TORONTO - Pre-election sniping continued Wednesday as Liberal Leader Stephane Dion attacked Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a short-sighted hypocrite.
In a well received speech to about 750 Liberal supporters, Dion accused Harper of having nothing positive to show for his year in office.
"Never before has a Canadian government done so little with so much," Dion said, as some 30 members of his Toronto-area caucus looked on.
"Never before has a Canadian government missed such an opportunity."
Dion criticized the recent Conservative budget as "written by a pollster" that panders rather than builds a strong economy.
The budget, he said, did nothing for the poor or children, while the scrapping of the tax-free status of income trusts was a broken promise for which "a million Canadians paid the price."
Even Harper's declaration on Wednesday of a wait-times guarantee for one health-care service in each province can be considered a "failure," Dion said.
That's because Harper promised such guarantees in five different kinds of surgery.
"Delivering a guarantee in only one of five promised areas is not delivery, it's failure," Dion said.
"We need a wait-times guarantee for Conservative wait-time promises."
Dion, a former environment minister, accused the prime minister of cloaking himself in green now that polls show Canadians want action on climate change.
The Conservatives, he said, are running a "con job" on Canadians when it comes to the environment.
"Stephen Harper has no conviction," Dion said.
At one point in his speech, Dion accused Harper of "blackmail and electoral manipulations" in a quest to strip the federal government of its powers.
While both Harper and Dion insist they don't want a quick election, both leaders have been upping the temperature of their rhetoric in recent weeks.
Each accuses the other of wanting to precipitate a vote they say Canadians don't want, and both say they are ready if the minority Conservative government falls.
On Tuesday in Goderich, Ont., about 700 Tories heard Harper blast Dion as a waffler when it comes to Canada's mission in Afghanistan and the Liberals as a party of corruption.
The Tories have also launched a series of negative ads against Dion, portraying him as spineless.
"You can't blame the Conservative party for running negative ads," Dion said.
"They wanted to do a commercial about all the good things they've done ... but there wasn't enough material for a 30-second spot."
