Rivals traverse Canada before vote

Prime minister, opposition leader battle on economy

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has made a few missteps during the campaign, greeted an older voter yesterday. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

OTTAWA - Canada's Conservative prime minister and his Liberal rival crisscrossed the country yesterday in a final day of campaigning, with voters concerned the ruling party is out of touch but also that the opposition's leader has trouble communicating in English.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has had a tenuous hold on power since the 2006 election and is forced to rely on the opposition to pass legislation, called today's vote in hopes of winning the 155 seats needed for a majority in the 308-seat Parliament.

But Harper, the first leader from the Group of Eight to face election since the global credit crisis worsened, has been hurt by his slow reaction to the market meltdown, and that - among other missteps - may have cost him his bid for the majority.

Opponents are painting Harper as a right-winger who would reshape the landscape like a US-style Republican.

"Just because someone's a Conservative doesn't mean he's George Bush," Harper told voters in Quebec Saturday.

Harper's rival, Liberal leader Stephane Dion, hopped from the Atlantic coast province of New Brunswick inland to Quebec and then toward the city of Vancouver on the Pacific coast in a last minute blitz of campaign stops. He urged the divided left to vote for his party and dismissed talk he would step down as party leader if he loses.

Dion is a former professor from the French-speaking province of Quebec whose struggles to communicate in English have become an issue. Dion's English is heavily accented and awkward. He stumbles over words during speeches and his grammar is often mangled.

"It's a handicap that a lot of people won't forgive him for. It just causes a lot of people to turn off. They claim they don't understand him," said Robert Bothwell, director of the international relations program at the University of Toronto.

Polls at the start of the campaign had Harper winning a majority, but Harper hurt himself when he said during a debate that Canadians were not concerned about their jobs or mortgages. Days later, he said stocks were cheap.

Canada's main stock exchange then had its worst week in almost 70 years.

Harper has since tried to undue the damage by saying he knows Canadians are worried. He contrasted Canada's economic and fiscal performance to the situation in the United States.

The prime minister has maintained that Canada will avoid the mortgage meltdown and banking crisis that are hitting the United States and Europe hard. But his government announced last week that it will buy up to $21 billion in mortgages from the country's banks in an effort to maintain the availability of credit.

Dion has moved his party to the crowded left by staking his leadership on a "Green Shift" tax plan. Dion, a former environment minister who named his dog Kyoto after the Japanese site of the first climate change accord, wants to introduce a carbon tax on all fossil fuels except gasoline.