CityVote Day 29: The final push to woo voters

The provincial party leaders were in and around the GTA Wednesday during their final push to woo voters before Thursday’s vote.

Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty is riding high with a recent Ipsos-Reid poll showing he’s within majority territory. The Liberals haven’t formed three consecutive majority governments in Ontario for more than a century.

The poll, released Tuesday, gives McGuinty a 10-point lead over Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and a 16-point advantage over NDP chief Andrea Horwath.

However, a second poll released Wednesday shows a conflicting result. The Angus Reid survey conducted for the Toronto Star gives the Tories an edge with 36 per cent support, compared to 33 per cent for the Liberals and 26 per cent for the NDP.

McGuinty had only three stops planned Wednesday in Windsor, Strathroy and Oakville.

Hudak had six events between Toronto and Brantford.

Horwath had the busiest schedule Wednesday with an ambitious eight stops, including events in Toronto, Kitchener, Guelph and Niagara Falls.

On Wednesday, Ontario Liberals campaign chair Greg Sorbara announced a new hotline for voters to report “dirty election tricks.”

“In the federal election we saw dirty tricks pulled in the last hours of the campaign: robo calls misleading voters and steering them to the wrong polling stations and telephone smear campaigns,” he said in a news release. “So we passed a new law earlier this spring that imposes fines of up to $25,000 and two years less a day in prison for anyone caught trying to stop Ontarians from voting. Now we’re taking the next step.”

Voters can report problems at 1-855-251-2549.

McGuinty received a big shot in the arm Wednesday when  Ken Lewenza, the president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, appeared with him at a campaign stop in Windsor. The Liberal leader continued to promote his party’s record on education.

Hudak visited the construction site of a gas-fired power plant in Mississauga Wednesday — a project McGuinty recently vowed to scrub due to public outcry.

The PC leader has also vowed to scrap the project, if elected, and said it’s a demonstration of a broken Liberal promise.

Job creation, affordability issues, tax reduction and education have been the top issues in this campaign.

Horwath is hoping the NDP victory in Manitoba’s election Tuesday night bleeds over into Ontario. She said she’s proud of running a clean campaign free of the negativity and attacks her two main rivals have engaged in.

Hudak received sharp criticism for a campaign flyer circulated in the GTA that blasted the Liberals’ record on sex-education in schools. Partial quotes are highlighted on the flyer, which references and paraphrases a Toronto District School Board curriculum guideline.The Liberals branded the pamphlet as misleading and some critics called it homophobic.

He was also forced to address the issue of abortion Tuesday after pro-choice advocates warned the PC Leader would de-fund abortion. Hudak insisted he wouldn’t reopen the issue.

“As premier, I’m not reopening this issue. I consider the matter settled,” he said.

McGuinty has ruled out the possibility of a coalition in the event of a minority government.

While Horwath hasn’t dismissed the idea completely, she noted Tuesday that she’s running for the premier’s office, and not for the position of kingmaker.

Voters turned out in higher numbers at advance polls for this provincial election than the last. Elections Ontario said 624,958 people turned out to cast an early ballot — an increase of just over 173,000 from 2007.

Click here for a more detailed look at turnout at the advance polls.

  • For more information on how and when to vote, click here.

With files from The Canadian Press

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