All eyes are on Andrea Horwath. And she is feeling the pressure from all sides — including her own.

With a provincial budget due in 10 days, the NDP leader holds the fate of the minority Liberal government in her hands. Horwath will keep us waiting a while yet.

While Premier Kathleen Wynne keeps dropping hints that the NDP will get much of what it wants in the May 2 budget, Horwath is playing hardball. And settling in for a waiting game.

“We’ll see, we’ll see, we’ll see — the jury is out,” she mused Monday in her Queen’s Park office over the lunch hour, just after Finance Minister Charles Sousa spoke to a blue-chip business audience about his grand budget plans.

Amidst feverish election speculation, Horwath will soon decide whether to pull the plug on the Liberals or leave them on life support for a while longer. Her fellow New Democrats are divided on whether to keep wielding the balance of power in the minority legislature or wash their hands of a Liberal government tainted by scandals and boondoggles.

Horwath will take her time, evaluating the final budget document and holding out for improvements rather than settling for the government’s first offer. The NDP’s agenda calls for cracking down on corporate tax breaks, boosting youth job creation, bringing down car insurance rates and improving welfare rules.

“I’m not in the driver’s seat here. I’m waiting to see what the government brings forward,” Horwath told the Star. “I would need to take some time to absorb what’s in the budget.”

And, she added pointedly, to “suggest some different things” to improve it.

For now, Horwath is skeptical of Wynne’s prebudget consultations aimed at wooing New Democrats. Her last meeting with the premier was unproductive and “very truncated,” and the NDP leader is resisting any follow-up encounters unless there is a clear public agenda.

When the premier’s office put out feelers for another meeting this month, the NDP didn’t bite.

“If it’s the same thing that we really talked about for 10 minutes, then it’s not really worth setting up another meeting,” Horwath says. “The ball is in their court. I’ve asked for an agenda and I’ve told them that I will be public about the fact.”

Horwath has come to be highly skeptical of Liberal-NDP “conversations:” a word she herself once used but now believes Wynne abuses. She wants the premier to walk the talk.

(While keeping Wynne waiting, Horwath is making plans to see her Tory rival, Tim Hudak, who asked last week for a meeting for the two opposition parties to compare notes.)

New Democrats dream of minority governments because they give the traditionally third-place party disproportionate leverage to advance its progressive agenda. But propping up another party also exacts a political price; it blurs the NDP’s brand.

“I think you’re right, it is a tension,” Horwath concedes. “It’s a tension, but it’s something I’m committed to” because the NDP’s agenda is now “very achievable.”

New Democrats got results in the 2012 budget: pressuring former premier Dalton McGuinty to freeze a corporate tax cut while imposing a surtax on the rich and raising welfare rates.

This time the party’s shopping list is longer and louder. But any budget gains could be outweighed by political damage if the New Democrats are seen as Liberal enablers.

Newer, younger caucus members who eviscerated Liberals in the last election are finding it hard to hold their noses now and are spoiling for a fight. Horwath says she is calming the dissenters by explaining that her budget manoeuvres are advancing the party’s progressive agenda: precisely what she promised during the last election.

“That’s the conversation that I have — there, I used the word! — with my caucus at our caucus meetings: Let’s stay focused, folks ... to try to make a difference.”

It’s a tough call. If she backs the budget, the party could be damaged. If she triggers an early election, she may be seen as expedient.

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Either way, there will be plenty of time to fight it out on the campaign trail.

“The time will come,” she says. “But in the meantime let’s focus on trying to do right by the people.”

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