Tom Mulcair brought his full-on attack game to a downtown Toronto rally today.
His attacks against both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau were pointed and blunt. Mulcair attacked Harper for Bill C-51 calling it “Harper’s spy bill.” Then he turned on Trudeau saying the Liberal leader “shrugged his shoulders” and supported Bill C-51. If the reference to Trudeau’s father wasn’t clear enough Mulcair then reminded the crowd that only the NDP defended the rights of Canadians when Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in 1970. Mulcair then moved on to the Trans Pacific Partnership. Again, he linked Trudeau to Harper saying “Trudeau and Harper stand together on a deal that threatens thousands of good jobs,” adding “Harper is playing a dangerous game and Trudeau is playing right along.” And, just in case his message hadn’t got through, Mulcair said “unlike Trudeau I will never side with Stephen Harper.”
Tough talk but Mulcair knows the TV news channels don’t carry the leaders’ stump speeches to supporters so he repeated, and was even tougher, with his attack lines when the live cameras were on for the questions by reporters. On the NDP commitment to raise corporate taxes, Mulcair went after Trudeau. “Justin Trudeau wouldn’t dare raise corporate taxes - I will,” he said. Then Muclair went after Harper. He said he was “appalled” at the way Harper has played race politics during the campaign. On the TPP, Mulcair criticized Harper’s negotiating in the final days. He said the other countries knew Harper was in the middle of an election campaign. “They played him like a chump,” he charged. With one national poll after another showing the NDP slipping into third place Mulcair needs to find something to stop the erosion of support. As one NDP supporter said Mulcair today was “firing on all cylinders.”
Trudeau was in the GTA this morning as well. He was in Vaughan - a riding held by Conservative Julian Fantino. His message repeated the Liberal commitment to get the GTA’s transit system moving. He used the money announced earlier to commit to an investment in the GO Transit system. Over the last days, the Liberal strategy has sent Trudeau into usually Conservative-held ridings. To win a majority the Liberals need to win 133 seats and hold the 36 ridings they held at dissolution. Around the GTA there are a number of ridings the Conservatives won by narrow margins when the 2011 Liberal campaign fell apart under former leader Michael Ignatieff.
Is it too cynical to suggest that the Conservatives are just fine with the Globe and Mail’s front-page story this morning? The report, quickly (too quickly?) confirmed by the Conservative party reported that the Prime Minister’s Office intervened in the process of admitting Syrian refugees to Canada. For weeks now Harper has talked about the need to protect Canada from any security risk posed by refugees coming to Canada from Syria. Today’s report could be read as an indication of just how important security is to the government. Ajax Conservative candidate and Canada’s Immigration Minister Chris Alexander issued a statement that said it is important “Canadian security is not compromised in any way.” The statement also said it was important to make sure Canada’s “procedures were adequate to identify those vulnerable persons in most need of protection while screening out threats to Canada.”
Trudeau objected to the role the PMO took to oversee the processing of Syrian refugees. He accused Harper of “always trying to pivot to security concerns to the politics of fear.” Trudeau went on, “I think there are very few people left in this country who are surprised when we hear reports of the PMO meddling in a political and non-transparent way.”
Mulcair’s criticism of Harper on the Globe report was more pointed. He called the interference by the PMO “egregious.” “We learned this morning that Mr. Harper personally interfered in order to prevent the arrival of Syrian refugees,” Mulcair said. “That is abject behavior on the part of a Canadian prime minister. It is a shame on Canada and Stephen Harper should apologize.”
The Conservative leader was on the west coast today. He delivered a short noon speech to a Chinese-Canadian group. Harper began with a comment on that Globe and Mail story about the PMO and Syrian refugees. Not surprisingly, Harper said the objective of the audit the PMO asked for was to make sure the most vulnerable people were admitted “and to keep our country safe and secure.” Harper denied that any political staff were involved in the selection of refugees.
With that out of the way, Harper listed his government’s achievements in increasing trade with China and improving tourism and immigration from China. Harper told the audience the Conservatives “have worked hard to improve the immigration system.”
This evening Harper heads to Surrey, B.C. All the leaders are making a point of visiting there. With redistribution Surrey has gone from four ridings to six. All the boundaries have been redrawn and only one name has been kept, Fleetwood-Port Kells. Based on 2011 results the Conservatives should have the edge in most of the six ridings.
Harper didn’t scrum today staying away from the reporters travelling with him. The word from Tory headquarters in Ottawa was that he was doing “loads of interviews.”
