KINGSTON—With all eyes on a Tory civil war, Kathleen Wynne is largely out of sight and out of mind.Just not out of action.While the media pay her no heed, the premier is quietly making tracks, popping up at town halls and universities across the province. With a spring election looming, it’s like spring training camp — on campus, on stage, on the road.Is this the calm before the comeback?Wynne strides into Wallace Hall at Queen’s University, where nearly 200 students are poised to question her on the state of the province. Stern paintings of past university presidents hang on the wood-panelled walls as the premier returns to the campus where she once studied English and history as an undergraduate.A soft winter sun streams through the high windows as ceiling fans rotate slowly above, returning heat onto the premier, who is perched on a stool. Global warming, sexual harassment and mental health are top of mind, with the economy a strong undercurrent.The premier is ready with her answers and her offerings: free tuition for eligible students, free prescription medicines up to age 25, a $15 minimum wage.She deflects their queries with a recurring rhetorical question of her own, turning the focus onto her political rivals: What’s their alternative?When a student asks why she opposes the Progressive Conservatives’ proposed carbon tax, Wynne counters that, “actually, the Conservatives are against” their own election platform’s climate change measures.“This is the No. 1 threat to humanity,” she intones, touting the Liberal government’s own cap and trade plan. “Don’t know what the Conservatives are going to do — they’re saying they’re going to do nothing.”Watching Wynne over two days of meeting university and college students in Toronto and Kingston, the personal animus tends to diminish in person — even if it hasn’t dissolved in public opinion polls. O ...
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