There are still those who think Ontario Premier McGuinty looks too much like the Norman Bates character in Hitchcock’s 1960 Hollywood classic Psycho. And lately they seem to be taking out s new lease on life.

It was not that long ago that even seasoned observers of Ontario politics who did not like Dalton McGuinty were agreeing he was probably close enough for jazz to a “three peat.” He was the likely winner of three straight provincial elections — the Premier Dad who was looking more and more like the very long-lived late 19th century Liberal premier of Ontario, Oliver Mowat,  in office without interruption 1872–1896.

Then it all came crashing down. The simplest explanation is just that the McGuinty government started doing badly in opinion polls. Late last August Jim Coyle at the Toronto Star was predicting “New poll will rock McGuinty’s government … It’s not so much the top-shelf numbers — even if the Progressive Conservatives under Tim Hudak have, for the first time since the 2007 election, moved ahead of the Liberals … Basically, at 36-35, they’re neck and neck and within the poll’s margin of error … What’s significant are the trend lines and leadership numbers … Sixty-four per cent of those surveyed said they believe it’s time for another party to govern …”

Former Essex MPP and deputy speaker of the Ontario Legislature Bruce Crozier, known for his bowties, died in Toronto of an aortic aneurysm, early on the morning of Saturday, June 4, 2011, at the age of 73. He is seen here (l) in the Ontario Legislature with Speaker Mike Brown (c) and Liberal MPP Kathleen Wynne (r). Aaron Harris/CP File photo.

Much more recently, on May 24, 2011 (a week ago this past Tuesday), Premier Dad’s government was doing even worse: “The latest Nanos Poll on Ontario politics is showing that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives are currently leading in the province with 41% support, followed by the McGuinty Liberals at 34%, the NDP at 19% and the Greens at 5%. Of note, the NDP has been the only party significantly trending up lately, registering a six point increase since February 2011.” (Or, as two other reports explained: “New poll shows McGuinty government down in support” and “NDP’s Horwath gaining popularity in Ontario.”)

In some degree, you could say (and some certainly do), the McGuinty government has only itself to blame. See, eg: “Kelly McParland: In Ontario government, ignorance is bliss” ; “eHealth scraps raises and bonuses after Star story” ; “Public sector wages: McGuinty hands ammo to rivals” ; “MacLeod: Dalton McGuinty’s flaccid reign … Do the Liberals have the gumption to face tough financial tests ahead?” ; “E-health raises issues of data management, privacy: panel” ; and “Nurses get payments during public sector wage freeze plus 2.75% hike in 2013.”

Some among the majority of Canadians who did not vote Conservative on May 2 are still passionate about their objections to right-wing agendas. Here former Senate page Brigette DePape, 21, holding a sign reading "Stop Harper," is led from the room as Canada's Governor General David Johnston delivers the Speech from the Throne, June 3, 2011. CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS.

Another problem is that the McGuinty Liberals are getting caught up in the latest strange sea change to the right, signalled regionally by Rob Ford’s election as mayor of Toronto last fall, and Stephen Harper’s strong Ontario showing on May 2. (Or perhaps they at least used to be : note again “the NDP has been the only party significantly trending up lately”? In any case, for the global case here see Rick Salutin’s Toronto Star column of this past Thursday: “Take the economy. Everyone knows that the disaster of 2008, which has clearly not gone away, had nothing to do with excess government spending … Any rise in deficits came mainly from bailouts to banks, or needless warmaking. The point is: The catastrophe had/has no connection to government social or economic spending. Yet the only solutions proposed everywhere are public spending cuts.”)

Still others will say that Premier Dad Dalton McGuinty has himself been getting a worse rap than he deserves in some quarters lately. The Oliver Mowat of the 21st century has gone back to being the angular guy from Ottawa who looks like Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 Hollywood classic Psycho.

Premier McGuinty celebrates announcement that 2011 International Indian Film Academy Weekend and Awards will be held in Ontario’s capital city, June 23rd-25th, with Bollywood superstars Preity Zinta and Anil Kapoor.

A recent example is Margaret Wente’s Globe and Mail column from this past Thursday — yet another installment in her ongoing series of always quite readable too-clever-by-half diatribes on subjects about which she knows far less than someone imagines. This was balanced, in some degree, by Adam Radwanski’s Globe and Mail column yesterday, which more circumspectly observed that “for all his basic decency, Ontarians have never entirely warmed to” Premier Dalton, etc. In my own view it remains attractive to have a politician with “basic decency” as your provincial premnier. But perhaps that has become an eccentric posture in 2011?

Meanwhile, I have been asked to announce that, with the campaign for the fixed-date Ontario provincial election of Thursday, October 6, 2011 now more or less seriously underway, the counterweights editors have returned to the arduous destiny of keeping their “Ontario Tonight” reporting up to date. You can click “Ontario Tonight” on the bar at the top of this page for the latest installment. Or CLICK HERE if that seems too much like work, as another laid-back summer looms in the wings, north of the North American Great Lakes.

Premier Dalton McGuinty visits with kindergarten children at Victor Lauriston Public School in Chatham, January 12, 2009. Aaron Hall Photo.

Guess who has just commandeered our new “Ontario tonight” feature (see bar at top of page), and turned what is supposed to be a home for “brief intermittent reports on comings and goings in Canada’s most populous province” into accommodation for yet another extended tirade on Ontario’s “founding Liberal Premier of the later 19th century, Oliver Mowat,” and what may or may not prove his great-spirit echoes in the present career of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty?

Whatever your guess, if you haven’t yet checked out “Ontario tonight” you may want to quickly look into “Monday 9 August 2010 — Premier Dad today as direct descendant of Christian Statesman and Elder Brother Mowat, 1872–1896.” The point of departure for the extended ramblings in this case is Robert Benzie’s piece in today’s Toronto Star on Dalton McGuinty —  “The upside and downside of being Premier Dad.”  (And we promise: the next entry in “Ontario tonight,” whenever the spirit moves it, will be much shorter.)

So where do things stand now?

1. Toronto Centre post-mortem

Glen Murray, back in 2004 when he was Mayor of Winnipeg, shares a joke with Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion. As of February 4, 2010, Mr. Murray is Liberal MPP for Toronto Centre at Queen’s Park in Ontario. And Premier Dalton McGuinty is pleased. AARON HARRIS/CP FILE PHOTO.

The McGuinty Liberals have passed at least their early test in Toronto Centre, with something close to flying colours.

Former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray won the by-election with 47.0% of the vote — compared with 47.85% for his predecessor (and now aspiring Toronto mayor) George Smitherman, in the October 10, 2007 general election.

The clearest losers on February 4 were the Conservatives’ Pamela Taylor, with a mere 15.4% in the 2010 by-election compared with 20.20% in the 2007 general election, and the Green Party with 9.81% in 2007 but only 3.1% in 2010.

The New Democrats, championed by street nurse Cathy Crowe this time, improved their performance dramatically — 33.1% in 2010 compared with 18.82% in 2007. But they still fell quite a way short of actually winning.

2. The next tests on March 4: not much to look for in old Tory bastion of Leeds-Grenville?

King Street, Brockville, in Bob Runciman’s and Jimmy Auld’s old Ontario Tory riding of Leeds-Grenville. Winter, 2009. (Thanks to Glenn and Judy’s Excellent Canadian Adventures).

You can of course say that a mid-term contest in Toronto Centre is not a telling reflection of just where the McGuinty Liberals currently stand in the province writ large.

(There was just one organization in all of Ontario promoting atheism in the late 19th century, the man who “wore the white flower of a blameless life,” Premier Oliver Mowat, noted: “and that is in Toronto.” Times have changed, but the principle of uniqueness seems similar.)

The next tests here will be two eastern Ontario by-elections on March 4, 2010 — in Leeds-Grenville and Ottawa West-Nepean.

Wilfrid Laurier political science professor David Docherty has wisely observed that Leeds-Grenville will not likely be much of a measure of anything either. It has been held since 1981 by the archetypal old Ontario Tory Bob Runciman, who has now been promoted to the unreformed Senate of Canada, by the unreformed federal minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Moreover, though name and boundary adjustments complicate the picture slightly, the riding of Leeds (the name of the seat Mr. Runciman first won in 1981: it did not become Leeds-Grenville until the election of 1987) had been held by the archetypal old Ontario Tory James Auld since 1954. Indeed, since its creation in time for the election of 1886 Leeds was only once won by a non-Tory, in Mitch Hepburn’s Grit populist uprising of 1934!

So, it might reasonably be said: if Mr. Runciman’s carefully meditated successor as local old blue-machine candidate, Steve Clark, former chief administrative officer for the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands, cannot hold Leeds-Grenville for the Ontario Tories this coming March 4, it will be Tim Hudak’s Conservatives who are really in trouble.

3. But keep your eye on Ottawa West-Nepean?

Bob Chiarelli (r) during his servcie as Mayor of Ottawa, with Renée Bates of the Aristocrat Hotel (l) and Julian Armour of the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival (c). The question now is can Bob Chiarelli hold Ottawa West-Nepean for Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals on March 4, 2010? ©Photo by Lois Siegel.

Professor Docherty and other close followers of the Ontario scene agree that the March 4 by-election in Ottawa West-Nepean does have some serious “potential to be a barometer of how the government’s doing.”

The seat here was vacated by Jim Watson’s decision to step down as minister of municipal affairs and housing, so he can run for mayor of Ottawa. (Judging from both this and the Smitherman case in Toronto, being mayor of a big Ontario city is more alluring than sitting in Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario cabinet. Although see also the case of former Ottawa mayor Bob Chiarelli below.)

Under its current exact name and boundaries Ottawa West-Nepean only dates back to the 1999 provincial election. Jim Watson has held it for the Liberals since 2003. But Garry Guzzo won for the Mike Harris Conservatives in 1999 — partly as a result, some would stress, of internal Liberal squabbling.

Before this Bob Chiarelli had won the predecessor riding of Ottawa West for the Ontario Liberals in the 1987, 1990, and 1995 elections. But Ottawa West had “previously been regarded as a safe Progressive Conservative seat.” (And a quick look at the historic returns confirms strong Tory proclivities, back to the earliest incarnation of an Ottawa West in 1908.)

From 1997 to 2006 Bob Chiarelli “served his community at the municipal level —  first as Regional Chair of Ottawa-Carleton, and then [for] two terms as the first mayor of the amalgamated City of Ottawa.” He has now returned to Ontario provincial politics as Liberal candidate in the March 4, 2010 by-election in Ottawa West-Nepean.

Mr. Chiarelli will apparently face a worthy Conservative opponent in longtime community activist Beth Graham, who has “resigned her job as a political staffer for federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq.” Pam FitzGerald, a local school board trustee, will stand for the NDP. Mark MacKenzie is the Green Party candidate.

4. Is Dalton McGuinty a reincarnation of Oliver Mowat … or not?

Statue of Oliver Mowat at Queen’s Park in Toronto today. Will there also be a statue of Dalton McGuinty some day — or has Canada’s most populous province finally outgrown such things? Photo by Nick Moreau.

If Bob Chiarelli finally manages to hold Ottawa West-Nepean for the Liberals on March 4, then Jim Coyle of the Toronto Star may be right: Dalton McGuinty (another man who still “wears the white flower of a blameless life,”107 years after the death of Oliver Mowat?) is likely enough to win a third Ontario general election in October 2011 — even though lately “some polls have shown Hudak’s PCs neck and neck with the Liberals and one suggested McGuinty is now the second least popular premier in Canada.”

(And note that the historic Ontario Liberal guru Oliver Mowat was never all that popular either, but nonetheless remained premier of Ontario for 24 successive years, from 1872 to 1896 — a Canadian record bested so far only by Preston Manning’s father in Alberta.)

On the other hand, if Ms. Graham finally manages to take the seat for the Hudak Conservatives more than a few observers will be saying ah yes indeed: the McGuinty Liberals really are in more longer-term trouble than I have thought so far. And they may be right.

So if you do count yourself  among the small but wiry band truly interested in the government and politics of Canada’s most populous province, stay tuned.

Randall White is the author of a number of books on Canadian politics and history, including Ontario 1610–1985: A Political and Economic History, and Ontario Since 1985.

For an update on the March 4, 2010 by-elections see Dr. White’s “Eastern Ontario provincial by-elections .. probably not too big a deal?“