The First Day of Dalton's Last Stand

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. While the Liberals are focused on a bunch of inside baseball and he-said she-said, as per usual, there were two major developments that hampered them right out of the gate. (The aforementioned inside baseball will be commented on tomorrow, because I *know* that's what all of you, Liberal and Tory alike, really want to hear about. :P)

First of all, the Speaker for the first minority Legislature since the 80's is, shockingly, Dimbulb Dave Levac. The guy who misspoke when he actually mistyped on whether a carbon tax was on the table. The guy who fiddled my time away while Caledonia burned. Truly the kind of inspiring, definitive leadership we're going to need in a one-seat minority! Look! He has to be dragged to the Speaker's chair. ;)

How did this lowlight of a Junior Energy Minister get to be the most one of the most powerful people in the Legislature? Maybe it's because the other three candidates were from GTA or Toronto ridings, which the Liberals likely think they will hold on to forever....except, um, that the former prospective front-runner, Donna Cansfield, admitted she wouldn't be running in the next election:

"I’m not going to run another time. I’m not here for future considerations at all,” said the former cabinet minister who was first elected in 2003.

By signalling she won’t be a candidate in the election expected in 2015 — though with a minority government it could come sooner — Cansfield underscores her autonomy in refereeing the Legislative Assembly."

Yikes! First day and already Liberals are getting while the getting's good.

Now, we know the Liberals like to talk a good game about how they respect women, but it seems that Christine Elliot and Lisa Macleod's endorsements of Cansfield may have provoked a massive stampede to Levac amongst the Liberals. Andrea Horwath was also on the record as saying she wanted to see more women in leadership roles. So we have two Tories and the NDP leader leaning towards Cansfield, which means that for Levac to have won, the Liberals must have backed him en masse. Yeah, we could have had the first female Speaker in Ontario's history, but that would have meant giving the Tories and NDP what they wanted. Can't have that!

You might have heard about how perennial Liberal leadership hopeful Chris "Smoove B" Bentley was about as smooth as chunky peanut butter during his announcement that the Liberals had finally halted construction on That Power Plant 58 days after they said construction had stopped. Why do you suppose Liberal leadership hopeful Chris Bentley is constantly made to look like a doofus and getting handed all these tough files? Hmmm. I wonder. I also wonder if work will begin again once people have moved onto another story.

We don't know how much this decision will cost taxpayers. So how about we ask and ask and ask until we get an answer? No, better yet....how about we answer every single one of their annoying questions about when we're going to apologize for something with a question about when they're going to tell us how much cancelling the plant will cost?

And we've only just begun!