Canadian PM in gruelling final bid to retain power

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin launched a gruelling final bid yesterday to drum up enough support for his ruling Liberals to stave off defeat in the June 28 election.

When Mr Martin took over from fellow Liberal Jean Chretien last December, supporters predicted he would win more than 200 of the 308 seats in Parliament in the next election.

But triumphalism has long since evaporated as polls suggest the Liberals - suffering both from a patronage scandal and from what many say has been a poor campaign - will win fewer seats than the opposition Conservatives of Stephen Harper.

Aides said a tired-looking Martin, 65, would put in a series of 20-hour days in the final week of the campaign as he flies back and forth across the world's second-largest country. The Liberals have been in power since November 1993, but are now in serious trouble.

"Over the next seven days... (we will try) to prove to Canadians that we are eager to earn their support, to prove to Canadians that we will not take a single vote for granted," Mr Martin told a breakfast rally in northern Ontario, a Liberal stronghold now under threat from the Conservatives.

"(We must) demonstrate to Canadians that issue by issue, we are prepared to work hard to earn their confidence."

Neither the Liberals or the Conservatives are likely to win overall control of Parliament and will therefore have to seek the support of a smaller grouping to govern.

The Liberals started the campaign on May 23 with 38 per cent support in the polls and have now slumped to 29 per cent, compared with 32 per cent for the Conservatives. But Mr Martin said he was optimistic the tide was turning in his favour.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the wind is at our backs and that we have really got the momentum now," Mr Martin told reporters after the rally.

Support for the Liberals has weakened to the extent that Mr Martin has been forced to spend large chunks of time campaigning in the vote-rich central province of Ontario, where the party could lose dozens of seats previously thought to be safe.

He has been lashing out at Mr Harper on several issues, including the opposition leader's plans for tax cuts, which Mr Martin says would either mean massive spending cuts or a return to deficit budgets and were therefore "a culmination of nonsense".

Mr Martin also accuses his rival of trying to hide some controversial policies until after the election.

He cited a letter from a Harper aide saying the party would revoke an act that requires Air Canada to be bilingual and to keep its headquarters in Montreal - an idea which is not part of the Conservative platform.

Mr Harper, whose support base is primarily in the west of Canada, was not campaigning yesterday. He will be spending much of the last week in traditional Liberal areas of Ontario.