Middle-class earners can expect income tax cuts of up to $786 annually, but they’ll have to wait three years to see any money if the Progressive Conservatives are elected June 7, says party leader Doug Ford.

The promise will cost the provincial treasury $2.3 billion a year when fully implemented, said Ford, who has also pledged to cut overall government spending by $6 billion without laying off any workers.

“Our plan is affordable and it is responsible,” he told a news conference on Thursday at a Mississauga hotel.

The pledge comes as the New Democrats and Liberals — trailing Ford in the polls — warn his spending and tax cuts will result in cuts to government services.

Ford said the income tax cut will deliver the “biggest relative savings” to people earning between $43,000 and $86,000.

“Families are stretched to the limit,” he added, accusing Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government of being “out of touch.”

“Ontario families can’t afford Kathleen Wynne,” said Ford, who has not specified which government programs and services he would axe through his promised $6 billion in “efficiencies.”

The tax break will be accomplished by cutting the second provincial income tax bracket by 20 per cent. This tax bracket is for earners between $42,960 and $85,923. The current tax rate of 9.15 per cent would drop to 7.32 per cent.

Ford and MPP Vic Fedeli, who has been the party’s finance critic, could not say how much the cut would be worth to earners at the lower $43,000 level and said more details will come later in the campaign.

Sheila Block, senior economist with the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the tax break will be an average of $7 for Ontarians with incomes below $49,000 and most lucrative for high incomes, with half the total value of the $2.3 billion tax cut going to the top 10 per cent.

Wynne warned that Ford’s tax cut proposal will mean a reduction in public services, such as health care and education.

“Cutting income tax means there is less that the government is going to be able to do,” Wynne told reporters at the Hospital for Sick Children.

“Doug Ford is campaigning on slogans. He is not explaining to people what it means when there is less money available to invest in health care, to invest in education.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath voiced similar concerns.

“It’s going to be interesting to get a sense from Mr. Ford of what exactly he’s going to cut in terms of public services,” she told reporters in Toronto. “He’s going to give with one hand, and take away with the other.”

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She said previous Progressive Conservative governments have made such cuts, telling Ontarians “to go it alone.”

“We’ve seen that movie before in Ontario,” she said, adding such cutbacks “created huge problems” for families and communities.

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