FREDERICTON - Liberal Leader Stephane Dion is urging Canadians to "Go green, vote red" as he embarks on one last cross-country tour before Tuesday's vote.
Asking Green and NDP supporters to vote Liberal instead is more about conviction than strategy, because the fight against climate change can't wait, he said Monday.
Despite polls that suggest the Liberals are still trailing behind the Conservatives, Dion was chipper as he arrived for a rally at Liberal campaign headquarters in Fredericton.
It's a tight race in the traditionally Tory riding that was held for the last 15 years by Liberal Andy Scott, who is not running again.
The local race is so close that Prime Minister Stephen Harper paid a visit later Monday as part of his own cross-country sprint to shore up votes.
Dion was asked why he's spending precious time in the last hours of the campaign in British Columbia, where the Liberals appear to be far behind, instead of in key Ontario battlegrounds targeted Monday by NDP Leader Jack Layton.
"We have great candidates, we are in the race, we are in the competition," Dion said.
The Liberals are not expected to win more than about two seats in B.C.
"I will go from Atlantic to Pacific to send the message that if we pull together, if we bring our vote together, everything is possible. We'll have a progressive government, a Liberal government for all Canadians.
"United, anything is possible."
When asked if it's too late for a Liberal win, Dion laughed off such pessimism.
"I don't understand the question, can you repeat it?" he joked, referring to last week's painful episode in Halifax when the Conservatives made hay out of Dion's misunderstanding of a TV reporter's awkwardly phrased question on the economy.
Anything is possible if those who care about the environment unite behind the Liberals, Dion said, speaking straight into a television camera covering his daily scrum with reporters.
Dion again took shots at Harper for refusing in the last days of the campaign to take questions from reporters travelling with him.
Harper has built his whole campaign "on a lie," Dion said of Conservative claims that the Liberal Green Shift plan would raise taxes.
In fact, average families will enjoy tax cuts of about 10 per cent, Dion said. Low-income Canadians will receive more.
"I'm speaking of a vote of conviction -- not strategic," Dion said of his appeals to Green and New Democrat supporters to "Go green, vote red."
His rationale is that the Liberals are the one party with a realistic chance to govern on a strong environmental platform, a polluter-pays carbon tax with offsetting income-tax cuts that is supported by 250 economists.
"There's one economist who disagrees with them," Dion said, referring to Harper, an economist by training.
"He will hopefully be prime minister no more than tomorrow night."
Dion has his work cut out for him according to consistent polls pegging Liberal support at about 26 per cent nationally. Such a result on election night would not be enough to match the Liberal claim on 99 of 308 House of Commons seats won in 2006.
The Liberals had 95 seats when Harper contravened his own fixed-date election law and forced an early campaign last month.
Dion landed Monday afternoon for a packed rally at a restaurant in Longueuil, on the south shore of Montreal.
About 300 people cheered as Dion made his case for Bloc Quebecois supporters to instead vote Liberal: "Not so that we can stop Harper," he said of Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe's appeal to Bloc voters to prevent a Conservative majority.
"But so that we can replace him."
The Liberals are the only real alternative for Quebecers who want to back a party with a shot at governing, Dion stressed.
He was on the ground for about two hours before heading to Vancouver via Winnipeg.
