New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath added her voice on Saturday to the clamour of provincial leaders promising not to raise income taxes.
"I will not raise taxes," she said, then repeated herself for good measure. "I will not raise taxes. ... We've made a very clear commitment that we are not raising taxes on families. In fact, we're trying to make life more affordable."
She has, however, said she plans to raise the corporate tax rate back to 14 per cent, where it was in June of last year before the HST was implemented and it was lowered to 11.5 per cent.
"I don't believe in giving blank cheques to corporations to then just ship jobs somewhere else," she said. "I want to work with corporations. I want to work with companies. But we're going to do that in a targeted way. ... With jobs credits, investment in capital, tax credits for training."
And in response to a question from a voter on the street, Ms. Horwath said she'd like to see the province take another shot at propositional representation, which was defeated in a referendum in 2007.
"If we were to form a government, we would start having that conversation again," she told Gail O'Gorman. "The last conversation, it was scaremongering, and nobody understands it."
Ms. Horwath clarified in a scrum later on that while her party supports proportional representation, initiating another referendum isn't top of mind.
"We very were disappointed with the way things went the last time around," she said. "But ... it's not top of the agenda."
Ms. Horwath was on home turf Saturday, pressing flesh and kissing babies at the Locke Street Festival in Hamilton-Centre, her own riding. Here, not only was she approaching potential voters but they were running up to her, pointing her out on the street and calling out from a block away.
Ms. Horwath's 18-year-old son Julian also made his first, brief appearance on the campaign trail, greeting his mom as she made her way from one street vendor to another.