SHERBROOKE, Que. - While federal Liberals were having their photos snapped for campaign posters and practising door-knocking, their leader insists he's not in election mode.
During a two-day tour of southern Quebec, Michael Ignatieff met with several dozen Liberal candidates at an election prep workshop and greeted supporters.
The all-day study session Friday saw aspiring MPs pose for campaign pictures and get training on the finer points of stumping.
But Ignatieff says it's just about being ready.
"Everybody's talking about elections, I'm not talking election," he told reporters at one point.
"It's crucial we prepare our candidates so they can face this unpleasant experience of a press scrum for example," he added at a news conference Friday, prompting chuckles from colleagues.
"I think you may have noticed the Conservatives had a campaign school in Ottawa recently and any party worth its soul wants to be prepared for any eventuality."
One eventuality being considered would see opposition parties topple the Conservative government this fall, either in a confidence vote or on a non-confidence motion.
If he chooses to bring down the government, Ignatieff may find willing allies in the other opposition parties.
Fellow opposition leaders Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe told separate news conferences Friday that people are fed up with the Harper government and want it defeated.
William Hogg, a Liberal candidate for Compton-Stanstead, suggested a fall election is entirely likely. He said a candidate-training school was held just before an election the last time he ran for the Liberals in 2008.
Still, he said the Tories' fate will all depend on what's said in reports on stimulus spending and Employment Insurance set to be tabled next month.
Ignatieff's road tour was not without its logistical drama.
A last-minute engagement prompted him to reschedule a meet-and-greet two days before the event, and in the end 50 people showed up in a stuffy church basement to shake his hand.
He showed up for a media scrum well after the 6 o'clock news began. A television crew, waiting with satellite trucks to air his local appearance live, still managed to get Ignatieff on the air.
Some Liberals have been grumbling -- some privately, and some in news stories -- that Ignatieff has some organizational kinks to work out before his run for the top job.
They have bitter memories of the logistical snafus that blew a hole in Stephane Dion's bid to become prime minister -- most famously that grainy, out-of-focus, late-arriving tape in an address to the nation that will live on in political communications infamy.
Ignatieff did impress a crowd of 300 with the story of his family's ties to the region, and also visited with some 30 Quebec candidates.
Both Layton and Duceppe admitted there's little public appetite for an election, but they say people are telling them it's time to get rid of Stephen Harper's government.
"I haven't heard a stampede of people saying they want an election," Layton told a news conference in Montreal.
"But ironically, you'll also get the same person saying, 'Get that Harper out of there!"'
Layton compared an election to cough medicine: it might taste bad, but it could get the job done.
Duceppe, who was also in Montreal, agreed people don't want an election less than a year after the last one. But he said people he's talked with over the summer don't like the Tory attitude to Employment Insurance and are asking him to get rid of the government.
"If you're asking people whether they're willing or not to go to the polls, people will say, 'Well, we just had an election a year ago,' " Duceppe said.
"On the other hand if you ask them, 'Do you agree with the Tories' attitude on Employment Insurance,' people will say, 'No.' And people are telling me, 'Could we get rid of that government?'
"So this is the real question. When the campaign starts, then we're discussing the real question."
The opposition leaders made their comments after meeting with university student groups.
During his stop in Sherbrooke, Ignatieff did offer a rare suggestion of some items that might factor into an eventual election platform. Critics have accused him of offering no suggestion about how he might govern.
Ignatieff said he supports high-speed rail, and disagrees with Harper's approach to Arctic sovereignty. He made a quip about the prime minister's northern trip this week.
"I think that Mr. Harper has militarized this question to the exclusion of economic development for the peoples of the North," he said in response to a question from an audience member.
"It's not a good day when you have a prime minister there and the generator in the town shuts down."
Iqaluit was plunged into darkness for two hours this week during Harper's visit.
