Working families out in cold under Harper: Layton

VANCOUVER—NDP leader Jack Layton tugged at a dangling thread in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s election campaign yesterday, hoping to unravel his newly-softened image and undermine Tory support in the key battleground of British Columbia.
Layton stormed several Vancouver-area ridings, brandishing bad-news headlines about the souring economy in an all-out effort to poach Liberal doubters and Green voters to the NDP camp.

“I’ll tell you the problem with Stephen Harper’s do-nothing attitude: you pull one thread and the whole sweater unravels, and it’s the working people of Canada who get left out in the cold,” he told supporters at a rally in Vancouver-Kingsway.
“That’s why the time has come to throw Stephen Harper out.”
Harper has failed to protect the pensions, savings, and homes of working families while his corporate buddies get billions in tax breaks, Layton charged.
“I’ll work until I drop to make sure that your homes, your pensions, your mortgages, and your jobs are protected as best as we are able from this unfolding financial crisis,” the NDP leader told keyed-up supporters at a buffet restaurant in Burnaby, B.C.
“Because it’s so important that in tough times, you have a government that will stand with you, not against you.”
Recent polls suggest Harper’s repeated reassurances about the economy have fallen flat with voters, thwarting Conservatives chances to form a majority government.
Layton is hoping to capitalize on that trend while dispelling the notion that his party can’t be trusted to steer the country through the turbulent times ahead.
He promised not to spend the country into a deficit, raise personal taxes, or roll back Conservative cuts to the GST. But an NDP government won’t reward banks that gouge consumers either, he vowed.
Instead, they’d freeze $50 billion in corporate tax breaks handed out by the Tories and make strategic investments in companies that are creating jobs, he said.
“Our approach is that we don’t want to see more interest being paid to banks,” Layton said after the rally in Vancouver-Kingsway.
“What we do believe is that we shouldn’t be giving them more giveaways right now at the same time as they’re turning around and ripping off Canadian consumers.”
Layton also took aim at the Liberals’ proposed carbon tax plan, casting it as an ineffective and unfair strategy that would hurt families while doing nothing to stop climate change.
It’s part of Layton’s siren song to Liberal and Green voters—calling on them to unite under the NDP banner to defeat the federal Tories.
He repeated the refrain to supporters in Vancouver-Kingsway, the riding of Foreign Affairs minister David Emerson, which traditionally has swung between the Liberals and NDP.
Emerson, who is not seeking re-election, won the seat in 2006 as a Liberal before crossing the floor to the Tories. Both the NDP and the Liberals are counting on lingering resentment over Emerson’s defection to push them ahead in the polls.
“People voted Liberal last time and they saw that there was no difference between a Liberal and a Conservative,” said NDP candidate Don Davies.
“They’ve also seen Stephane Dion vote 43 times with Stephen Harper, so people know it’s only the NDP who will stand up to Stephen Harper in this country.”