Kathleen Wynne confirms speculation throws hat into Ontario Liberal leadership campaign

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Among approximately 400 supporters who were mainly white, upper middle class and over 50 years of age, former cabinet minister Kathleen Wynne declared her candidacy for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party.

If Wynne succeeds in her leadership bid she will be the first woman to be the Premier of Canada’s largest province.  She will also be the first openly gay or lesbian premier of a Canadian province.  If elected leader of the Ontario Liberal Party and therefore premier of Ontario  Wynne will be joining an exclusive club which includes  female premiers Alison Redford of Alberta, Christy Clark of British Columbia Premier  and Kathy Dunderdale of Newfoundland.

In a speech that otherwise lacked specificity Wynne very pointedly went out of her way to express her complete support for current Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.  This is to say the least a risky move as McGunity’s decision to cancel two power plants in Liberal ridings seen by many as crass politics solely for the sake of ensuring Liberals held on to those ridings in the October 2011 election, the very public fight with the Teachers’ Unions  and the proroguing of the legislature have put the Liberal Party in third place in opinion polls.

Whether this calculated move by Wynne to demonstrate her loyalty to current Liberal leader McGuinty in the hope this will demonstrate that she is a loyal soldier and therefore garner her enough delegate votes to win the January 2013 Liberal convention will actually backfire in the general election in Ontario that will inevitably follow will surely be the one of the most discussed issues in the next three months. 

Leadership candidates such as Glen Murray who announced on November 3rd his intention to also seek the mantle of the Ontario Liberals and yet to declare candidates such as the party establishment Sandra Pupatello and current health minister Deb Mathews will have to also make a strategic decision whether in the immortal words of Marc Anthony each of them will decide to bury the current leader or praise him as Wynne did in her leadership launch speech.

Accusing the New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservative Party of polarizing Ontarians Wynne promised to provide strong leadership and bring people together and that she will stake the middle ground in dealing with these “complex times that require complex solutions” .  

Describing and defending at length what she defined as the achievements of Premier McGuinty in the past nine years, Wynne promised to “rebuild the economy and rebuild relationships”. Wynne also committed herself to McGuiny’s plan to eliminate the provincial deficit by 2017/2018 and committed herself to make the tough decisions that would be needed to do so.

Wynne undertook to in the coming weeks reveal her plans to rebuild relationship with Ontario teachers because as a former education minister she understands essential  a partnership with teachers is and the risks involved in losing it.  Referring to her stint as Minister of Transportation Wynne undertook to talk about how Ontarians can find a better way to move around the province and use her experience as the recent Minister of Municipal Affairs to start discussions on empowering cities, towns, rural and northern regions ensuring “that they have infrastructure to help them flourish and the autonomy to shape their own destiny”.

Insisting that the challenges that Ontarians face have solutions that lie in the shared commitment to a better life for all groups Wynne promised to keep talking and working to bring people together to find common ground.