Skirmishes among Ontario's political parties less than six months before an election are being called a phoney war, but don't tell that to Premier Dalton McGuinty.

The term is being applied because the party leaders have not taken off in their tour buses, turned on their flood of campaign commercials destined to be slightly larger than Niagara Falls or unveiled all the policies on which they will ask people to vote.

The biggest guns are not firing yet, but there is a lot of hand-to-hand infighting going on in the current front line trenches, the legislature, that could affect the result.

The opposition parties have broken through Liberal government defences in two areas, first their failure to get to grips quickly with the discovery that some retailers of provincial lottery tickets were cheating ticket buyers.

The Liberals have not been able to answer satisfactorily and refused to let the issue be investigated by a legislature committee. The opposition parties have made the most of the issue by dramatically comparing it to Watergate, the spying on political opponents that cost U.S. president Richard Nixon his job.

The Progressive Conservatives, who are not normally brimming with joy, have even had fun with the affair by labeling McGuinty "cut and run Dalton" and saying his favorite meal is duck.

The Liberals have counter-attacked by accusing the opposition of faking outrage and indignation and indulging in "gotcha politics," but mostly have been in retreat.

The opposition parties have pushed hostilities further by showing that the Liberals have been more prone to give grants to immigrant-aid groups run by Liberals, which adds to a growing feeling that they are as partisan as the others.

Conservative leader John Tory has been given some openings to scoff that McGuinty is not a reliable manager and has "never run a two-car parade before."

Tory was a chief executive officer in big business, and the few commercials he has put out so far have tried to show he was good at it.

Tory has said McGuinty has set a record for breaking promises, starting with one not to increase taxes when his first act as premier was to impose a new health tax.

The remark suggests he intends to keep this issue alive in the election.

The Liberals also have indicated they will attempt to beat back the New Democratic Party, which has increased its strength in recent by-elections.

Cheri DiNovo, one of the NDP winners, has charged McGuinty is using money "stolen" from poor people to pay for his massive pay raise for MPPs, which suggests how hard the NDP will push to make this a major issue.

NDP leader Howard Hampton has accused fellownortherner and Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay of being "the minister responsible for shutting down Northern Ontario," where rivalries will be high in the election.

In their counter-attacks, the Liberals have charged that the NDP has opposed increasing social assistance benefits and protecting tenants from unfair landlords, when clearly it shied from supporting legislation on them because of its fine print.

The Conservatives have raised again the case of Harinder Takhar, who remains a McGuinty minister despite having failed to sever himself from his former business and being criticized by the integrity commissioner.

The Liberals have recalled that Tory entered Ontario politics claiming he wanted to make it more civilized, but said he now is the gutter, and reminded he ran an infamous, unsuccessful campaign to reelect prime minister Kim Campbell in which his party aired TV commercials stressing Jean Chrétien's facial paralysis.

Parties are so eager to slug it out with each other that in a one-hour period Speaker Mike Brown had to ask the legislature to come to order eight times, complain he was having incredible difficulty hearing, urge MPPs to show more respect for their institution and warn four times that he would kick some of them out.

This has all happened in a few weeks in a so-called phoney war. What sort of casualties can we expect in a real one?