Just prior to the 2011 election, another controversy developed when McGuinty's government cancelled gas plants that were located in key Liberal ridings and were widely opposed by the local residents.

Kennedy, a former head of Toronto's Daily Bread food bank, was popular on the progressive wing of the party, while McGuinty built his core support on its establishment and pro-business right-wing.

During McGuinty's second term as opposition leader, he hired a more skilled group of advisors and drafted former cabinet minister Greg Sorbara as party president.

[13] In preparation for the 2003 election, the party adopted a platform that emphasized lowering class sizes in schools, hiring more nurses, increasing environmental protections, and "holding the line" on taxes.

[14] McGuinty also made an effort to improve his debating skills and received coaching from Scott Reid who also trained United States Senator John McCain.

The Conservatives questioned Peters' methodology, and suggested that the McGuinty government was overstating the province's financial difficulties to break or delay some of its campaign spending promises.

The government brought in auto insurance reforms (including a price cap), rolled-back a series of corporate and personal tax cuts that had been scheduled for 2004, passed legislation that enshrined publicly funded healthcare into provincial law, hired more meat and water inspectors, opened up the provincially owned electricity companies to Freedom of Information laws and enacted a ban on partisan government advertising.

The Liberals defended the premium by arguing that the previous government had a hidden deficit, and McGuinty claimed he needed to break his campaign pledge on taxation to fulfill his promises on other fronts.

His own finance critic of the time, Gerry Phillips, had predicted that the Tories' projected balanced budget would in fact result in a $5 billion deficit in a meeting of the Standing Committee of Estimates of the Legislature on June 3, 2003.

[citation needed] Soon after the federal election, McGuinty attended a First Ministers' Meeting on health-care reform that resulted in a new agreement for a national health accord.

[citation needed] During early 2005, McGuinty called the Legislature back for a rare winter session to debate and pass several high-profile bills.

[citation needed] In response to court decisions, the McGuinty Liberals updated legislation to reflect the change in the definition of marriage to include homosexual couples.

McGuinty said special deals made by the federal government with other provinces (Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia) compromised the nature of equalization.

[citation needed] The McGuinty Liberals also moved to expand infrastructure spending by encouraging Ontario's large pension plans to invest in the construction of new roads, schools and hospitals.

Education Minister Gerard Kennedy established a province-wide negotiating framework with the province's teachers' unions with the result that most school boards settled their contracts without lost teaching time.

[citation needed] At around the same time, Minister of Transportation Harinder Takhar was accused of a conflict-of-interest, after visiting a company that he owned in a blind trust.

The matter was sent to the provincial ethics commissioner, who on January 4, 2006, ruled that Takhar had violated Ontario's integrity guidelines by not maintaining an arms length relationship with the trustee appointed to run his blind trust.

The next day, the McGuinty government put forward a throne speech in October reiterating their priorities of health, education and economic prosperity.

The speech outlined plans to offer the first money-back guarantee on a public service: a refund for people who do not receive a birth certificate within 15 days of applying on-line.

On May 18, 2006, a judge agreed with Greg Sorbara's contention that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCPP) had erred in including his name in the search warrant.

In striking Sorbara's name from the warrant, Justice Ian Nordheimer of the Ontario Superior Court said there were inadequate grounds for police to include him in the first place.

On June 14, 2006, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan announced the McGuinty government's twenty-year electricity plan, which committed to spending $46 billion on rebuilding all of the province's ageing nuclear reactors.

A principal secretary to former PC Premier Bill Davis, Tory was regarded as more moderate than Mike Harris and the mostly rural MPPs who made up the majority of his caucus.

[41] There was criticism of McGuinty and calls for Health Minister David Caplan to resign after it was revealed that eHealth Ontario CEO Sarah Kramer had approved about $4.8 million in no-bid contracts during the first four months of the agency's operation, while also spending, argued that the McGuinty government spent five years and $647 million on the Smart Systems for Health Agency, which used 15 per cent of its $225-million annual budget on consultants despite employing 166 people with annual salaries exceeding $100000, before the project was shut down and restarted as eHealth Ontario.

[43] Documents obtained by the press showed that McGuinty intervened using an order in council to have Kramer hired as CEO, bypassing the competitive selection process, over the objections of officials in the Health Ministry who felt she was inexperienced.

The opposition, emboldened by the minority government situation, demanded that Energy Minister Chris Bentley release all documents related to the decision.

McGuinty had promised not to form a coalition with any other party if elected in a minority, and proceeded to govern by attracting support from opposition MPPs on a bill-by-bill basis.

During the Ornge Air Ambulance scandal, the CEO was paid 14.1 million dollars, and the executives purchased a commercial building, and them leased it back to themselves at a higher than market rate, through a shell company.

Her resignation allowed the riding to elect Catherine Fife of the New Democratic Party (NDP), leaving McGuinty's Liberals with a minority government.

The opposition charged that it was done to dodge negative publicity over the investigation and criminal probe into the Ornge Air affair, the controversial decision to halt construction of two gas-fired power plants during the previous election, and the subsequent threats by the opposition to vote on finding Cabinet ministers in Contempt of Parliament for withholding from the Legislature information related to halting the projects.