Trudeau in the North as Scheer and Singh take on Toronto after debate

By Cormac MacSweeney and The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is touting his party’s climate-change policies in Iqaluit today, the first party leader to go to the North in this federal election campaign.

He’s to appear with the Liberal candidate in Nunavut, Megan Pizzo-Lyall, emphasizing climate change’s dangers to the Arctic and meeting with Inuit elders.

Then Trudeau flies back south to Toronto, which is where Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and New Democrat Jagmeet Singh are spending the day.

Singh talked about a new deal for young people at a record label east of downtown, the part of the city where New Democrats stand the best chance of picking up seats.

Singh said he would immediately remove all interest on federal student debt, and an NDP government would start replacing student
loans with grants that are non-repayable, moving toward free tuition.

The day after the debate, he continued his attacks on the incumbent party.

“Liberals don’t fight back against the status quo, they are the status quo. I believe in fighting back against that,” Singh said.

Scheer has events in the suburbs of Markham and Mississauga, where his own party hopes to take seats from Liberals.

He’s promising that a Conservative federal government would try to unclog commuter traffic in Canada’s biggest city by funding a pair of projects to extend Toronto’s subway.

The city is a key battleground for all three leaders, and the Conservatives need to make significant gains there in the final two weeks of the campaign.

Trudeau spent two days in the Toronto area last week, laying out the Liberals’ gun-control plans at events that included several area mayors.

Scheer’s announcement was overshadowed by a question from a CBC reporter about whether or not the party has some Republican advisers who worked on Donald Trump’s campaign, now helping the Conservatives.

“Are they working on your campaign? Yes or no,” David Cochrane asked, referring to long-time Republicans Mike Roman and Matthew McBain.

“As I said, we have hundreds of volunteers from all across the country who have a wide variety of experiences at different levels,” Scheer responded.

A Conservative party spokesperson denied later in the day that Roman has been involved in the campaign, but did not clarify information on McBain.

The Greens’ Elizabeth May, meanwhile, is campaigning in Montreal alongside former New Democrat MP Pierre Nantel.

With the English-language debate behind them, the leaders have a couple of days to hit the trail again before digging in to prepare for the last debate of the campaign, the official French-language debate on Thursday.

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