It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to Mike.
In fact, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t even remember me, since for him, I’m one of those ephemeral faces that have cluttered up his life as he climbed his way to the very seat of power at Queen’s Park some thirty years ago.
We parted company, Mike and I, back in 1995 when he was elected Premier of Ontario and began his scorched-earth campaign to unravel all manner of supports for Ontario’s vulnerable populations. I should say that I parted company with him, and that he didn’t break a sweat, much less notice. So he won’t be troubled by today’s column, because he won’t read it, passing as it will well below his radar.
I knocked on doors for the guy, worked the phone banks, was a poll captain, speech-maker and speech-writer. But the last time I spoke to him was when I saw him get out of a car at the Renfrew County Plowing match back in the early 1990’s. We came abruptly face-to-face.
“Hi Mike,” I said. And that was the conversation right there, fairly one-sided from my point of view. Just ten minutes later another car pulled up and Premier Bob Rae stepped out.
“Hi Bob,” I said, having never met the man before. “Hey, how are you?” replied the premier.
I guess I could quit right now and be satisfied that I’ve left my readers with an accurate snapshot of Mike Harris.
Remember over the past couple days how I’ve been talking about the essential “goodness,” or “kindness” of humans and of their basic desire to be decent to one another?
I wasn’t talking about Mike Harris.
Mike, to me, was a hard-smoking, hard-swearing, possibly womanizing, maybe hard-drinking blue-chip five-star card-carrying member of AOA, or Assholes of America, only in their Canadian Division. He may have been president of that group, and that would be saying something, because I’ve seen plenty of assholes in my time, but Mike was, beyond doubt, a truly gifted one. If there’s a Hall of Fame for assholes, they’d name the foyer after him.
Of those vulnerable populations I was referring to, the one’s Mike put the boots to, were his own MPPs, or Members of Provincial Parliament.
These would the people who represent your riding every day, all day, the reason why they came up with the term 24-7-365. The people who bust their asses getting elected in the first place, then going to Toronto to be the community voice in the legislature, and sometimes even in Cabinet. And with all this they manage to attend every retirement party, Legion function, Tulip Social and windshield installer convention in their riding. They work all week in Toronto, then work all weekend in their riding. All the while, the media, people generally, and guys like me dump on them for all kinds of stupid reasons. MPP’s meet more unhinged people before breakfast than most of us do in a lifetime, and I’m not talking about their families.
Speaking of which, have many of us tried raising a family while serving as a long-serving MPP? It’s not the easiest of things, and requires a wagon-load of love, patience, and understanding from one’s spouse and children. And sometimes, sadly, even that’s not enough. Marriage break-downs can be part of the currency of this profession. Also substance abuse and depression.
About 100% of your daily lives as citizens of Ontario is governed or managed somehow by the provincial government, and by extension, your MPP. Yes, that’s an exaggeration, but sadly, not by a lot. The provincial government has more impact on your life, by far, than the federal government does. Federal MPs, or Members of Parliament, make $194,600.00 a year, with cabinet ministers coming in at $287,400.00.
MPPs in Ontario make $116,000.00 a year, and have had their salaries frozen since 2009, while federal MPs routinely vote themselves pay raises every year.
Think about that.
An Ontario MPP makes less money than every senior staffer at Renfrew Town Hall. Less money than a school principal. Less money than a Toronto city councillor. Jesus, even less money than me. And all these people get to go home for the weekend, some at 4:30 PM, some earlier. Some of us don’t even go into work at all.
That’s not right.
Lorenzo Berardinetti is a lawyer and four-term Liberal MPP. He woke up this morning in a homeless shelter in downtown Toronto. So far as I know, Lorenzo isn’t a fentanyl user, an anything user, a gambler, or a man reckless with his cash. Like a lot of us he was married, had a mortgage, and I honestly don’t know about any kids. Now he’s not, and he doesn’t, and I still don’t know. I do know that he became seriously ill in the past few years, something he’s never financially recovered from.
Lorenzo’s great crime?
He lost his seat in the 2018 provincial election.
And suddenly he’s a nobody, trying to reignite his law career from his new office, a cubicle at a Toronto Public Library location.
And he has no pension after four terms as a provincial MPP.
There’s Mike Harris, sticking his ugly face back into the conversation. The Sneer That Walked Like A Man made that part of his so-called Common Sense Revolution, the removal of pensions from Members of Provincial Parliament. Federal MPs get a gold-plated pension after six years of service, where they earn an amount based upon their best five-years of earnings and the number of years service. For example. Geoff Regan, a 24-year Liberal MP gets an annual pension of 147,400.00.
John Yakabuski, MPP of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke for 21 years, will receive an annual pension of $0,000.00.
Someone please explain to me the justice in that, and the logic behind it.
Mike Harris rolls in cash. He got the hell out of the game before he was going to be crushed in the 2003 provincial election. He sits on boards and prestigious committees. Nipissing University in North Bay named their library after him, which is a Heimlich Manoeuvre waiting to happen every time I think about it.
John Yakabuski gets nothing. Lorenzo Berardinetti gets nothing. And no premier since Harris, whether that be McGuinty, Wynne, or Ford, has had the decency or guts to remedy this in the years since, absolutely petrified of the media and other interest groups, and maybe even taxpayers throwing a fit for the unmitigated gall of paying their public servants properly.
And I don’t mean people working for the provincial government, of whom there are many. I mean the actual freaking members of the legislature, who make less than almost anyone else in the Ontario public service. Those other folks, the front-line types and their superiors, all make more money and receive adequate pensions.
Yakabuski will get his CPP.
Thanks, Mike, for being such a dick.
COVER PHOTO: Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
NEWSMAGRENFREW 