With just days left on the campaign trail, John Tory said he's certain voters appreciate the fact he changed his mind on the school funding issue before the election rather than after.
Speaking Sunday afternoon with CTV's Question Period, the Progressive Conservative leader said he's not ready to admit defeat yet, despite recent polls showing Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty with a comfortable lead.
"I listened to the people and I heard them," he said. "If you are a strong leader, you listen. When you listen, you prove that you heard what people were telling you by acting and I did that before the election.
"That's a big contrast between the way Mr. McGuinty conducted himself the last time where he made a whole range of promises he didn't keep."
He said he didn't anticipate his promise to fund faith-based schools would end up being the most talked-about issue of the campaign. He said his party had a platform that addressed a number of important issues but that it was cast aside by people who wanted to know more about his vision for schools.
"The intention was to address an issue of fairness and inclusion," he said. "The issues like the doctor shortage, the plight of farmers, the future of the economy that deserve more attention, and they've been getting it in the last ten days or so. But in the end, there are issues that you have to address that are controversial.
"These things were put to the side to some extent, it wasn't the choice that I made," he said. "I had a platform that addressed all of these things in many more pages but in the end, we ended up discussing what we discussed."
However the campaign evolved, Tory said this Thanksgiving weekend, people will think hard about whether or not McGuinty will be an effective leader for another four years. He said Ontario has slipped in both health care and economic growth and that it's time to get the province "back on top."
When asked if he would stay in politics if he lost the campaign, Tory said he has always been interested in a career in broadcasting -- after a stint as premier.
"I'm not going to lose and I'd love to have another career," he joked with a smile. "Anybody who sees a lot of me will know that my next career after serving as premier, will be in broadcasting, so you better watch out!"
Later Sunday afternoon Tory said he had no intentions of leaving politics.
"I came into public life to make a difference for a period of time that wasn't to be short," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
On the campaign trail
Meanwhile, party leaders continued to use the Thanksgiving weekend to get their message out to voters.
Tory started out his day by attending a prayer service but later in the afternoon continued to knock on doors. When he got to the house he grew up in in the Don Valley West riding. It had a Wynne sign out front.
Nonetheless, Tory went inside to speak with the owners. They told him they were voting Liberal because they didn't agree with his stance on faith-based school funding.
Tory also had to defend the attack ads the Conservatives have been running against McGuinty. He said the Premier has such a bad track record, that there are not many positive things to say.
McGuinty said he has preferred to focus his ads on his party's success.
"I think that's what leadership commands of us is that we speak to the sense of the possible. The great things we can do together," he said from a campaign stop in Markham.
NDP campaign co-chair Andrea Horwath said McGuinty has been running his fair share of negative attack ads of his own.
"McGuinty's been running a relentlessly negative campaign designed to bury the real issues," she said in a release.
Howard Hampton planned to spend the afternoon enjoying his son's hockey game but it was cancelled due to poor ice conditions.
He used the opportunity to talk about the harm the province has done by downloading costs to cities that can not afford to maintain their services.
He then helped serve a Thanksgiving dinner to people in Toronto's impoverished Regent Park neighbourhood.
With files from The Canadian Press
