In the Toronto area, voters are zeroed in on the policy plans of the political parties in the federal election.

That's the headline from a Nanos Research poll for CP24 released Wednesday.

Nanos said the poll shows voters are keyed on "meat and potatoes" issues. Among those polled, 85 per cent said the parties' plans for the future of Canada will be important in how they vote on Sept. 20.

In the second poll of the campaign for CP24, housing affordability is again the top concern. Wednesday's poll finds almost 50 per cent of respondents list a pocketbook issue as top of mind. Affordable housing comes in at 32 per cent, followed by the cost of living at 6.3 per cent, the economic recovery at 6 per cent and employment at 2.5 per cent.

Voters are concerned with good reason. Canada's inflation rate neared a 20 year high Wednesday, with prices increasing 4.1 per cent over a year ago. The NDP wasted no time putting out a release that the Consumer Price Index shows the price of a new home went up 14.3 per cent year over year. That, says Statistics Canada, is the largest jump in housing costs since 1987.

On the campaign trail, the leaders all took time out from bashing each other as they made their pitches on affordability.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh started his day in Essex, Ont. He highlighted the inflation concerns of voters.

Singh told reporters that inflation is "on a lot of folks minds and one of the major drivers of inflation is housing prices." Singh made an appeal to NDP working and middle-class voters to stick with his party on voting day.

"When you go through an economic crisis, and there aren't supports in place. Things get even worse. The struggles get harder if we don't invest in people," Singh said.

On Wednesday afternoon in Niagara Falls, Singh told supporters, "The cost of living is going up, the cost of buying a home is going up. You know, we thought that this was a problem only in big cities, but everywhere we go, young people are telling us we do everything right to get an education, we get a job, we work so hard, but we can't even imagine buying a home."

Justin Trudeau flew across Canada to start his day in Halifax. The Liberals hold all but one of the 11 seats in Nova Scotia. The NDP held the riding of Halifax until the Trudeau sweep in 2015, and it's a riding the Liberals just might lose on Monday.

Trudeau admitted that the economic recovery after the pandemic shut down is causing price "disruptions" and inflation. Trudeau said he recognizes "that families are concerned about affordability. But that's exactly why our focus has been on being there to support families."

Trudeau then flew on to Fredericton to shore up the support for Jenica Atwin.

She ran for the Green Party in 2019 and switched parties. Atwin is now in a tight race with the Conservatives candidate Andrea Johnson. It's another Liberal riding that could go Conservative on Monday.

The Conservative party sent Erin O'Toole into Quebec today. The Bloc Quebecois has picked up support in Quebec since the English TV debate a week ago. That growing support could cost both the Conservatives and Liberals seats in the province.

O'Toole spent a third day opening his daily media photo op with an attack on Justin Trudeau. He said Trudeau is running a negative American-style campaign of "scaremongering and misinformation."

O'Toole then told voters he is building a "Conservative movement where every Canadian can feel at home -- inclusive, diverse, forward-looking, progressive, worker-friendly. We're not your dad's Conservative Party anymore."

And then O'Toole made his inflation commitment to voters.

"We have several policies in our recovery plan to get prices bills down for Canadians," O'Toole said before adding, "Canadians deserve a government that's not going to put our future at risk, that's not going to add to the inflation problem."

Voters are listening to the pitches on the campaign trail. The Nanos poll showed 50 per cent of respondents said the performance of the party leaders in the campaign will influence how they vote in the election.

The English TV debate, however, did little to move the dial for voters in the GTA. Only a third of the respondents said the performance of the leaders in the debate was important.