TORONTO - The Ontario Liberals have vowed to create a new statutory holiday in February provided they're re-elected on Oct. 10, but critics suggest it's merely a ploy to grab votes and divert attention from the government's many broken promises.

Dubbed "Family Day,'' the third Monday of the calendar's shortest month would be aimed at recognizing the importance of Ontario families by giving people more time to spend with their loved ones.

"Ontarians work very, very hard. Ontario winters are very, very long and Ontarians deserve a statutory holiday in February,'' Finance Minister and Liberal campaign chairman Greg Sorbara said.

"I think this is going to be very, very welcome in Ontario. It's something we've talked about for more than a decade.''

While even Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory wouldn't disagree with the fact Ontarians could really use a break in February, he suggested the timing of the announcement is just a tad opportunist.

"The gap between New Year's Day and Easter is a long gap and I'm all for family having a day to be together,'' Tory said just before boarding his campaign bus.

"I just have to ask why, at the very, very end of a four-year term, 38 days before an election, did he suddenly have this brain wave?''

Given the loss of some 175,000 manufacturing and resource sector jobs across the province, New Democrat Peter Kormos suggested a more appropriate Labour Day announcement might have been to offer workers some kind of assurance that the government is working to preserve good jobs in Ontario.

Noting the Liberals already killed a private members bill that would have established another stat holiday, Kormos said this announcement could end up being nothing more than another broken promise.

"There have been private members bills before that the Liberals supported, but the McGuinty government declined to put it into effect,'' he said.

"We couldn't believe his promises four years ago. We have no more reason to believe his promises today.''

But Sorbara dismissed the criticism, suggesting the Ontario economy is only now strong enough to bear an extra stat holiday. Ontario is no longer struggling to deal with the economic deficit left by the previous Conservative government and the last three-day holiday of the summer just seemed like a good time to announce it, he said.

While Sorbara admits corporate Canada is likely to scoff at the idea, he maintains the province can more than handle it economically.

"We know that initially there will be some impact on productivity. That's always the case with a holiday,'' he said.

"But our own analysis suggests we'll make that up and more because a workforce that gets time off is a workforce that works even harder when they're on the job.''

Adding Family Day to the calendar would give Ontario workers a total of nine long weekends per year, putting the province on par with Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and the Territories.