With less than a week to go, the Ontario election has boiled down to two stark questions:

How tainted are Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals?

How dangerous are Tim Hudak’s Tories?

In the final stretch, all three major parties are zeroing in on one or both of these themes.

First, the Liberals. Wynne faces a daunting task. If she is to keep her job as premier, she must convince voters that her Liberal government is not the same one that oversaw the ORNGE air ambulance fiasco and that squandered more than a billion dollars to relocate two gas-generated electricity plants.

That’s a hard task. It’s been made harder by the fact that so many of the ministers who served during that period of fiscal recklessness, including Wynne herself, still sit in government.

And the scandals just won’t die down.

Last week came allegations that the Liberal government is preparing to bail out another struggling private-public partnership, the so-called MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto.

That was followed by Tuesday’s televised leaders’ debate in which Hudak and New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath hammered Wynne over the gas plants.

Two days later, the Ottawa Citizen reported that the Ontario Provincial Police had obtained a court order allowing them to demand information from the Legislature in connection with the alleged deletion of emails related to the gas plants.

Meanwhile, Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives have had their own troubles.

This is Hudak’s last chance. He muffed the 2011 election. If he fails to win government this time, he will almost certainly be finished as Tory leader.

And so he has taken a risk, placing his party on the hard right in a province that (with some notable exceptions) usually avoids extremes.

In logical terms, Hudak’s platform is nonsensical. He claims there are a million Ontarians out of work (there are not). His platform is chock full of elementary mathematical mistakes. He argues he can create a million new jobs by axing 100,000 public sector workers.

Throughout much of the campaign, it seemed that the sheer boneheadedness of Hudak’s approach might defeat him.

Yet there is method in the Tory madness, and it is beginning to show. Hudak may make no sense. But he exudes confidence.

The fact that he repeats the same million-jobs mantra over and over again drives reporters crazy. But to voters who don’t pay much attention, it is new information.

His anecdotes are corny. But in politics, corn often works.

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Finally, the NDP. Horwath began at a disadvantage. She seemed unprepared for an election that she had precipitated. At first, the NDP couldn’t even manage to hire a bus.

Moreover, Wynne’s decision to campaign from the left caused the NDP grave problems.

Horwath is deliberately running a centrist campaign that pushes consumer issues and the needs of small business. It’s an approach that reflects current NDP orthodoxy. But it has also alarmed many long-time New Democrat voters. Why should they support a party that appears to be to the right of Wynne’s Liberals?

At first, Horwath emphasized the Liberals’ unreliability. Wynne may talk a good game, the NDP said, but she’ll never deliver.

That appears to have been insufficient. So last week, Horwath shifted into high gear. The Liberals, she said, were not only unreliable but corrupt. They must not be permitted to win.

With less than a week to go, the polls show Wynne’s Liberals and Hudak’s Tories more or less tied for first place. It seems the final battle lines are being drawn.

The economy may be the central issue. But now voters are grappling with an unappetizing choice as to which party can best deliver on jobs and growth.

The corrupt Liberals?

The ludicrous Conservatives?

Or neither?

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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