Dalton McGuinty is still premier of a minority government for a change
13 Oct 2011 Adu Raudkivi
Dalton McGuinty went into the 2011 provincial election with the trepidation of loss. He had the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) hanging around his neck, something the federals had landed him with and didn't take the blame for. This cost the average family more than the pittance that he gave the people as a rebate.
The Progressive Conservative Leader of the Opposition Tim Hudak started with a slight lead over McGuinty but somehow his campaign didn't take off. There was a $14 billion amount that he wouldn't explain, that the Liberals kept hammering on saying Hudak will take it from healthcare. Hudak kept slipping further.
The New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath, on her first campaign also was so nice that people didn't ask her about the tie-in with the unions.
Both Hudak and Horwath went up in numbers, McGuinty went down in numbers, one less than the 54 seats required for a majority but still more than the other parties.
Nothing changed, the 416 dialing area stayed between the Liberals and the NDP (the NDP went up one seat), the 905 dialing remained with the PC's and the NDP took a lot of the north part of the province.
There was one all-candidates meeting towards the end of the election period that was attended by Horwath and Hudak, but not McGuinty. This could have caused the loss of the deciding riding that put the Liberals into minority category.
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