Dalton McGuinty has given a tip of his hat to gray power, which these days is not always the most sought after quality in politics.

The Liberal premier, in a little-noticed aspect of his latest cabinet shuffle, named his four oldest ministers to key posts.

In doing so, he ignored many predictions that his dominant aim would be to put a younger, newer, fresher — which often are seen as denoting more enthusiastic and energetic — face on government to win an election in 2011.

Gerry Phillips, who is 69 and the oldest cabinet member, is chair of cabinet, which gives give him an elder statesman’s voice in all decisions.

He also is minister without portfolio with responsibility for seniors, the fastest growing segment of the community with rapidly growing problems, whom all parties will be courting intensively.

Jim Bradley, 64, has moved from transportation minister to municipal affairs, where there are momentous issues to be decided, including whether developers will continue to have undue influence on municipal councils.

McGuinty gave votes of confidence to John Gerretsen, 67, in keeping him as environment minister, where he has been a solid agent for change despite constraints of an economic recession, and Rick Bartolucci, 66, in community safety.

Ontario has tended to appoint younger cabinets since the era of the Kennedys in the United States, who appeared to embody youth and vigor. McGuinty has been premier for six years and still is only 54.

With Progressive Conservative Norm Sterling, Bradley is one of the two longest serving MPPs, having been elected in 1977, and McGuinty’s faith in him at a ripe age is understandable.

When Bradley was environment minister under premier David Peterson in the 1980s, David Suzuki, the dean of environmental activists, rated him the best environment minister of any jurisdiction in Canada.

But Bradley’s prime benefit to McGuinty now is that he has watched every blade of grass that has moved in Ontario politics for three decades.

He knows which opposition parties tried to block policies now considered indispensable and in government favored friends who were lobbyists.

Bradley knows where all the bodies are buried and exhumes them in every debate to discomfit opposition parties.

Phillips also was a minister under Peterson and had tried to reduce his involvement in government, but McGuinty clearly has persuaded him to stay on.

Phillips has a reputation for dispensing quiet, downto earth good sense, which is not always in abundance in governments, where whiz kids of all ages and remote from practicalities sometimes get undeserved power.

These oldest ministers have been in politics long enough to be called grizzled veterans, but they are useful to their party and difficult to let go.

Even in opposition, older, more experienced politicians can win the day. Sterling, 67, recently used long-existing rules to sneak a request into the legislature to debate a pensions issue so it was heard before rivals.

Sterling could not resist chortling “the early bird gets the worm and they should learn that when they’re dealing with an old vet like me.”

But the issue of when politicians are too old is never far from MPPs’ minds. Bradley was accused by his Conservative opponent in the 2003 election of having been too long in the legislature – he then had been there 26 years – which can be seen as being too old.

But he insisted that it was the quality of his work that mattered and kept his seat.

Liberal MPP Annamarie Castrilli was 48 in 1999, when she argued that longer-serving Liberal Monte Kwinter at 66 was too old and should step aside in merger of their Toronto ridings and leave the new riding to a younger, more vigorous rival, herself.

In the first case, voters and in the second party members, felt age was no reason to put a politician out to pasture and McGuinty has agreed that there is life in the old dogs yet.