Conservatives promise to up defense budget

By Randall Palmer

SAINT JOHN, New Brunswick (Reuters) – The man likely to be
elected the new prime minister in a week’s time, Conservative
leader Stephen Harper, said on Monday he wants to boost defense
spending enough for the world to take notice.

“I’ve made no secret of our desire to rebuild the Canadian
military to have the capacities of a sovereign nation,” Harper
told supporters on a campaign swing through Atlantic Canada.
“To make foreign policy decisions that are not only independent
but are actually noticed by other powers around the world.”

With just a week until next Monday’s election, Harper’s
Conservatives are enjoying a lead of eight to 13 percentage
points in the polls over the Liberals, who have been in power
since 1993. That margin puts them on the verge of winning a
majority in Parliament.

The Liberals of Prime Minister Paul Martin have been hit
hard by scandals, an ill-starred campaign and voter fatigue.

Martin was upbeat on Monday, predicting in a speech in
Vancouver: “We’re going to win the election.” But minutes
later, Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh became the latest member
of the government to admit the Liberals have a big challenge.

“There’s no denying that there is this view in some
quarters of the country that they’re looking for change,” he
told reporters. “There’s no question that we have a gap to make
up. There’s a lot of fight left in us yet.”

Harper’s remarks on defense appeared partly to be in
response to frequent criticism from Martin that Conservative
policies would damage the country at home and abroad.

Harper said his commitments had all been detailed, dollar
by dollar. “I’ll only make promises I know we can afford and we
can keep,” he said.

Martin, who was finance minister in the 1990s, eliminated
the country’s chronic budget deficits, partly through cutting
defense spending to levels that were criticized by NATO and the
United States.

He charges that Harper’s plans would leave a C$22 billion
($19.5 billion) hole in the federal budget, which would require
major spending cuts.

“It is easy to make 196 promises but it is much harder to
make a choice, to choose between one program and another, one
service and another. I know this because I’ve been there,” he
said in his Vancouver speech.

“To me, (Harper’s plan) sounds very much like the kind of
thinking we did away with 13 years ago when we decided it was
time to turn our country around.”

Conservative strategists are watching to see if their lead
in the polls will start eroding as it did in the 2004 campaign,
when they were ahead by a smaller margin and ended up losing to
Martin, despite a corruption scandal that weakened the
Liberals.

An SES/CPAC poll on Monday showed an eight-point lead,
unchanged from Sunday, while two others showed a widening gap.
Strategic Counsel put the Conservatives ahead by 40 to 27
percent, and Ekos had them at 38.6 percent support to 27.2
percent.

Harper, 46, is trying to walk a fine line between being
upbeat and sounding too confident, thereby risking scaring away
voters leery of his party taking majority power.

He has been particularly keen in the past several days to
point to momentum in Quebec, where the Conservatives have
displaced the Liberals and are now second in the polls to the
Bloc Quebecois, which wants an independent Quebec.

“We are gaining support in every region of the country, and
we are pulling votes away from both the Liberals and the Bloc.
That’s good for Quebec and that’s good for Canada,” he said.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Vancouver)