New poll shows Liberals in BIG trouble
Harper leads in Ontario
Poll has Tories making great gains, now in dead heat across country
Scott Stinson And Robert Fife
CanWest News Service
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Stephen Harper's Conservatives have for the first time moved in front of the Liberals in Ontario, a new poll says, raising the possibility of a Tory minority government.
The Ipsos-Reid poll released last night has the Tories with 35% of voter support in Ontario compared with 32% for the Liberals, who hold 97 of the province's 103 seats in the House of Commons.
The numbers reflect a remarkable turnaround in Ontario, where the Liberals held a 31-point lead (46%-15%) in the polls four months ago.
The new poll shows Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals receiving 32% of voter support nationally with Stephen Harper's Conservatives at 31%; the NDP under Jack Layton is at 17% support.
Based on national support, Ipsos-Reid projects the Liberals winning between 119 and 115 seats and the Conservatives taking between 114 and 110. Either party would need 155 seats in the 308-seat legislature to form a majority government.
The poll, which surveyed the voting intentions of 1,000 Canadians between Tuesday and Thursday and was broadcast on a national television network last night, suggests the Liberals have not seen much benefit so far from the recent increased media scrutiny of the Conservative party's positions on such sensitive social issues as abortion rights and gay marriage.
The Tory rise in Ontario also suggests the Liberals remain hampered by voter anger over a provincial Liberal budget last month that broke a pledge to not raise taxes, although the federal numbers in the province have continued to drop over the past week. A poll released Tuesday had the Liberals and Conservatives tied in Ontario with 36% support.
The Liberals have also failed to gain ground in Quebec, where the poll released last night had the Bloc Quebecois at 45% support compared with 28% support for the Liberals.
The Liberals and Conservatives are in a statistical tie nationally, because the difference in voter support is within the poll's margin of error -- 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The Liberals have dropped more than 20 percentage points in the polls since Mr. Martin became Prime Minister in December, with much of the decline attributed to fallout from the Auditor-General's report into the sponsorship scandal.
Mr. Martin refused yesterday to talk about the sponsorship affair, saying an election campaign is the time to talk about "values" instead.
The Prime Minister made the comment after a senior Cabinet minister blamed the scandal -- in which as much as $100-million in questionable payments were made to Quebec advertising agencies -- on some of Jean Chretien's closest advisors.
Mr. Martin refused to comment on the statement by Stephen Owen, the Minister of Public Works, who was quoted as saying there was "political involvement at the highest level" in the scandal.
"I think it's the time to talk about our values as a country," the Prime Minister said. "My priority is health care, daycare. This is important."
He said Canadians should let the judicial inquiry into the sponsorship affair do its work before assigning blame. The probe will not get underway until the fall.
The Prime Minister tried to shift the focus yesterday to Conservative leader Stephen Harper's position on abortion.
Mr. Harper has said he will not introduce legislation, but he would not forbid a Conservative MP from putting it to a vote.
"I have proposed nothing that would limit a woman's right to choose, absolutely nothing," Mr. Harper said yesterday.
"I have no intention of tabling any such legislation in the House of Commons."
Mr. Harper charged that Mr. Martin's position on abortion is hypocritical. Mr. Martin has said if one of his MPs brought forward a private member's bill to outlaw abortion and it were to reach a vote, he would force his Cabinet to vote against it.
"Mr. Martin came to power by promising he would end the democratic deficit and increase the power of MPs. What he's now promising, because it's opportunistic to do so, is suddenly to limit this."
He said Mr. Martin should talk to his MPs, several of whom have in the past tabled legislation proposing to limit abortions and "check with them whether that's what they thought he meant when they supported his coup against Mr. Chretien."
At a daycare centre yesterday, Mr. Martin said he would reintroduce a bill to decriminalize marijuana and joked that he had never smoked a joint, but added "there is a rumour going around that I have eaten brownies."
The change to the laws regarding marijuana would mean fines -- not criminal sentences -- for people caught with small amounts of the drug.