Notes from the campaign trail: Single-topic debate an anomaly

A single topic leaders’ debate is unusual in a federal election campaign.

Back in the 1984 there was a debate on women’s issues but that one covered everything from the arms race to day care. This one is supposed to zero in on the economy. To prepare for it the three parties gave their leaders different assignments the day before the debate in Calgary.

The Conservatives kept Stephen Harper away from cameras today to prepare for the two hour session. The Conservatives are running on their record, their budget and a list of “affordable” promises. Over the last few days Harper has practiced his economic speech a number of times. A couple of days of practice and he should have his lines ready to defend his record and attack the NDP and Liberal plans.

This morning the Liberals sent Justin Trudeau out to repeat his pledge to improve mass transit, this time focused on Calgary. Trudeau used the opportunity to rehearse his lines for tomorrow night. He repeated that Harper has the worst economic record in 80 years before adding that hasn’t stopped him from giving “tax breaks to the wealthiest Canadians.” Trudeau finally got a loud round of applause for his Mulcair line that, “You can’t be Tommy Douglas on a Stephen Harper budget.”

Tom Mulcair is also in Calgary preparing for the debate. He posed for pictures with Naheed Nenshi the Mayor of Calgary and then went to practice. The NDP had a lock up for journalists in Ottawa to give reporters a chance to go through its costing for the election. The NDP is careful to say this is not the complete NDP platform but the full costings of future announcements are included in the document. The seven page document can be thought of as a balance sheet for the campaign. As expected the NDP will raise the corporate tax rate to 17 per cent from 15 per cent. It drops an earlier promise by Mulcair to increase spending on foreign aid. Andrew Thomson, the NDP candidate in Eglinton-Lawrence told reporters, “we have to work within the context of the current fiscal environment.”

The NDP called the costing a balanced approach. The NDP says the onus now is on the Liberals and Conservatives to table their full costings.

Trudeau was asked repeatedly when the Liberals will table a full costing for its campaign promises. Trudeau said the party released its “fiscal framework” months ago and said each and every policy is costed. I went to the Liberal web page and looked for how this week’s jobs skills and training announcement will be funded. There was lots of detail on how much was going to be spent but not a word on where the money would come from to fund the programs. When I asked the party about this “fiscal framework” and all the costing details Trudeau referred to I was sent to another link. Now this one did have significant costing detail on Trudeau’s plan for Fairness for the Middle Class. That plan was released back in early May. There have been a lot of Liberal promises since that accounting. It was also long before Trudeau announced a Liberal government would run deficits for the first three years and not balance the books until 2019.

Trudeau didn’t answer the question about providing a full campaign costing. Instead he talked about the May release calling it a “comprehensive document.” Reporters with Trudeau tried the same question in English and French and got the same non-answer in both official languages.

The national polls don’t seem to be moving much and that has polling companies drilling down and looking at specific ridings. Mainstreet Research released three riding polls this morning. The most interesting was for Calgary-Confederation, a new riding with no incumbent running. Going into the campaign the Conservatives had a huge advantage but this poll has the Conservatives and Liberals tied. The Liberal Matt Grant is capturing more than half of the young vote but a lot of undecided voters are leaning to support Conservative Len Webber.

Mainstreet also polled two GTA ridings. In Ajax, Conservative candidate and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander is in a tight race with former Liberal MP Mark Holland. Alexander nudges into the lead when the ”undecideds but leaning Conservative” are factored into the numbers. Another close race is in Spadina-Fort York between Liberal MP Adam Vaughan and NDP challenger Olivia Chow. Chow holds a slight lead but it is within the margin of error.

CP24 will release three more GTA riding polls tomorrow at noon. And Mainstreet is promising another poll tomorrow morning on the race in British Columbia. I’ll end with this tease, rumour has it, that poll will show some shifts in the party standings there.