Does anyone seriously believe Dalton McGuinty’s government has the will or the capability to reverse the disaster it’s produced in  its eight years in office? The report released this week by economist Don Drummond, which annihilates any illusion McGuinty supporters might have harboured that Ontario’s economy is under competent stewardship, is just one blow, and just the most recent, against a government that has stumbled from one mistake to another throughout its years in office.

So damning is the Drummond report that it almost — almost — managed to overshadow a concurrent scandal going on in Mr. McGuinty’s Health Ministry. For any other government the ongoing revelations at ORNGE — the agency responsible for Ontario air ambulance services — would be more than enough to threaten the survival of the government.  It’s a big, complex, highly expensive miasma of incompetence that is too extensive to catalogue briefly in its entirety, but involves hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars poured into a corporate web set up under the government’s nose (and with its approval), apparently for the benefit of a few grossly overpaid executives with  ego problems and a key to the vault.

Health Minister Deb Matthews was either unaware of the abuses, which is frightening enough, or hoping no one would notice, which may be worse. In any event the government did nothing about the blatant abuses until a series of devastating revelations hit the front pages (mainly, to its great credit, in the Toronto Star).   Since then Matthews has been scrambling to keep up, but threw up her hands Thursday andcalled in the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate potential criminal charges after complaining she’d been lied to repeatedly by senior ORNGE officials.

A week ago the McGuinty crew was busy dismissing new census figures that show Ontario sliding precipitously from its perch among the country’s more prosperous provinces. Now a have-not province increasingly dependent on equalization handouts thanks to its growing mountain of debt, Ontario is no longer the overwhelming choice of immigrants seeking a chance to make good in their new home. For that they look to the West; Ontario gets refugees and family members seeking to join earlier arrivals, the ones with skills prefer Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta.

There was little hint Mr. McGuinty had any idea how to handle any of these problems when Mr. Drummond came along with a report that dwarfed them all.  And his reaction since the report landed has hardly been encouraging: Mr. McGuinty seems to have fallen down a hole. Despite having received the report weeks before it was made public, he’s given no hint of how he might deal with it. He might have used that time to prepare a plan, or at least put together a response indicating some concrete action would be forthcoming. Instead he’s adopted the Scarlett O’Hara strategy in dealing with problems at Tara: “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

His non-response bolsters the suspicion that this is a government long since out of gas and in need of replacement. An excellent opportunity to do so in October was lost when the opposition Progressive Conservatives bobbled the campaign, enabling the Liberals to extend their lifeline by another four years. The PCs were defeated by their own lack of preparedness and inability to adjust to changing circumstances, but also by the Liberals’ success in hiding, disguising and papering over the full extent of the problems they must have suspected were about to burst upon them. Ontarians voted for the government under false pretenses. In British Columbia, former premier Gordon Campbell was forced to resign after misleading voters on plans to adopt the HST; Mr. McGuinty’s  violation of voter trust is far greater in scope and impact — while B.C. may have to re-pay the $1.6 billion advanced by Ottawa and find a new way to raise revenue, Ontario faces decades of austerity as it struggles to whittle down a deficit that has tripled under Mr. McGuinty’s watch, and, according to Mr. Drummond, could double again in the next five years.

Where is the accountability for this? Where’s the slightest sign that Mr. McGuinty recognizes how deep a hole he’s dropped Ontarians into — not just this generation, but the next as well? Tim Hudak, who was recently endorsed as leader by his Progressive Conservatives despite his failure to oust the Liberals in October,  has another chance staring him in the face. The Liberals were reduced to a minority in October, though just barely, and would likely have been reduced to federal Liberal levels if voters had known the truth. Mr. Drummond has provided the platform, Mr. McGuinty the motive and the opportunity. The opposition should seriously consider seizing it: no one will be able to clean up the mess the Liberals have made, not next year or for years afterwards.  But they certainly shouldn’t be left alone to compound their disaster. Ontario has done nothing to deserve a fate as bad as that.

National Post