SMITHVILLE, ONT.—Tim Hudak’s Tory campaign bus is on a roll, taking hard right turns at a fast clip.

Now public servants risk getting clipped as the Progressive Conservative bus gains momentum. With Hudak at the wheel, how did they become roadkill?

The Tory leader stepped up his campaign against government unions Monday on a swing through Niagara’s wine region. Time to prune, cut and slash before Ontario’s economy dies on the vine, he warned loyalists in his home riding.

Across Ontario, the message has been fast and furious. The Tories are targeting 100,000 public service jobs — roughly 10 per cent of the entire public sector that staffs schools, municipalities, hospitals and government.

Five days of campaigning , 100,000 jobs down. How many more still to go?

Here in Hudak country, the 19-year MPP spoke to his Niagara constituents more in sorrow than in anger, reminding them that his own mother, father and sister have worked in the public sector. Families, he intoned gravely, understand the need for sacrifice.

“I’m giving them the hard talk and the plain truth,” he explained at a factory photo-op, leavening the bad news with a promised new Million Jobs Plan to make up for their losses.

At this pace, public sector unions are in a panic. As Hudak continues to set the election agenda and march toward a possible majority government, their members are suddenly on the firing line.

What to do? Who will protect them from a Hudak majority?

First, some background.

Ever since the Mike Harris years, the union movement has been united in its opposition to a Tory restoration. But when Kathleen Wynne brought in her spring budget, which perpetuated wage restraint and cutbacks in the public sector, two big public sector unions rebelled against the Liberals.

Warren “Smokey” Thomas, head of the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union, was smoking mad. He backed a controversial decision by NDP Leader Andrea Horwath to reject the Liberal budget, triggering the June 12 election.

In so doing, he dissented from the consensus within the main union umbrella group, the Ontario Federation of Labour, whose private sector members saw mostly gains in the budget: a new contributory pension plan to expand on the CPP, minimum-wage hikes and higher wages for child-care and health-care workers. OFL president Sid Ryan and Unifor president Jerry Dias urged the NDP to hold its nose and back the budget to keep Hudak out of power.

Not to worry, countered Thomas, who boasted that he wasn’t afraid of Hudak. But barely a week into the campaign, the OPSEU and CUPE grassroots are rattled. The Tories have gone further than anyone imagined in their attacks on public sector unions.

Who will save their jobs? The answer, according to OPSEU, CUPE and the NDP, is that only Horwath can hold Hudak back.

The politician who unleashed the Tory juggernaut is best placed to shield them from it. The party that put public servants in the line of (friendly) fire is now promising to save their jobs in exchange for their votes. The NDP progressives who brought down the most progressive Liberal budget in two decades, and who brought on the Hudak onslaught, will bring on a workers’ paradise.

And how will her third-place party, holding a mere 21 seats in the 107-seat legislature, realistically win another 30-plus ridings — more than doubling its seat count — to thwart the Tories?

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Horwath would have you believe she has outmanoeuvred Hudak, luring him into showing his true colours so that she can wrestle him to the mat and drive the Liberals into the ground. But there is an alternative ending to this election story that reverses their roles — and in this narrative it is Hudak who outsmarts Horwath .

For two years he taunted the New Democrats for propping up a tarnished Liberal minority government, and this month the taunting paid off: He finally goaded Horwath into ditching Wynne’s Liberals, possibly clearing the way for his majority.

The unanswered question of this election may haunt Horwath until the end: Did the New Democrats go from being Liberal enablers to Tory enablers?

Perhaps Horwath’s dream will win the day. She boasts of displacing the Liberals and defeating those heartless Conservatives.

It may be a long shot, but what’s to lose? Only 100,000 public servants’ jobs hang in the balance.