OTTAWA -- With time and opportunities running out, the opposition parties may be down to trying to prevent Stephen Harper's Conservatives from forming a majority government.

The latest Canadian Press Harris-Decima public opinion survey released Saturday suggests the Tories had drifted back toward majority territory as the Liberal surge lost steam.

The poll had the Conservatives at 35 per cent, 10 points clear of

Stephane Dion's Liberals -- a gap that has more than doubled in the past four days. The NDP had fallen back from their highs and were at 18 per cent.

The latest results represented 1,273 interviews conducted Tuesday through Friday with a margin of error of 2.7 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

"The Conservatives enter the weekend with some clear momentum," said Harris-Decima president Bruce Anderson.

The Liberal momentum that began with the Oct. 6 collapse of global stock markets and peaked after Harper's less-than-empathetic reaction to the losses appears to have stalled.

Still, Anderson said the Tories remain vulnerable on the issue of the economy, and may have run out of time to recover the lost ground necessary to form a majority.

Harper got some good news Friday with a Statistics Canada report showing the economy had created a record 107,000 jobs in September.

While the number looked better than it was -- almost all the new jobs were part-time -- the fact it was on the positive side of the ledger suggested an economy that was inching forward despite recessionary fears.

The Conservatives also appeared to have grasped the enormity of the economic headwinds facing Canada.

On Friday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty acted to ease the tightening credit crunch with a $25-billion asset swap between the big banks and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. -- a deal Harper insisted did not amount to a U.S.-style bank bailout.

The five party leaders were expected to remain on the road through much of the Thanksgiving weekend through to Tuesday's vote.

Harper and Dion were spending most of Saturday in voter-rich Ontario, a province the Harris-Decima poll suggests may be the most competitive in Canada with the Conservatives and Liberals in a virtual dead heat.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe was working to shore up his first-place position in Quebec, while NDP Leader Jack Layton, whose numbers have slid of late, was also campaigning in Montreal.

Green Leader Elizabeth May remained in Nova Scotia, where she's in an uphill fight to unseat Tory Defence Minister Peter MacKay in the riding of Central Nova.

The prime minister has kept up his attacks on Dion, citing his controversial flubbing of an English-language TV interview as proof the Liberal leader isn't the man to lead Canada through the current economic troubles.

Dion responded by accusing Harper of a "low blow" aimed at his admittedly imperfect command of English.

He got some help Friday night from former prime minister Jean Chretien, who emerged from retirement to deliver a rousing speech to a Grit campaign rally and a scathing denunciation of Harper.