Premier Dalton McGuinty planned to suspend the legislature this week — even before he decided to resign — in order to reach a wage-freeze deal with 481,000 unionized public servants, the Star has learned.

Sources said the house was to have been prorogued Tuesday because McGuinty wanted to foster secret talks that began a week ago without the supercharged backdrop of a raucous minority assembly.

“There’s a desire to get a deal . . . through negotiation not legislation,” a senior government official said Thursday.

Ironically, McGuinty’s controversial prorogation could inadvertently jeopardize any chance at peacefully resolving the labour standoff.

“Any interest we may have had evaporated when Dalton McGuinty prorogued,” Ontario Public Service Employees Union president Warren (Smokey) Thomas said in an interview.

“I don’t like the notion he shut down democracy to get a deal with labour,” he added, calling it “offensive in the extreme.”

Privately, senior Liberals are hopeful Thomas’s stance is posturing because they believe he is sincere and constructive.

Indeed, even as he was railing about prorogation, sources say the OPSEU president met Wednesday with Government Services Minister Harinder Takhar to talk.

It’s part of an ongoing dialogue stemming from a two-hour meeting in McGuinty’s private boardroom last Friday, where senior Liberal officials huddled with top labour leaders — including the presidents of the teachers’ unions now at war with the government.

The exploratory discussions were the result of “back-channel” overtures from Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan aimed at averting a legislated wage freeze on more public employees.

Earlier this month, Canadian Auto Workers president Ken Lewenza — who is friends with Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, a fellow Windsor native — quietly assured the government “the coals are hot to get a deal.”

Lewenza, the most powerful private-sector union leader in Canada, prodded the Liberals to reopen lines of communication with labour after months of tumult that had culminated in last month’s law, Bill 115, mandating a freeze on teachers’ wages for two years.

Some CAW members who work in the public service would be affected by any new restraint measures.

A complicating political factor was the minority Liberal government’s threat to introduce legislation similar to Bill 115 imposing a wage freeze on 481,000 other employees, including nurses, custodians, and professors — possibly with Progressive Conservative support.

As long as the legislature was in session, the pressure to actually introduce that bill was mounting on McGuinty.

With unions already challenging the teachers’ legislation as unconstitutional in court, the Liberals know similar legal action looms for any other imposed wage freeze law.

That’s why — prior to McGuinty’s surprise announcement Monday he was resigning after nine years as premier and 16 as Liberal leader — the decision had been made to prorogue the house and concentrate all energies on a labour deal.

The list of attendees at last Friday’s meeting reads like a who’s who of Ontario power brokers:

McGuinty’s chief of staff David Livingston, Duncan’s chief of staff Tim Shortill, and Dave Gene, the premier’s top political fixer, met with Ryan, Thomas, Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario president Sam Hammond, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president Ken Coran, and Linda Haslam-Stroud, president of the Ontario Nurses Association.

Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario president Fred Hahn was the only key player unable to attend the session that one participant described as “pretty rancorous.”

“It was a fishing expedition on the part of the government,” insisted another union insider.

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Not so, argue Liberal sources.

“It was part of the reset,” said a Grit, referring to McGuinty’s departure and the house shutting down. “This now dials down things.”

One argument the Liberals are using is to remind labour leaders that Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, who leads in public opinion polls, has vowed to strip unions of some powers and slash public service jobs while unilaterally freezing wages.

But some unionists appear willing to gamble that NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who opposes any legislated freeze, will win an election expected next spring.

“I’m not interested in saving the Liberals,” said one labour official close to the talks.

Another union insider conceded that if the Liberals call back the legislature and water down Bill 115, they will be more willing to make a deal on framework toward a broader freeze.

While Ryan was not available for comment, the OFL’s Joel Duff emphasized: “Sid didn’t go in with any mandate there.”

“We’re talking about talking . . . feeling out when and how. Everybody’s reading the tea leaves. We’re trying to figure out where the unions are at.”

News of the secret meeting emerged as the Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario (AMAPCEO) on Thursday ratified a new collective agreement with the government that includes a two-year salary freeze for 10,000 workers.

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