The Liberal government of Ontario, unlike the federal Conservatives, prorogued the house for only a few days and yesterday, came back with a Speech from the Throne proclaiming a new five-year  "Open Ontario" plan. 

At the bottom of this post, you'll find a photo gallery of pictures I took during yesterday's proceedings.

Meanwhile, Graham Murray, an occasional guest on our program, who writes one of the best provincial affairs newsletters anywhere, had this to say about the speech:

Lieutenant Governor David Onley read the McGuinty government’s 2010 Throne Speech this afternoon, opening both the second session of the 39^th Legislature and the Liberals’ effort to prepare for the provincial election coming in October 2011.  The “five-year Open Ontario plan” unspooled today was remarkably close to the text of the speech read by Dalton McGuinty at his party’s major fundraising dinner on February 25.  That speech, for which his listeners forked over $950 and up, was skillfully delivered by the 14-year LIB leader and 7-year premier.  But unlike the typical Throne Speech, today’s free version contains surprisingly few specifics to fill in the broad outlines of the ‘Open Ontario’ theme which McGuinty and his colleagues have adopted to frame their case for a third consecutive majority government.

 

The speech begins by addressing the ravages of the recession, on which the government plans to invest over $32B for roads, bridges, public transit and school energy retrofits to create and sustain” over 300K jobs.  The long-standing Second Career retraining scheme is credited with helping 26K participants. 

 

Prefaced with windy rhetoric asserting that “the world needs Ontario” the Open Ontario plan “will be there for the transition to a new, clean economy” at the start of the 21^st Century.  For the economy, the five-year Open Ontario plan is based essentially on the tax reform package already in place and the expected Green Energy Act employment dividends, with a sister-initiative to be called the Water Opportunities Act. 

 

The newly-found chromite deposit is summoned  from the ‘ring of fire’.  Circles are to be squared – as in working with “northerners, Aboriginal communities and mining partners” to unlock that store of mineral wealth and in the creation of northern jobs while protecting half the boreal forest. 

 

The government will work with the sector to make Toronto “one of the world’s elite financial centres” (blessedly without the baseless suggestion, in the February 25 speech, that nothing had been done so far to bring the financial industries together).  The government’s goal of a 25% reduction of poverty rates over five years is repeated.   The not-for-profit sector will be “strengthened” with no specifics. 

 

The government’s “review of its business enterprises” will continue, though the recent straws in the wind are not spelled out. 

 

Beyond the already announced introduction of full-day learning for 4- and 5-year olds, the educational component of the Open Ontario plan rests on hiking the post-secondary participation rate from 62% to 70% and a five-year plan to enhance the quality of PSE.  An Ontario Online Institute will use the best professors and top university programs to better deliver distance education.  The international student market will be targeted to increase enrollment by 50%.

 

The health component of OO begins with claims to have delivered better and faster care and ends with the latest Queen’s Park panic over health program spending, now at 46% and threatening to reach 70% by 2022.  A public dialogue will consider how to fund the best health care without crowding out all [our] other priorities”.  Drug costs will be kept affordable and the savings directed into health.  Health care providers and executives will be made accountable for improving patient care, and the Public Hospitals Act will be amended to “tap into the  expertise of community partners and all health care professionals”.  The rationalization of health care will include “an independent, expert advisory body to provide recommendations on clinical practice guidelines”. 

 

On the economic side, a plan to return the budget to balance will be set out in the 2010 budget.  The government continues to work on its plan “to reduce its own size by five per cent”.  Nice noises are made about federal transfers to Ontario, and the federal government is urged to show leadership on climate change.

 

The Throne Speech gets a little carried away in its concluding section, describing Ontario as “a modern miracle”.  The vagueness of the Open Ontario label seems sure to preclude branding the province in a manner which resonates widely or for long.  And the government’s fortitude is open to question.  Can the clean water sector produce jobs by following the green energy model which has yet to deliver on its claimed employment goals?  Can the government show that it is open to delivering on the far-reaching Ontario -- Open for Business initiative that it shut up tight at the end of March 2009?  Those two steps might deserve to be called miraculous, but is Dalton McGuinty a miracle worker?