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Premier Kathleen Wynne’s running ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x2PXySGHbnk

Ms. Wynne insists the transit report, itself the product of a panel that was reviewing the work of an earlier panel, will not be punted again.

“We’re going to carry on,” the Premier says, sitting in an armchair across the office from her large wooden desk. “My hope is the opposition will see that it’s critical that we have a revenue stream,” she says. “I know that Tim Hudak has said that he has a plan, I don’t know how exactly he would fund his plan, but Andrea Horwath doesn’t have a plan at all.”

Ms. Wynne says she still believes one of the two parties might buy into her transit strategy.

“But if they don’t, we’ve said all along that we’re ready. Whether it’s on this issue or whether it’s on the broader issues that are part of the budget, we are ready for a general election.”

And so, Ontario moves toward a crossroads. The province has been governed by the Liberals for more than a decade, with Mr. McGuinty twice coming from behind to win elections he was expected to lose. Mr. Hudak, who lost the last of those campaigns, has spent much of his time since lamenting the Liberal management of the economy, which even under rosy government forecasts is not scheduled to climb out of deficit until 2017-18, or three years after the federal government is expected to do the same.

But while the Liberals and PCs would have been expected to do battle on the campaign trail over the economy and persistent deficits, the coming campaign may be fought over different issues entirely. Mr. Hudak’s party has released a series of white papers that promote fundamental policy shifts across all levels of government. Though the PCs aren’t expected to include all of them in an election platform, the leader has made labour reform, or rewriting the law that allows unions to make membership mandatory, one of his consistent targets. He told a Toronto business audience this month that his plan, which he calls modernizing labour laws and union leaders call an attempt to destroy their organizations, was an important part of stemming the manufacturing job losses that in the past few weeks alone have seen companies such as Heinz and Kellogg announce plans to relocate work from southwestern Ontario to the United States.