Kathleen Wynne doubles down in her fight with Stephen Harper

Kathleen Wynne has taken out her hammer.

And Stephen Harper is the nail.

The war of the words between the Ontario Premier the Conservative leader continues to heat up, with Wynne saying if it had been up to Harper, Canada would never have seen several historic national projects finished.

"If we had Stephen Harper as the prime minister when Canada needed a national railroad or a health care system or the CPP or the (St. Lawrence) Seaway, where would we be as a nation?" Wynne said in a sharp interview with Chris Hall on CBC Radio's The House.

"The fact is, there is nothing in his record that suggests he would have supported any of those national projects," Wynne said.

"Right now, we need the imagination and the foresight of the leaders who built this nation."

Opposing views on Ontario pension plan

Wynne's jump into the federal campaign in support of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau comes as her own approval ratings in Ontario sag.

The relationship between Harper and Wynne has steadily deteriorated since Harper's refusal to help administer Ontario's plan for a new pension.

"At this moment, there is very little working relationship," Wynne said. "Part of (my) job is to work with the federal government and I will continue to try to do that with Stephen Harper, but it has not been a productive relationship to this point."

The disagreement over the provincial pension plan is just one example, she added.

"The bigger issue is that we need a working relationship with the federal government, but the retirement security issue is at the core of this discussion."

Harper has said he opposes the new Ontario pension plan because he believes Canadians prefer savings options like tax-free savings accounts that the Conservatives created and then doubled.

"Canadians want to make their own decisions on savings, they do not want to be taxed by governments in this country," Harper said.

But Wynne called Harper's characterization of the ORPP as a tax as "silly."

"By his definition, any time you save money for anything, you're taxing yourself. Well, that's nonsense," she said.

Trudeau's bad cop? 'I don't see it that way'

Despite Wynne's fighting words, she said she's not trying to pick a political fight with the Conservative leader.

"This isn't about a political fight. This isn't a new gambit for me. Obviously there's a veneer of political campaigning on everything right now, but these are issues I've been raising consistently since I've been premier, and I'm going to continue to raise them."

The premier also doesn't believe her insertion into the federal campaign will hurt Liberal leader Trudeau's election chances in her province, despite recent surveys pegging her approval rating to be 29 to 31 per cent in Ontario.

"The positions I'm taking on the issues I'm talking about right now are the ones I ran on," Wynne said, pointing out that she won a majority government just one year ago.

​"This is not a strategy that a couple premiers dreamed up," she said of her and Alberta premier Rachel Notley's entry — willing or otherwise — into the federal campaign.

"I see this as my job — it's my job to articulate the needs of the people of Ontario."