WATERLOO—Ontario’s political fate will be determined by 98,000 voters in the riding of Kitchener-Waterloo.

While there are two byelection on Thursday, senior officials in all three major parties agree the governing Liberals should easily hold onto Vaughan, the fiefdom of the Grits’ Greg Sorbara’s since 2001.

So all eyes are on Kitchener-Waterloo where polls suggest a tight race between the Liberals, the New Democrats and the Progressive Conservatives, who held the seat for 22 years until Elizabeth Witmer’s surprise retirement in April.

It is potentially the most significant byelection in Ontario history because the outcome could radically alter the political landscape at Queen’s Park.

“This one’s unusual in that the majority-minority thing hangs in the balance,” said Premier Dalton McGuinty during a campaign swing here Friday with Liberal candidate Eric Davis, a lawyer who finished second to Witmer in the Oct. 6 provincial election last year.

“It’s in the hands of the voters.”

A win by the minority Liberals — who awarded Witmer a $188,000-per-year patronage job at the helm of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board to vacate her seat — would secure a 53rd seat in the 107-member legislature, excluding Speaker Dave Levac.

That would be a de facto majority because the governing party would not fall in a confidence vote.

If the Tories, who have 36 members in the house, can hang on to the seat, it could help muzzle critics of PC Leader Tim Hudak, whose own political future is threatened by a defeat.

Should the New Democrats take a riding they have never held, it would further boost NDP Leader Andrea Horwath’s popularity and expand her 17-MPP caucus.

NDP candidate Catherine Fife, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association and local public board chair, has enjoyed a boost from disaffected teachers’ unions that have broken with the Liberals over the imposed wage freeze and rollback of perks like cashing in sick days upon retirement.

“A majority government is not in the best interest of this province. Clearly, the McGuinty government has shown they cannot be trusted,” said Fife.

“A minority government will bring multiple solutions to a myriad of issues that I’m hearing at the doorstep around jobs, the economy, and health care,” she said.

But the Liberals’ Davis said Ontarians deserve stability to avert a repeat of the brinksmanship and deal-making used to get the budget enacted last spring.

“It is incredibly difficult to get legislation passed in the house because the Tories and the NDP keep stalling legislation,” he said.

“Using the budget as an example, Tim Hudak said he was going to vote against the budget before even reading it and Andrea Horwath basically tried to make a deal and then backtracked on it twice.”

The Liberals are frustrated that nine pieces of legislation have been stalled since last fall, including a bill to give seniors tax credits for renovating their homes so they can stay out of nursing homes longer.

Tory candidate Tracey Weiler, a business consultant and instructor in the MBA program at Wilfrid Laurier University, is in her inaugural run for provincial office.

The first major party candidate to be nominated in the riding, she found herself on the defensive at a recent all-candidates meeting when she was asked if she supports her party leader’s “right-wing” views.

“I’m not going to sit here and defend Tim Hudak,” Weiler replied. “This is not a general election.”

The Green Party candidate is environmentalist Stacey Danckert, who has been pushing for the end to public funding of Catholic schools and one secular system to end wasteful “duplicate administration costs.”

Local resident Mary Nightingale, a senior who cast a ballot for Davis in an advance poll, said she “voted Liberal because I like what (McGuinty) is going to do.”

“I like that he’s taken a stand with the teachers. They have very good benefits and they have good holidays,” said Nightingale during a break from shopping at the Conestoga Mall.

“For McGuinty, it’s important for sure that he get it (the win Thursday). He managed to get Hudak on his side with the teachers. The NDP is just too generous.”

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Liberal controversies, like the $190 million cost to taxpayers for cancelling a power plant near Sherway Gardens mall to save four Grit ridings in Mississauga and Etobicoke, convinced Elizabeth Elmasry to vote at an advance poll — and not for Davis.

“I didn’t want them to get a majority,” said Elmasry, who is retired and was a long-time Witmer supporter. “I like it when they’re kept in check a bit.”

Although McGuinty timed the byelection for after Labour Day to ensure university and college students were back on campus, it’s not clear how much of a bump the government will get for its move last January to cut tuition by 30 per cent for middle-class students with family incomes below $160,000.

“It’s fairly ineffective or people just miss it like we did,” said Kaitlin O’Brien, a third-year University of Waterloo English student from Mississauga.

O’Brien said she “probably” will not vote on Thursday.

In Vaughan, meanwhile, Sorbara’s unexpected resignation on Aug. 1 and the snap byelection call caught the Tories and New Democrats flat-footed.

The Grits quickly anointed party stalwart Steven Del Duca, a Sorbara protégé long groomed for the job, while the Tories were forced to again field Tony Genco, a disgruntled ex-Liberal who lost there last October.

Pauk Donofrio is the NDP candidate in Vaughan while the Greens are running Paula Conning, but neither party expects to make inroads.__

“It’s the Jean Chrétien byelection strategy,” confided one senior Liberal, referring to the former prime minister’s penchant for holding two or more byelections on the same day and ensuring one was in a safe seat to mitigate bad news elsewhere.

Indeed, another high-ranking Grit emphasized that governing parties traditionally only win 11 per cent of byelections in unheld seats so a Vaughan victory would offset any fallout from a Kitchener-Waterloo loss.

But the party leader under the most pressure this week may be Hudak.

“If Tim doesn’t win it (Kitchener-Waterloo) then he will have problems keeping his caucus in line,” said one Conservative insider privy to internal machinations.

“People will start looking for the next leader. That would be five lost byelections (since he became leader in 2009) and a lost general so it gets harder for him to argue he can pull off a win. He will hold on though and I think it will get ugly.”

While privately worried about the prospects of losing a seat that has been safely Tory for a generation, Hudak has been publicly less antagonistic than the NDP’s Horwath.

“It’s pretty clear that the Liberals don’t deserve a majority government,” she said.

“I expect that the people of Kitchener-Waterloo will show the government that they don’t deserve that reinforcement.

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