SAINT JOHN, N.B. – Jack Layton sat down at a piano Monday and launched into an impromptu jazz version of "Hit the Road Jack."
"I always play it before someone else does," he said, laughing, as he brushed off an encore request.
There’s no doubt the NDP leader is hitting the road on the last week of the election campaign with a lot more spring in his step.
Recent polls show the New Democrats surging in support in several areas of Canada, including Quebec, making these last days ahead of the May 2 vote crucial for him and his party.
That momentum has some questioning whether the NDP would divide left-leaning support and effectively hand Stephen Harper’s Conservatives a long-awaited majority government.
Layton bristled at that question Monday during a campaign stop at the same hotel Saint John, N.B., hotel where he played the piano.
"This is the absurd proposal that somehow you don’t really have a choice but to vote for the one or other of the two old-line parties," he said.
Besides, he wouldn’t suggest the Liberal alternative, Layton said.
"I don’t recommend that people vote for a party that has supported Stephen Harper 100 times in the last two-and-a-half years," he said. "What sense would that make?"
On the issue of Quebec, where support has risen dramatically for the NDP in the last decade, Layton said it appears Quebecers are looking for a choice.
As if to accentuate that choice, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe brought a well-known separatist warhorse – Jacques Parizeau – out on the campaign trail Monday.
Speaking at a Bloc rally near Montreal, Parizeau urged Parti Quebecois members to stoke support for their separatist cousins.
The former Quebec premier led sovereigntist forces in the 1995 referendum and his appearance seemed designed to rejuvenate Bloc support.
Layton said that makes the choice even clearer.
"We’re offering something new. We’re offering a real choice to Quebecers and all Canadians," he said.
"The Bloc Quebecois offers a different choice. Ours is new, ours talks about bringing people together instead of dividing people."
Both the Conservatives and Liberals have recently unleashed attack ads targeting the NDP.
The latest Liberal ad takes aim at both Layton and Harper, deriding them as two sides of the same coin.
It accuses Layton of teaming up with Harper in 2005 to torpedo a national daycare plan under the previous Liberal government.
"And Layton? He’d jack up your taxes to pay for $70 billion in new spending," the ad claims.
The Liberals have also attacked the NDP’s claim that they could generate billions of dollars almost immediately from a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gases which has yet to be set up.
But Layton isn’t backing away from the plan.
"It’s sufficiently popular that even the Liberals copied that element of it," he said. "We’re very optimistic that it can be implemented in a timely way."
He said the New Democrats would take a fiscally responsible approach and if something doesn’t bring in enough revenue, then something else will have to be cut.
"Our spending will always be calibrated to the revenues that are coming in and I think Canadians expect to see that," he said.
It was Layton’s first New Brunswick stop in this campaign. The NDP holds only one of the province’s 10 seats.
About 300 people packed a pier on the Saint John waterfront to see Layton, who – despite his recent hip surgery – bounced on his toes to try to assess the size of the crowd.
Layton kept his Quebec momentum going at a noisy Gatineau rally Monday night where about 500 people cheered as he announced improvements for pay equity for women.
"I will reverse Stephen Harper on pay equity. I will improve EI benefits for parental leave," he said.
Women are working harder to balance work and home, but they still make only 71 cents for every dollar earned by men, Layton said.
"And I will work to get more women elected to the House of Commons," he promised to loud cheers.
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