Tim Hudak thinks he has a winning formula for the next election:

Place the economy at centre stage. And put labour in its place.

When the Tory leader unveils his future campaign platform, the two issues will play off each other: labour reform will be cast as a prerequisite to job creation.

Disregard recurring reports about Hudak supposedly backing off his agenda to curb union power, merely because he is choosing his words more carefully now than in the past. Politics is semantics.

Admittedly, Hudak’s mixed messaging on labour keeps mixing up the media — and unnerving some party loyalists. It can get confusing.

The more the media asks whether he still intends to make Ontario a “right-to-work” province, the more Hudak refuses to repeat something he never said in the first place. Not taking the bait doesn’t mean he’s backing off.

Right-to-work has never been in Hudak’s speeches or press lines. Hudak’s ideas on lassoing labour were spelled out in a controversial 2012 discussion paper proposing that workers get a choice whether to join unions or not.

By any standard definition, that qualifies as “right-to-work.” But right-to-work is a loaded American slogan he has avoided from the start.

Instead he prefers to use the British phrase “closed shop” to describe the compulsory union checkoffs that have been a Canadian tradition since the 1940s, when former judge Ivan Rand proposed it as a compromise during a lengthy strike at the Ford auto plant in Windsor.

The reasoning behind the Rand formula, codified as Ontario law in the early 1980s by then-Tory premier Bill Davis, is that non-members shouldn’t freeload on the sacrifices made by unions in bargaining.

To understand where the Tories are going on unions, it’s useful to look at where they’re coming from. Hudak will campaign on curbing union power just as he did in 2011 with his official Changebook campaign platform:

“We will change Ontario’s labour laws to give union members more flexibility and a greater voice. We will give all individuals the right to a secret ballot in certification votes. We will introduce paycheque protection so union members are not forced to pay fees towards political causes they don’t support.”

In major speeches for the past 18 months, Hudak has targeted unions directly. And in a pre-Christmas interview with The Star in the opposition leader’s office, he didn’t waver.

“Modernizing our labour policy is bold policy, no doubt. I think it’s necessary if we want to bring jobs back to the province, particularly in manufacturing,” he told me and Star colleague Rob Benzie.

“So I’ve thought long and hard about this,” he continued, pointing to the loss of Ontario jobs to U.S. Great Lakes states with right-to-work laws. “They’re eating our lunch … .”

“So are we going to do something about that?” He pointed to Margaret Thatcher, the former British PM who ended the “closed shop” that once barred non-members from jobs in unionized British workplaces.

“Modernizing our labour laws is a part of that. Makes it more attractive for jobs. Thatcher was instructive in that … they had rigid labour laws, they were deep in debt. She ended the closed shop, she modernized the labour laws.”

Has Hudak had second thoughts in the past few weeks? Senior Tory sources say labour reform will continue to be used as a building block for job creation, the lens through which every policy will be viewed as he focuses on a final campaign platform.

More recently Hudak has dialed down the name-calling a notch, opting for “union elites” over “union bosses” when referring to the democratically elected labour leadership. And he downplayed his anti-labour agenda ahead of the Feb. 13 byelection in union-friendly Niagara Falls.

But when pressed again by reporters Friday, Hudak didn’t duck.

“Part of our plan to put people back to work is labour reform. We’ve put ideas on the table. We’ll have more to say about it in the future,” he said pointedly. “There are 50 different countries that have modernized their labour laws — that are taking jobs away from Ontario.”

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The Tories aren’t running away from labour reform, merely reformulating their message. Even if Hudak wanted to distance himself from a delicate issue — and he doesn’t — it’s too late. That ship has sailed, and he’d only be accused of harbouring a hidden agenda.

Either way, organized labour has already woken up to the risks of that agenda — hidden, latent or blatant — by reassembling a coalition of major unions to bankroll another anti-Hudak advertising campaign. Another reason why there is no turning back now for the Tories.