Alberta NDP finance minister fires back at Harper criticism on campaign trail

Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is promising to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more each year on aboriginal education. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau held a meet and greet at the Regina Farmer’s Market on Wednesday.

Before the election was called, the Conservative government announced $150 million in infrastructure spending on some 1,600 projects across the country – with a disproportionate share going to Conservative ridings.

Tom Mulcair is in Tory territory today to burnish the NDP’s fiscal bona fides, while his Conservative rival returned the favour in a New Democrat riding with a promise to pave a key Northwest Territories highway.

He pledged to shield the parliamentary budget officer from political interference and “take away the prime minister’s power to fire the PBO” by making the position an independent officer of parliament.

All of the party leaders were winners in the kickoff election debate – at least, according to the leaders themselves.

The Liberals are offering a similar plan to what the Harper government put on the table in 2014 but was rejected by the AFN.

“This plan would have an immediate impact and help close that gap by investing in our students and our schools”, said national Chief Perry Bellegarde, who is from Saskatchewan. Neither were Mike Duffy or Nigel Wright – but their impact on the race was unmistakable.

He said he doesn’t think his history of being rather sharp-tongued during his time in office will “play in one way or another”.

“We don’t know what surprises are in store, but we do know the NDP has already started raising taxes, because raising taxes is in the DNA of the NDP“, Harper told his supporters.

“Andrew has the experience and strong fiscal record that Canada needs to get the economy on track and create greater opportunity for the middle class”, Mulcair said. Harper was content to recycle what he has said for months; he thought Duffy had repaid his questioned expenses on his own and when he learned that wasn’t so, he took action.

Mulcair had only one other campaign event scheduled Friday, a photo-op with the red-hot Toronto Blue Jays as the open a series against the New York Yankees.

Acknowledging the economy’s weakness, and sparring over what should or shouldn’t be done about it, probably served Mr. Harper better than blindly denying it. Green Leader Elizabeth May rightly chided him for initially soft-pedalling the 2008 recession.