Premier Kathleen Wynne has come to praise her predecessor, not to bury him.

As former premier Dalton McGuinty made it official Wednesday that he will step down as Ottawa South Liberal MPP after 23 years, Wynne said that the good he did for Ontario will live after him.

“There are issues that we will continue to deal with and he will continue to be asked questions about — things like the relocation of the gas plants — but that’s not his … total legacy,” she told Citytv’s Breakfast Television.

“He’s done enormous service to the people of Ontario and … it’s been an honour to work with him.”

Despite being left to clean up a slew of past political messes, Wynne, who succeeded McGuinty four months ago, urged Ontarians to consider the former premier’s decade in power.

“He’s done so many years of service to the province. He worked to repair and rebuild our education system, health-care system, invest in infrastructure across the province,” she said.

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“He has left a really solid foundation. We got through the economic downturn much better than we would have had he not put those foundations in place.”

Wynne admitted she was caught off-guard that McGuinty was stepping down one day after the minority Liberals survived a confidence vote in the legislature when the budget passed thanks to support from the NDP.

“I spoke with him last night so I didn’t know before last night that he was planning to do this,” the premier said.

“He needs to get on with his life and I totally get that.”

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said McGuinty is “walking out under a cloud of corruption . . . we have a government that is subject to not one, but two, OPP investigations,” a reference to the probes into questionable business practices at the ORNGE air ambulance service and illegally deleted emails in the gas plant scandal.

New Democrat MPP Peter Tabuns said he respects McGuinty’s many years of public service and applauded the move to full-day kindergarten despite implementation problems.

But he added the timing of the former premier’s exit is intriguing given last week’s scathing report from Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian into the deleted emails and the subsequent OPP investigation.

“Look at what’s happened. The last time things got really hot on the gas plant file, he prorogued parliament and he said he was not going to sit any longer as premier,” Tabuns told reporters.

“The events of the last few days have ratcheted that up substantially. He takes the next step, he resigns as MPP. I think you can draw your own conclusions.”

The legislature’s justice committee, which is probing the gas plant scandal, intends to recall McGuinty as a witness in the wake of the Cavoukian report, which says high-ranking political staffers in McGuinty’s office deleted emails.

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McGuinty, who stepped down as premier Oct. 15, issued a news release Wednesday to formally announce his retirement as an MPP.

“I leave politics with my idealism intact and a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunity to have served in public life,” he said in a statement that thanked his family, his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, his staff, his constituents, public servants, and the Queen’s Park Press Gallery.

His riding association is holding a nomination meeting on June 20 and his long-time constituency assistant John Fraser is expected to be the Liberal candidate in a byelection that must be called by December.

Byelections will be called before Aug. 15 in London West and Windsor-Tecumseh to fill vacancies left by former energy minister Chris Bentley and former finance minister Dwight Duncan.

From Star Dispatches:The Quiet Evolution: How Dalton McGuinty changed Ontario - and why he resigned by Jim Coyle is available through stardispatches.com.

With a file from Rob Ferguson

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