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The leader of the federal NDP, Jack Layton, took some time on Thursday, April 21 to visit with members of The Globe and Mail Editorial Board.The Globe and Mail

Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party, visited The Globe and Mail editorial board on Thursday, April 21. The complete transcript is here. For briefer selections, click here.

Mr. Layton: I always say I'm a long-tack sailor. We planned what we wanted to say, and the message we wanted to take to people, and we just set out on that voyage. Probably Canadians were largely tuned out for the first little while. But the debates ... a little like the Stanley Cup, people who don't normally watch hockey watch the finals.

The good thing about the debates for us is that it's equal time, and people realize that maybe they actually do have a choice, even though they're told constantly that they don't, that there's only the two old choices. We always make the point that actually, you do have a choice, and we're making that message very clear, and we've laid out some very practical proposals about what we would do to respond to what we think people are concerned about today. And I think we began to break through, probably starting at the debates.

John Stackhouse, Editor-in-Chief: Was that the moment?

Layton: Well, you have equal time, in an unmediated way, say what you want to say to people. And, a lot more people paying attention. I think those two things kind of come together in that moment.

Mr. Stackhouse: I'm trying to get a sense of what the voters are telling us. Despite the momentum that is moving towards you, by and large it seems like, across a range of polling, that things are kind of the same. What are you hearing from the public, not about the NDP, but about the picture at large about the government?

Mr. Layton: What I feel and hear is a lot of enthusiasm. People are interested in our ideas, and that's what they're bringing to us. Maybe it's partly the campaign world that I'm in during this period of time. We have these gatherings - the interesting ones you can't even pick them up on the mikes, but people will, on your way out as you're shaking hands, people want to say something to you.

It'll be something like, "We can't afford the cancer medications that the doctor says we're supposed to have. I'm glad you're doing something about that." Or, I had one woman email me, she had a good job here, she was actually somebody who ran for mayor of Toronto, as part of the Hummer sisters ... You're all too young ...

Gerald Owen, editorial writer: Deanne Taylor

Mr. Layton: You're all too young. Deanne Taylor. That blank stare I got there told me something. She said she used to work at the building owner's association here in downtown Toronto. And she had to give up her job. She's looking after two aging parents, there's not enough home care, the palliative care situation isn't there for her. And she's lost four years of her career, and she was just glad that we were talking about getting more home care and more long-term care.

People are responding to those individuals in a very personal way. Or people out of work: I mean this myth that Mr. Harper and the bank economists have been perpetrating, that somehow we're out of the economic difficulty - I kept getting up and saying, "What about this plant that's closed?" or "Look at these jobs statistics. They don't add up."

And the OECD's most recent report is pretty strong on that. Certainly what we're seeing. You can resolve it and look at the statistics, and they tell you much of what we've been saying.

But the stories come through, like the guy who said to me - he used to work in a manufacturing - somewhere along the 401. Auto-parts, I guess. Twenty-two dollars an hour, had a medical plan, and something going for his pension. 49 years old. He'd worked there for 27 years or something. Right out of high school.

I mean, we took our kids right out of high school in Ontario, and put them right in those factories, and they became the best darned manufacturing workers you can imagine. For years. Thank God for the Auto Pact. And he says, "I went out and I was applying for jobs and I found out my daughter was applying for the same job at the coffee shop." A well-known chain. I won't mention the chain.

And, you know, he says to me, "I was happy that she got the job. But, you know, I'm not so sure she's going to be helping me pay the mortgage." And he kind of laughed. And that was really, you know, that's pretty poignant stuff. So I think the jobs issue is a bit of a sleeper, and we've tried to put a real focus on a different approach to that.

So, I mean when pollsters call, and you're sitting in your home and you get a phone call, you're not sure if it's the way you can find out really, how people are thinking about issues.

Mr. Stackhouse: There doesn't seem to be a groundswell for any party. And certainly not towards a majority. I'm curious as to what you sense is out there that is really holding the public back, and may return us to the same kind of Parliament we just had.

Mr. Layton: I don't think people agree with Stephen Harper. The majority of Canadians don't agree with him and his approach. If we had proportional representation, nobody would be talking about the possibility of a Harper majority.

Only in Canada could we be saying, "Hey! He could win a majority and win 100 per cent of the power with only 38.5 per cent of the votes." I mean, plus, we have an unelected Senate to help him out. Hello! If we went and advertised this around the world and said, this is the state of our democracy. You really should be having more democracy in your country. We'd be laughed out of the room. It's ridiculous.

We should have proportional representation like a modern, civilized democracy and we should not have a Senate. Unnecessary for a population of 35 million people to have a second tier of decision-making, in my opinion.

Mr. Stackhouse: If there is a minority, and there's certainly a lot of talk about this, you would again be an influential person in the party, whatever the constellation of power may be. Can you help us understand what your top priorities would be going into a new government - sort of expectations of support? Would the NDP demand be non-negotiable?

Mr. Layton: Well, first, I would have that we would have the most seats in those discussions. That's what I'm looking to do between now and May 2. So I'm not going to prejudge how the election's going to turn out.

But we would take in what we campaigned for. And say this is what we'd like to see done. And we've laid out a program of the things we'd like to see done in the first 100 days for instance. And there's a larger platform than that. I've always believed you work with other people.

And so you'd take those to the other leaders and say, "This is what we'd like to do. What would you like to do? Is there some overlap here? Is there some room to work, and any areas of disagreement?" Who's going to put water in whose wine, and let's see if we can come up with a program.

If it were to be an NDP majority government, I'd have those meetings nonetheless. I remember when [former Toronto mayor]Mel Lastman came and won for mayor and he didn't need to come and meet with other people, but he did. And we talked homelessness.

And we got something with Anne Golden, and he said, "Let's work on this together. You'll be the guy on council who will work on this issue because I, frankly, I, Mel, didn't realize how bad the problem was, and we'd better do something about it." In other words, he took an issue where he was offside, even though he won, he reached out. It was not what most people think of when they think of Mel Lastman, but that's what he did.

Some people say, "Jack, how can you ever work with a guy like that?" And I said, well, because there's some common ground here of trying to work together towards a solution. He actually ended up becoming a hell of a champion for housing, and for investment in cities.

So, I find you can work with other people. I've been doing it for 30 years. On council. And through the [Federation of Canadian Municipalities] And with the Liberals. When they were looking like they were going to lose their government there during the sponsorship scandal. And I said, well, cancel the corporate tax cut, put the money here, and we can work with you.

Mr. Stackhouse: What, for you, is non-negotiable?

Layton: I don't think you can go into negotiations having publicly declared that certain things are non-negotiable and other things are negotiable. I don't know many negotiators who would approach a negotiation in that way. What I'd say is, "Here's what we're looking for; now let's talk."

John Geiger, Editorial Board Editro: I just wonder that, one of the moments of the English-language debate that was jarring for me and probably for a lot of viewers was the discussion you had around Bill 101. And this apparent move or effort to fight an intrusion of provincial policy into federal policy-making. I was just wondering if you could explain to us what your thinking is behind that kind of change. Where you stand and where, maybe, that differs from what the Bloc is looking for?

Mr. Layton: Well, the Bloc doesn't particularly want Canada to work for Quebec. It's not a solution-oriented approach, really.

Mine is. I was born and grew up in Quebec. And I've always had the objective of trying to, as I put it, trying to create the winning conditions for Canada in Quebec.

We have an anomaly in that federally-regulated workplaces have very different rules regarding language of work than provincially-regulated workplaces. So if you take a financial institution that is regulated provincially, you can have a clerk there whose mother tongue is French and reads French, be able to read in French.

But the Banque Nationale, right across the street, she wouldn't have that, right. And we want to fix that. And we think we should fix it. It will strengthen the French language in Quebec. It's in the spirit of the Charte de la langue française. We don't, however, want to interfere with the Official Languages Act.

And so navigating that space, I guess you could say was what I asked Tom Mulcair to sit down and do, working with experts. And he's quite the expert himself actually if we could go back to his own history in terms of the language discussions in question and so on and so forth.

And so we crafted that bill which is now before the House. And we think it's one of those ones that uses some nuance and uses some understanding so you could move ahead an issue that's very important to Quebeckers but in a fashion that also respects the bilingual nature of the country. And I think we've found a very good balance there. It might not make Mr. Duceppe happy, which is why I think he was grilling me on it in the debates. On the other hand, he voted for the bill.

And I don't understand why the Conservatives wouldn't embrace it actually. I think it's a good policy.

Mr. Geiger: Has it made people outside of Quebec happy? Or do you think the rest of Canada just isn't paying attention to this?

Mr. Layton: Oh I think there's been a huge change over the years in how people in the rest of Canada view Quebec. Old sentiments can be whipped up pretty quickly, as Mr. Harper sometimes tries to do.

But the old days of the booing of the singing of "O Canada," or complaining about what language is on your cereal box - those days are gone. I think most Canadians now celebrate Quebec. Any part of the country can be grumpy about any other part of the country from time to time. Just like in a family, it can happen.

I'm not trying to minimize some of the cleavages and challenges that are there; not at all. But the mood has completely changed. There's been a whole generational change. And I think that's very good. But I still think there's more work to do. Because if we don't continue that work. You can't take a family for granted, you can't take a nation like ours for granted. It's going to take continual effort.

Karim Bardeesy, Editorial Writer: Does one of those efforts include a repeal of the Clarity Act?

Mr. Layton: You know, I don't see that as being an agenda item. We've got a Supreme Court decision that seems to have satisfied all the different sides of that discussion. I think having a government that works, and is seen to work for Quebeckers, seen to be helping to achieve their aspirations is the most positive thing that you can do. And that's certainly what I'd like to see happen.

Gerald Owen, Editorial Writer: Speaking of the Bloc, I'm puzzled by one section of the platform about the tone of Parliament, iIn which you say you would work with other "federalist parties" towards this goal of improving the tone in Parliament. Is that just a misprint, or do you mean other federal parties?

Mr. Layton: I don't think that had to do with just the tone issue. I'd have to go back and look.

Mr. Owen: It's [Section]7.1

Mr. Layton: Yeah. I mean, what I have said is that depending on the mandate that's given to me, I will work with other parties that want to build a stronger Canada to try and achieve results, in whatever arrangement makes the most sense.

I hope to be able to lead that undertaking, but I'll work with the mandate that Canadians give me, with those that want to build a stronger Canada.

Marina Jimenez, Editorial Writer: Can we talk about health care for a minute? So, initially, health care was a universal health insurance. And as time evolved, it's become a public service, which is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Do you think we should go back to the delivery of health care as a universal health insurance that follows a mutual type of structure that could grow according to people's needs?

Mr. Layton: Well, I don't believe it's unsustainable, first of all. The percentage of our GDP that's devoted to those aspects which are actually under the rubric of medicare running at about four to five per cent of GDP, and not projected to change dramatically, is absolutely sustainable.

I do think, however, that some significant next steps are required, and I draw a lot of this from the Romanow Royal Commission which is the most systematic re-think - I think Roy Romanow was very open to those who felt that, you know, as Dr. [Brian]Day has, or others like him - "show me the evidence that what you want to do will really work."

And I think Roy was very, very open about that. And there simply wasn't that kind of evidence. But then he turned around and said "However, we cannot stand pat." We've got to talk to the [Canadian Medical Association]people now. The current president was telling me how in his hospital, on some days, 50 per cent of the beds are occupied by people who should not be in those beds. They should be in homecare or long-term care. If they were in homecare, I forget the precise percentage, but it was a fraction of the cost of having them in that acute bed. And if it were in long-term care, it would be more. But still, a lot less than in the acute bed.

Problem is, when you have those beds filled with people who shouldn't be there, then the surgeon who's trying to schedule a surgery. The person who's had a surgery is going to need about four days in an acute bed. You can't schedule the surgery because there's no bed that's going to be available.

Having recently gone through some surgery, I was - I was going to say - I'm painfully aware of what they're talking about there. And the most interesting experience I had, recently, was to go into an emergency room and work as kind of a trainee for a couple of days.

It was for a TV show - Put the Politicians to Work. The assumption being, of course - yeah! The unstated was there, yeah! Hey, I've been in this my whole life. I know how people feel about politicians. When I was first elected, my mum sent me a clipping from the Miami Herald or something that someone had sent her. Pairs of professions, and their status in the eyes of individuals. And professors and priests were the top in that time.

I'm not sure it would still be rated the same 25 years later. And I was, at the time, at Ryerson as a professor. And way down at the bottom, you went through the list and it was politicians and used car salesmen. Something completely predictable. Journalists were higher. She had put a yellow sticky on. I think yellow stickies had just been invented. With the arrow, you know, "Why, son, why!" Actually, seriously, congratulations on your election. So I'm kind of used to that.

But, anyway, back to the story. One of the jobs and meetings they had me participate in was what they called bed allocation. And they do this every day. And so the emergency nurses, doctors, administrators and everything are there. And all the people who are in charge of the beds in the hospital are there.

And they're going through the names, and wondering when is that bed going to free up so that we can then move this person to there and so on and so forth. Enormously complicated process all being done on a computer and with reports.

But with the individual status of each patient known by somebody in that room. And are we going to be able to get that home care and who's working on making that happen. So we came back and we said, "Look, let's really drive this..." And Roy said homecare should be treated as the next essential service, and I think he's right. And with an aging population, look at the number of people who are having to take this on and can't. So I think we can save money as well as respond to the changing demographics with some of these initiatives.

Now a lot of this should be part of the 2014 discussions. And I think that is going to be a golden opportunity, as difficult as it will be to make some of the changes that should be made. And there will be lots of debate about that. But I don't think we should wait until then. I think we should get started now on some of these initiatives, and I'm proposing that we do that. And I'm also proposing that homecare and long-term care be put into the Canada Health Act, as part of the package. It's a bit of a long answer to your question.

Ms. Jimenez: Well it addresses one aspect, but do you think that speaks to the overall structural difficulties with keeping the health system able to do what it's supposed to do?

Mr. Layton: Yeah I do. And pharmaceuticals is the other key issue. Pharmaceuticals and primary care. I mean, when you have five million Canadians without primary care, then what you end up with is people showing up in emergency rooms much more ill than they should have been. Whereas if they have primary care, illness is intercepted at a much earlier stage. Sometimes can even be prevented and can be handled at much less cost.

So we'd like to see significant focus on primary care. That's why I talk about family doctors. And nurses with a specialty in that area. Nurse practitioners and so on. And we have costed this in our platform. I'd want to get the document in front of me to show you what we're proposing. It's a step-by-step process - you can't snap your fingers and do everything at once.

Our party has the best record of balancing budgets of any party in power in Canada in the last 25 years. This is something people refuse to believe, even though the Department of Finance did the study to show that it was true. And I believe very strongly in careful, public administration.

Commitments in our platform are all surrounded by the phrase that this would be subject to the available funding in the fiscal situation that we're in. So, our solutions are a step-by-step phase-in of this increased home care, increased long-term care, and begin to take on the issue of pharmaceutical costs.

And we've allocated some funds to begin that process. For example, to bulk-buying regimes that would encompass the whole country. That could really bring down some of the costs of some of the most commonly-used pharmaceuticals. And that would affect hospital budgets, insurance company budgets and premiums, as well as family budgets as well.

Adam Radwanski, Columnist: On the subject of health care: I obviously understand your goals to preserve the public system. I guess what I am wondering is, we have seen in this campaign from almost all parties a promise to preserve the status quo pretty much the status quo in terms of delivery, including even the Conservatives, with the six per cent promise.

Mr. Layton: I don't think it was in their platform, neither was it in the Liberal platform. It was in our platform.

Mr. Owen: With limiting conditions, though. You seem to be almost more cautious on this than the others.

Mr. Layton: Well we should be. You are talking about real budgets, and real revenues and real costs.

Mr. Radwanski: My concern a little bit is, while maintaining the same quality of care, there hasn't been that much effort, from any government, to engage the population broadly in a discussion about what health care is going to look like, 10 or 20 years from now. You mentioned beds, for instance, being tied up. One of the challenges I've noticed, more on the provincial side, when you're looking at communities, and they're reforming hospitals and so on. People are very attached to the idea of a certain number of beds. You close any beds, and people say you're cutting back services. In some cases, that might actually be a good thing, because it means you're trying to treat people elsewhere, get them in and out of the hospital faster.

Just in terms of how we view the system, clearly given the pressures of an aging population, there's going to need to be some need to adjust to accommodate that. And I worry a bit that we what we are basically telling people is federal funding will stay steady, that we can preserve the same system. Do we need to be engaging a little more in the discussion, where we level with people, and say "ok, we've got to think about what we want our system to be"?

Mr. Layton: Yes. I agree with what you are saying. In fact, we offered directly to the Prime Minister - I think we put it in writing at one point - to engage in a discussion. He went and set up a Senate committee to be looking into it. These are not elected people.

We said: "Let's really engage the Canadian public in a legitimate process. We're willing to be a part of that. We had something to do with bringing our current health care system into being in Saskatchewan and then with Tommy Douglas and others over the years and we'd like to participate in that discussion process." We had zero response from Stephen Harper on this.

But I think engaging the Canadian public on it is important. I think Roy Romanow tried to do that, I think there was a lot of participation. Time is passing however since that report was done.

Mr. Radwanski: Why did it end up being such a simplistic debate during the actual elections? In fairness, it's probably the Liberals pushing this message more, but you've been doing some of it too: "Our opponents want to cut it, we won't." There is not a lot of discussion of here's the concrete ways we want to change it. Let's take it as a given we are going to change it. How are we going to move forward with it? Why do we keep getting bogged down in that kind back and forth?

Mr. Layton: Well you will have to ask the Liberals about their approach. They didn't talk about health care in the House all that much and it kind of came in part way through the campaign as something they started to raise. We raise these issues all the time in the House.

And we laid out four very specific things that we wanted done. Right from the kick-off of our campaign.

More family doctors and nurses. More home care. More long-term care. And a plan to bring down the price of pharmaceuticals. One, two, three, four.

Are there more thing that need to be done? Of course. But in an election you can't give the people a list of 150 things. But I think people are looking for some indication of what you would actually do. And I think it's feasible to do it. And are these indeed practical, realizable propositions.

So that's how we've tried to approach the whole thing. I've been doing a little less of the finger-pointing, though I do ask people to consider who you trust to negotiate their health care system in 2014.

Mr. Geiger: We have a couple of questions from readers. I just received a Tweet from Caroline Hayward. She's asking, Do you support additional seats for Ontario and Western Canada? You favour abolition of the Senate, which is one way in our parliamentary system that regional voices can be aired. If you are going to do that don't you need to have better representation in the rep by pop chamber, which required reform of the house?

Mr. Layton: Yes we do support more seats for Ontario and Alberta and British Columbia. We also support retaining the current weight of Quebec in the seat calculation and we think it is possible to find our way to both of those objectives.

You mentioned the Senate. Imagine appointing candidates to the Senate, Members of Parliament who were defeated by the people of their region, and then you put them in the Senate. This to me completely undermines any argument that the Senate constitutes regional representation.

I clearly am very unhappy with what is happening with the Senate. The Senate has now become an activist entity. Overruling decisions that have been made by the elected house of commons. Other countries would not tolerate this and yet we somehow find it acceptable.

Mr. Geiger: If you have more seats to western Canada and Ontario, how do you maintain that historic balance with Quebec? They either get proportionally more seats or they don't. Are you suggesting that all regions get more seats?

Mr. Layton: There would be additional seats allocated in Quebec as well.

Mr. Geiger: Even though it is not justified by population?

Mr. Layton: Well it justified by the historic political weight of Quebec in the federation. There is a solution that can be found here. It's not an easy thing to do but it is one that we need to work for.

But we absolutely support additional seats for Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. They are under represented at the moment and that needs to be addressed.

Mr. Stackhouse: And more seats for Quebec?

Mr. Layton: There would be an adjustment vis a vis quebec.

Mr. Geiger: So in other words, they wouldn't have proportionally more seats.

Mr. Layton: Yes they would. Well, they would have more seats. Significantly more.

Mr. Geiger: But not proportionately more?

Mr. Layton: Well, it would begin to redress the very significant dis-proportionality we see.

Mr. Radwanski: One of the concerns that I've heard a little bit is that there's a bit of a split between the image of the NDP nationally and the image of the NDP in Quebec. You are a party that is fairly interventionist on social policy at a national level, but in Quebec that message doesn't obviously sell as well and there has been an underplaying of that and more talk about provincial jurisdiction. Some people call it an appeal to soft nationalists there.

Is that a concern? You don't want to end up with a split-personality on two sides. You can wind up in all sorts of trouble if you are in a governing situation. How do you address that?

Mr. Layton: The first is to say the same thing in English Canada as you do in Quebec. I notice even Stephen Harper is talking about asymmetrical federalism. That's a concept we've used for a very long time in our party.

And not only that - it's represented in some of our most successful programs nationally. Like our medicare program, that has a Quebec version. Our Canada Pension Plan which has a Quebec version. That's asymmetrical federalism. And we proposed the same thing when it came to our national childcare legislation. Quebec already has, by far, one of the most advanced ...

Mr. Fine: What is the Quebec version of medicare?

Mr. Layton: Medicare is operated differently in Quebec, different structure. Still within the Canada Health Act, but the way in which the delivery is handled in Quebec is constructed differently. And same with the pension plan. So we have worked this thing out before and our childcare legislation represents the same thing. And in fact was supported by both the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois. It of course didn't get adopted because the Conservatives were opposed to the approach of a national childcare program.

We've had a long history of making this thing work and I don't see why we shouldn't be able to come in and do so. And I think that the changed attitude in the country visa-vie Quebec assists that.

Nicole MacAdam, Presentation Editor: I have another question from a reader, Loren Hicks, who's a musician and handyman. He asks, How will you bring civil service pensions and those of regular working families in to line? And he wants to know what's the projected CPP increases of individuals and employers that will be required to accomplish it.

Mr. Layton: We thing the CPP should be, in a step-by-step fashion, ultimately doubled in the payouts it is able to make. That doesn't mean a doubling of the premiums, but it means a step-by-step increase to the premiums. What the would do is allow Canadians to have a basic sense of retirement security.

The Canada Pension Plan is a good system, it's just that ight now the average pay out is a little over $500 a month, and that is just not adequate for someone trying to retire if they did have a pension in their work place and were not able to save. and there are many people in that situation.

So we would like to see it growing in the way. There is a growing consensus that the CPP can be a very strong instrument for us. Its costs of administration are very low because of the size of the pool. The funds are available to be invested through wise advisers on Bay Street, and it has served us well, and that would help to close that gap.

Patrick Brethour, B.C. Bureau Chief (by phone): What do you see as driving your surge in B.C.? Is it something specific to B.C., or just more the generalized appeal of your party?

Mr. Layton: First of all, we have a very strong caucus in British Columbia, our Members of Parliament there are very highly regarded.

But I think also the message that Ottawa is broken and needs to be fixed has a real resonance in British Columbia these days. They watched how the HST was brought in, and it really upset them. The people of British Columbia are spontaneously democratic at the grassroots level. And you can see a meteoric rise in their political history in opposition to thing they don't like and think were done wrongly.

You could say, well, "Why didn't Ontario rise up in the same way?" Partly political culture, partly because there is a referendum law in British Columbia that gives people a vehicle to actually get quite agitated. And there is a law about removing elected representatives from their positions. All based on a more grassroots democratic notion.

Mr. Harper tries to hide the HST, pretends he had nothing to do with it. I remember standing in the House of Commons when they introduced the bill and then refused to have more than one day of hearing on a massive tax change, which included a $6-billion bribe to two provinces. And a huge tax shift and they wouldn't let any proper hearings go on and they rammed it through before Christmas with the support of the Liberals.

This upsets a lot of people in British Columbia. I would say those are probably the major reasons.

I think some of our policies appeal to them. Finn Donnelly who is our new member there and who has been campaigning hard with Nathan Cullen around the moratorium around the tankers and on the whole issue of the fishery. Finn is the guy who swam the full length of the Fraser River. And it's really, really cold. Not once, but he did it twice, ten years later.

And he is really well know as a champion of this precious resource, the river systems of British Columbia, the salmon fishery and so forth. I think some of the stands that our members have take have really well resonated.

I was talking to Ed Broadbent about this; we probably have the strongest group of candidates that we have ever had running and I think that is making a big difference. Now that the campaign is going and candidates are out and they've been talking to the voters, that's having an impact.

Mr. Brethour: If it is the HST and your environmental stances, then why is your growth seemingly at the expense of the Liberals and not the Conservatives?

Mr. Layton: I'm going to leave a lot of that to the pundits. I'm not sure we know for sure who is moving where.

I know a lot of the old Reform vote - people expected Stephen Harper to do certain kinds of things differently and are looking at it now and saying "Gosh that government is doing a lot of things we didn't like before."

Appointing their friends, fundraisers up on fraud chargers, if you are close to the government you seem to do well. The billion dollar boondoggle on the G8 G20. This is the kind of thing that gets the grassroots populists pretty upset.

In the 1988 election there was a lot of that support that went to the NDP, but then the Reform Party was created and a lot of analysts thought that a lot of support left the NDP at that point and went to the new expression of protest. And I think it is very possible that some Conservatives of the old Reform ilk who really do want to see a more grassroots approach are coming our way too.

Mr. Fine: What would you do to generate wealth? Social programs are wonderful, they're essential, but we've got to pay for it.

Mr. Layton: We sure do. The first thing I would do is cut taxes for small businesses who generate a lot of wealth and create more than of the jobs. I don't know why, but just the big banks and oil companies seem to get a big tax cut every year. It's become the expected thing.

We'd like to give a tax cut to the small businesses for a change. We are proposing to take the small business tax rate down from 11 to nine per cent which is an 18 per cent reduction on what they would be paying to the federal treasury. And we believe that a far greater percentage of that savings would go into job creation - which is wealth creation - than we're seeing from the current across-the-board tax cut regime that the federal government has adopted.

Mr. Fine: [How about]free trade with Europe?

Mr. Layton: Well, we're a trading nation. But we better be very careful about how we conduct these trading negotiations. We have made some serious mistakes. Look at what happened to our ship building industry with the free trade agreement we made with Norway. Now everybody is pulling their hair out because we don't seem to be able to compete in the ship building.

We think that is wrong. In a country with such coastline as ours, and the labour force and infrastructure we have we ought to have a ship building capacity and we jeopardized that through a trade deal and shouldn't have. I think we were the only party to vote against that. And those were the concerns we were raising.

The softwood lumber, a disaster. We were just about to win in the courts and so deal was cut that benefited certain multinationals, but look at the devastation that has been left. And now the amount of our raw product that is going across borders or oceans, driving up our dollar. At the same time as the jobs that used to be here are gone.

Why are we building more pipeline to ship out more bitumen from our country instead of processing the substance here? We don't seem to have any strategy around this. It's the old hewers of ... what do you hew?

Mr. Owen: Wood.

Mr. Layton It's wood! And you draw the water. It's been a long time since I hewed. But we seem to be slipping back to that and its causing a real problem for wealth generation capacity in our country.

Because we are losing the ability to compete for example in manufacturing. When you see a dollar in where it is today and you're a manufacturer who got going five years ago or 10 years ago, its brutal.

Ms. MacAdam: This is from a graduate student in engineering named Will Luff. He picked up on the platform promise to lower interest rates on credit cards. And suggests this could well result in reduced access to credit for persons with poor credit histories and low income. So how will the NDP help families adjust to reduced access to credit?

Mr. Layton: Well a lot of those families right now are being denied credit. Just look at where the Money Marts are. And what the interest rates are that they charge. It's outrageous.

And many times these companies are owned two and three times removed because they are probably embarrassed about it - by some of the larger financial institutions. The problem of access to credit in my view isn't going to be solved by allowing credit card companies to charge high interest rates.

And the review of the Bank Act which comes up every five years should be addressing these kinds of issues. As the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has called for, they want the Bank Act to include things like a community investment, access to credit and micro-credit programming. It is a privilege to operate a bank in this country

Everyone talks about how terrific our bank regulating system is how we didn't collapse and the others did. Well I was talking Lorne Nystrom about this who was our finance critic in the 1990s, when the Reform Party thought we should throw out our bank regulations when Paul Martin was advocating for the merger of the banks and the NDP was out there saying it was a bad idea and Jean Chrétien put his politic finger in the air and ultimate backed off.

And now everybody is celebrating that we kept our regulations and didn't let our banks get so big that they toppled over. How quickly we forget.

We should be using the Bank Act review process in order to strengthen and deal with these issues. Because access to credit for low income people is a very serious problem. Because they get the credit, it's just outrageously expensive. Same day, payday cheque-cashing is usurious when you calculate the interest on an annual basis.

Sinclair Stewart, National Editor: There is a bit of a Groundhog Day feel here. If the trend lines stay steady and Tories win another minority, all of a sudden we are back in March, when everyone was waiting to see what would Jack do vis-a-vis the budget. So you've said you like to work with people. Are you prepared to work with Harper if he has to reintroduce that budget to give that government the confidence it needs to move forward?

Mr. Layton: I'd rather submit an NDP budget, and that is what I am going to work to try to do between now and May 2nd.

Mr. Stewart: You've said before there were certain things you couldn't quite align on especially in regard to seniors in the last budget. Are there things that Harper could do that would satisfy some of those concerns and allow you to work cooperatively?

Mr. Layton: I'm hoping he will not be the Prime Minister after this election and I am working very hard for that not to be the case. I will deal with the mandate that is given to me on May 3rd, using the principles I have always used, which is you work with other parties to try and achieve your goals.

Mr. Harper, I have met with him on a number of occasions, before every budget and before every throne speech. And generally what he says to me is something along the following lines at ever single meeting: "Of course Jack, you know that we really don't agree on much."

I don't know about you but if you are going into a conversation about working together with someone, that is not the thing you'd say. Even if it was true.

I'm a guy who wouldn't walk into a meeting and say that. I would say, okay where is there some room to work. And so if I happen to be the Prime Minister coming out of this, I will meet with the other leaders with that tone of voice.

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