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Ontario’s long-awaited election day is finally almost upon us. There is a unanimous view that the Liberals are finally going to be thrown out, bag and baggage, after four catastrophic terms, when the province was mortgaged to hare-brained alarm about climatology and electricity-generating facilities were shut down and solar energy and other nostrums subsidized as the province piled up bone-crushing deficits and manufacturers were effectively encouraged to pack up their cards and leave. Over 300,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in southwestern Ontario as electricity costs skyrocketed for all Ontario residents. Only the ineptitude of successive Progressive Conservative campaigns and a formidable Liberal display of electoral skullduggery and chicanery, some of it master-minded by Obama tactician David Axelrod, has kept the regime in office until now. One of the province’s former premiers, when I encountered him socially a couple of weeks ago, declined to predict the outcome but said “I know a tsunami when I see one.”

I know a tsunami when I see one Former Ontario premier

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In the past 10 days, there has been a surge of conventional wisdom that the NDP has gathered strength and could emerge as the largest party, which would mean that it could govern, but with the support of the Liberals. If this were to occur, the outgoing premier, Kathleen Wynne, would perform a feat worthy of Mackenzie King, the all-time champion of Liberal trumpery and duplicity (an astonishing 22 years as prime minister between 1921 and 1948), in sustaining a heavy rejection but retaining the balance of power in the legislature, upon which the victors would be dependent. It must be said that Premier Wynne has fought a brave campaign; she did not yield to the temptation to step aside and leave someone else to take the bullet, as did Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney (who were followed by John Turner and Kim Campbell, respectively) and others have done. She has fought her corner with dignity in very unfavourable circumstances. Policy shortcomings do not deprive her of her right to personal civility and respect.