Mulcair promises positive campaign

“Stephen Harper’s economic team can fit in one room”.

“What the other guys are proposing, at a time of enormous market instability, is that they would embark on large-scale, permanent spending increases”, he said.

Campaigning in Toronto with Mulcair, Stephen Lewis, a former Ontario NDP leader and global diplomat, attacked the Harper Conservatives’ stewardship of the country’s finances, calling them “economic poseurs”.

A lot of eyes are on Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party, and the son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. “So is governing the country”, he said.

Election season is underway in Canada, where an October 19 vote will determine who will become the next prime minister. All he needs is one chair and a mirror.

Harper repeated his message that his government is the best bet in uncertain economic times.

Martin, who served almost a decade as Liberal finance minister, praised Trudeau ahead of his speech for recruiting candidates with strong economic backgrounds. “Having these eminences grises in your advisory team really enhances credibility and responds to the claim he doesn’t have experience”.

It’s the prime minister’s job to watch the economy, Harper told supporters in Quebec City, and if his opponents have a problem with that, they shouldn’t be running to replace him as prime minister, he said.

He pointed to Scott Bryson, John McCallum, Chrystia Freeland, Jean-Yves Duclos, Bill Morneau and Ralph Goodale, who he described as “the last Canadian finance minister to ever run a surplus”.

Tom Mulcair announced Tuesday that if elected, he will cut the small business tax rate by two percentage points.

He promised to create “good jobs” in contrast to the “part-time, low-wage, precarious jobs” created under the Conservative government.

“Small businesses like the one that we’re visiting here today, now account for 30 per cent of our country’s GDP and employ almost eight million Canadians”, Mulcair said while standing in front of a Hamilton business.

Stephen Harper was asked about the previous day’s phone conversation with the governor of the Bank of Canada, which was publicized by the Prime Minister’s Office on a day of widespread market anxiety.