When asked about messaging and specifically about the "Get Orange" slogan used in the last election, Horwath, who was co-chair of the NDP's 2007 election campaign, bristled and answered defensively.

"You know what, to be fair in terms of the last campaign - we could have stood on our heads and spit golden nickels and we would not have cut through the faith-based school funding issue. We could have had the most perfect campaign in the world and it still wouldn't have gotten through the Liberal's brilliant move to pull that piece out of the Tory playbook and ram it like a wedge."

Asked directly what she thought the party's message should be in an election, Horwath refused to speculate.

"You can't develop your message now. The message gets developed in the context of the environment as you're leading up to the campaign. I have no idea. I don't know, I mean how deep is the recession going to be, how long is it going to last? ... It's absolutely impossible to do the messaging on a campaign when you have no idea what the environment is going to look like and what the variables are."