Be smart, voters. A fourth term with a new leader didn't work very well in Ontario when Kathleen Wynne took over from Dalton McGuinty

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In the 1997 Mr. Bean comedy, Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie, there is a scene in which Grierson Art Gallery curator David Langley pleads with Mr. Bean, who has been sent to the gallery from London, to refrain from causing trouble as the famous painting Whistler’s Mother is delivered and unveiled. “Now listen, I am begging you,” Langley says to Bean as they drive to the gallery, “as a man whose entire professional career depends on you, behave rationally today!” Turning to the passenger’s seat, Langley sees Bean has shoved a metallic thing up his nose and concludes, “There is no God.”

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The observance of Easter this past weekend reminds many of us that there is a God; the federal election next week reminds us that disasters can and do occur if we do not behave rationally. It is therefore time, like David Langley, to plead with our neighbours to behave rationally — something voters have not always done. To cite but one example among many, in 2014, after three terms of expensive policy disasters, miserable economic performance and scandals under Dalton McGuinty, Ontarians voted for more of the same by giving the Liberals a fourth term under new leader Kathleen Wynne.

As Ontarians would have done well to remember, it is not rational to vote for more of the same and expect different results. The consequences of a fourth Liberal term from 2014 to 2018 included continued economic underperformance, further harmful regulation, increased debt, declining affordability,