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The Canberra Liberals are calling on the ACT Government to abandon its plan to build light rail in the wake of federal budget cuts.

Chief Minister Katy Gallagher expects the budget will slash $240 million in health funding from the ACT over the next four years.

Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson disagrees with those figures but admits Canberra is in for some lean fiscal times.

He says plans to build a $614 million light rail network between Gungahlin and Civic should be dumped.

"Now is not the time to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a tram track between the city and Gungahlin that we simply cannot afford, that this city does not need and for the vast bulk of Canberrans are going to miss out on," he said.

"Ultimately they still don't know how they're going to pay for this, and they still can't tell us how much it will cost to operate."

Mr Hanson says light rail is not a great way to create employment and Ms Gallagher needs to rethink her priorities.

"The case has not been made for light rail and I will be putting our nurses, teachers, children and surgery patients as my number one priority and Katy Gallagher should do the same," he said.

"Any cuts to health or education that she imposes on Canberrans while concurrently spending hundreds of millions of dollars on light rail would be a failure in her duty to the people of Canberra."

But Ms Gallagher says the project will create jobs and boost economic activity at a time when it is most needed.

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Canberra Liberals call for light rail plans to be dumped in wake of budget cuts

The Liberals appear to be benefitting from a low-key NDP campaign and voter concerns about a Progressive Conservative plan to cut 100,000 public service jobs, according to a new poll.

In the latest Forum Research survey, Kathleen Wynnes Liberals lead with 41 per cent to 34 per cent for Tim Hudaks Conservatives, and 20 per cent for Andrea Horwaths New Democrats. The Greens, led by Mike Schreiner, have 4 per cent.

Forum president Lorne Bozinoff said challenges lay ahead for the Tories and the NDP in the lead up to the June 12 election.

The NDP . . . campaign has just been slow to launch. There is a bit of a price to pay . . . for not announcing their platform yet, Bozinoff said Wednesday.

In Toronto, for example, where the NDP holds five seats, support has dipped to 14 per cent. That compares with 51 per cent for the Liberals, who have 17 city seats, and 33 per cent for the Tories, who have one.

Compounding the New Democrats dilemma is a left-leaning Liberal Party that appeals to traditional progressive voters and a right-wing PC platform that could lead to anti-Hudak strategic voting, the pollster said.

With the Tories . . . they havent, for some people, explained the 100,000 jobs and the million jobs, he said, referring to the 100,000 jobs Hudak plans to eliminate from the broader public sector over four years in order to create 1 million private-sector jobs in eight years.

Thats 100,000 people and they all have spouses and they all have parents and they all have friends so it takes time for this to percolate through.

In last weeks poll, 62 per cent disapproved of the proposed cuts while 26 per cent approved and 11 per cent werent sure. Similarly, 63 per cent doubted 1 million jobs could be generated while 26 per cent believe they would and 11 per cent didnt know.

Using interactive voice-response phone calls, Forum surveyed 1,136 people across Ontario on Tuesday and results are considered accurate to within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

See more here:
Poll: Tory cuts and low-key NDP campaign helping Liberals

Watch video above: Jackson Proskow looks at the claims made in the latest round of campaign ads and explains why ads are important to a campaign.

TORONTO The Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and NDP marked the end of a two-week blackout on election advertising yes, its only been two weeks. Just four more to go! by releasing their own ads.

The NDP attacked the Liberals; the Liberals attacked the Tories; the Tories, who spent the last three years criticizing the Liberals, focused on their jobs plan.

But the statements made in each ad, despite their tone, may not be entirely true.

The Liberals

Tim Hudak wants to make classrooms more crowded, cut teachers and health care and somehow make our economy grow by firing 100,000 people.

Wynne spends most of her 30-second television ad spouting vague statements about their plan; creating jobs, investing in transit, creating fair pensions.

She takes a shot at Hudak though, claiming he will fire 100,000 people. But thats not entirely accurate.

Tim Hudak does plan to reduce the government payroll by 100,000. But he wont be handing out 100,000 pink slips. Instead he hopes to use attrition: when employees retire, many of these positions will not be filled.

We still dont know how many people will be fired outright and how many positions will be left vacant, or where Hudak will find these vacancies if not from health-care workers or the police, as he has promised. His team says it will include municipal workers as well as those on the provinces payroll.

Link:
Reality check: Dissecting the claims of campaign ads

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Two new polls suggest the provincial Liberals have the momentum with the provincial election now just three weeks away.

While one poll asks Ontarians who they think would make the best premier, the other looks at the leaders popular support.

In an Abacus Data poll published on the Toronto Suns website on Wednesday, it found that 26 per cent of those polled said Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne would make the best premier.

Twenty per cent of respondents thought Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak would make the best premier, while NDP Leader Andrea Horwath was third at 18 per cent.

According to the poll, Wynne was viewed as more honest than the average politician. Also, 40 per cent of respondents thought Wynne would make a better premier than Dalton McGuinty.

A second poll conducted by Forum Research and published in the Thursdays Toronto Star found Wynnes Liberals have 41 per cent of popular support, compared to 34 per cent for Hudak. Horwath came in third at 20 per cent, followed by the Green Party at four per cent.

In last weeks Forum poll published in the Toronto Star, the Liberals received 38 per cent of voter support, while the Tories were at 25 per cent. The NDP trailed at 21 per cent with the Greens at five per cent.

Ontarians head to the polls on June 12.

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Ontario Liberals out front in 2 new polls ahead of election

Watch video above: Alan Carterreports on the day it was on the election trail the Tories and Liberals attack the NDP, the NDP responds and Wynne celebrates her birthday.

TORONTO Ontarios Liberals and Progressive Conservatives would have voters believe that theyre the only ones on the ballot in the June 12 election, relegating the New Democrats to the ranks of insignificant fringe parties.

The fight for strategic votes got underway in earnest Wednesday after the blackout on political ads was lifted, flooding the airwaves with commercials aimed at attracting voters outside of their traditional base of support to win a majority government.

While touring Ontarios manufacturing heartland, Premier Kathleen Wynne stuck to her message that the real choice voters face is her partys compassionate, sensible approach to growing the economy and creating jobs, or calamitous Conservative cuts that would plunge the province back into recession.

The NDP? Well, they dont even matter, she said.

Every time Andrea Horwath introduces a kind of non-sequitur, an idea that floats out there on its own, it further makes her irrelevant to the very serious challenges that were confronting, she said while visiting the Toyota plant in Cambridge, Ont.

There are no simple one-off solutions to the challenges were confronting.

Its a time-honoured tradition for the Liberals to target NDP voters, painting their party as the only one that can stop the Conservatives from taking power, said Henry Jacek, a political science professor at Hamiltons McMaster University.

Read More: Dissecting the claims of campaign ads

The Liberals are fighting a war on two fronts, with the Tories trying to eat up their support on the right end of the political spectrum and the NDP attacking on the left, he said. So theyre stoking fears over Tory plans to cut costs and public sector jobs to help win over NDP voters, telling them they could elect the Tories by default if they divide the centre-left vote.

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Tories, Liberals dismiss NDP as a choice in the June 12 election