Leaders rachet up the rhetoric.

As usual Harper is telling fibs. He is calling an election because his own party polls had shown a trend up for the Conservatives and down for the Liberals. It has nothing to do with the opposition blocking legislation. The Liberals passed everything the Conservatives brought forth and on Afghanistan were able to cut a deal. Both parties are supporting our troops by putting them in harm's way and ensuring more tragic and useless deaths to support the former warlords and a government that would have executed a Muslim who converted to Christianity were he not spirited out of the country to Italy.

Leaders Ratchet up the Rhetoric.

By Mia Robson

Sept. 5, 2008

OTTAWA -- Partisan punches flew feverishly Thursday as it emerged that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is ready to pull the plug on parliament on Sunday, triggering a vote on the day after Thanksgiving.

Tory sources say Harper will visit Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean at Rideau Hall around 9 a.m. Sunday, kicking off a 36-day campaign that is expected to centre around issues of the economy, the environment and political leadership.

It will end at the ballot box Tuesday, Oct. 14.

Harper -- who stayed out of sight at a pre-election cabinet meeting at Meech Lake Thursday -- is ending his minority government after 937 days by claiming partisanship and political mudslinging have ground the work of the House of Commons to an intolerable point.

He has said he can't wait for October 2009 -- the date an election was supposed to be held after Harper himself pledged and passed a law for fixed election dates.

As word of Harper's plans leaked out Thursday, opposition leaders kicked up their anti-Harper attacks. Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion -- who cut short a caucus retreat in Winnipeg and sent his MPs scrambling back to their ridings -- characterized Harper as a "secretive, centralizing, right-wing" leader who can't even be trusted to follow his own laws when it doesn't suit him.

"The next election will be one of the most important ones in the history of Canada because there is a gulf of differences between this very right-wing government and what we want to do for a richer, fairer, greener Canada," Dion said.

The Liberals used the day to blame the Conservatives for the deadly outbreak of listeria and demanded the resignation of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, an attack Ritz dismissed as pre-election ploy.

The Liberal election strategy -- to paint Harper as a bully and a liar whose tax cuts have brought the country to a brink of deficit on the eve of a recession -- will be contrasted with Dion's attempts to get out from under the attacks on himself by the Tories as a wimpy, unproven leader with a carbon tax plan for the country which is too risky in an uncertain economy.

"Many of them, my fellow Canadians, know me through the negative propaganda of the Conservatives," Dion said in an editorial board meeting with the Winnipeg Free Press Thursday. "I will (have a) golden opportunity to speak to Canadians in the coming weeks.

In Toronto, NDP Leader Jack Layton also went on the attack against Harper, putting into practice his campaign plan to ignore the Liberals and go straight at the governing Tories. In a 24-minute address to party supporters, Layton didn't mention Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion even once.

Meanwhile, the Tories continued their cross-country tour of pre-election announcements, offering up cash for shipbuilders in the Atlantic and a $4.9-million plan to target street gangs in Toronto amid a number of smaller regional announcements including in Manitoba.

The Tories also announced three of their cabinet ministers won't be running again. The resignations of Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn in St. John's and Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson in Vancouver were expected as both were unlikely to be re-elected in their respective ridings. The Tories could lose all their seats in Newfoundland amid a fight with the provincial government over oil revenues. And Emerson's defection to the Tories just days after he was elected as a Liberal in the last election left a sour taste in the mouths of Vancouver voters.

But it was a shock to most when word came that Monte Solberg -- the jovial and wise-cracking MP for Medicine Hat and Minister of Human Resources -- is also going to call it quits.

The Tories go into the election with a slim lead over the Liberals in most recent polls and a leader whose personal popularity far outstrips that of the other party leaders or even that of his party as a whole. It is on leadership the Tories hope to make or break this campaign.

A source from the Prime Minister's office told the national press corps last week the Tories will push for this election to be decided based on who is the bigger risk for the country: a Prime Minister who love him or hate him is confident and consistent and will carry the country through tough economic times without introducing new taxes, or Dion, an unproven leader with a "half-baked" carbon tax plan even his own MPs don't fully understand.

The Liberal election platform will centre around the Green Shift carbon tax plan and attacking the record of the Harper government.

-- with files from The Canadian Press, Mary Agnes Welch and Selena Hinds

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

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