Canada Liberal leader would not support Conservative minority

With the Liberals welcoming former Prime Minister John Turner to town and NDP leader Tom Mulcair rallying the party faithful at the General Motors Centre, Conservative candidate Colin Carrie took his message closer to home – literally.

Ellis said he expects Linda Duncan will hang on to her Edmonton-Strathcona seat for the NDP, but provincially the New Democrats at 18 per cent are still down from the peak support of 21 per cent they garnered in 2011.

“For a few families, that could be a Liberal tax hike of up to $2,000 a year”, Harper said. But when a Muslim door opens during his canvasses in Muslim-majority Thorncliffe Park, Oliphant is more likely to be scolded than praised. The unions “stopped Hudak” by having the NDP maintain in power a minority Liberal government that imposed sweeping social spending cuts and criminalized teacher strikes.

Things have changed a lot since then. Even with the number of Conservatives who bowed out before the election, legions of incumbents from the other two parties must be toppled by the Liberals. Harper used a bit of theatre to have a small business man count out what his small business would lose under Trudeau.

The plan has been three years in the making-from the time Trudeau kicked off his leadership run in October 2012.

However, he accused Harper of leaning on the central bank and using it to bolster his arguments – something Trudeau says he would not do.

The Conservatives base the brothel assertion on the fact the Liberals voted against the Conservatives’ law that criminalizes the buying of sex, a law passed in response to a Supreme Court ruling that prior anti-prostitution laws violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So, EI premiums won’t be going “up” by that amount, they just won’t go down as much as under the Conservative promise.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know our cities need infrastructure”, the senior Liberal said, citing heavily snarled traffic in Toronto.

Elsewhere across the country, voter tallies show that many seats are still up for grabs.In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the Tories have a slim lead with 39 per cent over the Grits at 36 per cent, NDP with 23 per cent and Green Party at two per cent. The battle for British Columbia has the Liberals in the lead with 37 per cent over the NDP at 30 per cent. The Tories are at 29 per cent and vying for second position. But one thing hasn’t: in that year the party was led by someone named Trudeau.

In the area of policy, Mulcair has repeatedly attacked the Liberals over their support of Bill C-51, the government’s surveillance legislation, and Trudeau’s tacit acceptance of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the NDP vow will never make it to the floor of the House of Commons.

“Aside from all of their policies, that is”.

Critics of strategic voting say it seldom works. With polls suggesting voters are keen for a change in government, Oliphant points out that was the election where the NDP increased its vote in the riding by 1,200 votes.

Why are the New Democrats unwrapping a B.C. platform now? Going door-to-door in khakis and a bright red jacket, Oliphant meets mostly supporters that morning. One of this week’s final NDP pitches is that for the first time in Canadian history there is a three-way race in a federal election.

“I don’t think it’s been tried like this before”, Leadnow spokeswoman Amara Possian told Yahoo Canada News.

NDP support in Quebec has always been quite soft, however.

It is true the Liberals propose to eliminate income splitting for families, which is worth up to a maximum of $2,000 in tax credits. To get there, one drives past farmers’ fields and a pumpkin patch, straight into what had been the riding of Conservative Pierre Poilievre. Like Bains, Liberal candidate Rob Oliphant is running to regain a suburban seat he lost in the 2011 Tory sweep. Little of this seems to have registered with the party leaders, let alone passed their lips on the campaign trail.

“They are quite seat-efficient in terms of their support and they may be able to come back in coming days” Graves said.

But Ontario voters who did that helped the Conservatives.

“Conservatives are not our enemies”.

“They want all their people to win”, he said.

So in the end, where do we stand when it comes to gauging whether a federal political party addressed our concerns?

While the Liberals would keep the Senate, they would create a non-partisan, independent process to advise the prime minister on Senate appointments. They believed in equality…Those are values that haven’t disappeared.

The Conservative Party declined a request for comment on the issue. Trudeau had three Toronto NDP ridings in his sights today.