A look back at some of the best, the worst and the strangest comments of 2012.

“Premier, you’re either implicated or incompetent. Which is it?”
-- Tory MPP Steve Clark to Premier Dalton McGuinty during Question Period over the ORNGE scandal.

“It must take a lot of energy every day to get up and be in a bad mood and to wish for rain.”
-- Premier Dalton McGuinty responding to MPP Steve Clark.

“You start to look at your life differently and your future differently.”
-- Former Tory MPP Elizabeth Witmer says she decided to accept an appointment as chair of the WSIB after learning that her husband has cancer.

“Our doctors are the best anywhere. Does that mean we have to pay them more? I don’t think so.”
-- Health Minister Deb Matthews in the early days of contract talks with the Ontario Medical Association.

“Ontario’s increasingly fragile experiment with minority government at Queen’s Park is falling apart . . . Something has to give.”
-- Former cabinet secretary Tony Dean, writing in QP Briefing on Oct. 3, says Ontario’s minority government has hit a wall.

“I’ve concluded that this is the right time for Ontario’s next Liberal premier and our next set of ideas to guide our province forward.”
-- Premier Dalton McGuinty surprises most pundits with his Oct. 15 announcement that he is stepping down and proroguing the Ontario legislature.

“I know you all have busy schedules and have better things to do. I don’t, which is why I'm here.”
-- Former premier Bill Davis during ceremony to honour him at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

"These products target kids and the packaging makes them easy to hide from parents."
-- New Democratic MPP France Gelinas introduces a private member’s bill that would enforce the ban on selling flavoured tobacco.

“Well, smoking will not help a person. But I’m telling you that’s not the reason that they’re dropping dead. If you’re healthy and you have a cigarette, it won’t hurt you.”
-- London city councillor Dale Henderson challenges the link between cigarettes and cancer.

“When you are able to show an executive that you took their compensation from $200,000 to $600,000 you really buy extreme loyalty from them.”
-- An industry insider tells QP Briefing that influential executive compensation consultants are driving up the salaries for CEOs in Ontario’s health sector and elsewhere.

“What am I supposed to do with my animals? They’re not disposable in two years.”
-- Glenn Sikura of the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society reacts to news that Saskatchewan and New Brunswick will follow Ontario's lead in defunding horse racing.

"Some of the things that I think individuals need to realize is that when the gods make war, peasants fall, and some of us need to remind ourselves of that on a regular basis."
-- Tory MPP Jerry Ouellette during committee debate on a bill to provide a tax credit for seniors to renovate and remain in their homes longer. (Editor’s note: We have no idea what he meant but the bill eventually passed.)

“What his ideas do is follow a road map to Alabama … These kind of Tea Party-type ideas that Mr. Hudak keeps bringing forward simply are not the way to build prosperity.”
-- NDP Leader Andrea Horwath responding to a series of policy announcements by Tory Leader Tim Hudak.

“My feet need to grow a little more – they’re big shoes.”
-- Scott Witmer confirms he won’t be a candidate in the Kitchener-Waterloo byelection to replace his mother Elizabeth after she resigns to become chair of the WSIB.

“This new age of robust and viral social media encourages spontaneous reactions and comment on whatever trend happens to have someone’s immediate attention. The intersection between ancient but still-valid parliamentary privileges, on one hand, and fair comment on the other, promises exponentially more crossings in the future than were possible even a few years ago.”
-- Speaker Dave Levac rules that tweets by two MPPs didn’t breach parliamentary privilege but acknowledges that social media is changing the political landscape.

"With each passing year, it becomes clearer that without new policies and a drastic change in the current upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, our planet is headed for a frightening future."
-- Ontario Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller in the introduction to his annual review of the government's Climate Change Action Plan.

"Well, we’ve got Grumpy, let’s hope Happy and Sneezy show up too."
-- Tory MPP John Yakabuski takes a verbal poke at New Democratic MPP Paul Miller during a testy committee meeting.

“Well, we've got Dumbo so that’s okay.”
-- New Democratic MPP Paul Miller responds to Yakabuski.

“You ask about how we know we would make more money. I can tell you, frankly, we don’t. But we don’t know that we would make any less money.”
-- Progressive Conservative finance critic Peter Shurman responds to questions about his party’s plans to sell off the LCBO and Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation.

“I have been with my wife for 38 years but she has never been in our kitchen.”
-- New Democratic MPP Michael Prue says he, not his wife Shirley, baked the banana bread he brought to a committee meeting.

“All the Premier does is, in the face of the job losses: another panel, another study. He kicks the can down the road. We say, ‘Kick that can no more. Get down to work. Create jobs with a bold plan to grow our economy, and get the private sector moving again.'”
-- Tory Leader Tim Hudak employs his favourite criticism of Premier Dalton McGuinty. (No word on how the can feels).

“We don’t want to be the go-to people, we’re not social workers. We’re law enforcement.”
-- Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police spokesman Joe Couto says the province’s police resources are increasingly being devoted to dealing with people who suffer from mental illness and addiction.

“There was some unfortunate miscommunication that somehow conveyed that the search and rescue team were putting down tools. That was never in fact the case. They wanted to do what I began to urge them to do. "
-- Premier Dalton McGuinty acknowledges there was some confusion during the rescue efforts that followed the mall roof collapse that killed two women in Elliot Lake.

“What amazes me in this particular case is, if you’re dealing with personal information. That’s what Elections Ontario does. That’s their currency. They trade in personal data. How is it that you wouldn’t bend over backwards to ensure this doesn’t happen?”
-- Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian after Elections Ontario misplaces two USB keys containing voter registration data, including names, birthdays, addresses, sex and whether an elector voted.

“They’re big bullies.”
-- OPSEU president Warren “Smokey” Thomas reacts to the government’s threat to legislate a two-year wage freeze for public sector workers.

“If you’re a liberal, make friends with a conservative, and vice versa. It won’t hurt you.”
-- Ontario Power Generation president Tom Mitchell urges graduating students to step outside their “comfort zones” during his convocation address at University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa.

"Ontarians have spoken very clearly. They’re not happy with the antiquated alcohol retailing system we presently have in Ontario. Both the LCBO and Beer Stores were established by the Ontario government in 1927 when Al Capone was in his heyday in Chicago.”
-- Dave Bryans, CEO of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, on a petition signed by 112,500 Ontarians calling for beer and wine sales in corner stores.

“I have lived under both Hitler and Stalin; I do know what dictatorship is. And we, the medical profession, are getting closer and closer to total control. Not only what I can earn but how I can practise medicine. This degree of government control over the medical profession is only in two countries in the world, North Korea and Canada.”
-- Dr. Thomas Baitz, speaking to a town hall meeting in Cornwall about changes in Ontario healthcare funding.

“Teaching my mom how to say 'fabulous' the right way, with all the proper syllables & the emphasis on the right ones."
-- Minister of Training, Colleges and University Glen Murray tweets about moving his mother from Montreal to Toronto’s gay village.

“This is a real bullshit announcement - and you can use that word, I don’t care."
-- NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson in an interview with the Timmins Daily Press on the government's announcement that it is fast-tracking its planned divestiture of the Ontario Northland Transit Commission.

“Unfortunately some people still don’t get the message that it’s really dumb to drink and drive.”
-- Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police spokesman Joe Couto reacts to anecdotal evidence that police across the country are reporting an increase in arrests and charges for drunk driving in December.

“If there is a self-critique, I could say what I’ve learned in the last three years (is that) people are looking for the positive, optimistic Conservative alternative.”
-- Tim Hudak on the third anniversary of his election as Ontario Progressive Conservative party leader

“I really make an effort to be nonpartisan. I like to think that they feel that we’re a reliable watchdog that calls a spade a spade.”
-- Jim McCarter, who will step down next year as Ontario's auditor general, reflects on his 10 years in the job.

“He’s somebody who’s made some changes I think that are for the better here in the province. I’ve always found him to be a very diligent person, a very thoughtful person, never unwilling to provide thoughtful commentary.”
-- NDP Leader Andrea Horwath offers her assessment of McCarter’s contributions.

“Buckle in!”
-- Tory Leader Tim Hudak during a speech to the Economic Club of Canada, saying some of his reforms won’t be popular but they’re necessary to save the Ontario economy.

“Together we will take Canada to new heights.”
-- Former astronaut Marc Garneau, who has been there, done that, launching his bid for the federal Liberal leadership.

“I saw the Argo movie recently and I was taken aback by its distortion of what happened. Because almost everything that was historic or courageous or innovative was done by Canada and not the United States.”
-- Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, speaking at Queen’s University, criticizes the Ben Affleck film on the rescue of six diplomats from Iran in 1980.

“The way he talks . . . he looks like a politician.”
-- Portuguese Cultural Centre of Mississauga president Gilberto Moniz, speaking fondly of Liberal leadership candidate Charles Sousa.

“I can tell you as someone who has worked in war zones around the world it was getting to be a very uncomfortable place, the legislature.”
-- Dr. Eric Hoskins, announcing his Ontario Liberal leadership bid.

"If it walks like a ducks, and talks like a ducks, then it's a Liberal and nobody's going to vote for it anyway."
-- NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson offers his assessment of the Ontario Liberal leadership hopefuls.

“Thirteen CEOs and one labour economist, so I tied one hand behind my back to even the odds.”
-- Jim Stanford, Canadian Auto Workers economist, on the composition of the government's Jobs & Prosperity Council during the Ontario Economic Summit in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Stanford is co-chair of the council.

“When I found out he was appointed to cabinet, I thought I should tell the Premier he was after his job.”
--Winnipeg councillor Harvey Smith saying he wasn’t surprised that his former colleague Glen Murray is running for the Liberal party leadership.

“You can’t fix stupid.”
-- Wilmot Mayor Les Armstrong on bad drivers during a Waterloo Region education session on traffic roundabouts.

"I am just a country lawyer from London, Ont."
-- Energy Minister Chris Bentley announces that he is leaving politics after the next election.

“All we’ve heard from the OPP is a lot of claptrap and drivel, and very little action. And that I find very disconcerting.”
-- Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin calls on the government and the OPP to help officers suffering from occupational stress injuries.

“Don’t screw it up.”
-- Premier Dalton McGuinty’s advice to his successor, whomever that might be.

They said it: 2012 in quotes

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