Conservatives lead polls in Canada

MONTREAL --The leader of Canada's Conservative Party set his sights Wednesday on the traditional Liberal Party strongholds of Ontario and Quebec as he maintained a lead in the polls five days before Canadians pick a new government.

After a rally in Toronto, Stephen Harper headed to Quebec, where surveys suggest his Conservatives have twice as much support as the Liberals, a rarity in the French-speaking province.

Harper's Conservatives, who would be more in line with Bush administration policies, are trying to end 13 years of Liberal Party governments.

"Change will be good," said Marc Langlois, 34, a telephone technician from Montreal.

Prime Minister Paul Martin's government lost a no-confidence vote in November and was forced to call elections after his Liberals were unable to overcome a corruption scandal involving tens of millions of misspent tax dollars.

"This election is about choice: A government plagued by scandal, that is only in it for what it can take, or our new team, who want in to public office for what it can give," Harper said in Toronto on Wednesday.

Harper is against gay marriage, which is legal in Canada, and the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouses gases. He once referred to Canada as a "northern European welfare state" weighed down by too many social programs. He has said he would reassess Canada's decision to opt out of the U.S. ballistic missile program and once hinted at support for the war in Iraq, which most Canadians condemn.

Harper's campaign has successfully portrayed him as a moderate who will work for the middle class of Ontario, the country's most populous province and a Liberal Party stronghold.

A poll for The Globe and Mail newspaper indicated the Conservatives were well ahead and could possibly even win a majority of 308 seats in the House of Commons on election day Monday.

Of the 1,500 people surveyed between Sunday and Tuesday, 42 percent said they would support the Conservatives, while 24 percent backed the Liberals and 17 percent the New Democratic Party. The poll by the Strategic Counsel in Toronto had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

Another poll released Wednesday has support for the Conservatives at 36.9 percent, with the Liberals gaining at 31.5 percent. The poll of 1,200 people conducted by CPAC-SES in Ottawa had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage pints.

Harper was wooing Torontonians on Wednesday, praising them as hardworking residents of a diverse city. Winning seats in Toronto would help the Conservatives' chances of forming a government, but the heavily immigrant city has voted strongly Liberal in recent elections.

Harper vowed to halve the $860 right-of-landing fee that Canada charges new immigrants and pledged to formally apologize to Chinese-Canadians whose ancestors were forced to pay a humiliating head tax between 1885 and 1923, enforced to discourage more Chinese immigrants, who were no longer deemed necessary to build the national railroad grid.

At a rally in Ontario, Martin painted his rival as an extremist and warned Harper would scrap gay marriage and the right to an abortion.

"If you want to stop Stephen Harper, if you don't agree with Mr. Harper's values -- such as the war in Iraq and missile defense -- there's only one choice you can make and that's the Liberal party," Martin said. "The question isn't change. It's change for what? I don't believe that Canadians want to roll back the clock."

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On the Net:

Liberal Party: http://www.liberal.ca

Conservative Party: http://www.conservative.ca