Tory Front-runner New Focus of Final Canada Debate

MONTREAL — The new front-runner in the Canadian election campaign, Conservative Stephen Harper, was verbally assaulted in the final debate Tuesday as barbs once reserved for Prime Minister Paul Martin were thrown at him.

Harper also seized on the French-language debate to urge disaffected Quebec voters to give Canada another chance, and to eschew the choice between what he called a corrupt Liberal government and an ineffective separatist Bloc Quebecois.

"For Quebeckers watching me tonight, there is another choice other than a corrupt party and eternal opposition," he said, referring to the fact that the Bloc will never be able to form a government since it only runs candidates in Quebec.

Harper took flak from all sides as a new poll showed he had risen to a daunting 12-point lead over the Liberals—long favored to win a fifth consecutive mandate Jan. 23.

"I can take a punch, and there's suddenly a whole lot of parties wanting to throw punches at us. But that's part of the game," Harper told reporters after the debate.

Martin's government has suffered from a series of inquiries into kickbacks in Quebec and possible illegal leaks to the financial community.

The Liberals had held strong polling leads for most of their 12 years in power and led throughout December, the first month of the campaign, but the Conservatives overtook them at the start of January.

The Ekos poll released Tuesday predicted the Conservatives would win a majority in Parliament, something that had been unthinkable even a week ago. But Martin shrugged it off: "I actually think the campaign is going very well."

However, he is much further behind the Conservatives now than he was in his lowest point in the 2004 election campaign, when he lost his majority in Parliament.

Tuesday's French-language debate followed one in English on Monday, during which many commentators said Martin failed to deliver the command performance needed to recover the momentum from Harper.

Martin charged Tuesday that Harper would take Canada to the right on everything from climate change to child care and would have supported the war on Iraq.

He suggested a vote for the Bloc Quebecois, which had more than two-thirds of Quebec's seats in the House of Commons, was a waste.

"The Bloc can't stop this slide to the right," said Martin, whose campaign unveiled an ad earlier in the day saying that a Harper victory would "put a smile on George W. Bush's face."

Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe had spent most of his campaign attacking Liberal ethics, but he turned on Harper as well on Tuesday night to charge that Conservatives had also participated in wrongdoing during Quebec's 1995 referendum on independence.

Quebec Federalism

Harper countered that Duceppe was saying that anybody who supports Canadian unity was corrupt. "It's not a crime to promote federalism in Quebec," he said.

Taking a shot at both Harper and Martin, the Bloc's Duceppe said: "This attitude of 'Ottawa knows best' just won't do."

Harper said it was only now that he was rising in the polls that Duceppe was taking exception to the Conservative record.

Part of the reason was a groundswell of support in Quebec, where the race had previously been only a two-horse race between the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois.

That made the task in Tuesday's debates, in Quebec's dominant French language, particularly critical for all three main players in the province, where voter sentiment is increasingly fluid.

Harper, 46, has campaigned on cleaning up Ottawa, cracking down on crime, cutting taxes and guaranteeing health treatment in a reasonable period of time. Martin, 67, has campaigned largely on his record and looking out for the most vulnerable.

Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa