QUEBEC - In his first campaign stop in Quebec on Saturday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper touched on the emotion of history and culture as well as the pragmatic lures of federal cash and greater power at the federal table.
If the Conservatives can dislodge more Bloc Quebecois MPs from their seats around Quebec City and Montreal, they could come significantly closer to piecing together a majority government.
The party currently holds 11 seats in the province, with four in the Quebec City area alone, but trails well behind the Bloc in the polls.
Harper pointedly reminded a crowd assembled in a small, stuffy community centre that only the Conservatives can put local MPs in important positions within the federal government. The slogan behind him read, "Our region in power."
"The citizens of Quebec City region want to be in the centre of the action, it's here that the country was founded in French, a little more than 400 years ago," Harper said, as local MPs and candidates looked on.
"Quebec City and the region was already the capital of the country and is now the capital of the Quebec nation. People in Quebec like to be in government, and not in eternal opposition."
To combat the power of the Bloc, which holds 47 of the province's 75 seats, the Conservatives are dedicating a campaign bus solely to travel the province. Quebec lieutenant Christian Paradis will lead this campaign.
"With that bus, our ministers, MPs and candidates will be very visible during the entire campaign," Harper told the crowd. "I can assure you that we won't let the coalition spread lies without responding to them."
The coalition issue was a major theme in his speech in Quebec, just as it was earlier in the day when he launched his campaign on the steps of Rideau Hall. Despite Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's categorical denial that he would ever consider a coalition arrangement with Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe, Harper said he can't be believed.
"Take two seconds to imagine what a this coalition would look like," the prime minister said. "Imagine the centralizers like the federal Liberals trying to work with Quebec sovereigntists. It's a real slapdash coalition."
The prime minister has problems in the Quebec City region over his refusal to finance a new hockey arena to serve as a the future home of a returning Nordiques hockey team.
The idea was abandoned amid grumbling inside and outside the party about using tax dollars for professional sports at a time of economic fragility. Still, Harper personally showed up in Quebec City 10 days ago to announce $21.6 million in federal money to help expand the local airport.
A deal to reimburse Quebec for harmonizing its sales tax with the GST has still not been signed, a fact that Duceppe will pound away on during the election.
Harper had hoped to gain more seats in the province during the last federal election, but the hope faded after he made a ill-chosen comment deriding artists who were clamouring for more arts funding.
In opening his campaign, Harper cited a long list of stimulus plan projects his government had dedicated to Quebec and to the Quebec City region, including funding for a series of arts festivals and community centre improvements.
He also outlined several measures that his party had proposed in the federal budget that had been tabled only days before the fall of the minority government.
And he stressed repeatedly that these budget benefits came without higher taxes.
