TORONTO - Premier Dalton McGuinty has the busiest day of the three party leaders as the campaign for the Oct. 6 vote enters its 16th day.
The Liberal leader has stops in Toronto at Mount Sinai hospital and the Canadian Club before heading to a hospital construction site in Oakville.
Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath have lighter days planned before heading to Thunder Bay for a leaders' debate on Friday. McGuinty has declined to take part in the debate on northern issues.
Hudak has stops at TSN Radio in Toronto and a campaign office in Oakville, while Horwath in to make a campaign announcement in Toronto.
Nurses are hosting an election health-care information session Thursday evening in Guelph.
Organizers say the purpose is to urge residents to make their health care needs heard in the provincial election.
Ontario Nurses' Association official Vicki McKenna will be part of a panel discussing health care issues at the session.
Nurses in Toronto are also hosting a candidates' debate on health care on Thursday evening.
They say health care deserves more attention than it's getting so far in the campaign.
The nurses say voters deserve to hear more details about each party's health care proposals.
On the campaign trail Wednesday, McGuinty promised to double the number of trade missions he leads from four to eight over the next four years.
"Developing stronger trade ties has helped Ontario businesses grow and build a stronger, more competitive economy," McGuinty said.
Since 2003, McGuinty led trade missions to China, India, Israel and the West Bank, Japan and Pakistan.
The Liberals say the trade missions have contributed $1.7 billion to Ontario's economic growth and created 2,000 jobs.
Hudak said the only thing voters can expect from a re-elected Liberal government is higher taxes.
At a campaign event at a family home, Hudak released a letter containing his party's no-tax-hike pledge and taunted McGuinty to make the same promise.
Meanwhile, Hudak's Grimsby campaign office was the scene of a protest by a group of taxpayers from Niagara, Haldimand, and Hamilton.
Group organizers say they fear a massive shift in program costs onto their municipal bill if the Tories for the next government.
"Tim Hudak is trying to sell his tax cut program on the backs of residential property owners," said organizer Mich Sinclair.
Horwath promised to provide more support to new mothers and babies.
Horwath, the single mother of a teenage son, took her feminist message to the Midwifery Collective of Toronto, where she greeted a line of young women cradling their infants.
"I didn't have to get into politics myself to kiss babies," joked Horwath, who studiously avoided the well-worn campaign cliche. "I could do that at home with my son."
An NDP government would do more for young mothers by developing a breastfeeding strategy and creating four new birthing centres staffed by midwives, she said.
