Can someone give Hudak math lessons, please!!!

 

 The picture to the left says it all. Tim Hudak and the PC Party don't know how to do basic math.

Not only does his 1 million jobs plan number don't add up, his party is now laying blame on the Liberals for running a budget deficit, and raising the Provincial Debt.

Let's take our Provincial Debt. The PC party is blaming the rise in our Provincial Debt to the mismanagement of the finances of the provinces by the Liberals.

What Hudak and his gang fail to see is that each year the Province runs a budget deficit that deficit is added to the Provincial Debt. This is also true on the Federal level as the Federal Conservatives, since the Recession of 2007/08 have ran massive deficits, reaching the high of 52 billion. That money gets added to the National Debt. Since the recession the Conservatives have increased our national debt by 200 billion and this is with lower taxes at all levels.

Now back to Tim Hudak's funny math. Hudak claims that he can bring Ontario back to balanced books 1 year sooner than the Liberals. His plan calls for the firing of 100,000 public workers, lower taxes, lower energy costs, lower everything....

Every major respected economist says that Hudak's plan is out of wack, and he could actually send Ontario back into recession. I'm no economist, but his numbers just don't add up, so I'll let you all be the judge on the Hudak funny math.

Hudak job cuts impact on communities

 
Today the Ontario Federation of Labour and CUPE Ontario published calculations I prepared of how Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s promise to eliminate 100,000 public sector jobs will be felt at the local level, on cities and communities across the province.
The original OFL release provides info on the magnitude of these impacts for the 15 largest census metropolitan areas across Ontario, for which labour force survey figures are available, a second release has the impacts for smaller communities, while CUPE Ontario has put a map on-line  that shows the impact for all the metro areas and a number of smaller cities and towns (or “census agglomerations”).   Below I include some details on how the numbers were calculated and provide the impacts for the full list of communities.
These job cuts–more extreme than  under Mike Harris–would be devastating for many communities.   As I outlined in a previous post, if the elimination of 100,000 public sector jobs plus the spin-off jobs led to an equivalent increase in unemployment, Ontario’s unemployment rate would reach 9.7% (based on an increase from current rates)– the highest in 20 years.
But the impacts would be even greater for particular communities.  What this analysis shows is if public sector jobs are eliminated proportionally, the impacts would be especially severe for mid- and smaller-sized cities and towns in the province–and could lead to double-digit unemployment rates in many.

For example, if the cuts were implemented proportionately, Kingston could see an increase in its unemployment rate by 3.8 percentage points up to 10.2%; Peterborough up by 3.2% to 14.8%; Oshawa up by 2.9% to 9.9%; Guelph up by 3.2% to 10.4% and Greater Sudbury up 3.2% to 9.4%.

This is because, perhaps contrary to the perception of many, public sector employment actually tends to be proportionally higher in mid- and smaller cities than in larger cities.  These public sector jobs are also an important source of economic stability in these communities because the jobs are more stable and are decently, or at least more equitably, compensated.   The cruel irony is that the smaller cities and towns that are often a base of Conservative strength would be most damaged by the deep cuts Hudak is planning.
The impacts of public sector job cuts of this magnitude would be at odds with the way Hudak and his Conservatives are trying to sell them: as cutting “100,000 jobs in the bureaucracy” that would have little impact on front-line services or local communities.
The reality is the large majority of public sector workers are front-line workers.  According to Statscan data over 400,000 Ontarians work in education (locals schools, universities, colleges and trades schools); about 236,000 work in health care and social services (hospitals, community clinics, residential care); about 275,000 for local governments; and about 40,000 for provincial crown corporations such as Hydro, the LCBO etc.
In fact, there were only ~90,000 employed in the core provincial public service.  This includes the classic government worker or “bureaucrat” that Hudak loves to disparage, but it also includes many others, including provincial police, judicial employees, and those working for agencies, boards and commissions.
So there’s no question: the cuts Hudak would implement would result in significant cuts to front-line public services and would have a major impact on communities across the province.  Even prominent conservative columnist Tasha Kheiriddin (formerly director with the Fraser Institute and Canadian Taxpayers Federation) recently wrote she won’t vote for Hudak because she realizes he will cut public services her autistic daughter needs.
(While Hudak claims only private sector jobs create wealth, private sector industries and companies can often be more bureaucratic with higher administration costs than the public sector.  For example administrative costs in the US private health care system are about three times the administration costs in Canada’s largely public system).
How these job impact figures were calculated
These figures are based on the most detailed employment by industry and occupation figures that are readily (and freely) available for communities in Canada: data from the National Household Survey (NHS).
From this I calculated employment in public sector industry groups at the four-digit (most detailed) level for the 48 “Census Divisions” (CDs) in Ontario (from NHS Table  99-012-X2011052) and separately for the 42 different Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) and smaller Census Agglomerations (CAs) (from NHS table 99-012-X2011034).
16 different industry groups at the 4-digit level were included, with most of the employment from these in education, health care and social services and public administration, but excluding employment in federal and aboriginal public administration.   However, I included in this local, regional and municipal public administration because Hudak was reported as saying he would also force municipalities to cut jobs.
From these totals of provincial and municipal broader public sector employment by community, I subtracted the NHS figures for employment of nurses, doctors and police officers (commissioned and non-commissioned) (From NHS tables 99-012-X2011051 and 99-012-X2011033) for each of these communities as Hudak said these jobs wouldn’t be cut.   This provided net totals for the public sector workforce by community that would be affected by these cuts.
This analysis assumed then that the cuts would be made proportionate to these levels of public sector employment across the province.  Hudak hasn’t provided any other details on how specifically the cuts would be implemented except to admit that they would definitely affect front-line services and mean fewer teachers.
And because the loss of these direct jobs have multiplier effects through the loss of their spending in the local community and beyond, the total impacts also include an estimate of the spin-off effects on private sector employment, using a multiplier of 0.67, as explained in my previous post.
The increase in the unemployment rates was calculated for the 15 Ontario CMAs for which Statistics Canada publishes Labour force Survey figures using the April 2014 seasonally adjusted figures from Cansim Table 282-0116.
These are of course estimates.  No one knows what the impacts ultimately will be, but they are the most accurate estimates I could calculate based on the most detailed data readily available and making reasonable assumptions.   Hudak has of course built his campaign around a claim that he’s going to create a million jobs through things such as corporate tax cuts, etc.   The credibility of those claims will be the topic for a subsequent blog post.
The following two tables provide these results: the first for the 15 largest cities (Census Metropolitan Areas) for which labour force survey data are available; and the second the public and private sector job losses for all the larger cities (CMAs) as well as the smaller cities and towns (CAs).

Estimated job losses and increase in jobless rate from Hudak’s public sector job cuts for the 15 largest cities (CMAs) in Ontario
City (CMA)	Job losses	Increase in unemployment rate	Resulting jobless rate (based on April 2014 rate)
Ontario	167,000	2.3%	9.7%
Ottawa	11,159	1.9%	8.8%
Kingston	3,333	3.8%	10.2%
Peterborough	2,057	3.2%	14.8%
Oshawa	6,134	2.9%	9.9%
Toronto	62,892	1.8%	9.6%
Hamilton	10,555	2.6%	9.0%
St. Catharines – Niagara	5,301	2.5%	10.7%
Kitchener – Cambridge – Waterloo	6,142	2.0%	8.8%
Brantford	1,782	2.4%	9.4%
Guelph	2,480	3.2%	10.4%
London	7,116	2.7%	10.7%
Windsor	3,964	2.4%	10.8%
Barrie	2,547	2.2%	9.4%
Greater Sudbury	2,785	3.2%	9.4%
Thunder Bay	2,460	3.8%	9.6%

 

 

Estimated impact of Hudak public sector job cuts on Ontario cities and towns
City or town (CMA or CA)	Public sector job cuts	Spin-off private sector job losses	Total job loss	% of provincial total job losses
Cornwall	471	316	787	0.5%
Hawkesbury	82	55	137	0.1%
Ottawa	6,682	4,477	11,159	6.7%
Brockville	322	215	537	0.3%
Pembroke	231	155	386	0.2%
Petawawa	60	40	100	0.1%
Kingston	1,996	1,337	3,333	2.0%
Belleville	686	460	1,146	0.7%
Cobourg	150	101	251	0.2%
Port Hope	155	104	258	0.2%
Peterborough	1,232	825	2,057	1.2%
Kawartha Lakes	716	480	1,196	0.7%
Wellington	250	168	418	0.3%
Oshawa	3,673	2,461	6,134	3.7%
Ingersoll	99	67	166	0.1%
Toronto	37,660	25,232	62,892	37.7%
Hamilton	6,320	4,234	10,555	6.3%
St. Catharines – Niagara	3,174	2,127	5,301	3.2%
Kitchener – Cambridge – Waterloo	3,678	2,464	6,142	3.7%
Brantford	1,067	715	1,782	1.1%
Woodstock	263	176	439	0.3%
Tillsonburg	86	58	144	0.1%
Norfolk	452	303	755	0.5%
Guelph	1,485	995	2,480	1.5%
Stratford	256	171	427	0.3%
London	4,261	2,855	7,116	4.3%
Chatham-Kent	764	512	1,277	0.8%
Leamington	271	181	452	0.3%
Windsor	2,374	1,590	3,964	2.4%
Sarnia	618	414	1,032	0.6%
Owen Sound	330	221	551	0.3%
Collingwood	133	89	222	0.1%
Barrie	1,525	1,022	2,547	1.5%
Orillia	293	196	489	0.3%
Midland	310	207	517	0.3%
North Bay	751	503	1,254	0.8%
Greater Sudbury	1,668	1,117	2,785	1.7%
Elliot Lake	78	53	131	0.1%
Temiskaming Shores	134	90	223	0.1%
Timmins	448	300	748	0.4%
Sault Ste. Marie	808	541	1,349	0.8%
Thunder Bay	1,473	987	2,460	1.5%
Kenora	203	136	339	0.2%

The Face Of True Partisanship - Christina Blizzard

I always get a kick out of reading the Toronto Sun, and watching the Sun Media channel. Some of their "reporters" are actually "reporters" who take the time to research the topics they report on. However in the case of Toronto Sun's Queens Park reporter, Christina Blizzard she, along with her buddy, Sue-Ann Levy are the most partisan "reporters" I've ever come across.

For example just read her recent article about the Liberals being a negative lot.

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/05/21/libs-a-negative-lot

She starts off the article blaming McGuinty for everything that's wrong in Ontario, and she then tries to tie Wynne into what McGuinty has done. Here's a wake up call Christina, Wynne is not McGuinty, just like Hudak is not Mike Harris. Conservatives like her seem to forget that Ontario was one of the hardest hit Provinces during the great recession. Yes we lost jobs as our American cousins were not buying our products. We also lost jobs as companies relocated to places like China, India, and Mexico.

Blizzard goes on to say that because of McGuinty's economic policies, he drove business out of Ontario. Really....Do you have your head so far up your ass that you fail to realize that Ontario has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Canada, and that Ontario is the leader in the auto manufacturing sector in North America.

Your whole article is mainly about McGuinty this, McGuinty that. Again McGuinty is gone, and yes he did break promises after promises, but again Wynne is no McGuinty. While you always love to attack the Liberals, you fail to see how much the same your beloved PC party is. Take Tim Hudak's wife who was on the payroll for one of the companies involved in the gas plants. You fail to bring that up, and you also fail to bring up the fact that Hudak himself said in the 2011 campaign which he lost, that he along with Horwath would have cancelled the gas plants had they been elected into office.

You fail to mention that since Wynne took over as Premier, not one scandal has occurred under her watch. You talk about the Liberals going negative? How about them Federal Conservatives with all their negative ads against Trudeau.

The bottom line is that you are a puppet of the PC Party who only likes to report half truths to advance your partisan agenda. What will you say if the Liberals win again? That the election was fixed!!

Ontario Liberal Party Videos

On June 12th the voters in Ontario will cast their ballots and either kick the Liberals to the curb, or re-elect them to another mandate.

Below are a few video's from the Ontario Liberal website. Do you believe that the Liberals are different under Premier Wynne or is it still the same as under McGuinty.

 

Gas Plant Scandal or not?

 

 A lot has been said during the campaign about the gas plant scandal and how the Liberals have been covering up everything under the sun. Hudak and Horwath have gone on record saying that had they won the 2011 election they would have cancelled the gas plants. Anyway I received a very interesting email this morning in my in-box, and I wanted to share it with you.


 Hudak Conservatives mislead with gas plant cancellation costs.

Wikipedia Ontario "Gas Plant Scandal” ays

It is now said that the final financial impact of the Liberal cancellations of the Oakville and Mississauga gas plants will approach $1.1 billion.^[18] That figure however is much larger than that stated by the Auditor General of $675 Million. The figure stated by the Auditor General in turn is disputed by Ontario Power Generation. Ontario Power Generation still maintains "Although the OPA’s and the Auditor General’s cost estimates are different, we continue to support our assumptions, as this difference, as set out in the report, is for the most part attributable to the assumptions used to calculate future costs."

However the discrepancy is a bit simpler to understand. The 'Costs incurred' of cancelling the gas plants is $253 Million according to the Auditor General's report. The 'Estimated future costs' include gas delivery and management services for a new Napanee plant, gas and hydro connections for that future Napanee plant, the cost of additional gas for potentially less efficient turbines, transmission system upgrades (which were already planned ^[19]), line losses for the distance power has to travel from Napanee, and for replacement power beginning in 2017. The Auditor General subtracts future savings from that figure to arrive at $675 Million. Opposition parties use the total cost of cancellation and include the cost of building the Napanee replacement plant while leaving out the cost savings.

Note that these numbers are from the Auditor General and OPG, not the Liberal Party.

Hudak would be wrong for Ontario.

I've been very vocal on why I think Hudak would make a lousy Premier. Yes he's a great father, great husband, and most likely a great guy, but when it comes to politics, and leadership he sucks.

The main plank of his platform is the creation of 1 million jobs in 8 years. On the surface it looks great with all the fancy signage, posters, and news bits, but when you look into his plan in greater detail it's a flop, and here's why.

He starts off his plan by saying that he will fire 100,000 public service employees over 2 years. 100,000 people being let go works our to about 934 people for every riding in Ontario. The severance packages that most of these people would receive could cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Not all of these laid off people will be able to find work which means that they will be collecting unemployment insurance, or go on social assistance which puts a further financial burden on the taxpayers.

A plan to create 1 million jobs, by firing 100,000 makes no sense and several well known economist from across Canada and the United States agree with me. Hudak's plan is to also lower corporate taxes so businesses will once again relocate to Ontario and boost our manufacturing sector which has lost about 300,000 jobs since the great recession. Our corporate tax rate is one of the lowest in Canada, and trickle down economics has proven to be a complete failure. Lowering corporate taxes does not create jobs, it just makes the corporations richer, and richer.

Hudak also blames our high energy costs as another reason why businesses won't relocate to Ontario. Yes our Hydro rates are high, but Hudak has not said how he intends to lower them, he has no plan, and if he does he needs to tell voters. Energy is not just Hydro it also includes, ground transportation like trucking. No Premier has control over the price of gas, as that's controlled on the open world market. Our high wages in Ontario is another factor in the cost of why businesses don't relocate to Ontario.

Again some of the world's leading economists have said that no matter who's Premier, the Ontario economy will create over 600,000 jobs in 8 years. Our economy works in cycles, and every decade we seem to hit a low, and then go back to where we were before the low hit. Just take a look at the United States. Back in 2007-08 the US Economy was losing about 750,000 jobs a month as a result of financial policies at the time. Since 2009 when unemployment hit a record high of 10%, the US Economy has added millions of jobs and the unemployment rate is about 6.6% and projected to go down to the 5% range in the next 8-12 months.

Hudak wants to cut, cut, cut, when cutting won't be required. Even former Premier, Mike Harris only cut 13,000 public service employees, and looked what happen, strikes, lock-outs, protests at Queens Park, larger class sizes, schools in need of repair, nurses and doctors leaving Ontario for the United States. What affect would 100,000 people being cut would do for our social services? It would be nightmare, and much worse than the Harris years.

When I read news articles praising the Hudak plan, it's very upsetting that these people don't see what a Hudak government would do to Ontario, and hopefully voters will see Hudak for what he is, a complete failure.

A Green of an idea!

 Mike Schreiner the leader of the Ontario Green Party, has a very bold idea. His idea is to merge the Catholic and Public School boards into one Public School board.

The savings to the Province of Ontario could exceed 1.2 billion a year, which is the cost of a couple of gas plants. All joking aside, I've always asked that question, why do we have and need 2 publicly funded school systems in Ontario. Other Provinces have merged their school systems to great success, and it's about time Ontario does the same thing.
 
Schreiner says Ontario's having two publicly funded school systems --- one for Catholics and one for everyone else --- is intellectually unsustainable in the year 2014. He’d move to end an education model that has existed in Ontario for a century and a half, by creating a unified school system.
You know the long history on this issue. Back in 1867, Protestants in Quebec and Catholics in Ontario agreed to the Confederation deal on the condition that their minority rights be protected with publicly funded schools. Initially, governments in Ontario funded the separate school system up to grade 8. Then the John Robarts government extended it to grade 10 in the mid-1960s. Then in 1984, William Davis announced he’d fully fund the Catholic school system right through to the end of high school. Davis retired before actually doing it, and it was left to David Peterson’s Liberal government, with an assist from Bob Rae’s NDP, to complete the task as part of their “Accord.”
 
Most politicians who have weighed into the toxic mix of politics, religion, and education have been punished for it. Davis’ successor, Frank Miller, saw the PC  seat and vote totals drop precipitously in the 1985 election because the Tory base never accepted the policy of fully funding Catholic schools. Six weeks after that 1985 election, the 42-year-long PC dynasty came to an end.
John Tory lost the 2007 election in large part because of the issue. Tory, to his credit, felt the unfairness of only one religion’s schools receiving public funding was unsustainable. Regrettably for him, he chose to offer some public funding to all religions --- a solution the public overwhelmingly rejected.

It's a shame that this bold idea will never take off in a divided Ontario. Hopefully the people of Guelph will vote to elect Mike, and send the first Green MPP to Queens Park.

The Man Behind Hudak's 1 million Jobs Plan.

Behind every great economic plan is the idiot who created it. I would like you to meet Mr. Benjamin Zycher.
Mr. Zycher has a long history as being an economist, having worked for many far right wing groups in the United States. Yes folks, Tim Hudak, the leader of the PC Party hired a well known Tea Party Republican to help him put together his 1 million jobs plan.

Given all the unemployment in Canada, which by the way is still higher than the United States, you would think that Hudak could have found someone in Ontario to help him come up with his dud of a jobs plan. What really bugs me, and it should bug you is what Mr. Zycher has to say on a number of other topics.

Here are just a very examples of his writings:

“The heat is on. The environmental Left is on the attack, and the target now is not ExxonMobil, or the Kochs, or the Keystone XL pipeline, or fossil fuels, or the efforts of the world’s desperately poor to escape grinding poverty, or plastics, or indoor plumbing, or those who fail to worship Gaia, or any of the other usual suspects. Instead, it is President Obama, urged last month in an open letter by 16 environmental groups to prevent the exportation of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and to make a commitment to keep ‘most of our nation’s fossil fuel reserves in the ground, in line with the recommendations of most of the world’s leading climate scientists’ … The letter obviously is far more a political than an analytical document, and as a reflection of scientific understanding it is deeply disingenuous. That the authors have defined their policy prescriptions as a ‘good-faith test’ for Mr. Obama is amusing in that the letter is a blatant exercise in disinformation. Thus have the environmental groups chosen to pollute the political process in pursuit of a massive suppression of technological advance and enhanced wealth for ordinary working people, an appalling exercise in bad faith. For them it is also business as usual.” American Enterprise Institute online magazine, April 8, 2014

“Now, let me be blunt: Michelle Obama, the product of lifelong affirmative-action coddling, is an intellectual lightweight who fancies herself a serious thinker. Just read her Princeton senior thesis, an intermittently coherent stream-of-consciousness pile of leftist jargon, campus pseudo-seriousness, and racial-identity babble. Can there be any doubt that the Princeton administrators accepted it only because of her skin colour?” National Review Online, Aug. 17, 2009

“I simply cannot remember an Oval Office quite so devoid of economic thinking. The latest example is the pending regulatory change, announced yesterday, which would raise the salary level above which certain classes of workers would be exempt from receiving overtime pay. Accordingly, the overtime pay requirement would be extended to vastly more workers … Suppose that the market-determined competitive salary for such workers putting in 50-60 hours per week is say, $750 per week, or $39,000 per year … Assume now that such work were to require only 40 hours per week; does President Obama actually believe that there would be no change in the competitive market salary? In other words, it is rather obvious that the market-determined salary reflects the long hours that some workers must devote to their jobs: a requirement for harder work, other factors held constant, reduces the supply of workers willing to provide it, thus raising the market salary … But until we have some ‘objective’ measure of ‘fairness’ - a mirage if ever there was one - only market competition can tell us the value of extra-hard work, in the form of prices determined by millions of individual choices made freely.”AEI blog, March 14, 2014

Mr. Zycher, president of his own research firm, has a long CV that includes his current role as resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and earlier stints at everywhere from the Milken Institute and UCLA to RAND Corp. and the U.S. State Department.

And in the wouldn’t-you-know-it category, he was senior staff economist on Ronald Reagan’s President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

What the CV doesn’t tell you – but his writings do – is that he hates government bureaucracy and positively loathes the “environmental Left.” He has thoughts on greenhouse gas, affirmative action, and working people.

As The Globe and Mail’s Adrian Morrow reports, the Ontario Conservatives chose Mr. Zycher to analyze their program in the run-up to the June 12 provincial election.

The program – the Million Jobs Plan – pledges to create that many jobs over eight years by cutting corporate taxes, killing subsidies for alternative energy, joining the trade agreement of the western provinces, slashing red tape and ending the endless traffic jams in Toronto. Oh, and it assumes that about half those jobs would have been created anyway.

“These economic benefits of the proposed reforms are substantial, and the rationales offered in defense of the status quo are dubious,” Mr. Zycher said in his 18-page study.

Hudak's job plan is a dud.

Hudak's plan to create 1 million new jobs over 8 years is a dud. Economic forecasts are saying that over the next several years over 500,000 jobs will be added to the economy, regardless of who wins the provincial election.

Here's a great piece regarding the latest polling numbers and Hudak's 1 million jobs plan.

Nearly two-thirds of Ontarians disapprove of Tim Hudak’s plan to cut 100,000 public servants to streamline government, a new poll suggests.

The Forum Research survey also found‎ 63 per cent do not think the Progressive Conservative leader will be able to create his promised 1 million new jobs, while 26 per cent feel he can deliver and 11 per cent don’t know.

‎Similarly, 26 per cent approve of cutting 100,000 public-sector workers — such as teachers and bureaucrats — while 62 per cent do not and‎ 11 per cent aren’t sure.

“The number is just shocking people. One hundred thousand is a lot,” Forum president Lorne Bozinoff said Tuesday.

“‎They may be too far out there,” Bozinoff said of the Conservatives’ controversial platform pledge to reduce the broader public sector over four years to spur the creation of what the PCs calculate will be 1,030,688 private-sector jobs by 2022.

Indeed, Hudak’s restraint proposal has taken a toll on the party’s popularity as the June 12 election campaign heats up.

Kathleen Wynne’s governing Liberals now lead with 38 per cent support to 35 per cent for the Conservatives, 21 per cent for Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats, and 5 per cent for Mike Schreiner’s Greens.

In the May 2 Forum poll, the Tories were at 38 per cent, the Liberals 33 per cent, the NDP 22 per cent, and the Greens at 6 per cent.

Using interactive voice-response phone calls, Forum surveyed 996 people across Ontario on Monday and results are considered accurate to within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Extrapolating the polling results suggests the Liberals would secure 68 seats in the 107-member legislature, the Conservatives 26, and the NDP 13, said Bozinoff.

“It’s not a huge change in the standings, but it makes a major difference in the seats,” the pollster said of the movement since last week. He noted the Liberals tend to win urban seats by narrow margins while the Tories pile up huge pluralities in rural ridings.

At dissolution, there were 48 Liberal MPPs, including Speaker Dave Levac, 37 Tories, 21 New Democrats, and one vacancy.

In terms of personal approval, Wynne was at 38 per cent (up from 34 per cent on May 2), Horwath was at 35 per cent (36 per cent in the previous poll), and Hudak was 23 per cent (down from 26 per cent).

Hudak told the Star he is not surprised his popularity has taken a hit over his “bold” plan to rein in government spending to eliminate the deficit by 2016-17 — one year ahead of Wynne’s target for balancing the books.

“Listen, this is why I engaged in straight talk early on,” he said, conceding the cutting will be “a tough slog . . . that has to be done.”

A senior Liberal strategist said Hudak’s austerity proposal is “definitely resonating in a negative way.”

“People don’t understand starting a ‘million jobs plan’ with 100,000 cuts,” the Grit said on background.

“It’s a much clearer choice than voters often get.”

Wynne said Hudak’s scheme, which also includes corporate tax cuts, is a “backwards step” that has landed with a thud, allowing her to focus on a “stark” contrast facing voters.

“If you think it’s right to give billions more to already profitable corporations while putting 100,000 of our friends and neighbours out of work, then vote for Tim Hudak,” she said in Toronto.

Horwath insisted her campaign “is doing well” despite her main rivals receiving the lion’s share of media attention.

The NDP chief said she is the only leader putting forward solutions to the problems faced by ordinary Ontarians.

“We are going to continue over the next little while to lay out a number of priorities,” she said Tuesday in Toronto. “People will have a choice on June 12 in terms of what kind of Ontario they want.”

Forum’s poll is statistically weighted by age, region, and other variables to ensure the sample reflects the actual population according to the latest census data. The weighting formula has been shared with the Star and raw polling results are housed at the University of Toronto’s political science department’s data library.