I'm legitimately curious, is the difference between changing after one year and changing after two years that significant? Does that extra year somehow magically garner a legitimate mandate vs an "unelected" leader?
I can't see how one is legitimate and the other not, especially when both are part of standard Westminster style parliamentary representative democracy.
It kind of remind of the old joke "we both know what you are; we're just dickering over the price."
Well, in general, the leader sets the policies of the party for an election, or during the term of their time as leader. Yes, the party also contributes, but the leader generally steers it in their favour, since they're the leader. So if the leader is in control for a majority of their term, their goals are what drives it (and this could be what someone voted for). When there's a leader change, they may have different goals (ie, not what you voted for, possibly). The year difference is simply because, in McGuinty's example, he was elected on his platform, but gave up after a year and couldn't implement what he wanted - or implemented very little given the short timeframe. Serving 2 years, or half your term gives the person a better opportunity to implement their agenda. Plus, there's the simple comparison. 1 year = 1/4 of your term. 2 years = 1/2 your term, or a majority of the time you committed to being Premier. I'm fine with it in this circumstance, I'm just pointing out why people feel they were 'cheated'. Serving one year appears like you weren't really committed to doing the job your were supposed to be elected to do - this also makes people feel like their vote was wasted. At least if your served 2 years and a day, you stayed for a 'majority' of your time. It's perception, and that's all politics and voting is at the end of the day. Do you perceive that leader to be trustworthy and to carry out what they say they'll do.
Also, I wanted to see where qwerty got this impression that the Ontario PC's have a history of changing leaders immediately after elections, from what I've seen, it's quite the opposite - the last few leaders of the PC's served 3/4 of their terms prior to the change of leaders.
Question - Did you have an issue with Harper's prorogations? He was only using the rules to his advantage in a Westminster style gov't (same as McGuinty). Again, it's all about the perception. It was all legitimate, even if I didn't agree with it.
