OTTAWA - Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is in Toronto today, where he'll keep stressing health care, which he calls the sleeper issue of the campaign for the May 2 election.
Ignatieff seems to have caught a second wind on health care. He accuses Prime Minister Stephen Harper of not making it a priority; but says the Liberals will.
Ignatieff contrasts his "family pack" pack of policies with what he says is Harper's focus on "jets, jails and corporate tax cuts."
The Liberal leader's spending proposals, including a $1-billion home care policy prompted Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to joke that Ignatieff is heading back to the days of high taxes and high spending.
"He might as well be wearing bell-bottom pants, a gold chain and big mutton-chop sideburns."
Harper himself is taking a down day after the formal launch of the Conservative platform on Friday.
NDP Leader Jack Layton is La Ronge, Sask., and Saskatoon, where he'll trying wooing voters angered by his party's support of the long-gun registry.
The Liberals and Tories duelled with health care money on Friday.
They both said they'll keep on with six-per-cent annual increase in health-care transfer to the provinces even after the present federal-provincial agreement on health expires in 2014. Us too, said Layton.
Keeping transfers rising at that level would cost about $2 billion a year.
Harper's platform contains a number of issues that are either holdovers from the March 22 budget or have been announced earlier in the campaign.
But it also promises to erase the deficit a year earlier than forecast in the budget while continuing to boost health funding and cut spending. Those cuts weren't detailed.
The 67-page document touched on variety of subjects, from a plan to publish the expenses of aboriginal chiefs to celebrating the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812.
It focused on five priorities: creating jobs, supporting families, eliminating the deficit, getting tough on crime and investing in the North.
Ignatieff brushed off the Tory proposals, saying Harper hasn't put a cent into health care that wasn't already committed by the previous Liberal government.
The Liberal pledged to ease the demands on the health-care system with the home care proposal, a national food strategy and negotiations with the provinces on a national prescription drug plan.
Layton announced his party's defence policy at a campaign event in Esquimalt, B.C., the country's principal West Coast navy base.
He said new naval vessels will get priority over new fighter jets in his party's policy.
He also pledged a new white paper, a formal study which would chart the course of the military's future. The last defence review of this kind was done in 1994.
Layer also said he'll stick with the $21 billion in defence spending proposed in the March 22 Tory budget. That may get him into hot water with some in his part who think that's too much to spend on the military.