A regular collection of tales from the campaign trail.

Kathleen Wynne has a new plea for voters: “I can do better.”

Trailing her main rivals for the premier’s chair by a double-digit margin in the polls, the struggling Liberal leader is using a new ad to try and mount a comeback bid in the last 14 days of the campaign.

A new ad released Wednesday with an appeal for donations pictures her with friendly crowds, often at party events, and jogging.

“How can I make life better for you? That’s what I think about when I get up to run at 5 in the morning,” Wynne intones. “That work never stops. Better never stops. Neither will I.”

Liberal campaign director David Herle said the ad comes as Doug Ford’s Conservative campaign is “drifting down” to its base level of support and anti-Ford voters pick a lane. He claims the NDP has “failed to close the deal” over Horwath’s $1.4 billion platform accounting error, plan to close the Pickering nuclear plant and refusal to use back-to-work legisation to end long strikes.

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“This is the moment to make our case — unabashedly and unapologetically,” Herle wrote in a note to supporters.

Fully-costed platform on its way, Ford says

The Ontario election is two weeks away, but there’s still ample time for the Progressive Conservatives to unveil a campaign platform.

“Absolutely,” said Tory Leader Doug Ford when asked if his party would share its plans for governing the province before the June 7 vote.

“Stay tuned, it’s going to be fully costed,” Ford said Wednesday in the NDP-held riding of Essex.

“We’ll have a fully-costed platform before this campaign is over,” the PC leader said.

“It’s coming, but I think we’ve been pretty responsible and putting a dollar figure behind every single item that we announce,” he said, conceding a Tory government would run a deficit.

“I’ve been pretty clear that we aren’t going to balance the first year, maybe not the second year,” said Ford.

“But we will balance maybe the third or fourth year. Our goal is to balance the budget.”

Poppy politics

The anti-poppy musings of Mississauga Centre NDP candidate Laura Kaminker left two Toronto residents riled enough to protest party leader Andrea Horwath on Wednesday night.

“Someone’s got to stand up for veterans,” said Peter Jelbert, who served as a corporal with the Royal Canadian Regiment’s third infantry batallion for seven years, with a 2010 tour in Afghanistan.

Jelbert and his spouse, Alahna MacFarlane stood outside a west-end coffee shop in Davenport riding with a Canadian flag free poppies attached to printouts of In Flanders Fields.

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They accused Horwath of “hypocrisy” for not firing Kaminker after calling on PC Leader Doug Ford to scrap candidate Tanya Granic Allen in the same riding for Islamophobic and anti-gay social media posts.

Horwath, who has defended Kaminker’s views as “free speech,” took a poppy from them.

“I respect your opinions, your right to be here. I always wear one. I’m always at Remembrance Day,” Horwath said.

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