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Don't switch boats in storm: Harper

Canadian Press Article online since October 6th 2008, 23:00
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Don't switch boats in storm: Harper
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is promising $400 million more in loans for hard-hit manufacturers in a bid to polish his tarnished image as a stand-pat custodian of the economy. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tom Hanson
TORONTO - Stephen Harper offered up a stiff dose of "hard-headed" pragmatism Tuesday as the Conservatives finally released their costed platform just one week before election day.
With stock markets nose-diving under a global credit crunch and Tory support drifting downward, the prime minister offered up $745 million in tariff relief and loans for hard-hit manufacturers.
But in a speech to a well-heeled business audience, Harper maintained the party line that all the fundamentals are already in place for Canada to weather the global economic storm.
"Prudent leadership does not set economic strategy for the nightly news or rewrite plans for the morning papers," Harper told the Canadian Club of Toronto after releasing his platform.
"As the saying goes, it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. Which is why when the rain came, Noah didn't need to panic and he didn't switch boats."
It wasn't exactly a clarion call to action or a compassionate embrace of worried Canadian consumers, as Harper himself later acknowledged at a news conference.
"I'm the first to admit I'm not the most emotionally expressive guy," he said, noting that's not the choice voters will have to make Oct. 14.
"Ultimately, it isn't about governments waving their arms. It's about how governments are actually going to deal with the situation."
At an evening rally in Hamilton, Ont., Harper took another run at connecting with troubled voters, this time by raising the plight of his own mother.
"Canadians are worried right now," Harper told a large partisan crowd in an airport hangar before flying to Victoria.
"Those worries are understandable. My mother is with my kids right now. I'm sure she's worried about her savings. I worry about my kids' future. That's why we're in this."
The platform release and the softer face came amid polls suggesting support for the Tories has slumped along with financial markets.
The most recent national survey from The Canadian Press Harris-Decima put the Tories at 31 per cent, 10 points below their high water mark and five points ahead of the Liberals with 26.
Harper's calming, stay-the-course message is in keeping with the party platform.
The document - entitled "The True North Strong and Free: Stephen Harper's plan for Canadians" - is a glossy, 41-page booklet printed in huge blue font that includes 22 colour photos of Harper.
Most of the platform had already been released in a series of announcements the Conservatives repeatedly stressed were modest and achievable.
Some of it was intentionally vague on a number of initiatives, allowing Harper to continue making platform announcements over the final days of the campaign.
One of them he revealed Tuesday: a $200-million boost over four years for the Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative, and another $200 million for the Automotive Innovation Fund.
The promise, which would provide additional loans to industry, was met with polite applause.
Harper also committed to eliminate tariffs on a wide range of imported equipment for a saving to manufacturers of $345 million.
If steady-as-she-goes was one Harper message, the other was of the perils of Liberal or NDP economic activism.
"When people are looking at their stock portfolios and seeing the drop, how can you tell them that your solution is to come in and hit their savings with harder taxes?" he asked.
"It doesn't make any sense. It is a recipe for disaster - nothing more, nothing less. And that is not the direction this government is going to go."
In fact, the Liberal platform doesn't call for higher taxes.
Harper also got a polite chuckle when he said that if Conservatives "do not win re-election, it will make Bob Rae's Ontario look like a boom town."
Rae, the former Ontario NDP premier during a deep Canadian recession in the early 1990s, is running for re-election as a Liberal and was waiting to react outside the hotel ballroom where Harper spoke.
Harper is completely failing to connect with economically battered Ontarians and Canadians, Rae said.
"The prime minister is presiding over a recession. Everybody knows it - except for him. He seems to be living in a bizarre bubble."
But Harper later acknowledged the roller-coaster economy could impact his party's plans.
"We've given ourselves a modest platform with a fair degree of flexibility in implementation," he said.
Of more than $8 billion in new "spending" over four years in the platform, only about $2 billion is actual government expenditures and the rest is lost revenue in the form of various tax cuts.
There's no year-by-year costing, but over the life of the four-year platform the Tories are promising a cumulative surplus of almost $8.7 billion.
And the $4.2 billion windfall from this summer's wireless spectrum auction is not factored into the platform accounting "since the proper accounting profile across time . . . has not yet been determined."
Rae maintained Canadians really won't know the true state of the nation's books until a Liberal government takes power. But he too made an interesting concession to the impact of severe economic turbulence.
The Liberal Green Shift carbon-tax plan, said Rae, could also face a delayed implementation.
The Conservative platform wasn't all economy.
In a nod to Quebec and the cultural community, the Conservatives promised to scrap controversial changes to film and television tax credit eligibility that would have allowed the government to disqualify productions it deemed offensive.
Those changes, folded into an omnibus bill that passed in the House of Commons, created a huge storm of protest.
The vast majority of the promises in the platform have already been announced by Harper on the campaign trail.
They range from minor tax breaks to support children's arts and culture lessons to promises to restrict charges on unsolicited text messages.
The Tories are also reprising a promise made in the 2006 election to create a Public Appointments Commission. That commission was shelved by Harper after opposition MPs rejected his initial choice of chairman.
A Tory government would also recommit to have the Senate "reformed or abolished," said the platform.
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