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Given the confusion that followed the blast as to who's responsible for the location and inspection of propane storage depots, or even how many there are in the region, the desultory response will hardly ease public anxiety.
You'd think there'd be political self-interest alone in a more assertive response. First, because of the premier's penchant for claiming a hand in almost everything. Second, because of the nature and power of fear.
Normally, McGuinty's office is a credit-claiming machine, the premier a credit glutton. Most days produce a steady transmission of boastful announcements.
"McGuinty government ready to expand the greenbelt," or "McGuinty government expands program to keep more Ontario youth active and engaged" or "McGuinty government improves road safety."
Let's leave aside for now the question of whether it's worrisome that his government is branded less as a servant of the people than the possession of an individual. The problem for McGuinty is that he can't have it both ways.
He can't have his name attached to every two-bit government initiative, every kilometre of highway repaving in the province, imply that almost nothing happens without his personal say-so, then shrug it off to arm's-length agencies when things go spectacularly wrong.
Most particularly, he can't do this when so much of what he claims credit for has to do with the very issue of public health and safety.
The premier has been close to obsessive in ridding the province of things detrimental to health. Trans fats in school cafeterias, pesticides on residential lawns, smoking in cars carrying kids, cigarette displays in convenience stores.
But it's a little rich to accept applause for such interventions while leaving the propane depots that sit like so many ammo dumps near residential areas around Ontario to the tender scrutinies of something called the Technical Standards and Safety Authority.
This is the private, not-for-profit agency created by the Harris Conservative government more than a decade ago to, among many other things, implement provincial law on the handling of propane.
Until recent days, it was a creature of which most citizens were blissfully unaware and one for which hardly anyone knows who's accountable. At a minimum, immediately tightening its leash or bringing it back under ministry control would seem prudent.
At a guess, most citizens aren't looking for government to protect them from their own choices in consumption. They're looking to be protected from the things they can't control, including the potential catastrophe of carelessness or incompetence in the handling of volatile commodities.
It doesn't matter that bad diet and smoking will likely kill more people than propane explosions. Fear isn't logical, it's visceral. That's why folks shudder more at bear attacks than car crashes and more at the threat of homicide than heart attack.
What we are afraid of are things that go bump in the night. Or, as Alfred Hitchcock more precisely put it, "there is not terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."
When one of those propane depots blows up, the rest make for a lot of apprehension.
That kind of fear usually emerges as anger. And anger, more than trans-fat bans, drives votes.
Jim Coyle's provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
