ONTARIO LEADERS FACE OFF AT DEBATE

Fiery clashes, but no clear winner emerges

At times during the Ontario election’s first televised debate Monday, it was hard to hear what any of the leaders were saying: all three talked, or shouted, at the same time.

The inaugural faceoff between the Liberal, Progressive Conservative and NDP chiefs started haltingly, but quickly escalated into a full-throated donnybrook among the contenders to be the province’s next premier.

Conservative leader Doug Ford repeatedly tried to steer the conversation into an indictment of Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s stewardship of government finances and Ontario’s electrical system.

Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath sought to depict Ford as a slash-andburn Tory.

But if blows were landed in the debate on Toronto’s City News station, no one emerged a clear winner.

Some of the most fiery clashes came as Ford was asked how he could possibly fulfil his promise of curbing government spending by 4% — about $6 billion — without laying off any public servants.

“The threat that you pose to the province in terms of cuts is really significant,” Wynne said. “Why would you put all those jobs at risks … and do it in order to give the richest people in the province a tax cut?”

Ford said his time as a Toronto city councillor showed he could accomplish the feat, then blasted the premier on her own record.

“You put this province in debt, the largest sub-national debt in the entire world,” he said. “You have the highest gas tax, you have the highest hydro rates … You could take the first five pages out of the Guinness book of records, you set all the records.”

Sometimes, the back and forth was less substantial.

“You got your hands caught in the cookie jar,” Ford said of revelations around the CEO of the partly privatized Hydro One utility.

“No, that’s you,” fired back Wynne about the Tory promising to allow development on the protected Greenbelt around Toronto, an idea he quickly retracted.

With Horwath hoping to bring the NDP up the middle between two leaders who have different image problems, she reminded voters they do have an alternative.

“While Mr. Ford and Ms. Wynne fought about who is going to make the worst premier of Ontario, I think this election is an opportunity to do something completely different,” she said in her wrap-up. “We don’t have to choose between bad and worse.”

The election campaign officially begins just after midnight Tuesday, but the phoney war has been humming for weeks, with the three leaders making promises and launching attacks on each other from afar.

The election is in many ways a referendum on 15 years of Liberal rule, one marked by controversy and scandal, including rising electricity rates, a ballooning debt and politically motivated spending boondoggles.

But Ford, the brother of late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, is also under scrutiny, having developed a reputation in the past for being hotheaded and light on policy know-how.

A Macleans-Pollara poll released on the morning of the debate again put Ford’s Conservatives in the lead, at 40 per cent support, but showed the NDP surging into second, with 30-per-cent backing, and the Liberals trailing in third place at 23 per cent.

Based on the respondents’ second choice, the online survey of just over 1,000 eligible voters suggests the NDP could grow further, and the Liberals fall deeper in the coming weeks.

Ford used the debate to usher in a new policy plank, saying he would spend $5 billion to expand rapid transit within Toronto and the surrounding area, including building a GO-Train line to the Niagara region.

He also reiterated his opposition to the safe-injection sites planned for Ontario.

Wynne tried to counter the narrative of scandal around her government, arguing it had ushered in one of the fastest-growing economies in the industrialized world, and produced the lowest unemployment rate in years.

At what was a fairly freewheeling debate — interspersed by questions from the audience — Ford created a strange moment as he prepared to ask the premier a question.

“You have a nice smile on your face,” he said to the grinning Wynne, standing a few feet away. “So do you,” she responded.

She said in a scrum later that she found his unexpected comment on her demeanour “disappointing.”

Horwath promoted her own policies — part of arguably the most detailed platform of any of the parties — but also raised questions about what would happen under a Conservative government.

“What you call efficiencies actually are cuts and people will pay the price,” she said. “It will make life more difficult for everyday families, and the people who will benefit most from your tax measures are going to be the very wealthy, and the richest corporations.”