Ernie Eves
Ernest Eves (born June 17, 1946) was the twenty-third Premier of the province of Ontario, Canada, from April 15, 2002, to October 23, 2003.
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| Rank: | 23rd |
| Term of Office: | April 15, 2002 - October 23, 2003 |
| Predecessor: | Mike Harris |
| Successor: | Dalton McGuinty |
| Date of Birth: | June 17, 1946 |
| Place of Birth: | Windsor, Ontario |
| Profession: | Lawyer |
| Political Party: | PC |
Ernie Eves was born into a working class family in Windsor, Ontario, in 1946. As a teenager, Eves moved with his family to the northern logging town of Parry Sound, Ontario. Eves went to law school and then in 1981 ran for the provincial parliament in Parry Sound. He defeated LIberal Richard Thomas by only six votes leading to the nickname "Landslide Ernie" but went on to keep the seat for twenty years.
Eves is a long time close friend of fellow northern Ontario MPP Mike Harris. In 1990 Eves backed Harris' bid for the party leadership. In 1995 after being elected on the "Common Sense Revolution", a Reagan-style program of tax cuts and government cutbacks, Eves was appointed Harris' finance minister and right-hand man. Eves went on to supervise unprecedented cuts to public services and also to pass legislation cutting the taxes of Ontarians.
Despite the close friendship and similar backgrounds and beliefs of Harris and Eves, the two have very different personalities. While Harris tried to be the embodiment of a grass-roots politician, Eves is just the opposite. He was always meticulously well-turned-out in expensive suits, with court-filings revealing he spent $25 000 a year on clothing, $5,000 a year on jewlry and cufflinks and $700 a month on dry cleaning. Eves also sported a slicked-back hair style that reinforced his image as a "slick" politician.
Eves' personal life in the last few years of the Harris government were tumultuous. His son was killed in a traffic accident in Parry Sound, and soon after his long-standing marriage broke down. Eves began a relationship with a fellow cabinet colleague, Isabel Bassett, and he and his wife separated. In 2001 Eves decided to resign from his post of Finance Minister to seek opportunities in the private sector.
His retirement was very brief, however. When Mike Harris unexpectedly stepped down as Conservative leader, Eves decided to run in the 2002 Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership election. Eves immediately became the front-runner and most Tory MPP's and members of the party came to support him. Eves staved off a determined run by his successor at Finance, Jim Flaherty, who pushed a hard-right agenda to appeal to the party's grassroots. Flaherty's campaign featured scathing attacks on Eves, calling him a "pale, ink imitation of Dalton McGuinty." Eves became leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party on March 23, 2002.
On April 15, 2002, Eves was sworn in as Ontario's 23rd Premier. His time in office was a difficult one, however, as the government was still trying to recover from the Walkerton affair, where seven people died from contaminated water, when fresh problems broke out. The most severe of these was the move to a competitive market in the power system. Cost over-runs at nuclear reactors and a very hot summer combined with problems in market regulation to drive hydro prices up significantly. The government was forced to cancel the privatization and capped hydro rates below cost, billing the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Eves' advisors were responsible for a public relations disaster when they convinced the Premier to have Minister of Finance Janet Ecker present the government's 2003 budget at a televised press conference at the headquarters of auto parts maker Magna International instead of in the legislature. The "Magna Budget" resulted in accusations that the government was trying to avoid the scrutiny of the legislature and was flouting centuries of parliamentary tradition in favour of a PR stunt. Furthermore, the expense of this move was condemned as a waste of money considering that the legislative chamber was already equipped with video equipment for televised coverage. Attacks came from not only the opposition parties and the media but from one of Eves' own MPPs, Gary Carr, who had been disgruntled since being passed over for a Cabinet position in 1995. As Speaker of the legislature, Carr ruled that the government's actions were prima facie in contempt of the legislature. (Subsequently, in a rebuke of Carr, the PC majority in the Legislature voted that the government's actions did not, in fact, constitute contempt.) The budget was meant to be the launch of a spring election campaign, but was so poorly received that Eves was forced to delay the election. The budget also included several unrealistic assumptions that led many commentators to believe the government was in fact running a deficit in the range of $2 billion.
(Indeed, Liberal Finance Critic Gerry Phillips said in June 2003 that the real size of the Ontario government deficit was $5 billion. These words would come back to haunt Phillips and Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty after the October 2003. They claimed to be "surprised" by the $5-billion deficit and said that this forced them to break one of their key election promises: not to raise taxes.)
Soon after the budget, Chris Stockwell, one of Eves' cabinet ministers, ran into trouble when he used public money to pay for a family trip to Europe, and was forced to resign.
In the summer of 2003, the power issue caused further trouble for Eves. During its time in office, the Tory government had failed to make any substantial investments in new sources of power. Warm weather and the use of air conditioners pushed the Ontario hydro grid to the brink, and after the 2003 North American blackout, the provincial power utility was forced to buy expensive power from neighbouring producers in Quebec. During that time, Eves made daily television appearances announcing developments in the situation, and appealing to the public to conserve as much electricity as possible during the period. As a result of this exposure, Eves enjoyed a moderate uptick in the polls.
In September 2003, Eves called an election for October 2, 2003. His government was 15 points behind Dalton McGuinty's Liberals in the polls heading into the election, and despite the reputation of the Ontario Tories for pulling off Houdini acts, Eves was unable to close the gap. Much of the Tory platform closely resembled the platform that Jim Flaherty had campaigned on in the leadership race, and Eves was visibly uncomfortable defending policy proposals that he had opposed a year earlier. When a Tory campaign staffer distributed a press release referring to Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty as an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet, many voters were turned off by the attack.
On October 2, 2003, the Liberals won 72 of the 103 seats in the Legislature, and Eves' Tories won just 24.
In early 2004, Eves announced his intention to resign prior to the fall 2004 legislative session. A leadership election chose John Tory as Eves' successor on September 18, 2004
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Preceded by: | Premier of Ontario 2002-2003 |
Succeeded by: |
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Preceded by: | Ontario Conservative Leaders |
Succeeded by: |
Categories: 1946 births | Ontario premiers