OTTAWA - After decades of waiting, the NDP is getting a rare taste of the political big leagues — where the crowds are larger, the media glare is brighter, and the opponents hit harder.
New Democrats held what was billed as their largest-ever Quebec campaign rally, drawing more than 1,000 supporters to an orange-themed love-in in a riding where they once finished fifth.
That show of strength occured in Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe's downtown Montreal riding, where the NDP finished a distant fifth behind the Marijuana and Green parties a decade ago.
There were other signs of an NDP spike Saturday.
The party platform went from being ignored as a well-meaning opposition wish list to being rushed under the microscope of media scrutiny and opposition attack.
Jack Layton was forced to defend his platform against the accusation that it was a fiscal fairy tale, full of promises that could never possibly be paid for in a real-world federal budget.
He was also accused of making promises, willy-nilly, in some regions like Quebec which might surprise voters in other places.
And despite his longstanding friendly relationship with Duceppe, Layton was suddenly being cast by his Bloc rival as hostile to the aspirations of the Quebec people.
It was all a drastic change from earlier in the campaign, when it looked like Layton might struggle to hold onto his existing seats and he was hardly mentioned by other parties or the media.
A surge in the polls is now fuelling NDP dreams of dozens of new seats and the once-unimaginable prospects of eclipsing the Bloc in Quebec and the Liberals on the opposition benches.
The burst of attention washing over the NDP has even swept some of the spotlight's glare away from Stephen Harper. The prime minister quietly continued his quest for a majority Saturday in the 905 belt around Toronto, where he hopes to steal seats from the Liberals.
All this has led to another knock against Layton: that the rise of his left-wing party will guarantee a right-wing Conservative majority thanks to new splits in the opposition vote.
"This is not the first time people have put a target on my back," Layton told reporters at a crowded Montreal news conference.
"But I can bob and weave as well as anybody else. . . I take it as a compliment."
He may find some of the attacks less flattering than others.
The NDP's newfound status proved jarring enough for Duceppe to make a strident, emotional appeal to his base Saturday:
"This election is a battle between... Canada and Quebec," said a message Saturday from the Bloc leader's Twitter account.
He later erased that note and replaced it with a toned-down appeal for all sovereigntists to back his party. The message is a clear departure from previous campaigns that saw Duceppe work to broaden his appeal beyond sovereigntist voters.
"This election is not a left-right battle, but a battle between federalists and sovereigntists," said the later message from Duceppe's account. "Between the parties of the Canadian majority and Quebec."
There are even anti-NDP attack ads, including a new one from the Liberals featuring a yellow traffic light and the message, "Not so fast, Jack."
The Liberals are pointing out a series of alleged exaggerations in the NDP platform, saying the promises are based on invented revenues like a supposed $3.6 billion that would come in the first year of a climate cap-and-trade system. The Liberals call it, "fantasy money."
The Liberals also heaped ridicule on the NDP promise to hire 1,200 new doctors and 6,000 nurses for the bargain-basement rate of $25 million.
They said the NDP promise to save $2 billion by slashing subsidies to the oil sands overstates the possible savings by four times, and that the math is similarly wonky on the NDP's pledge to crack down on foreign tax havens.
"It's time to take a close look at what Jack Layton's saying to the Canadian people. The numbers add up and up and up," Ignatieff said.
"Mr. Layton has got a platform that when you look at it closely has . . . $30 billion of spending, which we think is not going to be good for the economy and he derives it from sources we just don't think are credible.
"He's got a cap-and-trade system that's going to deliver $3.5 billion in the first year. We don't even have a cap and trade system. It's science fiction."
Layton is also facing more pointed questions about just how much he is promising people — especially Quebec nationalists — in order to gain their support.
He underwent a grilling in a CBC radio interview over his promise to let B.C. drop the Harmonized Sales Tax but keep the federal compensation money anyway.
He was also forced to defend the logic of giving Quebec additional seats in the House of Commons, whenever the chamber expands, to ensure it continues to have about one-quarter of the seats in the country.
Asked for examples of how he would create the so-called "winning conditions" for Quebec to sign the Constitution, Layton replied that he would do it by exporting things Quebecers are proud of — like public daycare — to the rest of the country. When interviewer Kathleen Petty suggested the country might not be able to afford such a program, Layton replied that it was a priority for Canadians.
At the same time Layton is being forced to fend off suggestions his party would hurt Quebec.
The Bloc says NDP policies, including the design of its cap-and-trade system, would work against the province and the sovereigntist party argued that only it has Quebec's interests at heart.
Layton began his Montreal speech by reminding the audience that he was born in that city. He also dismissed the attempt to turn the election into a mini-referendum on Quebec independence.
"I believe Quebecers have seen the same-old, same-old politics going on, year after year in Quebec, and they're beginning to say, 'Perhaps we want to be at the leading edge of change,' " he told a news conference before arriving in Montreal.
"We've offered to Quebecers the same thing we've offered to all Canadians: We will look after the issues of health care of your families, we will focus on job-creation, we will work hard to provide economic security for seniors, and we will try to take steps to make life a little more affordable — and people are responding to this in Quebec, very strongly."
While his foes fought over the role of Opposition leader, Harper continued courting voters in key ridings he would need to take him above the magic 155-seat mark and into majority territory.
The prime minister delivered a speech on religious freedom in Toronto, touting his party's promise to create an office to monitor persecution abroad.
He illustrated his case by telling the story of his recent encounter with Pakistani cabinet minister Shahbaz Bhatti — just before he was murdered last month.
Harper called the encounter unforgettable. Later in the event, the late cabinet minister's brother took to the stage to speak at the rally.
But that message was overshadowed by questions about a controversial endorsement that was given to a Conservative candidate in B.C.
Harper supporters, prompted by campaign staffers, drowned out the media by cheering loudly for over a minute as a journalist tried asking a question about an endorsement from Ripudaman Singh Malik — who was acquitted of criminal charges laid in the 1985 Air India bombings.
The party says it would never have knowingly accepted an endorsement from Malik.
The cheering crowd made it impossible to ask Harper how, given Malik's profile in B.C., his local candidate could possibly have been unaware that she was attending an event where Malik gave the endorsement.
The Tory candidate, Wai Young, said she had no warning that Malik would be at the event that was held at a local school and would not have gone had she known.
In raising the issue on Friday, the Liberals questioned Young's judgement in being at an event with Malik. They pointed out Malik had links to the only man convicted in the bombings.
Evidence entered during Malik's trial revealed he provided financial assistance to the family of Inderjit Singh Reyat. Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter for supplying parts to make the bombs that brought down an Air India jet, killing more than 300 people.
But the impact of the NDP surge was on Harper's mind late Saturday afternoon at a rally in Campbell River, on Vancouver Island's northeast coast.
Harper flew directly to the island from Toronto in an effort to shore up Tory incumbent John Duncan, who faces a fierce challenge from the NDP.
"Friends, this is important, because I know here we're not under any illusion here — your main competition here is the NDP," Harper told a crowd of about 500 in a stuffy community centre gymnasium.
A stronger NDP could help the Tories overall, but also hurt them in some pockets of the country; B.C. is considered among the latter.