Leaders prepping for debate

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Three federal leaders face off tonight in the last english language debate of the campaign. And the only place you can watch it on broadcast TV in Ontario is on CHCH.

Tom Mulcair, Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper will gear up for the event in private today. A common practice is to use role players to stand in for other leaders.

The Liberal party won’t reveal how Trudeau is preparing, but say their leader is calm and looking forward to talking about the economy. NDP leader Mulcair will remain in his room at Calgary’s Fairmont Hotel and will use the entire day to go over the main issues with his closest advisors.
Harper has no Conservative campaign events today as he wants to use the time before to get ready.

Yesterday on the eve of the debate, the NDP gambled and announced the costing of their promises. In order to pay for their plans they will cancel some Conservative tax breaks and increase corporate taxes to 17 per cent from 15 per cent.

NDP candidate Andrew Thomson, a former finance minister in Saskatchewan, says “based on both the finance numbers and the (parliamentary Budget Office) projections as of July, it’s a double balance. The number is roughly between $3 and 4 billion a year in surplus and contingency, and I think that that’s important to outline that this number does include the contingency within it.”

Liberal finance critic John McCallum doesn’t agree. “The NDP policies will lead to nearly 200,000 job losses almost immediately. Second, Thomas Mulcair’s promises are meaningless. He is backing off multi-million dollar promises on transit, child care, development assistance, and much else.”

“Third, his math doesn’t add up.”

McCallum wasn’t the only one to find faults. Conservative defence minister Jason Kenney says the 2 per cent raise to corporate taxes would result in the loss of 150,000 thousand jobs.

The Liberal party is also getting a lot of criticism for its fiscal plan; from running consecutive deficits before balancing the budget, to why the party hasn’t released a fully-costed platform with details on revenue and expenditures for Trudeau’s promises.

“On the contrary, we are the the very first party to have put out a detailed framework about where every single dollar that we’re investing in our cities, in our communities, in growth, in jobs, is going to come from.”

Harper has been promoting his economic action plan throughout the campaign. The Tories have not yet released a full costing of their fiscal plan.

This is the seventh week of the campaign and four percentage points separate the three main parties. The latest numbers released by Forum Research show the Conservatives regaining the lead with 32 per cent support, the NDP with 30 per cent and the Liberals with 28 per cent.

The leaders debate will begin at 8 o’clock tonight on CHCH and streaming on CHCH.com, and will be followed by a post-debate analysis with Nick Dixon. We will have full coverage on the Evening News at 11.