Alexander Panetta, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

5 Comment(s)

OTTAWA - Stephen Harper's quest for a majority government begins Sunday when the prime minister heads to Rideau Hall to seek the dissolution of Parliament and a federal election, sources say.

Enlarge Photo

THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Dave Chidley

Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

He will have to seek that mandate without three cabinet ministers who announced Thursday that they will not run again.

There was no surprise in the confirmation that Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson and Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn had run their last campaigns. The withdrawal of Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg - one of the original Reform MPs from Alberta - was unexpected.

Harper has repeatedly downplayed the prospect of a big win and publicly declared that the next election - to be held Oct. 14 - will likely result in another minority government.

But with a lead in the latest surveys, a huge advantage in polls that compare the party bosses, and hopes of big seat gains outside Quebec and Ontario's metropolitan centres, the Tories are privately optimistic.

They say their campaign is designed to win over specific voters in key ridings, and if they peel enough of these voters away, they can scrape together the three-dozen seats they need for a majority.

"(We're) not trying to build a Mulroney tidal wave," said one Conservative insider, referring to the two huge majorities the Tories racked up in 1984 and 1988.

"We're trying to pick up seats."

The Tories have actively courted middle-class families, sprinkling the federal budget with targeted tax breaks to appeal to the suburban soccer moms and tradesmen who could hold the keys to a majority.

But the Liberals point out that the hodge-podge of tax changes - reviled by economists who prefer simple, across-the-board tax cuts - have pushed the federal treasury dangerously close to deficit.

They will campaign on at least three key ideas: Liberals are better managers of the public purse; the prime minister is secretive, has often broken his word, and subsequently can't be trusted; and that the Liberal carbon-tax plan would benefit both the environment and the economy.

The question of whether Canadian troops stay in Afghanistan beyond 2011 could also emerge as a key campaign theme.

Harper is aware that his chief rivals will seek to feed fears that he's a control freak with a hidden agenda - hence the warm-and-fuzzy Tory ads the party has already begun rolling out.

The TV ads show Harper sitting in a comfy chair, waxing with uncommon sentimentality about being a father, about immigrants, and about Canada's veterans.

The party's cash-stuffed coffers have also helped bankroll another set of ads showing regular-looking citizens listing the reasons they like Stephen Harper.

Because all parties are held to an $18 million spending limit during the campaign, the Tories are making use of their cash advantage by bombarding the airwaves with ads this week.

"We're going to paint Dion as the man in the ivory tower," said one Conservative. "Harper will be the hockey dad. Dion will be the intellectual."

But the Liberal intellectual will tell voters that the Conservative hockey dad is on the brink of returning Canada to a deficit, and has also broken his word several times - by taxing income trusts and by going back on his promise of a fixed election date of October 2009.

But Harper will counter that opposition parties have already proclaimed their desire to defeat the government, rendering the fixed election date obsolete.

Other strategic concerns also appear to have prompted Harper to pull the plug on his own government.

With the economy wavering, the government is sprinting to the polls out of concern it could worsen.

A quick campaign would also cancel byelections set for next week. It would allow for a vote to be held before a mid-October Francophonie leaders' summit in Quebec City.

And, perhaps more importantly, it would conclude before the U.S. presidential election in November.

One of the U.S. candidates - Barack Obama - had his campaign undermined by the leak of a Canadian diplomatic memo last winter.

That incident would be more likely to resurface on the Canadian campaign trail if Obama happened to be elected president before Canadians voted.

An election on Oct. 14 would pre-empt that possibility.

Entering the campaign, the Liberals also cite the deadly listeriosis outbreak as another case of Conservative secrecy. On Thursday they said Agriculture Minister GerryRitz should resign for misleading Canadians about cuts in government inspections at food-processing plants.

"We are angry when we see this kind of government, this culture of secrecy everywhere, even about the safety of Canadians on their food," Dion said.

The Conservatives, elected Jan. 23, 2006, go into this campaign having managed the third-longest parliamentary minority in federal history - and the longest since the 1920s.

Harper's Conservatives ended almost 13 years of Liberal government on Jan. 23, 2006, by claiming 36 per cent of the popular vote.