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The Ontario government has launched a host of new taxpayer-funded ads promoting the Ontario Retirement Savings Plan (ORPP), which use a series of trendy acronyms, like YOLO (You Only Live Once), TTYL (Talk To You Later) and LOL (Laugh Out Loud), to hype its combined 3.8 per cent new payroll tax.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has been effectively running against Ottawa on the ORPP since she proposed the idea. Her famous 2014 complaint about the prime minister “smirking” at her was over his refusal to support ORPP, and for his correct description of the ORPP as a tax.

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Now, ORPP is becoming a federal election issue. On Aug. 2, after the federal election was called, Wynne urged voters to turf Prime Minister Stephen Harper because of his “blatant disrespect” for Ontario by refusing to support her new payroll tax.

The problem of a premier running against Ottawa in the midst of a federal election is that while federal government advertising stops, provincial government ads continue. And now Premier Wynne is spending taxpayer money advertising an issue she has said Prime Minister Harper ought to be defeated over.