At an event in Montreal, Stephen Harper urged his party faithful to keep fighting hard, said that the opposition hasn’t focused on the economy and pleaded for a strong, stable, Conservative majority. He claimed other countries are increasingly looking at Canada as a place to invest (without mentioning that they’re also wondering what happened to our foreign-affairs competence). With warnings against a Liberal or NDP-led coalition, and how that would raise taxes, he again made his plea for a majority. When he took questions from the media, he was asked how he would work with other parties, should he get a minority, to avoid the dire consequences he has warned of (I’ve worked with others, and the opposition plans are fantasies); the NDP menace threatening his seats in Quebec (we’ll keep those we have and win new seats in Quebec!); whether he would accept a minority (honoured to accept any mandate, and governments get them from the people based on platforms, not on cooked-up coalition deals); having Rob Ford’s endorsement and spending little time campaigning in Toronto proper (we have strong support from Toronto and the surrounding area); and extending Bill 101 to federal institutions in Quebec – from a local reporter who just gave Harper an endorsement (our constitution has a division of powers).
Michael Ignatieff was in Val d’or, where he said it is a competitive race because he has such a great local candidate. (Being out of the office, I can’t give you anything more than what I’ve learned over the Twitter Machine.)
Layton was in Kamloops. (Again, being out of the office, I wasn’t able to catch what he said.)
Here’s Layton speaking to Reuters about economic issues, including foreign investment and the high Canadian dollar.
Here’s a bit from the campaign on the populist noise about gas prices and the hollow promises that are being made about it (such as Layton’s proposal to create an ombudsman to look into said prices, even though that will do nothing).
Here is an account of a mystery Conservative candidate in Lethbridge, Alberta, who not only has degrees from an unaccredited university (a fact he didn’t mention), but also has been almost entirely absent from the campaign trail – even the mayor hasn’t seen him.
Irshad Manji laments the parochialism that has cropped up in the campaign.
And here is a photo of the governor general and his wife before the royal wedding.
Why you can trust Xtra
