Photos: Campaign highlights (and some low moments)

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A recap of some of the highlights of the federal election campaign

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Tuesday, March 29: On the season finale of his show, television personality Rick Mercer airs a rant challenging young Canadians to get to a polling station and vote on election day, sparking the creation of “vote mobs” on university campuses across Canada. The vote mob phenomenon begins with a video posted to the Internet showing a huge and upbeat crowd of students from the University of Guelph, west of Toronto, who are running around with signs saying they plan to vote. It is a direct response to Mr. Mercer’s rant, with the overriding message: “Surprise, we’re voting.” Mr. Mercer later tells CTV’s Question Period, “In the back of my mind I was thinking perhaps some of them would write a nasty letter to the local paper. But no, they’ve started these vote mobs.” At least 35 vote mobs are organized across Canada, including this one on April 20 at the University of British Columbia.
(The Globe and Mail)
Friday, March 25: Prime Minister Stephen Harper's second minority government falls. Early in the afternoon, 156 opposition MPs – all of the Liberals (including party leader Michael Ignatieff, pictured here), New Democrats and Bloquistes present in the House of Commons – rise to support a motion of no-confidence. The motion declares the government to be in contempt of Parliament for its refusal to share information that opposition members said they needed to properly assess legislation put before them. The next day, Governor-General David Johnston grants Mr. Harper's request to dissolve Parliament, and the election is on. Mr. Harper immediately frames it as a choice of who is best suited to lead Canada while the global economy's recovery is still fragile.
(CP)
Wednesday, March 30: A consortium of Canada’s broadcasters rule out a face-off between Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff and say they will exclude the Green Party from the official election debates. The decision to air debates involving only the leaders of the four main parties in Parliament follows a public battle between the Conservative and Liberal leaders, but also controversial backroom dealings between the country’s major television stations and four biggest political parties.
(Reuters)
$Sunday, April 3: Eager to dispel concerns about his health, NDP Leader Jack Layton dances a jig at a sugar shack in Quebec to the accompaniment of traditional French-Canadian folk songs. The NDP Leader has been climbing podiums at campaign stops with the use of a forearm crutch after hip surgery in March to repair a hairline fracture. The biggest fear, he says, is that he could fall and break the healing joint. Anyone who asked him about his health during the first week of this election campaign receives the same answer: “It's getting better and better every day.” (CP)$

Sunday, April 3: Eager to dispel concerns about his health, NDP Leader Jack Layton dances a jig at a sugar shack in Quebec to the accompaniment of traditional French-Canadian folk songs. The NDP Leader has been climbing podiums at campaign stops with the use of a forearm crutch after hip surgery in March to repair a hairline fracture. The biggest fear, he says, is that he could fall and break the healing joint. Anyone who asked him about his health during the first week of this election campaign receives the same answer: “It's getting better and better every day.”
(CP)
Sunday, April 3: A 19-year-old University of Western Ontario student says she was reduced to tears after being expelled from a Stephen Harper rally in London. Awish Aslam (pictured here) tells The London Free Press that a friend had registered them online before the rally with the help of her friend's father, a card-carrying Conservative. Soon after she had arrived at the event, she and her friend were asked to follow an official out of the rally. He then ripped off their name tags, tore them up and told them to leave. “He said, ‘We know you guys have ties to the Liberal Party through Facebook’,” Ms. Aslam told the newspaper. “He said … ‘You are no longer welcome here’.” Dimitri Soudas, the chief spokesman for Mr. Harper on the Tory campaign, apologizes for the incident through the media and asks Ms. Aslam to contact him.
(The Globe and Mail)
Sunday, April 3: Michael Ignatieff launches the Liberal Party election platform in Ottawa, an $8-billion package that focuses on helping students pay for university, helping families care for ailing family members, an increase in support for low-income seniors and a $500-million child-care initiative. He says the Liberals would pay for their promises by raising corporate taxes that had been lowered by the Harper government.
(CP)
Monday, April 4: Prime Minister Stephen Harper denies knowledge of the full extent of his former adviser Bruce Carson’s criminal record after a news report revealed that Mr. Carson (pictured here) was convicted on five counts of fraud – three more than previously known. Mr. Carson also received court-ordered psychiatric treatment before becoming one of Mr. Harper's closest advisers. “Had I known these things, obviously I wouldn’t have hired him,” the Conservative Leader says. Mr. Harper told reporters he knew some of Mr. Carson’s criminal history but not all of it.
(CP)
Tuesday, April 5: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is thwarted in her last-ditch effort to be included in the televised leaders’ debates when Federal Court judge Marc Nadon decides not to make an emergency ruling on the case before the nationally televised discussions. His decision is a big blow for the Green Party. Ms. May is seen here waiting to speak to the media about the decision.
(AFP/Getty Images)
Friday, April 8: Tory Leader Stephen Harper launches his party’s election platform in Mississauga, Ont., with a promise to rein in government spending and eliminate the deficit by 2014-2015, a year earlier than his government had promised in the failed budget that triggered the election. The platform also contained new spending aimed at the party’s target audience, such as installing defibrillators in every hockey arena, a $2.5-billion annual tax break for parents and $2-billion in compensation for Quebec for sales-tax changes. Under pressure from the Liberals and NDP, Harper subsequently vowed to continue the six per cent annual increases in health-care spending currently set to expire in 2014, something he hadn’t mentioned in the platform launch.
(Reuters)
Sunday, April 10: NDP Leader Jack Layton launches his party platform in Toronto, touting a four-year plan to balance the books that includes $14.4 billion in new spending and $3-billion worth of tax cuts in the first year. Mr. Layton vows to save billions by cutting fossil fuel subsidies and raising the corporate tax rate to 19.5 per cent. He also offers a job-creation tax credit for employers of $4,500 for every new hire and to limit credit-card interest rates to a maximum of 5 percentage points over the prime rate. On the health-care front, he says the NDP will hire 1,200 doctors over 10 years and increase access to home care to 100,000 more Canadians.
(Reuters)
Sunday, April 10: Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe suggests rescheduling the French-language debate, which was slated for April 14, because the Montreal Canadiens were to face the Boston Bruins in their first playoff game that evening. “All I’m asking is that the debate take place Wednesday [April 13] so that Quebeckers have as much access to this debate as Canadians,” Mr. Duceppe said. “We all know that hockey is very popular in Canada and in Quebec, which is why it would be a better idea to push the French debate back to allow hockey fans to watch the debate as well as the game on Thursday night.” Rather than take issue with the Bloc leader’s nationalistic semantics, the other party heads conceded the point.
(CP)