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Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's musings on unpaid holidays for civil servants reflect rising political pressure to do something about the advantages that the province's public sector has enjoyed over private-sector employees.

But the Premier runs the risk of undermining his own legacy for restoring labour peace in Ontario if he declares "Dalton Days," a measure that would result in some cost savings for the government but would do nothing to address the province's economic problems, observers say. A look at Lakehead University's tussle over unpaid days gives a taste of the unrest any major moves could trigger for the McGuinty government.

The observers, from a range of sectors, questioned the Liberals' resolve to potentially pick a fight with nurses, teachers and civil servants. After all, they said, the Liberals have demonstrated little desire to rein in spending since the onset of the global recession a year ago, and they are facing a provincial election in 2011.

"No government is going to cast its fate to the wind roughly [two years] before they have to go to the public," said Hugh Mackenzie, research associate with the left-of-centre Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Mr. McGuinty said this week it is not fair that civil servants have been sheltered from the recession while thousands of private-sector workers have lost their jobs. He refused to rule out unpaid days off for public-sector workers.

His comments followed Finance Minister Dwight Duncan's announcement of a "sweeping review" of government spending to help eliminate the province's record $24.7-billion deficit for this fiscal year.

"We have to look at every aspect of government, including wages and benefits," Mr. Duncan told reporters yesterday.

So far, the government has spared the legislature's 107 MPPs and senior civil servants from sharing the pain. As part of a restraint package unveiled last December, salary increases were capped at 1.5 per cent a year for MPPs and senior civil servants, and the Ontario Public Service was frozen at 68,645 employees.

Mr. McGuinty was elected in 2003 on a pledge to restore labour peace in the province following dramatic funding cuts to health care and education as part of the former Harris government's Common Sense Revolution.

David Docherty, a political science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, said Mr. McGuinty faces difficult choices. "I think he's afraid of being attacked on the right if he were to raise taxes, and he would be going against what got him elected in the first place if he cut services," Prof. Docherty said.

Former NDP premier Bob Rae used a similar strategy of unpaid days off to deal with a deficit in the early 1990s, which the unions condemned as "Rae Days."

Warren Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, has warned the government that the NDP's Social Contract would be struck down by the courts today because collective bargaining has been recognized as a protected right. "McGuinty can't legislate his way out of this," Mr. Thomas said.

The experience of Lakehead, the first university in Canada to ask faculty members to take unpaid days off during the Christmas holidays, could serve as a spectre of what's in store for the McGuinty government, said Henry Mandelbaum, executive director of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations. The union representing faculty argues that the move amounts to a pay cut and the matter is now before an arbitrator.

"Not only would he be tackling a large portion of the Ontario population and making his party's re-election more difficult, but also he'd be undermining his own legacy," Mr. Mandelbaum said.