NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is hoping her third provincial campaign will be the charm.

The captain of the third party will have been at the helm for nine years by the time Ontarians go to the polls next June, and Horwath, preparing for her third bid as leader, is promoting the NDP as the viable alternative to the governing Liberals and popularly-polling Progressive Conservatives.

So Ontarians can expect more progressive policy goodies to come out of the orange arsenal ahead of the election, Horwath said – although she isn't sharing what exactly those policies are.

“There’s a number of big visionary pieces that we’re going to bring forward … You’re just going to have to wait and see,” Horwath said Tuesday in an interview at Queen’s Park.

Horwath isn’t crossing universal government-subsidized child care à la Quebec off of that list, but she isn’t wholly committing to it just yet either.

When pressed, Horwath, a former critic for Children and Youth Services, said New Democrats have always been “strong advocates” for universal child care. In 2014, she successfully passed a motion for Ontario to partner with Ottawa for $15-a-day child care, based on federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair’s promise to establish one million affordable child-care spaces. The Liberals supported Horwath’s non-binding motion at the time (with the PCs opposing) but Premier Kathleen Wynne said later Mulcair’s pledge was more an idea and less a concrete plan.

Wynne’s government recently announced it would be setting up an expert-led framework for affordable child care that will focus on growing not-for-profit care, offer subsidies for families in need, and build on a pledge to fund 100,000 licensed spaces over five years. At the time, Early Years and Childcare Minister Indira Naidoo-Harris said it would set the province “on a path towards a universally accessible child-care system.”

Horwath observed the move has an orange tinge, as the NDP have long pushed to have public funds go to the not-for-profit child care sector. And that might reveal one reason behind Horwath’s coyness ahead of 2018 – that it has something to do with the Liberals poaching ideas.

Horwath recently told The Canadian Press the governing Liberals “tend to steal” and bungle the implementation of NDP-tinted policies, such as pharmacare, which the Grits and NDP unveiled within days of each other. She reiterated Tuesday there is “no doubt” the Liberals “take our ideas and they roll out things that are half baked and not nearly what we’d like to see.”

“These things are part of the DNA of the NDP,” Horwath said, citing among other things a $15-minimum wage, which the Liberals have also promised.

She contended the Premier is more concerned with girding for her political future with an election less than a year away, and came out swinging against PC Leader Patrick Brown, whose party leads most public opinion surveys despite a lack of detailed policy. Brown has teased a fleshed-out platform after their policy convention in November. In the meantime, Horwath has launched a two-pronged attack.

“On the one hand we have New Democrats bringing forward these great ideas; on the other hand, we have a Liberal government, the only reason they’re picking them up is because they’re in trouble. And then we have a Conservative party, and nobody knows where they stand or what they’re doing," she said. "Both Liberals and Conservatives, frankly, govern to please."

That might be owed to the fact Liberals and Conservatives have had more opportunity to govern. Ontarians have only voted in a New Democratic government once, with Bob Rae at the wheel in the 1990s, and Horwath thinks people are looking to shake up a government that will have been in power for 15 years.

Horwath has painted the Tories with a "cut and privatize" brush, and has said the Liberals are "out of touch" with average folks, but she is facing her own branding challenge. While she consistently beats out the other leaders based on popularity, a poll out this week suggested less than half of Ontarians know who she is. Propping up the NDP as a "real choice" will be one focus of her campaign, she said.

"We've had a century and a half in this province of Liberal and Conservative governments, [and] a very, very short time of NDP government ... When we see the damage that's been done by the Liberals and the damage that's been done by the Conservatives before them, people are looking for a change, they're looking for a true change."

It being her third bid to be Ontario’s first minister, Horwath said she’s “absolutely” learned a few lessons out on the stump. She came under fire from some in the party base for moving toward the centre in the 2014 election, something Mulcair was also criticized for federally, but Horwath maintains the provincial campaign three years ago was about “everyday families,” just as it will be in 2018.

“I would say the way that we're talking about them is different,” she said.

She denied that criticism is spurring the slew of left-leaning policy goodies coming from the NDP. But it appears New Democrats have been appeased – 89 per cent of delegates supported her leadership at this year’s convention, compared to 77 per cent in 2014.

“There were probably some communication challenges that we had in the last campaign, but certainly I’m proud of the work we’re doing …We’re getting ready to fight a real good fight, and we’re getting ready to form government,” Horwath said.

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Horwath teases ‘big, visionary’ policy planks ahead of 2018 election

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