LONDON, Ont. - Stephen Harper was drenched with rain and later showered with affection during a campaign-style swing through southwestern Ontario in which he sprinkled money, buttered up the troops, bragged of Conservative achievements and took a predictable run at the opposition.
The three stops in Kitchener and London on Thursday took on all the trappings of an election campaign the prime minister said he hoped won't come any time soon.
Still, the day appeared a test-run of many themes on which the next election will be fought.
In essence, he said, voters will have a choice between a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition or a majority Conservative government.
"Don't let anyone ever tell you they are not a coalition — they work together on everything," he said.
Harper accused the three other parties of "obstruction for the sake of obstruction."
They should never be given the chance to govern Canada, he said.
"We have to defeat the coalition and ensure that we have a Conservative majority that can keep this country moving forward."
He took direct aim at the separatist Bloc Quebecois for its "bizarre" criticism of a program that offers free passes to national parks to Grade 8 students.
"It's the habit of the Bloc Quebecois to see anything as a federalist plot," Harper said after announcing funding for local transit in Kitchener.
He refused to predict when the next election might happen, saying that was in the hands of the opposition.
The focus of his minority Conservative government has to be on the economy, not on an election, he said.
At the airport in London, where Harper opened a new cargo-processing area, the skies opened up in a brief deluge as he spoke.
The PM was forced to wipe away rain from his forehead and grappled with the soggy pages of his speech before tossing the paper aside.
Later, in a speech to about 1,000 enthusiastic supporters at a party barbecue in London, Harper took credit for steering the country through the worst global recession since the Second World War.
He struck a note of caution about the recovery, given the sluggish economy in the United States and the mountains of debt many governments have incurred battling the slump.
"There are others in Parliament . . . who couldn't care less about balancing the budget," Harper said.
He bragged about his government's spending on the military, arguing the opposition always speaks against such investments.
He trumpeted law-and-order initiatives, including one to stop long-term federal prisoners — such as serial killer Clifford Olson — from receiving government pensions.
The opposition, he said, appeared more interested in the rights of the criminal than in those of law-abiding citizens.
He drew his loudest applause when he alluded to the raging debate over Canada's gun registry.
"We support gun control that targets guns in the hands in the hands of criminals, not gun control that tries to make criminals out of farmers and duck hunters."
