Parties & Leaders

Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty

MPP Ottawa South  [ Liberal Party of Ontario ]

Dalton McGuinty, shown in 2007, has led Ontario's Liberal party since 1996. (Ryan Taplin/Canadian Press)

Dalton McGuinty, 52, has already campaigned through four Ontario elections in 17 years, including two as the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.

But this is the Ottawa-born politician's first shot at being re-elected premier.

Politics is in McGuinty's blood. His younger brother, David McGuinty, has represented the federal riding of Ottawa South for the Liberals since 2004.

His father, Dalton McGuinty Sr., was the MPP for the Ottawa South riding from 1987 until he died of a heart attack in 1990.

That year, Dalton Jr., ran for the first time and was elected to his father's former seat, beginning his steady rise through the ranks of provincial politics. That's not to say that the journey has always been a smooth one.

Early challenges

In 1996, McGuinty threw his hat in the race to lead the provincial Liberals. On the first ballot, he placed fourth out of seven candidates.

He eventually prevailed — but only after five ballots.

The victory launched McGuinty into his first term as Opposition leader against Mike Harris' Progressive Conservative government.

A rocky 1999 election campaign left McGuinty in opposition for a second term against the Harris government. McGuinty took his share of insults in the process, including one from NDP Leader Howard Hampton, who suggested McGuinty physically resembled silver-screen psychopath Norman Bates.

Landslide victory

Four years later, in the 2003 election, McGuinty faced off against a new Tory leader, Ernie Eves.

McGuinty promised a change from the Tory philosophy of tax and service cuts that had steered Ontario for the past eight years.

He vowed the Liberals would balance the budget within a year and neither raise nor cut taxes.

That time around, commentators called him the winner of the leaders debate and McGuinty was undamaged — perhaps even helped — by a Progressive Conservative news release that referred to him as "an evil reptilian kitten eater from another planet."

His party won a landslide victory, taking 72 of 103 seats in the legislature with 47 per cent of the popular vote.

As premier

After McGuinty began his term as Ontario's 24th premier, he backed down on a promise to balance the budget within a year and introduced an unpopular health tax of up to $900 per taxpayer.

However, the Liberals had balanced the budget by 2005-06 and managed to turn out budget surpluses annually until the end of their term.

While premier, McGuinty hiked the minimum wage, fixed the provincial election date for a day in October every four years, gave municipalities greater powers and put off closing the province's coal-fired generating plants until 2014.

In response to issues brought up by his opponents this summer, McGuinty has opposed extending public funding to non-Catholic faith-based schools and committed to paying some of the social services costs downloaded to municipalities by previous governments.

Family life

Outside politics, McGuinty has been married for 26 years to elementary school teacher Terri McGuinty, whom he met in high school. The couple have a grown daughter, three sons in university, and a dog named Mickey.

McGuinty grew up as one of 10 children in a Roman Catholic family. His mother, Elizabeth McGuinty, came from a French-Canadian family in northern Ontario and worked as a nurse. His father, Dalton McGuinty Sr., was an Irish-Canadian from the Ottawa Valley who worked as a professor and politician.

After completing high school, McGuinty studied biology at McMaster University in Hamilton and law at the University of Ottawa.

He started a law firm in suburban Ottawa that he later ran jointly with his brother Dylan until entering politics.

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