Tim Hu­dak says, if elected, his Pro­gres­sive Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment would cre­ate one mil­lion net new jobs over eight years. Hu­dak also promises he’d cut 100,000 jobs from the pub­lic sec­tor.

This pledge has launched a fu­ri­ous de­bate over the chances that the PCs could ac­tu­ally cre­ate that many new jobs, and the dam­age crit­ics claim will be done to gov­ern­ment ser­vices if 100,000 pub­lic sec­tor jobs were cut.

Both the Grits and the Dip­pers are slam­ming the cuts to pub­lic sec­tor jobs, of course, since both par­ties are heav­ily sup­ported by pub­lic sec­tor unions that sup­ply them with fund­ing, third-party ad­ver­tis­ing and cam­paign vol­un­teers. No sur­prise there.

Hu­dak’s promise to elim­i­nate 100,000 jobs in the broader civil ser­vice would rep­re­sent about 10 per cent of that sec­tor’s jobs and would leave us with about the same num­ber of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers as we had in 2009.

More: Russ Campbell’s Blog: Hudak’s ‘Million Jobs Plan’ Is the Economic Tonic Ontario Needs