Will Trudeau’s attempt to woo soft Conservatives work?

“Stephen Harper is desperate to change the channel from his 10 failed years”, the Liberal campaign said in a statement.

Broadly speaking, the Liberals, the NDP and the Conservatives have similar social policy goals: better childcare, healthier retirement savings, improved employment opportunities and so on.

“If you make it, they take and spend it”, he said.

Maharaj lives in multicultural Ajax, a closely watched bellwether district where Conservative immigration minister Chris Alexander is fighting to retain the seat he won from the Liberals four years ago.

Ads in Chinese and Punjabi media have attacked Trudeau’s positions on marijuana and prostitution, taking considerable latitude with the latter by suggesting the Liberals would allow brothels to be set up in people’s neighbourhoods. They started lining up more than two hours early, Liberal staff said.

But with only one week left in the marathon campaign, the roles have reversed.

By releasing a B.C.-specific campaign platform during a closely fought election, the federal New Democrats are copying a Liberal strategy from more than a decade ago.

The so-called “niqab issue”, inspired by the ruling party’s legal campaign to prevent one Pakistani immigrant from veiling her face during the ceremony held to formalize her new citizenship, remains powerfully divisive as Canadians prepare to elect a new government on 19 October.

Ellis said the data showing Conservative support is still extremely strong in rural areas but waning somewhat in urban centres. And the NDP leader is adamant that the richest Canadians are already paying their “fair share”.

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. (See: “Canada’s Conservatives stoke anti-Muslim bigotry”). Harper and his advisers have been reasonably successful in convincing the party’s core supporters-about 30 percent of the electorate-that only the Conservatives can protect Canadians from the volatile global economy and the threat of worldwide terrorism.

If Harper fails to win the support of enough opposition legislators, his government would fall.

The Liberal government also plans to take advantage of low interest rates as a way to borrow to invest more in infrastructure.

Harper has hailed the Trans-Pacific deal – the text of which has yet to be released – as a means of ensuring Canadian access to a market of almost 800 million people.

The 2008 coalition negotiations were mentored by Chretien and former federal NDP leader and party “elder statesman” Ed Broadbent.

Provincially, the Liberals orchestrated an upset in Burlington previous year.

In the current election, the unions are spearheading an “Anybody but Harper” campaign.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, framed by a crowd of partisans waving orange, octagonal “Stop Harper” signs, spoke to a rally in Oshawa, Ont., just east of Toronto.

So how can this play out in B.C.?

The extra scrutiny on the Liberal spending plan comes after recent polls suggested the party was inching closer to forming a government following Monday’s election.

But it’s the regional numbers in Quebec and Ontario that tell the story of voters talking turkey over the long weekend, and moving away from the Conservatives to the Liberals.

At 17 per cent in Quebec, the Conservatives would win half a dozen seats at most in the Quebec City region, rather than the 20 seats they would win at 25 per cent. “They vote for what is best for them”.

The Liberals do, after all, have a long record of using avowedly rightwing parties as an electoral foil, only to implement their policies once in power.

“We have no intention of cutting from the public service”.