Because, seven years ago, Doug Ford’s new Progressive Conservative government was sworn in outdoors, on a sweltering June day, you might be under the impression that that’s the way it’s always been done.
Not the case.
For more than a century, successive Ontario governments were sworn in indoors, in small ceremonies attended mostly by family, friends, and hangers-on. Public participation was never a consideration. The whole thing was a bit of a closed shop.
That practice ended 40 years ago tomorrow, on a glorious sunny day in the provincial capital.
To set the stage: a week earlier, opposition MPPs had combined forces to defeat Premier Frank Miller’s four-month-old PC government.
Now, David Peterson would be the first Liberal premier since Harry Nixon in 1943. (And his treasurer would be Premier Nixon’s son Robert, himself a 23-year veteran of the legislature.)
Peterson wanted his government to look and feel different from the 42-year Tory dynasty he had just defeated. The best way to start? Invite the public to be part of the swearing-in ceremony. Given that a stage had already been set up for the pending Canada Day celebrations, the Liberals decided to hold the ceremony outdoors, in front of the Ontario legislature. Some worried it would rain. Others wondered whether anyone would show up. But the weather was spectacular, and thousands of civil servants descended on Queen’s Park on their lunch break to watch history in the making.
Former premier David Peterson, seated beside his wife Shelley. His brother Tim, also a former MPP, stands behind him. (Steve Paikin)
Last week, nearly 200 Liberals gathered in downtown Toronto to remember those times. “Our government had an unlikely beginning, a spectacular end, and a lot in between,” said Sean Conway, who was the minister of education under Peterson.
“I’d see people from hopeless-case ridings who never stopped doing their duty,” said an emotional Conway, who was responsible for shepherding the bill giving Catholic schools public funding to the end of high school. “But when the bell rang in that election, David Peterson was ready, and Frank Miller was looking for his plaid jacket.”
From left to right: Shelley Peterson (the former premier’s wife), Bonnie Crombie (current Liberal leader), Kathleen Wynne (Ontario’s 25th premier), and her partner Jane Rounthwaite. (Steve Paikin)
Peterson, only 42 at the time, took the oath of office, pledging in his speech to run a government “without walls or barriers.” Then he invited the massive crowd to tour the legislative assembly because: “It’s your building.”
So many people took him up on the offer, officials were terrified the building was going to collapse from so much foot traffic.
The Press Gallery from back in the day: (L-R) Keith Leslie, Richard Brennan, Randy Rath, and Lorrie Goldstein chat with former cabinet minister Brad Duguid. (Steve Paikin)
As the new cabinet ministers gathered for their first meeting, one polite older woman joined the normally confidential meeting. As the political staff and civil service quizzed each other (“…Is she one of yours? She’s not one of ours…”), the woman was finally asked what she was doing there. When she said, “The premier invited us to come tour the building,” some poor soul had to clarify that didn’t include the confidential deliberations of the executive council.
The “spectacular end” of the Liberals’ time in office has, in my view, overshadowed many of the Peterson government’s historic achievements. When this era of provincial politics gets discussed, the premier’s early and (as it turns out) ill-advised election call, just three years into his second term, dominates discussion. (In 1990, the Liberals lost 59 seats, including Peterson’s in London Centre, and the NDP under Bob Rae won an unlikely majority government.)
David Peterson tasked education minister Sean Conway with getting the contentious separate school funding bill through the legislature. (Steve Paikin)
So, let’s take a moment and remember those initial years of Liberal reign. The government featured Ontario’s best and most influential environment minister in Jim Bradley (still in politics at age 80, incidentally, as chair of Niagara Region). Bradley led something called Countdown Acid Rain, which forced the four largest point sources of sulphur dioxide emissions to clean up their acts, lest more lakes die and the air become even more unbreathable.
Peterson’s two chiefs of staff are on the left: Vince Borg and Hershell Ezrin. (Steve Paikin)
Health Minister Murray Elston oversaw the ban on extra-billing, a practice whereby some doctors charged patients a fee beyond what the OHIP fee schedule allowed. Despite massive protests by doctors in white lab coats on the front lawn at Queen’s Park, and threats to shut down the health-care system, the government banned the practice because it thought it was rendering some services inaccessible to Ontarians who couldn’t afford the extra fees. And Treasurer Bob Nixon also cancelled the regressive OHIP premiums, which families had been paying for two decades, because they too were becoming a barrier to lower-income families accessing their own health-care system.
Ian Scott, almost certainly the most brilliant attorney general in history, passed amendments to the Human Rights Code prohibiting discrimination when it came to seeking housing or employment. (And for the record, it was NDP MPP Evelyn Gigantes who sought an amendment to Scott’s original bill, demanding these human rights be extended to the LGBTQ+ community.)
Peterson’s government, perhaps anticipating future trade troubles with the U.S., made significant outreach to Europe and Asia.
Former Liberal MPPs Steve Offer and Sean Conway get reacquainted. (Steve Paikin)
The patronage system at the LCBO and the ministry of natural resources (where seemingly anyone who wanted to work for the liquor board or a provincial park had to be connected to a PC MPP) was busted up and professionalized. “There were more Tories prancing around Algonquin Park than deer,” is how Conway described it last week.
Former premier David Peterson along with former Liberal campaign volunteer Brenda Brown. (Steve Paikin)
Pay equity, televised legislative proceedings, a Freedom of Information Act, unprecedented social housing construction (initiated by Ontario’s first ever Black cabinet minister in Alvin Curling from Scarborough). The Liberals thought there was pent up demand in the province for the government to do more, and so they did more from what they called “the radical centre.” They also raised taxes to pay for it. Nixon, who described himself as a “parsimonious old farmer” (or sometimes just a “parsimonious old fart”) believed in pay-as-you-go government. Soon, he would present the first balanced budget the province had seen in more than a decade-and-a-half.
At last week’s Liberal reunion, I was asked to do a Q&A with the now 81-year-old Peterson, whose answers were repeatedly interrupted by applause. The former premier confessed he never was a great orator, but when he got on a roll about issues he truly cared about, he dazzled the crowd with his stories, passion, and conviction. It was a reminder of how effective Peterson could be on the hustings 40 years earlier.
Charles Beer (front row, second from right) leads the effort to remember the accomplishments of that time with “The Peterson Project.” Others, L-R in the front row are former MPPs Frank Miclash, Ron Kanter, and Bob Wong, Ontario’s first ever Chinese-Canadian cabinet minister.
Naturally, at this partisan gathering, there was no talk about the government’s missteps. The premier spent considerable political currency on the national unity file, in particular negotiating the Meech Lake Accord with Brian Mulroney’s federal government and the other premiers. This was born from genuine concern, but many at the time argued Peterson fixated on that at the expense of more mundane issues that were ultimately more pressing to voters, such as auto insurance rates, Sunday shopping, or the so-called Patti Starr fundraising scandal. (That last comedy of errors ultimately prompted Peterson to call a public inquiry, the results of which made some in the government look a tad sleazy and also sent Starr to jail for breaking fundraising laws.)
The last week of June has become a time that both Liberals and Tories can remember fondly. On June 29, 2018, Premier Ford’s first government was sworn in and held the first outdoor ceremony since 1985. On June 26, 1995, Mike Harris took the oath, ushering in his common sense revolution.
The current Liberal leader, Bonnie Crombie, was a Young Liberal at the University of Toronto when David Peterson won the party leadership in 1982.
But it started with the events of 40 years ago tomorrow, when, as current Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie (herself, president of the University of Toronto Young Liberals in the early 1980s) told the crowd last week: “You have inspired us to lead with courage, as you did. David, you led with heart.”
Just as some Harris acolytes created a book and a website to remember the CSR years, the Liberals are in the throes of creating their own book and website, called The Peterson Project, to ensure the history of this time is better remembered. And not just how it all ended.
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