It is a GTA-free day in the federal election campaign. The Conservatives have sent Stephen Harper to Atlantic Canada. The Liberals start the day in Winnipeg and fly to London. The NDP campaign is in Montreal.
The big Liberal promise today is on child care. It makes me smile. Every campaign, going back decades now, the Liberal Party advocates some kind of national early education program. Win or lose the issue then fades away – until the next election. This is straight from the Liberal platform in the 1993 campaign.
Experts on children agree that readiness to learn as a child reached school age may be the best indicator of whether we are meeting our obligations to Canada's children.
Back In 2004 there was another promise.
A $5 billion, five-year spending commitment to kickstart a national affordable child-care program inspired by the $7 a day child-care system pioneered in Quebec
The Liberals won both those elections. This time round Ignatieff is again promising a Liberal government will create an early childhood education fund. There will be $500 put in the kitty in the first year and that will grow to a billion to be doled out to provincial child education needs.
Layton sticks with economic issues
Jack Layton is sticking with economic issues again today. Every day he is defining the NDP campaign as the one that cares for Canadians who don't get fat pay cheques.
Nothing new in that either. For example the NDP have made credit card interest rate reform part of the last couple of campaigns. It is worth noting that if you want to Google and find the 2004 NDP platform the NDP website will tell you that the link to that page is "broken". It says "Ottawa is broken and so is this link."
Harper talks free trade
Stephen Harper talked a bit about free trade today and the need for new free trade treaties with countries like India. But his real goal is to get more seats in Atlantic Canada. He's on to Newfoundland. Back in 2008 then Premier Danny Williams actively campaigned against his Conservative cousin.
With Williams gone Harper hopes the provincial Conservative party will work for Conservative candidates. The Conservatives are the first party to make it east of Quebec.
Turn of events in Mississauga-Erindale
There's been a curious turn of events this week in Mississauga-Erindale. This is one of the 9-0-5 ridings long held by the Liberals and now in Conservative hands. The NDP candidate there, Mustafa Rizvi, was nominated a while back and was the party's candidate back in 2008. He got about 5,000 votes in that run.
Yesterday Rizvi called CP24 to let us know that he's withdrawn as the NDP candidate and wants Conservative MP Bob Delchert to get re-elected. In 2008 Delchert won by only 400 votes in a very tight contest against Liberal Omar Alghabra. So what's up? Rizvi says he supports Delchert but told me that after the 2008 election Muslims in the riding were upset that he had split the Muslim vote allowing Delchert to win. Alghabra is running again for the Liberals.
Will the NDP nominate another Muslim candidate? Will the Muslim vote rally around Alghabra. The NDP will nominate a new candidate on Saturday. Right now the only declared candidate for the nomination is Michelle Bilek, a high school teacher. There will be lots of interesting politics in the coming days in that riding.
English debate set
The English leader debate is set for April 12, the day before the Stanley Cup playoffs begin. It will be interesting to see if the idea of the one on one debate between Harper and Ignatieff comes to pass and if it does will it be in English and French?
