Canadian Contest: The Rhetoric Heats Up

It was a quiet weekend in the Canadian polling world. Only one poll was released over the weekend, from Harris-Decima. It shows the Tories at 39%, the Liberals at 23% and the NDP at 17%. In Quebec, the new poll shows that the Bloc remains ahead with support from 31% of likely voters. Followed behind them are the Tories at 25%. For the first time in years, the NDP is now the third party in Quebec, as it's 17% level of approval was just higher than the flunking Liberals.

democraticSPACE also updated its seat projections:

Tories at 144 seats (37,3%)

Liberals at 89 seats (25,6%)

Bloc at 41 seats (8,0%)

NDP at 33 seats (17,8%)

In Quebec:

Bloc at 41 seats (32,2%

Tories at 16 seats (26,0%)

Liberals at 16 seats (20,4%)

NDP at 1 seat (13,5%)

Yesterday, the campaign's rhetoric was turned up a notch. An unwritten rule of Canadian politics is that the parties do not (usually) campaign in the riding where the leader of another party is running. On Sunday, the Tories unleashed a full-scale assault in Gilles Duceppe's riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie (Montreal) by campaigning on a publicity truck accusing the Bloc of having costed $350 million in salaries since it's founding in 1990.

Most pundits and editorials in Quebec agree that this move could heavily backfire for the Conservatives, as this kind of aggressive, negative campaigning is not really what citizens are used to here. How does Mr. Harper's team come up with $350 million? Simple--They added up the House of Common salaries that Bloc MPs have received in income since 1990. Of course, the attack does not mention that this $350 nillion in salaries would have been paid regardless of the party affiliation of Quebec's MPs.

It remains to be seen if this hubristic behavior coming from the Tories will damage their Quebec campaign or not.