WELLAND, Ont.–NDP Leader Jack Layton's campaign travelled from Windsor to Welland yesterday, home to thousands of lost jobs in Ontario's disappearing manufacturing heartland.

"We are going to be travelling right up the 401 through the communities that are being so hard hit by this manufacturing jobs crisis," he said earlier in Windsor, which has the highest unemployment level in Ontario at more than 9 per cent.

Layton said communities along Highway 401 throughout the Golden Horseshoe are hurting like they have never before. He visited seven communities – Windsor, Essex, St. Thomas, London, Welland-Thorold, Hamilton, and Guelph – in 16 hours.

"When you lose a good middle-class job, you are losing a lot," Layton said in Thorold.

Nearby Welland is still reeling from the announcement last month that John Deere is closing its plant at the end of February, throwing some 800 employees out of work.

"In these difficult times you've got to have leadership that understands the personal stories of Canadians," he told reporters in Thorold after accusing Harper of not caring about the 400,000 manufacturing jobs that, he says, have disappeared.

"He (Harper) has no comprehension of what hundreds of thousands of them are going through, that they are losing their well-paid jobs and now can't make ends meet at the end of the month ... what planet is he living on?"

Layton told supporters in hard-hit St. Thomas he has looked into the eyes of too many workers who have lost their good-paying factory jobs, in some cases after decades.

Some 2,000 CAW members recently marched through the streets to protest jobs lost there and across the country. According to newspaper reports, over the past few years some 4,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost – about 10 per cent of the city's population.

Layton is spending the last day of the campaign travelling by bus in southern Ontario after logging 55,873 kilometres and visiting 48 cities while criss-crossing the country since Sept. 7.



