Prime Minister Stephen Harper answers a question during the English language federal election debate in Ottawa Ont., on Tuesday, April 12, 2011.Chris Wattie/The Canadian Press
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper adopted a world-weary prime ministerial presence at the televised leaders debates Tuesday to chide his political opponents to stop the "bickering."
Mr. Harper made the pitch for a majority government as he fended off a three-pronged attack that focused on allegations of Conservative deception, dubious spending practices and secretive, conspiratorial government.
"What we are asking - in an election we didn't want, in an election Canadians didn't want - we're asking Canadians to make the decision: Do you want to have this kind of bickering, do you want to have another election in two years? Or do you want a focus on the economy?" an unflappable Mr. Harper asked at the debate's midpoint.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff shot back: "There he goes again with this word 'bickering.' This is a debate, Mr. Harper. This is a democracy."
Mr. Harper was slapped from the opening exchange of the evening, when Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe thanked him for taking his first question of the campaign from a citizen.
Mr. Harper has been running a classic front-runner's campaign, with only limited, tightly scripted interactions with the public.
And NDP Leader Jack Layton, another seasoned veteran of televised leaders' debates, landed blows literally left and right as he took on both Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Harper in turns.
After ripping Mr. Ignatieff's Liberals for supporting Mr. Harper's minority government in a number of key votes, Mr. Layton turned to the podium on his right.
"In fact, Mr. Harper, if it hadn't been for him supporting you all this time, I'd have to be lending you my crutch so your government could've stayed in power," said the NDP leader, who recently had hip surgery.
That the three opposition leaders would be focusing their fire on the prime minister was no surprise and Mr. Harper - participating in his ninth televised campaign debate as a party leader - turned to his preferred election message.
"I hope this time - and I'm being quite frank - I hope it is a majority," Mr. Harper said.
"Otherwise - you look at the debate we're having today - we're going to be back into a fifth election in no time at all."
Mr. Harper has been claiming the opposition parties will form a coaltion government to unseat another Conservative minority "with lightning speed," although Mr. Ignatieff explicitly ruled out a formal coalition on the first day of the election campaign.
Through two elections in 2006 and 2008, Mr. Harper seldom or never mused in public about winning a majority. But he's stressing that pitch this time around.
Mr. Ignatieff repeatedly made the point that Mr. Harper's Conservatives cannot be trusted with power.
"You keep talking about Parliament as if it's this little debating society that's a pesky interference in your rule of the country. It's not," said the Liberal leader, the only rookie in the debate.
"It's the Parliament of the people of Canada and they've found you in contempt."
Mr. Harper said the election was simply opportunism, "because the other three parties saw a chance to go after the government."
The debate consisted of six segments, each featuring two of the four leaders squaring off in a six-minute showdown after a pre-recorded question from a Canadian voter.
Each segment ended with a brief free-for-all debate involving all four leaders.
Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Layton did battle over Afghanistan, with Mr. Layton urging an immediate end to the Canadian mission and the Liberal leader insisting it's right for Canadian soldiers to stay and train members of the Afghan National Army.
"Are you saying (after) these brave men and women gave their lives, we walk away from Afghanistan and pretend to the Canadian people it didn't happen? We are where we are, sir," Mr. Ignatieff said.
"You can't walk away and pretend it didn't happen. It did happen."
Mr. Layton dismissed the argument as the same one put forth by the Conservatives, and tried to portray Ignatieff as a Tory in Liberal clothing.
"How can people trust what you're saying today, when your actions are so contrary to what you're offering Canadians?" said Mr. Layton, citing the harmonized sales tax as just one of many instances when the Liberals voted with the government in the House of Commons.
"You're Mr. Harper's best friend."
A Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll released today suggests voters have the highest expectations of Mr. Harper, with 37 per cent of respondents predicting the prime minister would have the strongest performance.
Only 19 per cent of respondents predicted a strong performance for Mr. Ignatieff.
Mr. Harper, however, was expected to come under fire amid fresh accusations of Conservative pork-barrel politics and dubious government spending.
Respect for democracy and transparency in public spending were at the heart of the historic non-confidence vote March 25 that found the Harper government in contempt of Parliament.
Those issues were largely ignored through the first two weeks of campaigning, but got new life from a Canadian Press story about a damning draft report by the Auditor-General.
The confidential Jan. 13 draft says the government misinformed Parliament to win approval for a $50-million G8 fund that lavished money on questionable projects in Industry Minister Tony Clement's riding. And it suggests the process by which the funding was approved may have been illegal.
Conservative cabinet minister John Baird insists a subsequent version of the report doesn't say the government "misinformed" Parliament.
But other media reports indicate that version is no less damning of Tory spending practices.
The Auditor-General's office, which can't release the final report until Parliament resumes, is investigating the leaks.
The draft report says a local "G8 summit liaison and implementation team" that included Clement chose the 32 projects that received funding, and did so with no apparent regard for the needs of the summit or the conditions laid down by the government.
The report is the latest in a string of campaign controversies that have had Tories scrambling. Others include:
- Reports from the U.S. that the cost of the F-35 stealth fighter jets the government plans to buy is likely to double to about $150 million a plane.
- Orwellian-style vetting of guests at Conservative campaign rallies and the expulsion of those deemed undesirable.
- The revelation that Harper hired a senior adviser who had been convicted on five counts of fraud. Harper said he didn't know about all the convictions.
Still, polls suggest the Conservative leader hasn't suffered any tangible losses. A Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey Monday suggested the Tories were close to majority territory with 40 per cent support compared with the Liberals' 28.
Historians and political scientists have differing views about the lasting impact televised leaders' debates have had on election campaigns in Canada.
The biggest came in 1984, when John Turner's Liberals were heavily favoured by pollsters to hold on to government. During the debate, Tory Brian Mulroney lashed out at Mr. Turner for keeping his predecessor's last-act patronage appointments to the Senate.
Mr. Mulroney's finger-pointing "you had an option, sir" was the debate's knock-out punch and the turning point of the election. His Progressive Conservatives swept to a majority victory.