Canada's Chretien tries to woo cool Quebec

Chretien

MONTREAL, Canada (Reuters) -- Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Friday took his reelection campaign to his native Quebec, where he is so unpopular that he could possibly lose enough seats to jeopardize his majority in Parliament.

With three days left in the campaign, Chretien tried to fend off the four other opposition parties, all of them salivating at the idea of holding the balance of power if the Liberals win less than half of Parliament's seats.

"I think we're in a very good position ... to form a majority government," he told reporters.

A Reuters/Zogby poll released on Friday put the Liberals ahead of the right-wing Canadian Alliance by 41 to 27 points, a smaller gap than the 19-point lead the Liberals won in the 1997 election when they had only a five-seat majority.

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And a Decima poll released by Global TV later in the day had the Liberal lead shrinking in the last two days to 39-26 percent from 39-23 percent in the previous three days.

The Liberals hold 29 of Quebec's 75 seats in the 301-member House of Commons and had hoped to pick up 10 more in this election. Chretien still bravely predicted on Friday that the Liberals would win a majority of Quebec's seats.

But much of Quebec's French population holds him in disdain, and a Sondagem poll released on Friday by Le Devoir newspaper gave the Bloc 33.9 percent against 30.7 percent for the Liberals, with a high 19.2 percent undecided.

In fact, the Liberals have not staged a major public rally in Montreal, Quebec's largest city.

Sandwiched between big rallies in Toronto on Thursday morning and Friday evening, Chretien flew in to Montreal only for a speech on Friday morning to a retirement home -- his support among seniors is strongest -- and a photo opportunity at a plant that makes ski poles.

"Three days from the election, (the Liberal Party) is running a cautious campaign of an old codger," mused the province's largest paper, the Journal de Montreal.

Chretien, 66, has had to face comparisons with 50-year-old Stockwell Day, the Alliance leader, and that of Finance Minister Paul Martin, 62, who is much more popular both in Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Martin, who is eager for Chretien to retire, appears in French television ads with Chretien, with not a hint of the hostility that exists between their two camps, and he cordially announced Chretien at the seniors residence.

If Chretien fails to win a majority, Martin's people are bound to howl for his removal. And even if Chretien does succeed, the prime minister will face an automatic leadership review by March 2002, at which time the Martin camp is certain to press once again for Chretien to go.

At the evening rally in Toronto, he warned that if the Liberals were forced into a minority, the Bloc would hold the balance of power. In fact, no single party would hold the balance of power; the Liberals would have to turn to other parties to pass their legislation.

Both Chretien and Day seized on remarks on Friday by Conservative leader Joe Clark in an interview published by the Quebec newspaper La Presse saying the separatist Bloc Quebecois's program was not separatist.

"The program of the Bloc is not one of independence," Clark was quoted as saying. He also expressed a willingness to consider co-operating with the Bloc on certain issues.

Clark's once-ruling Conservatives were the fifth party in the last Parliament but in the past two weeks they have risen to third place, with 14 percent in the Reuters/Zogby poll.

That threatens both the Alliance, which is vying with the Conservatives for right-wing voters, and the Liberals, who see them as the main threat in Atlantic Canada, another region key to Liberal hopes of keeping their majority.

"Come on, Joe. The Bloc Quebecois is a separatist party. The Bloc Quebecois is absolutely devoted to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada," Chretien said. "We will not make that compromise with the separatists."

In Winnipeg, Day declared: "It's a surprise for me...This (idea of an alliance with the Bloc) is not possible for me and I'm surprised it's possible for the Conservatives."

Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, heading out on a 36-hour campaign swing, ruled out any coalition with Clark.

But Clark protested: "There's never been any question of a formal alliance. Certainly I would not contemplate a formal alliance with the Bloc Quebecois or with other parties."

At the Toronto rally, Chretien said: "Joe Clark should stop playing footsie with the separatists."

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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