T he Harperization of Premier Dalton McGuinty has been astonishing to behold.

With the minimum-wage flim-flam he pulled last week, the premier has added a certain bloody-mindedness to the increasingly arrogant and autocratic attitude he's exhibited since his Christmas epiphany.

That was when McGuinty undertook a session of Yuletide soul-searching which led him to conclude he's a leader of boldness rather than an incremental fuss-budget, and when he apparently decided to pucker up for business.

It is bizarre that the Ontario government, in its budget last Thursday, should have reiterated its commitment to raise the minimum wage to $10.25 next year, but that within 18 hours the premier was backing off. "Like all prudent business managers we have to take into account ... the economy as a whole," he said.

In practical terms, just about everything in any budget is a projection contingent on variables. But to have singled out one commitment as less equal than others, and before a group strongly opposed to it, blithely undercutting his own finance minister in the process, sends a strong signal the premier is ready and willing to renege.

In its cynicism, it was positively Harper-like.

Once upon a time, McGuinty was at perpetual loggerheads with the Prime Minister and claimed to stand for a different vision. Now, he seems an increasingly kindred spirit in both substance and style.

In last week's budget, he served up the sales tax harmonization and corporate tax cuts federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had long urged in his feud with the province. The Ontario government even mimicked the feds in the way major components of the budget were rolled out in a series of announcements and leaks the week before its tabling.

The parliamentary convention of releasing such matters to the Legislature has now been sacrificed, by the premier's own admission, to the greater imperative of news management.

Every day last week, Progressive Conservative MPP Ted Arnott, as courteous a parliamentarian as there is at Queen's Park, complained of the disrespect to the institution.

Every day – even on the day McGuinty sang praises to "our heritage and parliamentary democracy" during a ceremony to return the refurbished mace to the Legislature – the premier brushed him off.

To add insult to injury, Arnott was even barred from the Legislature one evening by security when he attempted to fetch a book from his desk because Finance Minister Dwight Duncan – using the place as a glorified rehearsal hall – was inside practising his budget speech.

As a symbol for the diminishment of the chamber into a place of theatre, while the Legislature's intended work has been outsourced to roving premierial photo-ops, it could hardly be topped.

Finally, it even seems possible now that the premier was less than forthcoming with his own Liberal caucus when the matter of the harmonized sales tax was discussed at a meeting earlier this month.

Afterwards, many MPPs from the government side still seemed to think the matter was up for debate and said privately they were nervous about sparking in Ontario the sort of consumer tax revolt that had toppled governments in other provinces.

"There were lots of questions asked and few answers given," one MPP told the Star's Robert Benzie.

It's difficult to see why answers were scarce. The deal was already done. The feds had signed the memorandum of understanding about blending the PST and GST a day earlier. And Duncan, by the date on the document, was signing it that very day.

By the looks of things, don't be surprised if the premier's next musing is about the pleasures of prorogation.





Jim Coyle's provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.