Ford or Horwath poised to become next premier,
Either Ford or Horwath will lead Ontario as Wynne admits she won’t remain premier
The province’s future is now in the hands of its 10.2 million eligible voters.
Ontarians head to the polls today knowing one thing for sure: by Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne’s own candid admission last weekend, she will not be premier after the election.
That means either Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford or NDP Leader Andrea Horwath will head the province’s next government, ending almost 15 years of Liberal rule at Queen’s Park.
“We are not going to form (the next) government. I will not be the premier,” Wynne repeated Wednesday, standing on the shore of Lake Erie near the former site of the Nanticoke coal-fired generating plant that the Liberals closed to reduce pollution.
“There will be lots of ‘what if-ing’ after the election. When we came into this election, there was a clear and strong appetite for change, which is what made it so evident for us that it was going to be a tough election,” she said.
Ford, who became his party’s leader less than three months ago after Patrick Brown’s surprise resignation, predicted that “this will be the most important election in a generation.”
“The stakes have never been higher. The only question that remains is what kind of change will you vote for?” he said in Burlington, warning that “the NDP want to raise your taxes.”
“I want to assure our public sector workers … no one, I repeat, no one will lose their jobs,” said Ford, who has promised $6 billion in unspecified cuts, but is mindful of former Tory leader Tim Hudak’s disastrous 2014 election promise to axe 100,000 public sector jobs to save $2 billion annually.
Horwath was in Toronto and Brampton, emphasizing to voters that only the New Democrats can defeat the Conservatives and preserve public services.
The NDP leader predicted Ford’s spending cuts would eliminate 60,000 jobs in the Greater Toronto Area alone, despite his claims that any changes would be painless.
“It’s coming down to the wire, and I don’t want to hold Mr. Ford to account after the election — I want to stop him on election day,” Horwath said.
“We know that Doug Ford’s tax cuts for the rich are not going to solve the prob- lems that families have,” she told supporters at a campaign office on Weston Rd.
Instead, she said, there will be “more steep cuts to the services families rely on,” under the Tories.
“The people of Ontario can win this election … with a vote for the NDP. Everywhere I go, I can feel the momentum behind us to make sure it’s the people of Ontario who win this election.”
With change in the air, Wynne spent the final day of the campaign touting what her Liberals have done to clean it up. That took her to Cabbagetown and, later, to Nanticoke.
“If this were 2005, there’s a good chance that on a warmer June day we would have had a toxic smog advisory,” she told reporters on the rooftop of an Ontario St. housing co-op against the backdrop of the downtown skyline.
“Toxic chemicals would have been spreading all across the province, jeopardizing people’s health. Kids with asthma would have been filling up the ER aaand schools would be cancelling recess and runners like me would have been getting an advisory not to go running,” the Liberal leader said.
“That’s what life was like under the Conservative government. The air was not always safe and some days it was downright dangerous to be outside,” she said, referring to the 1995-2003 reign of former Progressive Conservative premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves.
After Liberal Dalton McGuinty was elected in 2003, Queen’s Park put more of an emphasis on cleaning up the environment, promoting — sometimes controversially and expensively — green energy, among other initiatives.
Wynne noted that along with closing Nanticoke and eliminating all coal-fired generation, the Liberals partnered with Quebec and California for a cap-and-trade system to discourage businesses from polluting the air with greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
While praising Horwath’s New Democrats for supporting such environmental policies, she warned that Ford’s Tories are “living in a different decade, talking about slashing regulations that protect your family’s health.”
Horwath has said she would keep a cap-and-trade, which brings in $1.9 billion that t by law must be used to bankroll environmental programs, such as retrofitting old buildings and boosting publictransit infrastructure.
Ford has vowed to eliminate any form of what he calls “a carbon tax,” but has not said how he would account for the loss in revenue from scrapping such programs.
The campaign’s final week had moments of unexpected drama, beginning with Wynne’s acknowledgment Satur- day that her party could not possibly win the election.
She then criss-crossed the province in a mad scramble to preserve Liberal seats, hoping her party can hold the balance of power in a minority Legislature — and prevent a majority PC or New Democratic government.
The second jolt came Monday, with the revelation that Ford and his older brother, Randy, are being sued for $16.5 million by the widow of their late brother, former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
Renata Ford’s lawsuit alleges the Ford brothers have used money from their father’s estate to create the illusion the family business, Deco Labels and Tags, is profitable when it has lost $5 million in the last seven years.
In addition, the suit accuses Doug Ford of taking an “extravagant” salary from Deco that is not justified.
None of the claims have not been proven in court.
Ford called them “false and without merit,” but refused to bow to pressure from Horwath and Wynne to reveal his salary at Deco or disclose the company’s audited financial statements.