Partisan attack noise drowns out issue talk as Ontario election starts

TORONTO – Ontario’s election campaign roared to formal life Wednesday as partisan noise quickly drowned out the conversation Premier Dalton McGuinty said he looked forward to having with the people of the province.

The dominant tenor of Day 1, despite passing references to policies and issues by the leaders, was one of attack, signalling what could be one of the nastiest provincial campaigns to date.

Following his morning chat with the lieutenant governor, McGuinty quickly picked up on a Liberal branding of his main rival, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, as a liar and hypocrite.

Hudak, McGuinty intoned, had “jettisoned his principles” and “abandoned his values” to play the politics of division by opposing a tax credit to help skilled immigrants land their first job.

“It smacks of a Tea Party approach which seeks to divide (and) seeks to appeal to anger resentment and envy,” the Liberal leader said.

Speaking at his sole campaign event of the day in Mississauga, McGuinty also said the Tories would drive up property taxes across the province.

The Tories have consistently branded McGuinty as “The Taxman” and his government as profligate when it comes to tax dollars.

Get breaking National news

Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won't miss a trending story.

Sign up for breaking National newsletter Get Started

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Hudak pursued that theme with vigour, blaming the Liberals for problems in the health-care system and accusing McGuinty of betraying taxpayers.

The government wasted almost $1 billion on the “eHealth boondoggle,” Hudak said in reference to the controversy that two years ago engulfed the agency that is creating electronic health records.

The Tory leader also attempted to cast off the “Tea Party Tim” label slapped on him by the Liberals by accusing McGuinty of playing divisive politics over a campaign pledge to help newcomers to the province find work.

Hudak denounced what he called “an affirmative action program for foreign workers” while 500,000 people in the province are out of work.

“You want to know who’s being divisive? It’s Dalton McGuinty by bringing in this policy that divides Canadians,” Hudak said.

In an acknowledgment the Liberals are also in a tough fight against the New Democrats under Andrea Horwath, the Liberal attack machine crowed that the NDP was still “scrambling” to field a full slate of candidates.

The Liberals also accused Horwath of breaking her own pledge to run more women candidates this election than the previous campaign.

For her part, Horwath, who called herself a “little bit of a fighter,” said she did not want to spend the campaign “squabbling” with her political opponents.

“The smears, the attack ads, and the name calling…” she said. “They’re all designed to turn people off, and the sad thing is, all too often, it works.”

The NDP also said it hoped to have a full slate of candidates within a day or two.

Earlier in the day, McGuinty visited Lt.-Gov. David Onley to herald the start of the sprint toward the Oct. 6 vote.

“We had a good conversation, and now we’re going to have a more important conversation with the people of Ontario,” he said after.

Even though Wednesday marked the formal start, McGuinty and Hudak have been attacking each other for weeks in an effort to shape the campaign from the outset.

McGuinty is seeking his third straight majority and faces what all polls predict will be a tight race against Hudak and Horwath, both in their first campaigns as party leaders.

Going into the month-long campaign, the Liberals held 70 of the 107 seats, the Progressive Conservatives 24, the New Democrats 10, and three seats were vacant.

In all, about 8.5 million people will be eligible to vote on election day although only slightly more than half actually did so in 2007 – the lowest-ever turnout for an Ontario election.