In retrospect, it seems like George Smitherman got hung out to dry a bit.
A pervasive storyline, coming out of provincial Liberal circles last fall, was that the former energy minister had overstepped by locking Ontario into a green energy deal with Samsung. The complaint was that Smitherman had undermined the open competition that he himself had set up for green energy development - the so-called feed-in-tariff - by giving a big foreign company preferential rates and exclusive access to transmission capacity.
It may have been a convenient way for some of his cabinet colleagues to convey their general fatigue with Smitherman's heavy-handed manner, and their growing impatience with his dual role as a senior cabinet minister and a prospective mayoral candidate. But coming out of today's announcement, it's pretty clear that Samsung was as much Dalton McGuinty's baby as it was Smitherman's.
Even if there would have been a penalty for backing out of the agreement, which is unclear, McGuinty could have done so and implicitly hung the blame on his former minister. Instead, he pushed ahead with it over the objections of several cabinet members - including, by most accounts, interim energy minister Gerry Phillips. And when Brad Duguid was named this week as Smitherman's proper replacement in that post, he was clearly informed in no uncertain terms that signing off on the deal would be his first major order of business.
What's intriguing is why exactly McGuinty was so keen on it.
In Smitherman's case, there might have been a desire to get a big green announcement out the door before he left Queen's Park. But why wouldn't the Premier, not exactly known as the impatient sort, prefer to let the feed-in-tariff play itself out?
It more or less boils down to something more often associated with opposition leader Tim Hudak: faith in a simple message.
There are all kinds of legitimate concerns with this deal, mostly centred around its unfairness to domestic companies. But to understand those, you have to wrap your head around the complexities of the energy market - something that requires more time and interest than most Ontarians probably have.
In stark contrast, the case for the deal can be summarized in a single sentence, and it's likely to lead most coverage. Here, for example, is the lede from the report on the Star's website:
"Premier Dalton McGuinty has signed a landmark agreement with a South Korean consortium that will see $7 billion invested in Ontario to create 16,000 new jobs over six years."
For a premier who desperately needs to convince Ontarians that he's bringing jobs and investment to their economically ravaged province, that's exactly the kind of message he needs to get out.
Is the Samsung deal creating many more jobs than would otherwise be the case under the feed-in-tariff? That's debatable, since most of the 16,000 cited today are spin-offs from its investment, not people who will be directly employed by the company.
But to create the impression that Ontario is taking the lead in the competition for green energy investment, one big announcement is much more useful than a whole bunch of little ones, spread out over an extended period.
Smitherman was no doubt aware of that equation. But he clearly wasn't alone.