CREDIT: QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY ON FLICKR (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
It's hard to hold Premier Kathleen Wynne solely responsible for the current state of Ontario given the burden she was left with following the McGuinty government.

Giving medication to a small child can be tricky. When doctors prescribe a remedy they typically suggest a few methods for parents to employ when it comes to administering said remedy. Since using the threat of violence against a child has fallen out of favour in the mainstream media, crushing it up into jam can be an effective way to trick them instead. Fortunately, children are jam-loving idiots who don’t understand that the world is full of people trying to take advantage of their naiveté.

Like children, adults enjoy jam to varying degrees. Particularly when that jam is alcohol. Limited beer sales in grocery stores achieved the three-pronged goal of simultaneously disappointing retailers, the major breweries and consumers, all of whom are of the legal age to vote. Making alcohol more accessible to Ontarians was supposed to be the jam to offset the bitter taste of a gas-plant scandal even Betty White thinks has been around too long. Add in the sale of Hydro One and the ongoing train wreck of senior’s care and that about brings us to now.

The provincial government is back in session, picking up right where they left off: desperately trying to hold onto the reins. It’s hard to hold Premier Kathleen Wynne solely responsible for her predicament, given the nature of the circumstances in which she took office. It was sort of like getting promoted to be the head of a company whose former manager died while burning the building down.

Former premier Dalton McGuinty was adept at wooing the important players and inept at balancing the chequebook. His solution was to hire a financial expert, at an enormous expense, to lay out exactly how screwed the province was and how to fix it.

The Drummond Report warned that Ontario’s $215 billion debt could balloon to over $400 billion by 2018. After cleverly fixing the problem by paying someone to explain it more precisely, McGuinty ignored the report’s recommendations. The province is on the cusp of reaching $300 billion in debt and is bravely forging ahead.

Despite their bold approach of bravely going where they’ve never left, the Liberal Party in Ontario may be in trouble. Toronto Star writer Bob Hepburn recently wrote an article that illuminates how failing to take a by-election in the GTA could be indicative of a diminishing appetite for a Liberal government. The campaign cycle seems to get longer every time around, as both the government and the opposition want to set a track record of integrity, poise and probably some third thing that also doesn’t exist in politics. It’s no coincidence that legislation virtually no one opposes is mysteriously slow in manifesting itself. The Liberals have to ration their palatable legislation to use whenever they need to see a bump in opinion polls. It may be intangible, but voters typically have a gut feeling that they associate with a political figure. Whether it takes months or years, even the jam trick only works for so long.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.