We'll link him in through speakerphone.
Incidentally, I should note as well that in 1990 my mother's uncle, so my great-uncle, was also a member of the legislature in Ontario. He served as a New Democrat in the Bob Rae government. He served from 1990 until 1999 with Mr. Christopherson. We have that connection—not party affiliation, but we have that connection.
The NDP in Ontario had a long-time opposition to the nomination of the Speaker by the premier through that process. It was not that there was anything wrong with any of the individual Speakers, as they themselves noted, but that the overall process didn't lend itself to a democratic House. There was a need to see a change in the way in which that was undertaken.
What we're looking at is each Speaker's election from 1990 until about 2007, how each of those elections took place, and some of the factors that affected the way in which the Speaker was elected in each case. We looked at each of the elections and determined in each of the seven races who was the government's preferred choice, who was the premier's preferred choice. We were able to determine fairly easily, from public comments from the premier of the day, from government ministers, and from the media at the time, who was the preferred choice of the premier or the government, and who was seen more as the maverick, the one who wouldn't have been preferable to the government.
Certainly, in each case the government would have preferred their own MPPs to endorse their preferred candidate. That's the logical inference that anyone would make, but that wasn't the case in most cases.
One of the most stunning examples is the very first one. In 1990 Bob Rae was elected as premier. It was a significant surprise. I don't remember it. I was six at the time. The CBC archives provide the reaction of Bob Rae himself when he was elected. He was surprised, and I think his caucus was surprised as well. You had a new caucus as a new group of parliamentarians, not necessarily having been entirely involved in politics beforehand—some probably didn't expect to get elected at all—suddenly given this opportunity, for the first time ever, to undertake a major election of the Speaker.
Bob Rae certainly wasn't a neophyte politician. He had served many years, both at the federal level previously and at the provincial level, and he certainly had his preferences for whom he wanted to be Speaker. He tapped a gentleman by the name of David Warner to be the Speaker of the Ontario legislature. That was his preferred choice, and he made it known to his caucus and to the media that he wished to see David Warner elected as Speaker of the Ontario legislature.
As is always the case, both in Ontario and federally, other MPPs or MPs will put their names in as well. In 1990, two Liberal MPPs also put their names in, despite being opposition party candidates against a majority New Democrat. In fact, the New Democrats held 73 of the 130 seats in the legislature. They had a substantial majority, or a healthy majority, at least. There was a very public, and private, and political acknowledgement that David Warner, the NDP candidate for Speaker, the only NDP candidate for Speaker and the premier's choice would be the Speaker once the secret ballot was counted. But something happened. He did eventually end up as Speaker—a bit of a spoiler alert—but it took multiple ballots. When the first ballot was counted, one candidate, Jean Poirier, was eliminated, but Mr. Warner did not have a majority of the votes.
Despite the New Democrats holding a majority, despite the premier making it very publicly known that he had a preferred candidate for Speaker, certain members of the NDP backbench decided that was not what they wanted to see. In fact, the result was quite publicly covered. The Toronto Star wrote of it, and said:
Warner was the only New Democratic candidate and was expected to win on the first ballot since his party has a 73-seat majority in the 130-seat Legislature. The New Democrats were so confident the diminutive Warner would be elected that the legs on the Speaker’s chair were sawed down before the vote was taken yesterday afternoon.
It shows that the NDP members didn't actually vote along party lines. It showed that there was a degree of legislative dissent that allowed a message to be sent to the government caucus, to their own members, that there was some unhappiness with where the party was going. I think you'll often find that in a first-term government with new MPs and new MPPs, all with good intentions. You're going to find a degree of challenge in maintaining order and maintaining cohesive and loyal opportunity.
As those who may have paid attention to Ontario politics will know, following 1995, the NDP were not returned to power. Mr. Rae did lose that ensuing election. He lost it to the Progressive Conservatives, the PC Party of Ontario, and shortly afterwards, Mr. Rae returned to private life for a period of time. I believe he did make sort of a re-emergence on the other side at some point in time, but we'll save that for another discussion.
In 1995 we saw in Ontario the election of a PC majority government under Premier Mike Harris. Immediately after the election, after he made his cabinet.... Again, making a cabinet is one of those things where you are not going to make everyone happy. You're probably going to make significantly more enemies than friends and create unhappiness in the process. He had a challenge in which he had to leave a lot of people out of caucus. Among those people who were left out of caucus were those who then put their name—