Just when I thought a defining issue wouldn't emerge in the provincial election campaign, it did. On Monday Premier Eves was stumped about the cost of his election platform - after slamming the Liberals at every turn for their $4.6 billion platform - when scrummed by reporters. While he caught himself quickly in the afternoon stating Year One of the Tory platform will cost $658 million, the damage was already done.

On Monday night, Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty pounced on this "gaffe" as a defining moment where Mr. Eves failed the test of "leadership." And now that they've engaged the "leadership question" which will likely drive October's ballot question, the Liberals will likely change their campaign strategy somewhat.

Let's be very clear, leadership is the issue. The Tories wan to make it about Ernie Eve's personal leadership qualities and his perceived competence as a good numbers guy when it comes to your dollars and the province's finances. On the other hand, both the NDP and Liberals have to date been hammering home themes of issues leadership. The NDP from its narrow but committed ideological base and the Liberals from their admittedly large body of platform work done over the past 18 months.

With Mr. McGuinty rightfully jumping on Mr. Eves temporary forgetfulness - as his campaign called it, but this is bizarre coming from a guy trumpeted as a master of policy detail - the Liberal leader is now fair game as well on questions of personal judgment and leadership style.

In other news from the campaign front, commercials from all the parties start airing today and the first round will be institutional exercises in self-branding of the leaders and the parties. Predictably, the Tory ads will play up Ernie's two-decades of experience in the provincial legislature and show him resonating with seniors, young suburban homeowners (think 905, 613, 519 and 705 area codes) and local merchants … all key demographics the Tories need to pull votes from if they are going to hold on to power.

The Liberals will show Dalton as "up to the job" this time and hammer home their proposals on economic growth, health care, education, and interestingly enough, governance where some of Mr. McGuinty's ideas on voting reform, citizen deliberative issue panels, etc., out flank the Tories. Their slogan of choose change is designed to drive home a message of fatigue with and in the governing Tories. Local Tories are playing with this slogan changing it to loose change and stating that's all we'll have left after the Liberals $4.6 billion spending plan is implemented.

As for Mr. Hampton and the NDP, their ads will be the hardest hitting. Look for them to show pictures of Walkerton, Ipperwash, and even Aylmer, Ontario, and to blame the Harris-Eves Tories (kind of like Mulroney-Campbell from 1993) for every sparrow or West Nile infected crow that has fallen from the sky in the last decade. To be fair, at least the NDP is intellectually honest enough to tell us that the bulk of their money is coming from public sector unions. Hence their campaign website of publicpower.ca. I wonder if this party will ever learn that the opinions of union bosses are increasingly diametrically opposed with rank and file card carrying union members? Voting day should yield the answer to this question, but I digress.

From a non-partisan view, it appears as though the Tories won week one of the campaign by bringing the other parties to the leadership theme. As well, polls show that the race is now neck and neck between the PCs and the Liberals with Mr. Eves beating Mr. McGuinty on personal leadership attributes. But our friends in the new, lighter blue, machine shouldn't get to comfortable.

Parliament returns next week in our fair city and you can bet that restless backbench Liberal MPs and the federal NDP will jump into the provincial fray with partisan shots during Question Period and strategically timed funding and issue announcements to help their provincial cousins. Meanwhile Mssrs. Harper and MacKay will be too busy trying to figure out how to cooperate to lend any sort of hand to the Eves' Tories.

And looking ahead, the provincial leaders debate is scheduled for Tuesday September 23rd marking the symbolic mid-point of the campaign. Look for a repeat of the 1999 debate with Ernie Eves picking up where Mike Harris left off last time around … praising but disagreeing with Mr. Hampton and then questioning every utterance that comes from Dalton McGuinty's lips.

But the Liberals and NDP war rooms will rewind these tapes as well and they will have their leaders prepped and ready. In boxing parlance, it will be a slugfest. As well, Ernie will have eight years of government to defend instead of four as Mike Harris had in 1999. Let me be the first to predict the winner: No knockout punches will be landed; none of these leaders has the debating acumen or oratorical skills to get the job done. So the winner will come down to the man who is in the greatest command of his party's platform details and can translate this knowledge consistently and repeatedly into your living room.