What’s behind Jim Flaherty’s bashing of Ontario’s Liberal government?

For Canadians outside Ontario, maybe even outside the Greater Toronto Area, the repeated attacks being made on Premier Dalton McGuinty's minority Liberal government by federal Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty may look like piling on.

Flaherty has been batting at McGuinty and his finance minister, Dwight Duncan, like a birthday piñata.

But Ontarians know this has as much to do with settling of old scores as it does with objections to the Ontario government's plan for righting its fiscal ship.

Flaherty's latest shot was fired last week at a meeting with the Globe and Mail's editorial board, when he questioned the McGuinty government's promise to eliminate the province's nearly $15-billion deficit by 2017-18.

"They've said this sort of thing before," he said, referring to the McGuinty government's promise to curb spending sharply, "and then it hasn't come to pass."

Flaherty's comment came after two credit-rating agencies gave Ontario a poor report card.

Toronto Star political writer Tim Harper noted Flaherty has slammed the McGuinty government's performance regularly, going back as far as 2008.

In the weeks leading up to Ontario's March budget, Flaherty kibitzed on what Duncan should be doing to bring spending under control.

"They need to focus in Ontario, and for the good of the country — on the spending side of the ledger and get things under control," he said. "What we've seen so far from Ontario — and this is disappointing, but not surprising — is this 'we're in a lot of trouble, so we're going to blame Alberta and other Canadian provinces.' "

He rapped Duncan's proposal to end tax breaks for luxury sports suites as scapegoating and regularly blamed the Liberals for destroying Ontario's economic reputation.

"If you're going to make a new business investment in Canada, and you're concerned about taxes, the last place you will go is the province of Ontario," Flaherty said in 2008, according to the Star.

Just this week, said Harper, Flaherty said McGuinty-spawned deficits are holding back Ontario's economy.

But Flaherty has his own baggage, the columnist pointed out. He was treasurer in Progressive Conservative Mike Harris's government and his wife, Christine Elliott, is the provincial Tories' deputy leader.

"Of course, it was Flaherty and his fellow Queen's Park Tories who delivered the big-spending budgets (including one by Flaherty himself) which saddled the McGuinty Liberals with a $5.6 billion deficit when they took office in 2003," Harper wrote.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has defended Flaherty's past criticisms of the McGuinty government, said Tim Harper, but the Prime Minister's Office now wants him to focus more on selling budget, which is full of controversial spending cuts.

The federal Tories are living in a glass house when it comes to fiscal prudence. They've been criticized in the past for squandering the surplus they inherited from the Liberals in 2006 by cutting the GST and for boosting spending during their two minority governments.

And, of course, they're under fire now for the lush spending habits of federal ministers, from Bev Oda's and Peter McKay's stays at posh European hotels, to MacKay's use of a Coast Guard helicopter as a taxi and hundreds of thousands of dollars in standby overtime racked up by limo drivers who ferry ministers around Parliament Hill.

But are Flaherty's most recent attacks part of another agenda?

The resignation of Kitchener-Waterloo Tory MPP Elizabeth Witmer last week to take a job in the McGuinty government rocked the provincial Conservatives. The inevitable byelection also gives the Liberals, who have a one-seat minority, a chance to regain control of the legislature.

The prospect prompted conservative Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to promise he'd do "everything in my power" to prevent that.

The Toronto Star said it's another sign the blustery mayor doesn't understand his job.

How, exactly, would Ford get involved, the Star wondered in its editorial. Would he go to Kitchener-Waterloo and explain the McGuinty government didn't support his plans for an expensive new subway line to Scarborough?

"Good luck with that meddling ... Indeed, no one is more likely to welcome Ford's parachuting into this byelection than the Liberal and New Democrat candidates he would oppose."