Harper’s putting cash on table as Conservatives bid to stall Liberal momentum

One way to pay for this break would be to take more from the wealthiest Canadians by creating a new tax bracket of 33 per cent for annual incomes higher than $200,000. Remember August? Around dinner tables, aficionados of politics toyed with the hypothesis that the once-mighty Liberal Party of Canada was on the way to extinction, like the British Liberal Party that disappeared in 1988.

The Conservatives are second with 30 per cent, the NDP third with 23 per cent and the Green’s fourth with four per cent. “The Liberals have gained ground taking it away from the NDP no question about that, but the motivation has been to defeat Stephen Harper”, Wright said. Until EI is reconstructed as a genuine insurance plan – one in which premiums and benefits are related to the relative risk of being unemployed – we fear governments of any stripe will be tempted to use it as a slush fund. Trudeau’s team was cheerful, although quick to acknowledge there were still days of fighting left in the campaign.

After starting the marathon campaign in third place, opinion polls now have the Liberals sprinting down the home stretch just ahead or just behind the ruling Conservatives.

At the start of the last week of the campaign, the Liberals were leading in the polls. “People keep saying it’s been tried before and hasn’t worked”.

Much of that stimulus will go into infrastructure, billions of dollars more than even the Conservatives have pledged to build roads, bridges, public transit – and jobs. “You are getting more people recognizing that with Trudeau’s momentum that’s better to join them than to stay with the NDP.”The Grits have made significant gains in the “905” region surrounding Toronto, where they have 48 per cent support – 12 points more than than the Conservatives with 36 per cent. The NDP trails with 14 per cent support”.

“Markets are, at least in part, a reflection of confidence or a lack thereof”, said Ralph Goodale, a former Liberal finance minister and a candidate in next week’s election.

Frank Graves, president of EKOS Research, said the results are quite telling: “If it is repeated tomorrow, with today’s polling, it would be quite unlikely that Harper would win enough seats to survive”.

“It gets worse for Dino”, Harper went on to say. They cancelled that plan, but Harper still looked callous when he insisted on combining any intake of refugees with tight security measures and “a firm and military stance against Isis”. Both parties have repeatedly attacked the Liberal plan, which they argue would saddle future generations with more debt.

This 78-day campaign-the longest in Canadian history-has helped the Liberals in other ways, too. But one thing hasn’t: in that year the party was led by someone named Trudeau.

The underlying theme of that message was that voters had to flock to whoever had the best chance of beating the Conservatives. Trudeau said that his party would examine “a mandatory expansion of the CPP, of the type that Kathleen Wynne put forward in Ontario”.

The Liberals point out, however, they would cut the middle income tax bracket by 1.5 percentage points – which would save every individual making between about $45,000 and $90,000 up to a maximum of $670 a year in taxes.

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

Another candidate alongside the prime minister Tuesday was Ted Opitz, who won the riding of Etobicoke Centre in 2011 by only a handful of votes, triggering a judicial review that ended up in front of the Supreme Court of Canada, which ultimately upheld Opitz’s victory.

WPR: What are the major issues in this election, and what are the major divisions between the Conservatives, Liberals and the NDP?

The Liberals maintained later in the day that Harper failed to mention that their spending promises would be largely offset by new revenue. Going door-to-door in khakis and a bright red jacket, Oliphant meets mostly supporters that morning. Still, a few people have concerns. For the same reason we favour the existing policy under which the age of eligibility for Old Age Security will be gradually pushed back to 67, not rolled back to 65 as the opposition parties propose. But she thinks the Liberal definition of the middle class is “off” and could mean less money for her family.