'Hard-headed' Harper offers tough platform
Published Wednesday October 8th, 2008
OTTAWA - A self-described "hard-headed" Stephen Harper stuck to his guns on the economy, offering only modest aid for manufacturers and little comfort for Canadians taking a beating on stock markets.
With his poll numbers mirroring the sliding stock markets, Harper announced his party's platform Tuesday urging Canadians not to follow the opposition "off the cliff."
"If we stay on this course we'll get through this," Harper said.
"The alternative is a bunch of guys who want to do some things, and they are big things, hiking spending by $40 billion is a big thing...
"(But) they are also very bad ideas that would make the problems of ordinary people, job creation, savings in the stock market infinitely worse."
As he spoke, investors in Canada's stock markets were taking another beating as shares plunged another 400 points after Monday's 500-point plus bloodbath, but Harper said there was little anyone can do about it.
"We've had big drops in the stock market, it hits a lot of people and it's upsetting.
"At the same time, stock markets do go up and down, and governments can do very little about stock markets," he said in response to a question about whether he was showing sufficient empathy for Canadians.
Harper's comments and the Conservative platform drew a swift and caustic response from the opposition parties, who accused the prime minister of ignoring reality.
"He doesn't do hope very well; he doesn't do empathy very well; he doesn't do understanding very well and frankly those are all qualities we expect in our leaders, particularly in a time of difficulty," Toronto-area Liberal MP Bob Rae said of the prime minister.
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion described the platform as a "brochure" of small tax cuts.
"Stephen Harper says 'Don't switch votes in the middle of a storm,' but we have a captain who is asleep at the wheel," he said.
The NDP's Jack Layton was even more critical, comparing Harper to the hapless Conservative prime minister who governed the country during the Great Depression.
"Mr. Harper's response to the crisis in the banking system is to say everything is fine, nothing needs to change and there are no problems," Layton said.
"R.B. Bennett couldn't have said it better himself in 1930."
Both Dion and Layton were campaigning in Vancouver.
Despite its humble reach, the platform did contain a few nuggets designed to address weak points in the Conservatives' suddenly wobbly campaign - $400 million over four years in aid for manufacturers in Ontario and Quebec and an olive branch to the arts community.
Branded in Quebec as anti-culture, Harper sought to make amends by promising to trash an unpopular bill that critics charge would have given government more say to determine what films and television shows are funded.
He also vowed to slash tariffs on imported new machinery that the Conservatives say will save industry $345 million a year.
The Tory proposals, while cautious, appear targeted directly at the Harper's growing vulnerability in central Canada and particularly in the two vote-rich provinces where a new poll shows the Conservatives falling sharply.
The latest Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll released Tuesday had the Tories falling to 31 per cent, 10 points below their campaign high water mark and only five points ahead of the Liberals. The NDP were at 21 per cent and the Green Party at 13 nationally.
In Ontario, the Tories have tumbled eight points back of the Liberals and are barely ahead of the NDP, while in Quebec, the party was at 19 per cent and behind both the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals.
In an interview with the CBC's Peter Mansbridge, Harper appeared to concede that a majority may now be out of reach and that he would be happy with a second minority.
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