The Need for Change

Head Table Guests

The Rev. Dr. John S. Niles, Rector, Victoria Park United Church and 3rd Vice-President, The Empire Club of Canada; Ruth Trainor, Grade 12 Student, North Toronto Collegiate Institute; The Rev. Roland de Corneille, Anglican Priest, Former Member of Parliament, Eglinton-Lawrence; Gerry Phillips, Liberal Candidate, Scarborough-Agincourt; Mark Cohon, President, Audlenceview Software; Kiki Delaney, President, C.A. Delaney Capital Management Ltd.; Rai Sahi, Chairman and CEO, Morguard Corporation; John A. Campion, Partner, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP and Past President, The Empire Club of Canada; Robert Lantos, OC, Producer, Serendipity Point Films and Founder, Alliance Communications; Mary Anne Chambers, Liberal Candidate, Scarborough East and Past President, The Canadian Club of Toronto; W. Edmund Clark, President and CEO, TD Bank Financial Group; and Ravi Seethapathy, PEng, President, The Canadian Club of Toronto and Chairman, Engineers Without Borders.

Introduction by John Koopman

When California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger was attacked by his opponents for some things he did and once boasted about in his body-building days, he said: "I did not live my life to be a politician."

Now Mr. Schwarzenegger was trying to excuse himself from some behaviour for which he probably should feel some shame, but his comment did inadvertently highlight the very high standard to which we in the western democracies hold our leaders.

In the bump and grind of daily life and our inevitable public policy disagreements, we too often lose sight of the honesty, integrity and strength of character of the vast majority of our political leaders, particularly here in Ontario, where we have historically been uncommonly blessed. We may not always agree with our leaders but we are seldom given cause to question their probity.

In the heat of election campaigns civility falls too easily by the wayside and Ontarians of all political stripes take pride in the high road that Mr. McGuinty has taken to date in the campaign.

We should not be surprised. After all, Mr. McGuinty is a grit.

Grit originally referred to the first-grade sand that the old Scottish stonemasons of Upper Canada liked to use in making mortar.

Grit appears in literature when Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn sees Mary Jane, and Twain writes that Huckleberry said: "She had more grit in her than any girl I ever see. She had the grit to pray for Judus, if she took the notion--there warn't no backdown to her."

What Huckleberry means is that Mary Jane has pluck, stamina and an ability to see things through to the end.

Grit was first used politically by George Brown in 1850 in what was then Canada West (and is now Ontario) to describe the quality of character required to join his reform party.

Well Mr. McGuinty is clear grit and Brewers 1894 Dictionary of Phrase aptly describes a clear grit as "a man of decision, from whom all doubt or vacillation has been bolted out, as husks from fine flour."

Mr. McGuinty worked his way through school, for a while as an orderly in a veteran's hospital. He is an Ottawa lawyer who was first elected to the Ontario legislature 13 years ago for the riding of Ottawa South, which his father represented before him. He aspires to be premier of Ontario. Let's hear him explain, in his own words, why.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the Honourable Dalton McGuinty to the podium of the Empire Club of Canada.

Dalton McGuinty

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, friends. First of all let me thank the Canadian Club and the Empire Club for extending the invitation and giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.

We find ourselves in the thick of a provincial campaign. There are some very important issues being placed before our electorate.

This is Day 18 of the campaign and I've come to two overwhelming conclusions. Number one: no matter how much furniture you put in the bus, you still can't make it luxurious! Number two: I should have run in Prince Edward Island; this is one big province!

It has been nothing less than an absolute privilege to run for premier in the Province of Ontario. For the past six years, I have put more kilometres on our van that they provide me with as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition than I care to acknowledge. But you cannot help but be impressed by this magnificent province, its people, and its geography.

I have had the benefit of having my wife, Terri, accompanying me. She's been absolutely superb in terms of keeping me grounded and lending me the support I need. Why she hasn't changed the locks on me the past 13 years, I simply do not understand.

For the past 13 years, I have lived by and large in Toronto or I have been travelling the province. Terri continues to look after our home and raise our children back in Ottawa.

Here's a true story. A number of years ago I was travelling and I was exhausted at the end of the day. In keeping with our custom 1 called Terri, but I forgot to put in the area code. A woman answered.

"How did the day go?" I said. "Oh, not bad," she replied. "Did you get the kids to bed?" I asked.

"Yes, they're all asleep," she said. Then something clicked.

"You're not my wife," I said.

She replied, "You're not my husband," and hung up the phone.

We may have our differences in this province, but there is today in Ontario a strong and growing consensus for change. People long for something better because they don't like what they see.

They see longer health-care waiting lists. They see a public school system in a steady state of decline. They see frightening threats to the quality of their water and their food, they see $21 billion added to the provincial debt, and an annual bill of $1.6 billion to pay for that debt.

They see a government that has spent eight years pursuing policies that separate people rather than bring them together. Policies that divide and conquer some of us, rather than unite and serve all of us. They see a government that feels it must create enemies in order to secure votes. Teachers, nurses, young people, gays, lesbians, new Canadians, unions, the homeless and people on welfare. Each has taken its turn as a Tory target. That's the politics of division. That's not real leadership.

People long for something better so we're offering the high road. We know we can do better. And we will do much better. Let me tell you how.

Right off the top, we're going to run a tight ship. I represent a new generation of Liberals in the province. As one of 10 children, and as a parent with four children, I understand a little something about how to make ends meet--about living within our means.

Here's the point. We will not raise taxes on our families. We will not run deficits. We will balance the books. And we will not add to the provincial debt.

Everybody on the street--everybody in this room knows that the Eves government is currently running a multi-billion-dollar deficit. TD Bank, Dominion Bond Rating Service, and Standard and Poors have all said so and they have put their views in writing. That's what more than eight years of mismanagement has brought us: the road back to deficits.

When he was first asked what his plan for Ontario would cost, Mr. Eves said he didn't know. More recently he said it would cost $650 million. Yesterday he said it wouldn't cost anything. Not a penny.

According to Mr. Eves, not only is he not running a $2-billion deficit, but taken altogether, his $3.2-billion promise to corporations, his $500-million promise to private schools, his $450-million promise to seniors, his $700-million promise to mortgage holders, and his $700-million cost for a teachers' strike ban--that's his figure not mine--add up to nothing in terms of additional cost. If you believe that, then you believe that J-Lo and Ben would have had a very long and happy marriage!

We have costed out our plan. It's $5.9 billion at the end of our fourth year. Yes, it's a sizeable price tag, but it's half the cost of the Tory platform. And we know where we're getting every single penny. Instead of billions in give-aways to large corporations and private schools, spending on private consultants and partisan government advertising, we're going to do better for all Ontarians for a change.

Our plan has been fully costed over four years. We have subjected it to a rigorous review by an independent forensic accountant, and had it examined by leading independent economists, who tell us that it will ensure balanced budgets. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, hardly the kind of organization that you would expect to be in my back pocket, when they described our four-year program of targeted investments and balanced budgets, said, "A responsible plan." We've done our homework. We're going to run a tight ship. Your money will be treated with respect. It will bring you better value. You have my word on it.

The second part of our plan for the economy is the determination to build the best work force in North America right here in Ontario. And we are convinced that the way to the top is not by chasing Mississippi to the bottom. It's by building our work force to be the best educated, the most highly skilled, the best-developed talent in all of North America. That's the race that we choose to run.

I think U.S. economist Lester Thurow said it best when he said, "In a world where you can borrow your capital, and copy your technology, and buy your natural resources, there's only one thing left on which to build a high-wage economy-skills." There isn't anything else. So we're going to begin where it counts--with children and schools. We're going to make quality child care and education available to our youngest learners. We're going to adopt better standards and training for early childhood education in Ontario. We're going to achieve improved learning through a real cap on class size on the all-important early grades. I'm talking about a real cap--not more than 20 kids from junior kindergarten through to grade 3.

I have had the opportunity to speak with many teach-ers and parents, but I particularly recall a story told to me by Mrs. Fox. She had 26 junior kindergarten children in her class. Coincidentally she had been teaching for some 26 years. And she said, "Mr. McGuinty, 1 want you to understand something about the nature of my work. Every day in my classroom--and these are three, four and five-year-olds-somebody's going to wet their pants. There's going to be a fight. There are going to be bumps, bruises, scrapes and cuts. And somebody's going to try and escape."

She told me a particular story about a young lad, who was going to be sick to his stomach. Across the room, two other guys were getting into a scuffle, so she directed the sick child over to the garbage can, and dealt with the guys in the scuffle. But the child who was going to be sick to his stomach fell asleep with his head in the garbage can. We don't need experts to tell us this, but if we need confirmation of it, there's plenty of it. The single most important thing we can do to improve the quality of public education that we deliver to our children is to ensure that they get the individual attention that they need to succeed and to give that to them in the early years. Will there be some resistance to this? Are there some naysayers? Absolutely! Let me tell you this folks something that my parents told me and I'm sure yours told you the same thing: "Nothing worth doing is ever easy." We're going to get this done. We're going to give our kids the good kind of start that they need in life. That's not only in their interest; it's a matter of enlightened self-interest.

Here's another challenge that we're prepared to embrace. We're going to raise the dropout age from 16 to 18.

Have you ever seen those vacant eyes of kids in dead-end jobs? Have you ever seen them hanging around the shopping malls, getting into trouble? We're not going to allow that to continue. We're going to insist that young people continue to learn until the age of 18.

We're going to double the number of apprenticeships in the Province of Ontario from 13,000 to 26,000. We'll develop more co-op programs. We will engage and challenge young people in the Province of Ontario. It is in our interest that they be able to achieve their potential to contribute to the health and well-being of our society and our economy.

We're not going to give up on kids who are 16 and 17 years of age who have been shunted to the side. At the post-secondary level we're going to expand our capacity by 50,000 spaces.

Our colleges and universities clearly need major investment, but not the same kind of 130-per-cent tuition increase that we've seen during the last decade. So we're