Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and Temiskaming-Cochrane candidate John Vanthof speak with a woman during a luncheon meet-and-greet in Sturgeon Falls, Ont.
Over 19 hours and 3,300 kilometres, Andrea Horwath laid out her battle plan for Ontario's north.
The region was home to some of the closest-fought races of the 2007 election. This year, the parties are going at it again. Their game plan? To duke it out over who is the best champion of a recession-hit region that tends to feel politically disenfranchised and far removed from Queen's Park.
So Ms. Horwath, campaigning on a platform of average-Joe discontent, has a receptive ear to complaints of neglect.
"We can create a future for the North that creates good jobs. But it won't happen by sticking with the made-in-Toronto status quo," she said Thursday. "We are shipping away logs and we are buying back the sawdust. It makes no sense. And we can do better."
She unveiled her Northern Ontario platform Thursday at stops in Sudbury, Sturgeon Falls and Thunder Bay – selling a message that the current Liberal government is ignoring the need of the North, and her party won't.
The policies were tailor-made and hyper-local – a new PET scanner for Sudbury will cost $3-million to buy and about $1-million a year to run. But the symbolic importance of the first such scanner in northeast Ontario, the only region of the province without one, is potent.
Some of her initiatives bear a striking resemblance to those being advanced by Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, who promised to take measures to make energy cheaper and repeal the Far North Act.
"Dalton McGuinty wants to freeze half of Northern Ontario in time, basically rope it off like some kind of museum exhibit never to be touched," Mr. Hudak told reporters in Ottawa. "But there's people who live there, people who aspire to good jobs."
Similarly designed to go for the local-issue jugular is Ms. Horwath's plan to oblige companies to process and refine the resource they're extracting within the province.
That's an easy sell for her audiences, who are aghast at the thought of contracts going to out-of-province companies, let alone international ones.
But the Liberals charge that her promise smacks of opportunistic protectionism that risks hurting the economy more than it will help.
Northern Development Minister Michael Gravelle warned of "hundreds, if not thousands" of jobs that would be lost when multinationals who haven't the stomach for such conditions pack up their equipment and go home.
"Mining is a global business. And we process minerals from many other jurisdictions," he said. "If we were to force companies to process minerals in this province, there would be retaliation. We would lose those jobs. It would be devastating."
Ultimately, who wins in the North on Oct. 6 depends whose story recession-weary residents buy.
But Ms. Horwath has another challenge: Her French could use some work; she relied heavily on francophone candidates during her whirlwind tour.
Ray Pellerin, a 30-year veteran of an Inco mine near Temiskaming, figures people in the francophone-majority area are willing to give her a chance.
"Lots of people are waiting for the result; what promises are being made."
Mr. Gravelle, for his part, would much rather people focus on his party's plans for education in the region – a northern medical school and plans for a law school in Thunder Bay, and plans for an architecture program in Sudbury.
"There has been no government that's put a higher priority on Northern Ontario than the McGuinty government."
But is he worried? "I'm campaigning hard," he says. "And I think I can safely say all my colleagues are as well."
With a report from Steve Ladurantaye in Ottawa