TORONTO - Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Liberal government are "whistling past the graveyard'' while Ontario's manufacturers are fighting for their lives, the opposition parties charged Monday as the legislature resumed sitting for the first time since the Oct. 10 election.

The number one challenge facing the province is "the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector'' and the subsequent loss of good paying jobs, but McGuinty has failed to come up with a specific plan to address the problem, said Opposition Leader Bob Runciman.

"We're seeing a lot of communities hard hit, a lot of families hard hit and Mr. McGuinty has adopted a don't-worry-be-happy-approach, it'll resolve itself,'' complained Runciman, who is standing in as Opposition leader for the seatless John Tory.

"They're kind of whistling past the graveyard, in my view.''

McGuinty said Monday that his government had successes in its first term with a $500-million auto sector fund that leveraged $7 billion in new investments, and with an advanced manufacturing fund that helped secure about $200 million in new projects, but he conceded that the sector is facing serious challenges.

"The ground is shifting under our feet with respect to a fluctuating dollar, the price of oil, the sluggish U.S. economy,'' said McGuinty.

"What's incumbent upon us is to always look for new ways to ensure that our manufacturing sector can be competitive.''

NDP Leader Howard Hampton took McGuinty to task during question period for failing to take any "meaningful action'' to help workers in the troubled manufacturing sector, but said afterwards that all he got was the same tired answers he heard before the election.

"The McGuinty Liberals are shopping around the same old, time-worn solutions that haven't worked in terms of sustaining jobs in the auto sector, the manufacturing sector or the forest sector,'' complained Hampton.

"So we continue to lose thousands of jobs every week, and the only thing the government's offering that's new is to study the problem. We're long past the time when we should be studying the problem.''

McGuinty dismissed Hampton's criticism, and said former natural resources minister David Ramsay would look at the long-term future of manufacturing in Ontario while the government explored short-term solutions.

"We will continue to support our new initiatives, including our $1.1-billion next-generation jobs fund,'' McGuinty told the legislature.

"So we are coming to the table in a real and meaningful way.''

McGuinty said the bulk of Ontario's economy is doing fine, adding he doesn't believe the province's manufacturing sector will gradually give way to lower-paying service sector jobs as the global economy changes.

"There's going to be about a half a billion people here in North America, and they're always going to be in search of manufactured goods, and our responsibility is to ensure that we have a robust manufacturing sector that is devoted to value added goods,'' he said.

"We need to seek out a sector of the marketplace of which only we can provide for.''

The first piece of legislation to be introduced Monday by the re-elected Liberal government was a bill to waive the 90-day waiting period for health care coverage for military families moving to Ontario and to protect reservists' jobs.

Even though it passed all three readings with the unanimous consent of the opposition parties, Runciman complained the government didn't bother to consult them, and said the Liberals should have sought out Conservative and NDP support beforehand if they were serious about changing the acrimonious tone of debate at the legislature.

"It's a bad first step in terms of an indication of where we're going for the next four years,'' said Runciman.

"I think most Ontarians would like to see a more co-operative environment in terms of the legislature . . . this is an indication that we're going to be playing the same old games, and that's unfortunate.''

Tory remains Ontario's Progressive Conservative leader, but can't sit as the leader of the Opposition because he lost his head-to-head election battle with Education Minister Kathleen Wynne in the Toronto riding of Don Valley West.