Harper makes it official, and it's game on!
Sep 07, 2008 - 09:16 AM
Tonda MacCharles
Canadians will go to the polls Tuesday, Oct. 14, the day after Thanksgiving, to vote for a new federal government.
Prime
Minister Stephen Harper, who had fixed the next federal election date
in law as October 2009, pulled the plug on his own government a year
early.
He claimed Opposition parties had made it impossible for him
to run his legislative agenda, and that Parliament was “dysfunctional.”
At 20 minutes after 8 a.m., a handful of protestors watched as
Harper drove in a four-car prime ministerial motorcade across the
street from his 24 Sussex Drive residence to Rideau Hall and told
Governor-General Michaelle Jean he needed a new mandate.
The governor-general, as was expected, agreed to dissolve the
39th Parliament and to launch the 40th general election in Canada’s
history.
Harper began to signal six weeks ago that he intended to
force an election if he didn’t get a guarantee from three Opposition
parties in Parliament they would not obstruct his agenda.
Indeed, the five major federal parties contesting the
election – Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, Bloc Québécois, and
the Greens - had already begun to lay out their campaign messages in
the few weeks.
The key issues all point to: leadership, the weak economy in
the midst of global economic shifts, the environment, and the
management of the war in Afghanistan.
The governing Conservative party, and its leader, start the
campaign with a lead in the most recent national opinion surveys, more
money and an experienced campaigner in Harper, 49. Harper travels to
Quebec City this afternoon.
The Liberals, whose rookie leader Stéphane Dion, 52, is
backed by a nervous and restive caucus, say they are ready. But Dion’s
plane is not, and he will travel by bus for the first three days of the
campaign, heading to Quebec late today.
The NDP’s leader Jack Layton, 58, is an experienced
campaigner, and plans to target electoral gains in B.C., Ontario and
Quebec by attacking the Conservatives head-on, in contrast to past
strategies of trying to pull away Liberal votes. Layton heads to
Calgary later today, a Conservative stronghold where the party doesn’t
expect to win a seat.
The BQ's Gilles Duceppe, 61, with his sights set only on
Quebec seats, is in a tough fight with the party's raison-d’etre –
separatism – a cause that no longer gripping Quebeckers as a priority.
The Green Party’s rookie leader Elizabeth May, 54, has shown
herself a shrewd campaigner. She personally chose to fight high-profile
cabinet minister Peter MacKay for his seat, made gains for the party in
recent byelections, brought in a sitting Independent MP (former fallen
Liberal Blair Wilson) to the Green ranks, and is fighting for a place
in the national televised debates.
In the current 308-seat House of Commons, the Conservatives
held 127 seats, the Liberals 95, the Bloc 48 and the NDP 30. There were
four independent MPs and four vacant seats. Independent Blair Wilson is
running for the Green party.
-- Torstar news services
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