The place of organized labour in this province will be at the heart of the next general election. Ignore recent media speculation about whether Tory Leader Tim Hudak will or won’t take on big unions with his controversial “right to work” proposals.

Of course he will. Just ask him.

Wait — don’t ask Hudak just now, in the middle of a byelection in labour-friendly Niagara Falls where anti-union rhetoric doesn’t play well and local issues predominate. The Tory leader has been coy lately, dodging direct questions from reporters wondering why he’s not targeting labour in his proposed new Million Jobs Act.

Instead, for clues on where he’s been and where he’s going, look at Hudak’s 18-month anti-union campaign. It would be a complete misreading of the emerging Progressive Conservative election platform to conclude that Hudak is backing away from “right-to-work.”

In fact, such a miscalculation proved fatal to the political ambitions of Dave Brister, fired as a Tory candidate this week after tweeting approvingly about the policy’s supposed demise. He didn’t check his facts. While Brister’s candidacy in Essex is now quite dead, reports of the policy’s death are premature.

True, the right-to-work plan is not universally popular among Tories — many delegates questioned it publicly at a policy convention last September; some MPPs have reservations (but maintain caucus solidarity); and several candidates remain nervous.

But anyone who thinks Hudak is having second thoughts about right-to-work misunderstands his right-to-work messaging — and hasn’t been reading his speeches. It’s more instructive to listen to what the Tory leader has been telegraphing for the past 18 months — in major fundraising speeches and numerous news conferences where he attacks “union bosses.”

Listen to what Hudak said just last month in what his staff billed as a major “vision” speech to a blue chip audience at Toronto’s Economic Club laying out the building blocks of a future Tory economic policy, with right-to-work as a pillar.

“It’s time to reconsider the extraordinary powers government grants unions,” he began. “We are still operating under the same labour rules as we did in the 1940s,” Hudak continued — a reference to the so-called Rand Formula, a made-in-Ontario compromise crafted by former Supreme Court judge Ivan Rand to settle a landmark 1945 Ford strike in Windsor.

“Clinging to outdated labour regulations for fear of stepping on the toes of the union elites means we will be unable to reverse Ontario’s continued decline,” Hudak argued.

“So what does worker choice mean?” he asked. Under his plan, workers could “choose whether or not to pay union dues.” Hudak asked for “a mandate to lead,” because “these choices are no longer optional, they are required.”

One of Hudak’s top aides noted that reporters seem to have forgotten the strategic vision laid out in his December speech. The Million Jobs Act is merely a private member’s bill that Hudak will soon present to the Legislature — aspirational, with broad-brush strokes on job creation.

“People are making too much out of what’s in or what’s not in the Million Jobs Act,” the aide told me. “These two speeches were four weeks apart.”

The union movement isn’t taking anything for granted. Top labour leaders huddled earlier this month to plot strategy with the Working Families coalition that spearheaded an anti-Tory campaign in the last three elections. And the Ontario Federation of Labour convened a summit of its member unions Wednesday.

Liberals are also keeping a close eye on Hudak’s plan, convinced they can capitalize on voter skittishness about right-to-work. But just as it would be a mistake to underestimate Hudak’s resolve, it might also be wrong to overestimate public reticence.

A Forum Research poll last November showed voters evenly split on right-to-work in the public sector — precisely the kind of polarization that Tory wedge politics could exploit. Asked about the Rand Formula, only four in 10 approved, with slightly more Ontarians opposed.

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Those polling numbers suggest plenty of fertile anti-union ground for the Tories to harvest. Right-to-work never left Hudak’s hard-right vision. If he wins the job of premier, it will be front and centre in the province’s rightward drift.