Poilevre gets read to slam McGuinty tomorrow.

Flaherty continues his assault today:

TORONTO — Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty took the extraordinary step yesterday of denouncing Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s management of the economy just hours before the unveiling of the provincial budget.

Mr. Flaherty did not say anything he hasn’t already said in recent weeks about the need for the province to heed his calls to reduce business taxes. But the timing of his latest attack, on the eve of today’s budget, raised eyebrows around the provincial legislature. A government source called it unprecedented.

The Finance Minister made a special trip to Toronto, where he made a dire prediction about the prospects for Canada’s largest economy under the McGuinty government. Without tax cuts, he warned, Ontario is in jeopardy of becoming a “have-not” province for the first time in history.

Even if you want to give Flaherty the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s genuinely concerned about the state of the economy, that doesn’t explain him making these demands on Budget Day Eve, when the time for changes has long since passed. There is no way to interpret this as anything but political posturing.

Given that, one would assume there’s some sort of master plan behind all of this because…well…people always assume there’s a master plan behind everything Stephen Harper does. The only game plan I can see is that Harper thinks the economy is ready to tank and plans to scape-goat McGuinty. But even that doesn’t fully explain the intensity of the fight Harperty has picked with Queen’s Park.