The Progressive Conservatives have launched an all-out attack on unions as the clock winds down on Thursday’s byelection in Niagara Falls.

Tory MPP Monte McNaughton Tuesday directed his verbal onslaught toward NDP candidate Wayne Gates, accusing the veteran union activist of plotting to have organized labour take over the New Democratic Party.

“It is clear that Wayne Gates doesn’t want to represent Niagara Falls residents. He wants the union to take over the NDP led by former union leader Buzz Hargrove,” he said, referring to the former Canadian Auto Workers president.

“Mr. Gates’ only goal is to make sure his union friends are taken care of at Queen’s Park.”

McNaughton based the comments on a video of Gates speaking at a 2006 Canadian Auto Workers council meeting in Port Elgin, Ont.

“Families in Niagara Falls damn well deserve to know who is on their side and it’s not the NDP or Wayne Gates,” McNaughton said.

On Thursday there are byelections in Thornhill and Niagara Falls, but it’s the latter that has special meaning for the Tories, since it is in Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak’s backyard of Niagara West-Glanbrook.

McNaughton claims the Ontario Federation of Labour has blanketed the riding with hundreds of paid union activists to bolster Gates’ campaign. Running against him is defeated former Tory MPP Bart Maves and Liberal Joyce Morocco.

The race is tightest between the New Democrats and the Tories.

Among other things, McNaughton accused unions of, in part, being the reason Ontario is a have-not province.

“I think it’s clear that the NDP and union elites are keeping Ontario a have-not province,” he told reporters at Queen’s Park, adding that 300,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Ontario.

“Only candidate Bart Maves recognizes that the number one concern for families in Niagara Falls is jobs, not the union leaders’ jobs,” McNaughton said.

Like his leader, McNaugthon refuses now to say that it is the party’s position to get rid of the Rand Formula, which requires workers in a closed unionized shop to pay dues whether they join or not.

He would only acknowledge that “I am in favour of modernizing labour policies” and “making unions more accountable.”

NDP House Leader MPP Gilles Bisson says McNaughton’s rhetoric is further proof “that they are worried . . . because Hudak has been nothing but negative for the last two and a half years . . . compared to Andrea (Horwath) who has been rolling up her sleeves and trying to get results.”

“I think what they are seeing on the doorstep is that they have a bit of a problem and basically they are going negative, which I think is the wrong thing to do,” Bisson said.

Meanwhile Hudak said regardless of the outcome of the two byelections he will still be pushing for a spring election.

“We need change in Ontario regardless of whatever the byelections say. I look around this province and I see 300,000 manufacturing jobs gone, a high unemployment rate,” he told CP24.

Earlier, Premier Kathleen Wynne told CP24 that Hudak’s million jobs plan “would kill jobs, because right-to-work legislation is not where we need to go; undermining labour is not what we need to do, cutting programs is not where we need to go right now.”

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Wynne downplayed the two byelections, which could see the

Liberals go down to defeat in both.

“Byelections are particular beasts. People can cast a vote in a byelection and they know they are not going to change the outcome of the government,” she said.