Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Friday that while the country doesn’t need a panicky US-style government, he does need a strong mandate from the Oct. 14 election so he can deal with a slowing Canadian economy.
“We don’t need a parliament that acts and functions like the American Congress,” Harper said. “We’re not going to get into a situation like we have in the United States where we’re panicking and annunciating a different plan every day.”
The US Congress defeated a US$700 billion bailout of the US financial industry last Monday amid partisan bickering, but passed it on a second try on Friday.
PHOTO: AP
Harper criticized the way the US has managed the credit crisis, a day after his Canadian political rivals attacked him during a leadership debate for being out of touch with the seriousness of Canada’s economic slowdown.
Harper’s opponents accused him of being lax about the country’s economy, which they say is teetering from shock waves from the US credit crisis. Thursday’s debate took place on a day the country’s main stock exchange plunged almost 7 percent as investors dumped Canada’s commodity stocks.
“The prime minister is ignoring it,” Liberal leader Stephane Dion said of the financial crisis. “We will not ignore the difficulties of today. We’ll act right away to help Canadians when they have a lot of concerns about their savings, their pensions, their mortgages and their jobs.”
Dion said Harper has no plan to tackle Canada’s economic challenges or make it more competitive over the long term.
The prime minister, meanwhile, urged Canadians to vote for the party they think can best run the economy. Harper acknowledged Canada’s economy is slowing but argues that — unlike the US — the country has avoided a mortgage meltdown and a banking crisis. He has promised a steady hand on the economy and has accused his Liberal opponent of wanting to raise energy taxes at the wrong time.
The Conservative leader called early elections in hopes his party would increase its seats in parliament in the Oct. 14 vote. Recent polls say the opposition Liberals are trailing badly and that the Conservatives could win a majority of seats.
As a minority government, the Conservatives have had to rely on the opposition to pass budgets and legislation.
Harper will get a five-year mandate if his Conservative party wins the majority of parliament’s 308 seats. Opposition parties couldn’t topple his government in a “no confidence” vote.
“The country would be better off if the government had a strong mandate than if we had a parliament that is weak,” Harper said.
Dion has moved his party to the crowded left by staking his leadership on a “Green Shift” tax plan. Dion, a former environment minister who named his dog Kyoto after the site of the first climate change accord, wants to increase taxes on greenhouse gas emitters.
The Conservatives have been targeting Dion’s plan in television and radio ads, saying it would drive up energy costs. Dion has said he would offset the higher energy prices by cutting income taxes.
Harper said a carbon tax would be a disaster that would be felt the most by commodity and energy producers, both of which have been hit hard on the stock market.
“We see what’s happening to some portfolios. Where are the drops? They are in energy and commodity stocks. What does the opposition propose? To raise taxes on energy and commodities, to hit the very stocks that are taking a fall,” Harper said.
“This is exactly what we don’t need. If we don’t panic here, if we stick on course, we keep taking additional actions, make sure everything we do is affordable, we will emerge from this as strong as ever,” he said.
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