ABOVE: Premier Kathleen Wynne is making a blunt pitch to voters considering voting NDP: vote for me instead, or watch Tim Hudak triumph following a split vote. Alan Carter has the story.
KINGSTON, Ont. – The election platform put forward by Tim Hudak and his Progressive Conservatives is dangerous, Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne said Tuesday, as she insisted she would never support a government in which he is premier.
Using some of her toughest language to date, Wynne warned of mass layoffs and other dire consequences that would result if Hudak were to win Thursday’s too-close-to-call election.
“What he is proposing is dangerous for the people of this province, it’s dangerous for children, it’s dangerous for the people who are needing health care,” Wynne said.
“It is wrong-headed on so many levels and it’s fundamentally flawed.”
Wynne made her comments at a college as early childhood education students looked on.
In Depth: Ontario Election 2014
She warned that Hudak’s pledge to cut 100,000 jobs from the public sector shows he doesn’t understand the complexities of the education system and would hurt those heading into the workforce.
“He’ll be busy firing people that are just a little older than you and those jobs would not be there,” Wynne warned.
“It would slam the door on jobs for young people.”
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Hudak has accused Wynne of spending the final days of the election in a campaign of fear and anger.
The Liberal leader denied fear-mongering, saying she was simply stating the facts. Nothing good can possibly come of his plan, she said, which is why she could never support it.
“What he is proposing would be so detrimental and have such a negative impact on so many people’s lives in this province, that it is not something that I would countenance,” she said.
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Wynne appealed again to New Democrat supporters to carefully consider the consequences of splitting the progressive vote – something that would likely put Hudak in the premier’s office.
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The race is so close that the Liberals need the NDP vote, she said.
“They cannot assume that Tim Hudak’s plan is so crazy and so wrong-headed that it’s impossible for him to get elected,” she said. “It’s possible for him to get elected.”
Wynne again raised the spectre of the last Tory government in the 1990s under Mike Harris, a period of unprecedented turmoil in the education system and among labour.
Hudak would only go back to those days, she said, undoing the progress made under the Liberals over the past 11 years.
“We saw all of this during the Harris years. What Tim Hudak is proposing goes beyond what Mike Harris did,” she said.
“We’re right now at a very fragile moment.”
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