There’s the smell of blood in the Liberal waters.

One can only hope the media sharks go on the same feeding and tweet frenzy with the Wynne Liberals when all the courtroom doors finally swing open this week as they did with the Harperites when the ol’ Duff was tossed overboard like chum bait.

If any government in recent memory needs to be filleted and fried, it’s the Dalton McGuinty-Kathleen Wynne Liberals.

Innocent until proven guilty? It’s a lovely concept, but not one easily extended to the current pack of Liberals at Queen’s Park whose election to a majority in 2013 remains a stupefying feat.

They are beyond redemption or mercy, these Liberals are, at least in the court of public opinion where verdicts are delivered in the polling booths, and not via judicial guilt or acquittal.

Besides, their shelf life is way past due; their scandals so deep that chest waders would fall short of offering effluent protection.

Ethics? What ethics?

On Monday, two top aides to Wynne’s chief enabler, former premier Dalton McGuinty, will appear in a criminal court to answer charges of breach of trust and mischief.

Mischief? David Livingston, McGuinty’s former chief of staff, and Laura Miller, his deputy, are accused of destroying government documents about the cancellation of two gas-fired power generating plants by allegedly purging damaging e-mails from hard drives.

Some mischief.

These charges are denied, of course, but the thought of Livingston and Miller sitting at a defence table will be a sight for sore and long-waiting conservative eyes.

These allegations, after all, date back to 2012-13, and now finally they will be aired out in public — with little time left to plug the hole in the Liberal boat before next year’s provincial election.

The Liberals got lucky when former Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak threatened to fire 100,000 civil servants on the eve of the last election, and everyone who had family or a friend in the public service voted en masse to teach him a lesson.

And, bingo! Another Liberal majority, as undeserved as hell, but a majority nonetheless.

And then, up in Sudbury later in the week, the premier herself is expected to testify at a trial where her former campaign director, Pat Sorbara, and Liberal fundraiser Gerry Lougheed Jr., are accused under the Elections Act of bribery, allegedly for offering a job to a would-be Liberal candidate to pull the plug so that Wynne’s favoured candidate could run.

“Make no mistake, it is Liberal political corruption that will be on trial,” said Steve Clark, the provincial Tories’ accountability critic.

“It’s a sad day for the people of Ontario that they will be seeing their premier as a witness on a stand.”

A sad day? Ontarians who spent their winter in the cold because they could not afford to pay their hydro bills, thanks to the incompetence of the Wynne Liberals, should be feeling very warm at the prospect of Wynne squirming in the witness box trying to explain ethical behavior.

Oh, for the good old days when the media of my early years would descend on Sudbury, their flasks fully loaded, and make it a Saturday night that would do Stompin’ Tom Connors proud.

Bringing down a premier such as Wynne can be a noble mission.

The ol’ Duff, by comparison, was small fish.

markbonokoski@gmail.com