Day of fear and loathing on election campaign trail

OTTAWA - A federal election is no time for a national party leader to be talking about his local campaign teams -- according to the Conservatives.

Nor, apparently, is it the time for a local candidate to get hung up on representing the national party that nominated him.

The federal election took some odd twists Wednesday that knocked at least three campaigns off stride on Day 5 of the 36-day marathon.

The Tories, for the second day in a row, were forced to cut loose a party worker following questions being raised about the organizer's past, this time in the murky world of Montreal municipal politics.

"On that guy, I don't know the details," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters on the campaign trail. "They tell me he's no longer a volunteer in our campaign."

He refused to repeat his French-language response in English, highly unusual for the prime minister.

A day earlier, Harper faced similar questions about an Edmonton volunteer who is the subject of an RCMP probe over interference with an Access to Information request. He too, according to Harper, has been cut loose.

The questions led Harper's communications director, Dimitri Soudas, to inform reporters that the Conservative national entourage would not respond to any more inquiries about its 308 local campaigns for the duration of the election.

Liberals responded with derision, saying it fits a Harper pattern that includes proroguing Parliament and hiding the cost of programs.

"Every time he's faced with tough questions, he runs away," said Liberal campaign spokesman Marc Roy.

The front-running Harper had already restricted national media -- who pay $11,413 a week each to travel with his tour -- to just four questions a day. No follow-up questions are allowed.

Harper did, however, lay the ground for a potential one-on-one televised campaign debate with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff -- a development that had leaders from the NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Green party screaming foul.

"Any time, any place," Ignatieff said in response to Harper's challenge.

But the carefully choreographed and sanitized Conservative campaign could not have planned for Wednesday's messy developments elsewhere.

In southwestern Ontario, a local NDP candidate announced he was throwing his support behind his Liberal adversary in an effort, he said, to unseat the Tory incumbent and stop a Harper majority.

Candidate Ryan Dolby in Elgin-Middlesex-London appeared to catch both his own New Democrats and delighted Liberals off guard with his switcheroo.

NDP Leader Jack Layton put a brave face on the defection, which plays to Liberal arguments that left-of-centre voters who split their allegiance between NDP and Liberal candidates help elect Conservatives.

"People who think that way are in for a little bit of a surprise, because what you see is New Democrat support has been growing," said Layton.

"We've added hundreds of thousands of votes with each election to the support of New Democrats across the country."

Ignatieff reacted with predictable glee to the gift dropped in his lap.

"If you want to replace Stephen Harper, the place to go, the place to vote, is to come into that big red tent at the centre of Canadian political life," Ignatieff said.

But any Liberal gloating was short-lived.

Before day's end, an erstwhile Liberal in the hotly contested suburban ring north of Toronto had endorsed the high profile Conservative he battled only months ago in a losing byelection. Tony Genco threw his support behind Julian Fantino, the star Tory candidate and former Ontario Provincial Police commissioner in the riding of Vaughn.

"The Liberal party I joined over 20 years ago in university has disappeared ...," Genco said in open letter released Wednesday.

"It's clear the Liberal party policies do not resonate with the majority of Canadians."

High fives from the Conservative campaign war room were as predictable as Ignatieff's earlier jubilation.

"When Canadians are given a choice between a stable, majority Conservative government under Stephen Harper or an Ignatieff-Bloc Quebecois-NDP coalition, even people like Tony Genco ... choose Stephen Harper," said Conservative spokesman Chris Day.

Genco was the Liberal candidate last Nov. 30 in a byelection Fantino won by a 964-vote margin. But Genco did not win his party's nomination this time around, prompting Liberals to suggest the defection was sour grapes.

"It is certainly up to Mr. Genco to reconcile his endorsement with past criticisms and attacks made of Julian Fantino," Liberal spokeswoman Sarah Bain said in statement.

The Conservatives also used the NDP defection in London to buttress their claim that the Liberals will form a coalition with New Democrats and the Bloc if Harper fails to win a clear majority on May 2. That despite the fact NDP officials knew nothing of the move -- and Layton promised to have another candidate in place within 48 hours.

Amidst all the furious party politicking, the campaigners did manage to toss around a few billion dollars of election promises Wednesday.

Layton's New Democrats proposed a $2.3-billion tax shift designed to reduce taxes for small business and provide tax credits for companies that take on new hires.

The package would be paid for by reversing corporate tax cuts brought in by the Conservatives and raising the corporate rate back to 19.5 per cent from the current 16.5 per cent.

The Liberals ripped a page from the NDP playbook, promising a $700 million annual boost to the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income pensioners.

The pension reforms proposed by Ignatieff also include a new mechanism for Canadians to make voluntary, tax-deductible contributions to the Canada Pension Plan, while boosting the overall CPP through negotiations with the provinces.

The Conservatives reprised another measure from their stillborn 2011 budget document, the extension of an accelerated tax write-off for manufacturing equipment aimed at improving business productivity.

The broadcast consortium announced dates for the leaders debates and stuck to the decision to exclude Green Leader Elizabeth May.

The Twitter world exploded with angry tweets over the May snub.

After meeting representatives of the four main parties on Wednesday to discuss timing and format, the consortium said the English debate will be April 12 with the French meeting two days later.

The negotiations took place as Harper and Ignatieff were challenging each other - through Twitter - to a one-on-one debate. The Tories tweeted that they raised the idea during Wednesday's debate negotiations but the Liberals did not support them.

Liberal spokesperson Marc Roy later clarified that Liberals want the one-on-one face-off to be in addition to traditional multi-leader debates organized by the consortium. He said the Liberal negotiator argued for May's inclusion in the latter.

May has threatened to go to court to fight the decision to keep her out.

On Thursday, Harper campaigns in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. Ignatieff starts his day in Winnipeg and ends it in London, Ont. Layton is in Montreal, May campaigns locally in the Vancouver Island riding she hopes to wrest from the Tories. Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe is in southern Quebec.