WHITBY, Ont. - Jim Flaherty is used to being grilled on the economy and taxes and isn't shy about engaging in aggressive verbal sparring with the opposition.
But in his Ontario riding of Whitby-Oshawa, the federal finance minister puts aside his parliamentary pit bull persona. He's quicker to talk about his triplet boys than trash talk the Liberal Green Shift carbon tax -- although he still is happy to do so.
While he's taking economic questions from prospective voters about the impact of gas prices and interest rates on household budgets, he's also being asked about issues like autism funding and education.
Which is fine with him. Flaherty's happy to portray himself as a proud father and family man and is thrilled that almost no one is asking about his infamous income trust tax.
His main competition in the election is Liberal candidate Brent Fullard, founder of the Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors, who parachuted into the riding so he could take on Flaherty mano-a-mano on the controversial tax and other broken promises.
The Liberals are pledging to replace the Tories' 31.5 per cent tax on income trusts with a 10 per cent tax, which would be refundable for Canadian residents but not for U.S. or overseas investors.
But Flaherty said he's feeling pretty comfortable heading into the Oct. 14 election with the sense that Fullard doesn't get the constituency base and is making the wrong promises.
"What I used to get in Whitby three elections ago was, 'We need more hockey rinks,' and that was a big, big deal," Flaherty said of the kind of issues that drive the vote in his riding.
"About two-and-a-half weeks into the campaign, only one person has raised income trusts. It's not an on-the-ground issue here. It's an issue with some of the Bay Street people still, but it hasn't come up here."
During two hours of door knocking in his riding last week, no one asked about income trusts.
Most admitted they still hadn't identified any ballot issues at all.
"I just truly don't know yet, I have to do more reading," said one voter.
"Right now I have no idea what I'm doing," said another.
And one disinterested woman -- who barely turned her attention to Flaherty while enjoying a beautiful day on her porch -- said, "Not so much so far," when asked what she thought about the election.
"Thirty per cent of the people you talk to won't vote and then what you're trying to get is half of those who will vote," Flaherty said of his strategy at the doors.
Flaherty is well known in the riding, having represented the area both federally and provincially since 1995. His wife Christine Elliott is also the provincial member of provincial parliament, and he suspected that voters will be turned off that the Liberals didn't recruit a local candidate.
"I was surprised (Fullard was chosen), there's a pretty good Liberal tradition in this riding so it's not as if you can't elect a Liberal here, you can, but to bring someone from outside to Whitby is noticed by people," he said.
Fullard insists the income trust issue will not dominate his campaign and said it will just serve to highlight a Conservative record of broken promises and a rule of uncertainty.
"I will only mention income trusts insofar as they're representative of accountability or lack thereof, transparency or lack thereof, and good economic policy or lack there of," he said.
"The role of the government is to take away uncertainty and replace it with certainty, but they're introducing new uncertainty: with the safety of our food, and our nuclear safety, and retirement income, and arts funding -- everything they're doing is increasing the level of uncertainty."
Fullard said observers may be underestimating the impact of income trusts on the election, considering about 2.5 million people were invested in the stocks at one point.
Flaherty is probably fortunate that Fullard is placing so much focus on income trusts and that the Conservatives are polling so highly because he's made a few blunders that could turn off voters, said University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman.
"Many of the things he said were impolitic," Wiseman said, in reference to his feuds with the Ontario Liberal government and statements that Ontario is the "last place" to invest in Canada because of its business tax structure.
"Attacking the provincial government doesn't sit well with the public because they like to see parties co-operating."
Flaherty is also remembered for leaving the province with a surprise multi-billion dollar deficit as provincial finance minister before the Liberals took over the Ontario government in 2003, Wiseman said.
"I've seen Dion make some references to that but I don't know how much traction it'll have in the constituency," he said. "I don't think the riding will swing it to the guy who's hung up on income trusts."
Some voters may also recall that Fullard was forced to apologize "sincerely and without reservation" in the early days of the campaign when it was revealed that he made comparisons between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Adolf Hitler in an e-mail written in 2007.
