Ontario Liberals Don’t Just Want Mike Schreiner: They Want His Party.

By Ray Rivers

February 5th, 2023

BURLINGTON, ON

The provincial Liberal party is Ontario’s green party. The last decade and a half of Liberal rule from 2003 to 2018 were the greenest years in Ontario’s history.

In 2014 Ontario became one of the first jurisdictions anywhere to phase out its reliance on coal fired dirty electricity generation – the number one historical cause of global warming. That was also the single biggest reduction of carbon emissions in Canada, ever!

Ontario became Canada’s leading jurisdiction in implementing clean passive solar and wind renewable energy.

In its place Ontario became Canada’s leading jurisdiction in implementing clean passive solar and wind renewable energy. By the time they had been replaced as government, more than 92% of all the electricity in the province was being generated without using fossil fuels. Ontario led the rest of the country in wind capacity adding 5,060 MW of wind capacity between 2005 and 2019. And with 2,670 MW installed, Ontario had about 97% of Canada’s solar capacity in 2019,

The Liberals established an emissions trading regime to efficiently facilitate industrial carbon emission reductions and avoid the requirement for a carbon tax. They brought in powerful incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles (EV) and created the framework for an extensive network for EV charging across the province, including in apartments and condos. And the Liberals created the Greenbelt in 2005, the most extensive protective barrier to urban sprawl anywhere in the world.

It is questionable that the Greens or NDP could have practically done more to transition the province towards energy sustainability and on the path to reducing Ontario’s carbon footprint. In fact the changes the Liberals introduced so threatened the dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, those with vested interests in oil and gas, and the climate change deniers, that they were booted out by the elect-Doug-Ford dinosaurs.

For those that read my columns leading up to the last provincial election you’d remember that Mike Schreiner won the debates hands down. He hit the points the Liberal and NDP leaders only slept through, and took Ford to task, not only on his environmental policies but health care failures as well. So he is not only a good leader for the Greens but, if debates mean anything, would probably be a great leader for Ontario as well.

Change the colour of tat sign to red – and it will do just fine in the next provincial election.

Hasn’t anyone in the Green Party woken up to reality and smelt the coffee. In last June’s election, that party scored only 6% of the vote, whereas the Libs and Dippers split the rest (about 25% each) of the non-Ford vote, allowing Ford a free pass to a four year virtual dictatorship. The Green Party is acting like the Ralph Nader of Ontario politics. Left of centre Nader stole enough votes from Gore to help Bush steal the presidency in 2000.

There was a letter from some 40 prominent Liberals inviting Schreiner to come over and lead their party. In response some 75 Greens penned a response saying that the Libs should join them Greens. It’s a brilliant idea. As someone famous once said, ‘a rose by another name would smell as sweet’.

So call it the Liberal Greens or the Green Libs or whatever, but get your collective act together and stop Doug Ford before he does even more damage to this province than he already has. If you love this province, that is.

Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.   Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa.  Tweet @rayzrivers

Background links:

Family doctors

Those gas plants

Greens think Liberals are trying to steal their leader

National Post thinks pursuit of green party leader is a new low for Ontario Liberals

Eight reason why Schreiner is a good fit for the Liberals

Ford for got what he learned when he was a municipal councillor