Canada's Conservatives, now heavily favored to win the Jan. 23 election, unveiled a policy platform on Friday they said would rein in the current Liberal government's "reckless pace" of spending, Reuters reported. In one of few surprises left in the platform, they also pledged to eliminate capital gains taxes on the sale of assets, as long as the proceeds were reinvested within six months. They said their six weeks of almost daily campaign promises would result in C$60.7 billion ($52.3 billion) in net new tax cuts and additional spending, and leave larger budget surpluses than the Liberal platform can produce. "All of these things have been carefully considered and fully budgeted. We've been working on them for months," Conservative leader Stephen Harper told supporters. "Our government must always see tax dollars not as a large pile of money but as an incredible amount of public trust." Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale charged that the Conservative plan risked landing Canada -- the only member of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations posting budget surpluses -- back in deficit. Calling the Tory plan "a formula for fudge", Goodale said it had a C$30 billion hole that could only be paid for by tax hikes, program cuts or budget deficits, or more likely all three. But the Conservatives say they have booked C$22.5 billion in savings over the Liberals by keeping spending growth in most ministries to inflation plus population growth -- about 2.2 percent -- and C$6.8 billion in reallocation from budgeted Liberal spending. They project they would have C$22.7 billion of surpluses over the next five years available for uses such as transfers to provinces and cities. That is on top of C$15 billion allocated to paying down the debt. The Liberal plan also would keep Canada in the black, with C$14.2 billion available for other spending over five years. Harper is riding a surge in popularity that polls show is likely to end 12 years of Liberal rule, with the main question whether he will win a minority or a majority in Parliament. A party needs 155 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons to form a majority government. Martin's minority government was brought down in November over findings of kickbacks to Liberal Party members from government contracts. The Strategic Counsel polling firm projected in Friday's Globe and Mail newspaper that the Conservatives would take 152 seats -- just short of a majority but well up on the 98 they had when Parliament was dissolved. The Liberals would drop to 74 seats from 133, the separatist Bloc Quebecois would rise to 60 from 53 and the leftist New Democrats would bump up to 21 from 18. "We've got a good feeling," Harper said, careful however not to predict a majority. He mused about one in the 2004 election campaign, when he was leading by a smaller margin, but nervous voters ended up swinging back to the Liberals. He said he could feel momentum this time around. "I don't see momentum because we got good poll numbers. I saw momentum long before that just from the number of volunteers we're getting on the ground, the reaction our candidates are getting at the door and the donations that are flowing into the party," he said. Revenue Minister John McCallum predicted the Liberals would still win but said "the possibility of Mr. Harper becoming prime minister becomes more real as we approach election day." A Strategic Counsel poll showed 39 percent support for the Conservatives and 27 percent for the Liberals. An SES/CPAC survey put the gap at 40 percent to 31 percent. The economic centerpiece of the Conservative platform is a C$32.3 billion plan to cut the oft-reviled federal sales tax. They would not proceed with a series of income tax cuts announced late last year by the Liberal government. The Liberals have largely run on their record, including the elimination of the deficit in the 1990s and an agreement to give the provinces more health dollars. They accuse Harper of being right-wing and too close to the United States.
