| This is allegedly a straight news story but there's so much spin I nearly had to move it to the Opinion page... |
| Run for your lives! But not south! You might end up in George Bush's gulag! |
"Change is an issue for a lot of people," said Nelson Wiseman, a political scientist at the University of Toronto. "This is the Liberals seeking their fifth consecutive term, so a lot of people believe that it's healthy to have a periodic alteration of parties, like the Americans, so that dynamic is out there."
Paul Martin, 67, has trumpeted the eight consecutive budget surpluses under Liberal Party rule and sought to paint Harper as a right-winger posing as a moderate to woo mainstream voters. He claims Harper supported the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which was opposed by many | "Just a heartbeat away from Jesusland..." |
Harper, the youngest candidate at 46, has toned down the rightist rhetoric that cost him the last election in June 2004 and has painted the Liberals as a party that takes taxpayers for granted and is top-heavy on scandal. He has pledged to establish a federal accountability commission to review government spending, to contribute $1,041 to Canadians with young children for day care and to cut the widely unpopular national sales tax from 7 percent to 5 percent within five years. "If you want your taxes to go down, you have to vote for it. If you want a government that actually does something about crime, you have to vote for it. If you want to fix health care, you have to vote for it. If you want choice in child care, you have to vote for it. And the only way to get that is to vote for a new Conservative government," Harper said Sunday at a campaign rally.
Martin's government and the 308-member House of Commons were dissolved in November after New Democrats defected from the governing coalition to support the Conservatives in a no-confidence vote.
| Thanks, Captain Ed! |
But the Liberals' numbers began slipping after a teenage girl was killed by a stray bullet in downtown Toronto while shopping on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. Harper quickly responded with a platform that was tough on crime and promised stricter measures to keep illegal guns from being smuggled across the U.S. border. The Liberals' popularity slipped even more in early January when it was revealed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were investigating a possible leak by Liberal government officials that appeared to have influenced the stock market. Though no one has been implicated of wrongdoing, Conservatives seized on the report to add to their campaign momentum. At one point last week, the Conservatives led in one poll by double digits, although their edge had dropped to 7-8 percentage points by Friday.
Postal worker Tim Armstrong is among the many Canadians tired of the scandals plaguing the Liberal government. "I think they lack credibility and integrity," he said. "Every time you turn around, there's another scandal. It just goes on and on and on."
| Mon dieu. Good luck and good voting, cousins. |