Dalton McGuinty makes electoral pitch to women, seniors, new Canadians

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Dalton McGuinty's Liberals are making a bargain-basement pitch for the groups of voters they would need to win a third majority government in Ontario – women, seniors, and new Canadians.

The province's governing party will release its full platform on Monday, two days before the official start of this fall's election campaign. But large chunks of it, leaked on Sunday to the Canadian Press, show that the Liberals will try to appeal to voters on core issues such as health care, education and transportation while spending only an additional $1.5-billion annually by the final year of a four-year mandate – a far more modest commitment to new programs than Mr. McGuinty's previous platforms.

The latest platform includes a promise to provide a tax credit on the first $10,000 of costs associated with hiring new immigrants – an obvious attempt to one-up Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives, who have proposed a series of measures to help newcomers find work.

Meanwhile, the immigrant voters who heavily populate the Greater Toronto Area – along with others in the 905-belt around the province's largest city – are targeted by the platform's promise to run GO trains all day, rather than just at peak times.

On health care, perceived to be a huge driver with female voters, the Liberals are relying heavily on preventative policy – particularly measures aimed at childhood obesity and tobacco use.

According to details obtained by The Globe and Mail, the government will promise to double enforcement on contraband tobacco sales, while revoking both the tobacco and lottery licences of stores found to be selling cigarettes to minors. Somewhat more abstractly, the Liberals will promise to reduce child obesity by 20 per cent within five years, including by requiring healthier snacks in schools and doubling an existing tax credit for parents who enroll their children in physical activities.

The platform will also provide funding for "personalized cancer-risk profiles," and $60-million to pay for a promised three million additional hours in home care – one-upping a similar but more modest commitment by the provincial NDP. And various measures announced in the past week, including a tax credit for seniors who retrofit their homes to live in them longer and funding doctors to make more house calls, are aimed not just at elderly people but also at the "sandwich generation:" voters, particularly women, who are attempting to care both for children and for aging parents.

The Liberals are also making a slew of relatively inexpensive education announcements aimed at the same demographic, including summer-school assistance for struggling students and expanding teachers' college to two years rather than one. The platform also promises to expand the number of undergraduate programs in the province, with an unspecified commitment to improve "affordability" for post-secondary students.

The platform does not appear to include any major cost-saving measures, to accelerate the elimination of the province's $14-billion deficit. But Mr. McGuinty also seems to have resisted major new spending commitments, hoping to deflate Mr. Hudak's claim that he will have to raise taxes again if given another mandate – and also with an aim to showing he takes the province's tenuous financial situation seriously.

The Liberals want to strike a contrast with the Tories' platform, which they say would cost as much as $4-billion a year and leave a multi-billion-dollar gap that would require cuts to core services. They are attempting to frame their platform as a "serious plan for serious times."

The Liberals' efforts to convey professionalism took a hit on Sunday, with the manner in which the platform was leaked.

According to the Canadian Press report, a disgruntled Liberal surreptitiously recorded a conference call in which Mr. McGuinty's principal secretary, Jamison Steeve, outlined the platform.

The recording included some Liberals raising concerns – including a worry voiced by Andrew Steele, a veteran strategist who blogs for The Globe and Mail, that the tax credit for hiring immigrants could provide fodder for the Tories the way affirmative action once did. (Mr. Steele subsequently told The Globe and Mail that he thinks it's an "excellent policy," but "was merely providing communications advice for something I thought could be misconstrued by the opposition.")

A senior source with the Liberals' campaign said that there were approximately 20 to 25 people on the conference call that was recorded, and that similar briefings were provided to other Liberals through the day. Saying that hundreds of people were briefed, some Liberals purported not to be surprised that the details leaked.

Nevertheless, the leak has made for a messy start to the Liberals' campaign. Their hope had been to take control of the election's early days by releasing a platform at the end of the Labour Day long weekend – a time when voters are expected to start tuning in. The leak of information well before the weekend was over may take some of the air out of their pitch – and draws as much attention to their internal organization as it does to the platform they are trying to pitch to voters.