HAMILTON - With a tough election campaign looming, the Liberals moved Wednesday to bolster their law-and-order record with a $6.3-million expansion of the anti-guns and gangs program to Ontario cities outside Toronto.

Premier Dalton McGuinty made the announcement in Hamilton, the kind of city political observers say the Liberals need to win back if they are to be returned to government in October.

The extra cash will help tackle crime on the streets of cities like Hamilton, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, London and Waterloo, McGuinty said. The money is part of about $12 million in funding to fight drugs in Ontario, targeting methamphetamine labs and marijuana grow operations.

"If young people make the wrong choices, if they pick up a gun, if they join a gang, then we'll be there with the full force of the law,'' McGuinty told a room full of police officers and regional chiefs at police headquarters in Hamilton.

"We all have more work to do. That's why we're giving our police services more resources to continue the fight against gun crimes.''

The extra cash to fight crime comes as the unofficial election campaign kicked off with the adjournment of the legislature on Tuesday. Polls show the Liberals and Conservatives running neck and neck.

Henry Jacek, political science professor at McMaster University, said these kinds of announcements are designed to win back decaying Liberal support in urban areas before the Oct. 10 vote.

The Liberals have lost much of their support from left-leaning, strategic voters in cities like Hamilton, London and Windsor, Jacek said.

"(The party) has started to take the core cities for granted,'' he said. "That's where the NDP live. That's why you see McGuinty coming to Hamilton and other core cities trying to reverse this trend. All the surveys show we're in for a tight race.''

Conservatives say the last-minute wooing of city dwellers with law-and-order announcements won't work because McGuinty has had four years to fight crime and have done little to attack the growing problem of guns and gangs.

Conservative Leader John Tory said he called for the expansion of the anti-guns and gangs program over six months ago and only now - on the eve of an election - is the project being expanded to communities in the Golden Horseshoe, Essex County, Durham, Kenora, London, Ottawa, Peel Region, Thunder Bay, Waterloo and York Region.

"Where has he been?'' Tory said.

"At the 11th hour of the last day of the last months of his government, he's suddenly very proactive on . . . crime. He's gone to Hamilton because he's got a political problem there where he holds most of the seats.''

New Democrat Peter Kormos said the Liberals should have been putting more money into police departments over the last four years so that officers have enough money to provide core services, let alone conduct big investigations into fighting guns and gangs.

"We have fewer cops today, per capita, than we did over 10 years ago,'' Kormos said. "They had four years to deliver real policing resources and did nothing. Now McGuinty has come up with an election campaign promise that people aren't going to put much stock in.

"These are areas of the province where Liberal support is evaporating quickly and the Liberals are desperate to do anything in those communities.''