TORONTO -- Premier Kathleen Wynne took a day off from campaigning Saturday, but the Liberals were far from silent, rolling out a new attack ad and a one-two punch to their opponents.
The ad takes aim at NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, noting proposals for transit and social programs that were in the Liberal budget that Horwath said she would not support.
"We were all mystified last Friday by Andrea Horwath and the NDP's decision not to support our budget," Finance Minister Charles Sousa said Saturday. "It simply doesn't make sense."
The budget included left-wing-friendly promises for a provincial pension plan, levies to raise billions of dollars for public transit, roads and bridges, billions more for corporate grants, a minimum wage hike and higher taxes for individuals earning more than $150,000.
But Horwath said she had lost confidence in Wynne and the province's minority Liberal government and couldn't prop up a government that has been the focus of scandal after scandal.
Horwath's announcement that the NDP would not be voting for the budget sent Wynne to the lieutenant governor to ask him to dissolve the legislature and call an election.
Sousa said at a press conference Saturday that Horwath's decision raised the prospect of a "radical" Progressive Conservative government led by Tim Hudak.
He spoke of the "terrible choice made by Andrea Horwath and the alternative, which is more of a scare, and that would be Tim Hudak."
"The Hudak PC's agenda for cuts and labour wars gets more radical and more dangerous by the day," Sousa said.
Sousa criticized Hudak's plan, unveiled Friday, to cut 100,000 public sector jobs as a way to help eliminate the $12.5-billion deficit by 2016, saying it's contrary to his pledge to create jobs.
Hudak announced Saturday that he would create 120,000 new jobs in Ontario by reducing corporate taxes by 30 per cent. The Progressive Conservative leader has said he would create one million jobs in Ontario over eight years, and is adamant his plan to cut public sector jobs would spur job creation in the private sector -- though just how that would come about wasn't immediately detailed.
The Liberals' main adversary in this campaign is not Hudak nor Horwath, rather it's both, Sousa said.
"The extreme Tea Party thinking that's about to destroy many parts of other parts of the world, creating the damage that it has, is not to be accepted in this province because we want to be positive," he said.
"We want to be progressive. Nor can we have reckless spending and tax hikes, because that's what Andrea Horwath has also proposed in the past. We must be dynamic. We must be competitive. We must find that right balance."
The new 30-second ad, voiced by Wynne, is now out online and will be broadcast on traditional media starting May 21, once a political advertising blackout ends.
