A secret Progressive Conservative election document leaked to the Star is further proof party leader Tim Hudak is bent on undermining unions, which would drive down wages and hurt the economy, critics charge.

Politicians and labour officials alike on Monday were quick to condemn the leader’s detailed election calendar, prepared by the Tories in the event the minority Liberal government had fallen on its budget forcing an election last spring.

One Tory source, who asked not be identified in order, played down the embarrassing campaign breach, denying it was a final draft even though each campaign day had a theme, time and location.

A dominant theme was labour, including so-called worker’s choice, which means allowing unionized employees to opt out of paying dues.

“This is confirmation the centrepiece of the Hudak PC platform is their plan to kill jobs and drive down wages,” Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi said in an email.

“The leak of internal documents shows even some PCs are uncomfortable with Tim Hudak’s reckless plan. This race-to-the-bottom PC approach only means one thing for Ontario — lower wages for every worker in this province.”

Many critics have compared Hudak’s approach to the right-to-work policies in the United States, where they say unions have been vilified and wages driven down. As recently as Friday, Tory MPP Monte McNaughton (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex) held a press conference to sing the praises of states that have loosened labour laws.

Ontario Public Service Employees Union president Warren (Smokey) Thomas said he hopes “Ontario would reject this kind of negative thinking.”

“It just confirmed for me that he doesn’t have the best interest of working people at heart,” Thomas said.

The Conservatives’ policy on weakening unions is one of 14 platform proposals put forward, but Tory MPPs have declined to say which ones they would actually campaign on.

Just seven days into the campaign, according to the calendar, Hudak was to head to Windsor — a Liberal and NDP stronghold — with the message “Fixing Labour Laws” to be explained at a non-union factory.

The Tories want to kill the Rand Formula, which requires all employees in a closed union shop to pay dues whether they join or not. Coincidentally, Supreme Court of Canada Justice Ivan Rand introduced the formula in 1946 as a result of the 1945 Ford strike in Windsor.

NDP MPP Gilles Bisson said Hudak seems to be picking a fight with labour for ideological reasons.

“For the Conservatives to pick a fight essentially with the working class and say, ‘We need to move to some other system such as they have in the United States,’ I think just tells us volumes about who this guy really is,” Bisson said.

“It is an attack on the working class.”

Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, noted that at Tories’ policy convention in September almost half of the PC delegates didn’t agree with the anti-union agenda.

“His strategy of going after workers in the province is a strategy that (former Tory) premier Mike Harris used,” he said, predicting it would only galvanize union opposition.

Ryan said the Tories’ hatred for the union-backed Working Families coalition appears to behind the initiative.

The coalition, which includes the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, and the Ontario Nurses’ Association, spent $1.2 million on ads attacking Hudak during the 2011 election campaign.

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Patrick Dillon, business manager and secretary treasurer of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, who helped launch Working Families a decade ago, said PC proposal was troubling enough “but you always sort of hope they won’t enact it.”

“This leaked document is something that is probably real and it is very, very troubling for all Ontarians, not just unionized workers,” said Dillon.

“To me it is just not the way you build a society. It is bad feeling in the pit of the stomach to think there are people who would seek leadership based on what they can do to people, not what they can do for people.”