Â鶹ӰÊÓ

After a weekend full of partisan jabs over a hypothetical coalition, the federal election campaign finally turned towards policy on Monday.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper proposed an income-splitting measure he says will eliminate tax unfairness for Canadian families, but Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says withholding the move until the budget is balanced is putting corporate concerns ahead of people's needs.

At a campaign stop in Saanich, British Columbia on Monday, Harper said his party's top priority is still "completing the economic recovery and eliminating the deficit without raising taxes."

But Harper said the proposed tax break will only happen after the budget is balanced – which the Tories say won't happen until at least 2015.

The 2010-11 deficit sits at $40.4 billion, down from a previous projection of $45.4 billion.

"We will build on our record with a low-tax plan for families," he said, explaining that "eliminating tax unfairness" for households with children under 18 will be one of his party's highest priorities.

The proposed measure, he said, will allow eligible families to share up to $50,000 of their household income for tax purposes. The tax cut is projected to cost about $2.5 billion per year and could save families anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars annually.

With the plan not coming into effect until at last 2015, it is very likely there will be at least one more election prior to that.

Harper said the move will occur "within our next term," a veiled hint at his expectation of winning a majority.

Liberals respond

But even before Harper made the official announcement, Ignatieff went on the offensive, accusing the Conservatives of putting the needs of corporations ahead of families.

At a press conference convened on the theme of "government waste," Ignatieff took aim at the proposed income-splitting tax scheme, zeroing in on the provision that it would not come into effect until the federal budget is balanced.

Answering reporters' questions at a press conference in Toronto, Ignatieff said Harper's Tories expect balancing the books to take another five years.

"It's like he's saying to middle-class families: take a number and come back in five years and we'll see what we can do for you," Ignatieff said at the first of his day's three Toronto-area events.

"That's what you get, that's the policies that you get if you put banks, insurance companies and oil companies first and leave Canadian families at the back of the line."

David Quist, head of the Institute of Marriage and Family, which has been advocating for income splitting for families for the past four years, hailed Harper's announcement, saying "anything that we can do that will assist families deal with the day-to-day finances is a good thing."

Quist told CTV's Power Play Monday evening that the measure's delay is "the fly in the ointment," saying anything can happen between now and 2015 to derail the Conservative's plan to balance the budget.

But he said the tax break will allow families to use the funds in the way that best suits them.

"I think that's where the benefit is, that we can ensure that what's best for one family isn't necessarily best for the other," Quist said. "One size doesn't fit all."

However, an economist with Carleton University says the proposed policy will mostly benefit high-earning, single-income households.

"This is a socially conservative move, not a fiscally conservative move," Frances Woolley told The Canadian Press.

The Tories say the tax break will save an average of $1,300 per family, but Wooley says the actual dollar amount varies wildly.

He says someone earning $127,000 a year with a stay at home spouse would save about $6,000. In comparison, a one or two income family where neither spouse makes more than $40,000 would not get a tax break at all.

Tory priorities misplaced: Ignatieff

Meanwhile, Ignatieff blasted the Conservatives for misplacing priorities on a host of issues, not least of which he said is their offer of corporate tax cuts before giving breaks to families, as well as spending on stealth fighter jets and prisons. Ignatieff said the spending spree would leave government coffers empty when the federal-provincial health-care accord expires in 2014.

"If you spend billions on fighter jets, on mega-prisons, very quickly by 2014 we'll reach a point where there's not enough money to work with the provinces in order to save the universal, accessible health system we have," Ignatieff said.

The Liberal leader said his party will not raise business, personal or sales taxes.

Ignatieff also pledged to unveil his complete election platform within the week, with small announcements planned for each day leading up to the big announcement. While details were scarce, campaign staffers said the platform will be focused on families.

Describing his experience meeting middle-class Canadian families for whom the 'elastic is stretched tight,' Ignatieff said, "That's why we have a firm commitment not to raise taxes on small business or on Canadian families."

Harper was apparently unconvinced, however, as he told supporters that Canadians are still left with a choice between his fiscally prudent team and the Grits' "high-tax agenda."

"We want to tell people what our priorities are when we reach that fiscal position," Harper said, explaining why Canadians should be interested in hearing what might happen so far down the road.

NDP Leader Jack Layton, campaigning in Saskatchewan, also criticized Harper's announcement Monday, saying Canadian families "need help right now, and this policy announcement from Mr. Harper shows he doesn't understand that.

"He thinks that people can wait and -- on a wing and a prayer -- maybe get some help some day."

An NDP press release also pointed out that Harper has a history of decrying such moves.

"This is exactly the sort of cynical move Stephen Harper used to denounce," said the NDP release, which went on to quote Harper from the 2005 election campaign, when he attacked a Liberal pledge to devote $10 billion over 10 years on childcare.

"Why not $100 billion over 100 years?" Harper was quoted as saying at the time. "In our system, you actually have to get a mandate from the people. You can't just declare that you're going to govern for 10 years."

Leaders target 'battleground' ridings

Ignatieff targeted Toronto-area voters Monday, amid concerns that traditional Liberal strongholds, such as the downtown core, may fall to the Conservatives. With the election of a right-of-centre mayor in the city and the provincial Liberals taking a hit in the polls, Ignatieff scheduled three events to reach out to GTA residents.

Before meeting with business leaders in Toronto's Chinatown neighbourhood, Ignatieff dismissed suggestions that he was mimicking a Tory strategy by targeting voters from various cultural backgrounds.

"The word 'ethnic vote' -- spare us this," Ignatieff said. "I don't think it treats people with respect. These are Canadians.

"I'm going out there and saying, 'a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, come on into the big red tent."'

Meanwhile, Harper's schedule earlier Monday focused on battleground ridings just north of Victoria, B.C, where he lent support to the incumbent MP, Minister of State (Sport) Gary Lunn on Monday.

The Saanich-Gulf Islands riding promises to be hotly contested, as Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who moved from Halifax to Sidney two years ago, is campaigning there in her third bid to secure a Green Party seat in the Commons.

Although she had no formal campaign events planned, May planned to meet with her team before canvassing the riding on Monday. And the Liberals are knocking on doors in the Vancouver Island riding too, with author and climate change activist Renee Hetherington mounting her own campaign for the seat there.

Harper then travelled to Alberta, where he lent his support to Edmonton-Strathcona candidate Ryan Hastman in his bid to reclaim the only Alberta seat Conservatives lost in 2008, when NDP Linda Duncan ousted Rahim Jaffer.

In a speech to supporters in Beaumont, Harper said to cheers: "On May 2, let's paint Alberta blue. Every, single riding."

NDP Leader Jack Layton is trying to boost his party's recent electoral fortunes with a pair of stops in the onetime NDP stronghold that's now Conservative-dominated Saskatchewan.

Layton had scheduled two stops in the central-Saskatchewan riding of Palliser, where the NDP hopes Regina lawyer Noah Evanchuk can take back the riding they had held between 1997 and 2004. Before the event in Palliser, Layton addressed an enthusiastic gathering of supporters in the Regina-area riding of Wascana.

Turning the crowd's memories back to promises that the Tories made on their way into government five years ago, Layton said that, rather than fulfill promises to put an end to scandals in government, Harper has "just replaced them with scandals of his own."

Disenchanted voters should look to the NDP, Layton said, suggesting he could do what recent Liberal and Conservative prime ministers have not.

"Instead of action, when folks turn on the evening news all they see is the same old scandals that they thought had been left behind with the Liberals. Well I think people are concluding one thing: that Ottawa is broken and it's time for us to fix it," he said.

The NDP has announced it is targeting Saskatchewan after placing second in 12 of 14 ridings in the province in the 2008 election. While the party was well back in many of those ridings, Layton and his team have identified three ridings in particular to target: Palliser, Regina Qu'Appelle and Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar.

"Uniting behind this team, behind New Democrats, in every corner of this province is the only way that you'll send a message to Stephen Harper that Saskatchewan will no longer be taken for granted," Layton told the Wascana crowd.