willful and ideological, she intoned. The federal-provincial back and forth on this topic has been clear. The Finance Minister (now retired) claims Canada has never had a more affluent, if not wealthy, generation of seniors. Was it really necessary to increase the Canada Pension in order to help some people who had fallen short? No need to answer. The feds are all about dealing with the debt. That was a subject missing from the Premier’s remarks today. In fact the speech was like a reverse epiphany on debt It had an unreal feeling, possibly like the night they decided to cancel the gas plant. Ottawa writer David Reevely concludes in the Citizen that the Premier announced “the end of the adult conversation” about the province’s problems and how to fix them. The premier redefined herself as the possessor of “safe hands” which will guide us through troubled times ahead, he said.
