TORONTO - The Conservative election platform is a blueprint that will take Ontario back a decade with cuts to public health care and education, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Sunday as party leaders kicked off the summer election campaign wooing voters and exchanging pot shots.
The Conservative platform, unveiled this weekend, promises to find $1.5 billion in "efficiencies '' while cutting the $2.6 billion health care tax and pumping more money into health care and private, faith-based schools that choose to become part of the public system.
These promises are unrealistic, McGuinty said as he campaigned at the annual Portuguese Parade in Toronto Sunday.
"You can't take money out of health care, offer to put more money in and find the savings in efficiencies without remembering what that meant when the same approach was brought in the past,'' McGuinty said, referring to the former Conservative government of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves.
"It meant cuts to health care. It meant closed hospitals, fired nurses and longer waiting times.''
McGuinty's criticism linking current Conservative Leader John Tory to the party's past is going to be a familiar one as the election campaign gathers momentum leading up to the Oct. 10th vote.
While Tory said he is a new leader with a different set of priorities, McGuinty said his promise to put public cash into private schools is no different than the controversial private-school tax credit brought in by the Conservatives before the 2003 election.
"Those hundreds of millions of dollars are going to have to come out of public schools,'' McGuinty said. "My focus will remain on the 95 per cent of Ontario kids who are attending our publicly funded institutions. It would be unfair to them to take money out of their schools to fund private schools.''
While the New Democrats say there is little difference between the Conservative and Liberal promises, Tory said he has outlined a realistic set of priorities that don't warrant McGuinty's fear-mongering.
Although Tory hasn't attached a price tag to his set of promises, he said it shouldn't be hard to find some fat to trim given the Liberals' wasteful spending habits.
The Liberals have rushed billions out the door at the end of the fiscal year with "no accountability,'' Tory said.
"I can find 2 per cent efficiencies in the government and the result will be improved government services,'' said Tory as he hopped between four campaign-style stops in the Toronto-area Sunday.
"We have a plan that is about a strong economy and additional investment in health care, additional investment in education and helping disadvantaged people in any way that we possibly can.
"I don't think (voters) are going to be fooled by Mr. McGuinty trying this deathbed repentance. It's just laughable that he thinks that's going to wash with anybody.''
But NDP Leader Howard Hampton said very few voters will be able to tell the difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals come election time.
Both are in favour of profit-driven hospitals and both have the same energy plan which favours nuclear power rather than clean power, Hampton said.
The Liberal tactic of harkening back to the days of the former Conservative regime and encouraging people to vote strategically won't work this time around, Hampton said as he mingled with Toronto revellers beside McGuinty at the Portuguese Parade.
"If that's all the McGuinty government has to offer at the end of the day is politics of fear, that says they're out of ideas,'' he said.
