Change for the sake of change will put pharmacare and a higher minimum wage at risk, warns Premier Kathleen Wynne.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Star, the premier said Tuesday that she’s getting ready for an election now less than a year away.

Wynne, who trails Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown in most polls and lost a June 1 byelection to the Tories in Sault Ste. Marie, said the Liberals plan to remind Ontario voters of the downside to change.

“Part of this discussion around change is change to what and change from what? That’s why all I can do is make it clear what we have done and then talk about how we’re going to build on it,” she said.

The premier insisted next year’s campaign will differ from the occasion on which her predecessor Dalton McGuinty toppled a Conservative government by urging Ontarians to “choose change.”

“In 2003, the change was to a very clear set of priorities. Education was our number one priority. We were very clear about investing in health care. We had some very clear principles that we were operating on… that we believed that public service was important, that we believed in public institutions,” she said.

Brown, in contrast to McGuinty in 2002 and 2003, has yet to reveal much in the way of policy plans.

Asked about the 39-year-old Tory leader’s new ad blitz, which shows him marching in the Pride parade and meeting with Ontarians from many different cultural communities, Wynne expressed wariness.

“I don’t know who he is or what he is. I don’t know what he stands for,” she said, alluding to Brown’s rebranding of himself as a progressive after voting against same-sex marriage and access to abortion as a federal MP.

“The people of Ontario are going to have to ask him those questions. It’s quite unclear what he believes in or what he stands for.”

Although she will be 65 by election day, she is not yet thinking about retirement, Wynne stressed.

“I have known older politicians than 64. I am focused on June 2018, and we’ll have that conversation after I win the next election... if I win the next election,” she said.

“We’ve still got a lot to do. I’m eager to get (to) it.”

The famously competitive premier said she will be proud to tout the Liberal government’s record, including a new pharmacare plan, which provides prescription coverage of 4,400 medications for everyone under 25, and a $14-an-hour minimum wage.

Both measures kick in on Jan. 1. The minimum wage, which stands at $11.40-an-hour, is scheduled to jump to $15 in 2019.

Wynne said the Liberal campaign will not be shy about pointing out that those gains could be lost if Brown’s Tories win the election.

“That will be part of the subscript, obviously, because we’re different. We are different parties. We’re different people. We have different sensibilities and different values, as far as I can tell,” she said. “So that’s obviously going to have to be part of the discussion.”

The premier also indicated that, as she did in 2014 when she successfully campaigned against then Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, she is willing to look further afield than Queen’s Park for a political foil.

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That means tackling U.S. President Donald Trump while on the hustings in Ontario.

“The fact is we’re operating in a political environment and a cultural environment and an economic environment that is made more uncertain by the... current president of the United States. That’s a reality,” she said.

“What you’ve seen us doing over the last couple of years is trying to address the uncertainty of the economy, and I would say that’s going to be very much a part of the election campaign.”

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