Martin Regg Cohn: Can Steven Del Duca win Ontario with ideas that are more memorable than credible?

New man with a new plan.

But will voters give Steven Del Duca's supposedly new-look Liberals a second chance after throwing the old gang in the penalty box four years ago?

The rookie leader unveiled an ambitious campaign platform Monday to win your vote, even if he's a long-shot to win over the province on his first try. His once-powerful party has put forth a shopping basket full of ideas - dubbed A Place to Grow" - supposedly fully costed, even if not entirely credible, in the tradition of all election promises.

Del Duca vows to cut taxes, rebate fees and slash fares. But he also pledges to go on a massive hiring spree for 10,000 teachers and 100,000 health-care workers to expand schools and hospitals, long-term care and child care.

All while vaporizing the deficit on schedule - or not, depending on how it goes.

It's the Del Duca version of what Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford detailed in his pre-election budget as premier last month, before calling the June 2 election. And it's the Liberal answer to what NDP Leader Andrea Horwath promised in her own platform a few days before, albeit without any comprehensive spending and revenue estimates.

The difference between the three rival election blueprints?

It's costed," Del Duca deadpanned, before mocking the NDP for having ideas without solid numbers, and the Tories for having numbers without worthy ideas.

Whether any election platform can stand up to serious scrutiny is a fair question - they are more marketing strategies than blueprints for government. But Del Duca was still standing after a marathon 70-minute news conference Monday that may have set a recent record for longest public encounter with a campaigning politician who keeps his cool.

If his pyramid of promises is self-evidently aspirational, it's also revealingly political.

The platform is written for a certain kind of voter, while writing off those unlikely to ever mark a ballot Liberal. The 81-page document pointedly takes a page from Ford's Tories on pocketbook issues, while still trying to strike a progressive tone to compete with the NDP.

Which means that in a campaign where all three major parties are obsessed with what I call the audacity of affordability, Del Duca is focusing on a new demographic hybrid - call them pocketbook progressives.

The target isn't merely demographic but also geographic. Del Duca is clearly aiming at urban and suburban voters, while giving up for all time on the bedrock rural Tory vote.

The result is a classic contradiction between needs and wants, policy and populism. Four years after Ford won an election with buck-a-beer promises that came up empty, Del Duca is putting a new spin on his rival's successful sloganeering.

Look at the latest Liberal shopping list:

• Buck-a-ride fares for mass transit users across the province, while Ford focuses on highway commuters by paving new roads, removing tolls, cancelling licence fees and lowering gas taxes (Del Duca is going along for the ride and the reductions, but he'd cancel Highway 413 while quietly reassessing the controversial Bradford Bypass).

• Banning handguns to seduce city dwellers, while antagonizing rural folks who hate any kind of firearms control (and hate Liberals, too).

His handgun play will have a ricochet effect in those rural ridings where the hunter and collector crowd may be running back into the arms of Ford's Tories (that is, if they were flirting with other fringe parties). But it matters little to the Liberals if it helps Ford in the hinterland (where Del Duca has little chance), provided it reinforces their recovery in urban centres where they are trying to outshine New Democrats who profited from the Liberal collapse of 2018.

After the last electoral drubbing left the Liberals in a distant third place, the NDP was unable to overtake Ford and instead claimed the consolation prize of Official Opposition. Four years later, the NDP has fallen further behind, while the Tories are now so far out in front that it'd take a massive shift in voter intentions to dislodge them.

Against that backdrop, the little-known Del Duca is desperate to be noticed. Hence his attention-getting ideas that are aimed more at making a political mark, rather than getting high marks for how they all hang together.

To be fair, the numbers all add up - as they do in any platform that is reverse-engineered to look plausible. But as much as the former Liberal cabinet minister boasts of experience and stresses competence, he wants talkers.

That means planks that might be more memorable than credible:

• Capping class sizes in all grades at 20 students, and building 200 new schools - part of a blizzard of education pledges that predominated in Del Duca's first few days on the stump;

• Restoring Grade 13 for students who want to make up for lost classroom time during COVID-19;

• Helping first-time homeowners by boosting supply, discouraging speculators and offering up generous subsidies for buyers;

• Removing taxes on prepared foods below $20, making up the cost by raising taxes on the most profitable corporations and people earning more than $500,000;

• Raising the minimum wage, but not by much. All these years after the Liberals promised a $15 minimum wage in 2019 - postponed by Ford until late last year - they are offering $16.

Like the political competition, Del Duca is trying to have it both ways - paying homage to affordability while paying lip service to balancing the budget. He promised to eliminate the deficit if possible within four years, but with a catch - it'd be impossible if his other promises aren't implemented first.

The bottom line is that if his undertakings on education and health care remain unfulfilled, all bets are off for a balanced budget. Which means that like any political platform, these are not budgetary pledges you can take to the bank.

But the planks Del Duca has laid down assuredly do tell you where his Liberals are coming from, who they're trying to talk to, and where they want to take the province.

Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist focusing on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn