The future of Canada's most populous province is now in the hands of its 10.2 million eligible voters.
Ontarians head to the polls Thursday 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.
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."
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.
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.
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 cap-and-trade, which brings in $1.9 billion that by law must be used to bankroll environmental programs, such as retrofitting old buildings and boosting public transit 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.
