Liberals now hold a significant lead: EKOS Poll

This time around they hope they’ve found the right formula.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in Oakville, Ont. – earlier in this long campaign.

“Communities where a federal Liberal government mandates legally-protected brothels with madams and all that goes with that because the Liberals have promised to legalize the selling of women in Canada, and mandates marijuana stores like in Vancouver where there are more illegal marijuana stores than Starbucks”, he said, to cries of disbelief from the audience that prompted the moderator to intervene. More than 840,000 Canadians, 13.6 per cent of them Aboriginals, use food banks every month in a country of just 35 million people. The Liberals have pledged to cut it to $1.65 per $100, while the Conservatives have committed to slicing the rate to $1.49 per $100 in 2017. The new benefit would be dependent on family income and be gradually phased out for those earning more than $150,000. If people are buying into that message – and I think they are starting to – it’s reasonable to assume that they are headed the Liberals’ way more so than the NDP.

But the Liberal platform amounts to more than dollars and, what the party considers, good sense. Canadian equities surged 33 per cent during his time in office, for annualized compound growth of 47 per cent. Elected at age 40, Clark was the youngest prime minister in Canadian history.

A simmering ABC sentiment – anyone but the Conservatives – has spawned a growing strategic voting movement, but experts say the 1-2-3s have to add up for it to actually work. Partisan government ads would be banned.

In recent weeks, as indicated by the corporate media’s highly favourable coverage of Trudeau’s campaign and the editorial endorsement of Quebec’s most influential daily, La Presse, significant sections of the ruling class have rallied behind the Liberals. Of course, he’s also the guy who would legalize marijuana.

That about sums up the late-game attitude in Liberal circles. Harper attacked that position, saying it would cost the Ropp family $2,000 per year. Do we just keep growing the national debt?

So, the Conservatives are borrowing the number being used by the Ontario Liberal government as it moves ahead with the creation of an Ontario Registered Pension Plan. If this service is a right, why can’t everyone expect it?

They will have to do it by wooing the likes of those outside the Beacher Café – voters like Gail Sutton, a Saskatchewan native and lifelong Liberal who has, in the past, voted NDP; or Samuel Getachew, a onetime Progressive Conservative who says he has soured on Harper over an immigration bill that creates two tiers of Canadian citizens, the way he has ignored imprisoned Canadians and sold armoured fighting vehicles to Saudi Arabia. There are also questions about the Liberal plan to take action on climate change by putting a price on carbon and reducing carbon pollution.

But critics argue Harper is taking credit for lower emissions resulting from an economic slowdown during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, and the shuttering of coal-fired power plants in Ontario ordered by the regional government.

While it is true Conservatives under Harper have traditionally performed better on election day than their final poll standing would indicate, if there is major movement in the final week of this race, it could be dominoes falling Trudeau’s way. The party is in danger of being squeezed out altogether if voters who want change stampede to the Liberals.