A byelection in cottage country northeast of Toronto a decade and a half ago started a revival of Ontario's Progressive Conservative Party that quickly put it in government. Could another there today do the same?

The influential byelection was in 1994 in a riding then called Victoria-Haliburton, and Mike Harris had been Conservative leader for four years but still was little known.

Harris had begun promoting policies with an underlying theme of cutting government and taxes under the title, The Common Sense Revolution, but had not caught much public attention, and the competing opposition party, the Liberals under Lyn McLeod, held a substantial lead in polls.

The New Democrats, who had won government and the riding in the 1990 general election, were not in the race, particularly because they had piled up $10 billion-a-year deficits that were being held against them

The Conservatives, who had not emerged as quite the aggressive, far-right party they were to become under Harris, took the offensive by saying their own first priority was to create jobs, while the Liberals' was to provide gay and lesbian couples with the same family benefits as heterosexual couples.

This was a distortion, because McLeod had supported extending family and survivor benefits to samesex couples, but placed this nowhere near the top of her professed goals and spent incomparably more time discussing jobs.

Harris also declared that Ontario had "too many from other countries coming here for a free ride," which also bent the truth, because immigrants generally have been as willing to work as those born here.

Harris added that if he became premier, welfare recipients who "choose to stay at home and do nothing will get nothing," which appealed to many who had to scratch out a living in a riding that lacks industries that provide reasonable incomes.

The byelection was the most bitter in memory and the Conservatives won it comfortably, in terms of votes, and it put Harris on the map, where he had not been before.

A year later, Harris went on to sweep the province, particularly because of his promise to cut government and taxes, something most residents had been waiting to hear.

He was helped, particularly among small-c conservatives, by his refusal to support spousal benefits for same-sex couples, which went along with his refusal to recognize same-sex marriages.

Harris also won votes because he promised to force welfare recipients to work, which many felt logical, although it is less easily put into practice.

The legislature's best phrase-maker, Liberal Sean Conway, who had shied from attempts to persuade him to run for leader of his party, announced "the politics of prejudice" had taken hold and later said he would run for Liberal leader solely to eliminate Harris, although he did not follow through on the promise.

Not much of what Harris campaigned on is of help to Conservative leader John Tory, if he wins the byelection in approximately the same riding, now re-named Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock.

Same-sex benefits are no longer an issue, because the courts have ruled that refusing to recognize samesex marriage and provide benefits is discriminatory and Tory and his current party have gone along with this.

Mainstream parties today would not single out immigrants as unwilling to work or argue that many are on welfare because they choose to stay home, although they might press for policies to get more welfare recipients in jobs.

Tory or whoever is Conservative leader will have to produce policies that appeal, but will be helped by the rapid deterioration of the economy and tendency to blame Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty for it or at least failing to act sooner.

Tory would have to avoid the trap of advocating policies that hurt him, such as proposing to fund more faith-based schools, which destroyed any chance he had in the 2007 election.

But for the Conservatives even to have a leader in the legislature at a time when a government is struggling would help make them a more acceptable alternative.