In Ontario, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats are battling over which party can best capitalize on the province’s Red Tory tradition.

The Liberals are coming at it from the Red side, promising to spend billions on infrastructure. Polls show that so far they’re leading in this crucial province.

The NDP is appealing to Ontario’s Tory side with its promise to balance budgets. That strategy doesn’t seem to be convincing Ontarians yet. It may ultimately succeed.

In terms of political culture, Ontario is a strange beast. Historically, its voters have tended to favour activist governments both federally and provincially.

But there is also a strong small-conservative strain in the province, one that puts a premium on sound management and fiscal probity.

The result is Red Tory-ism. With a few notable exceptions, it has provided the winning formula for any political party hoping to capture Ontario.

Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives won seats in Ontario by presenting themselves as Red Tories. So, in effect, did Jean Chretien’s Liberals.

In Red Tory Ontario, sensible state action in the economy is not only acceptable but expected.

Former premier Bill Davis, a Progressive Conservative, spoke to that when he had his government buy an oil company. So did former prime minister Pierre Trudeau when he had his Liberal government do the same thing.

Indeed, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is one of the few federal politicians to score well in Ontario without going down the Red Tory route.

Yet even he had to make some accommodation with the Ontario tradition, most notably when he backtracked on a pledge to end corporate welfare and instead continued the practice of handing out federal grants to the province’s well-heeled auto companies.

Now, Harper may be slipping. A Nanos poll this week puts his Conservatives in third place nationally, with the Liberals and New Democrats effectively tied for first.

Five polls over the last two weeks show Trudeau’s Liberals leading in battleground Ontario.

Polling now for an election that is six weeks away have little predictive value. But the surveys do indicate two things.

First, Trudeau’s announcement that a Liberal government would spend more than it takes in has not yet hurt him.

Politicians had assumed that defying balanced-budget orthodoxy was a recipe for career suicide. Trudeau has demonstrated that this may no longer be true.

In Ontario, his pledge to spend an additional $60 billion over 10 years on things like public transit, urban infrastructure and affordable housing seems to have struck a chord.

It is the kind of activist government action that Red Tories like.

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Second, Mulcair’s pledge to balance the books may have helped him in other provinces. But not in Ontario.

Across the country, the NDP holds first place in most recent polls.

But Tuesday’s Nanos poll shows only 25 per cent of Ontarians support Mulcair’s NDP, compared to 38 per cent who say they would vote Liberal and 32 per cent who back the Conservatives.

Recent polls by Leger and Ekos produce similar results.

At one level, this is odd. Mulcair is trying to position his New Democrats as compassionate fiscal conservatives who would create an ambitious new child-care program and balance the budget at the same time.

In Red Tory Ontario that should work. And by the time of the Oct. 19 vote, perhaps it will.

But right now, Ontarians — insofar as they are paying attention at all — appear to be attracted to Trudeau’s classic agenda of public works financed by borrowing.

On Tuesday, the Liberal leader promised reforms to the employment insurance system in order to let jobless workers obtain benefits more easily.

That the Liberals are promising to undo some of the damage that they themselves inflicted on Canada’s social safety net may seem bitterly ironic to those of us with memories of the 1990s.

But Trudeau’s pledge to help precarious workers should play well in Ontario. It is the kind of thing that Red Tories expect the state to do.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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