Jim Flaherty continues his attacks on the McGuinty government

It's not surprising that federal finance minister Jim Flaherty dislikes Ontario's Liberal government.

Flaherty, after all, was a MPP in Ontario's legislature for 10 years. His wife, Christine Elliott, is currently the the opposition Tories' deputy leader.

What is surprising, however, is the intensity of Flaherty's recent attacks.

"I'm waiting for the Ontario government to grow up, quite frankly, this is a sad government, badly mismanaged now for almost nine years," Flaherty was reported as saying last week.

"The result is the rating agencies around the world are looking at the Ontario government and going, actually we don't even trust your credit-worthiness."

He didn't stop there. Canada's finance minister was at it again on the Sunday morning political circuit.

"It's not as if Ontario doesn't have anything going for it — it has lots going for it," Flaherty told CTV's Question Period.

The province's problem, he said, is that "its government needs to manage its finances better."

York University political scientist Dr. Dennis Pilon suggests Flaherty is making these comments to help out his unpopular provincial counterparts.

"[The provincial Tories] lost the last election running as Harper clones and are getting poor polling in their opposition to the McGuinty budget," he told Yahoo! Canada News.

Pilon adds that Flaherty is the enviable position of being able to criticize without fear of political backlash.

"There is no real cost to Flaherty because the electoral dynamics are so different between the federal and provincial scenes," he said.

For their part, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and his finance minister Dwight Duncan appear to be taking the high road.

"I don't know what prompts Mr. Flaherty to have these little temper tantrums," Duncan told CBC Radio's The House.

"In fact our expenditure growth has been exactly the same on an annual basis as there's has been since they took office.

"I think we should leave these little fights aside, and let's work together the way we did during the downturn."