Balanced budget for Canada's Harper overshadows corruption trial

By Julie Gordon
KAMLOOPS, British Columbia, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Good news
about the economy propelled Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper on the campaign trail on Monday, with an
earlier-than-expected budget surplus overshadowing the trial of
a former aide for influence peddling.
Trumpeting a C$1.9 billion ($1.4 billion) budget surplus for
the year just passed - the first surplus in seven years for
Harper's nine-year-old Conservative government - the prime
minister said his opponents in the race to the Oct. 19 election
will turn the good news into bad if they topple him from office.
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"The Liberals and the NDP are making spending promises, tens
of billions of dollars of spending promises, with money they do
not have, and money they can only get through running ongoing
multi-billion dollar deficits and raising your taxes," Harper
told supporters during a campaign stop in British Columbia.
"Make no mistake. That will hurt our fragile economy, that
will cost you money, and that will put jobs at risk."
Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who has said he would run
deficits if elected to help spur Canada's sluggish economy,
accused Harper of playing a shell game of covert cuts and
underspending in some areas to produce a surplus on paper.
While economists said the early surplus, one year ahead of
promised, was meaningless to financial markets, it allowed
Harper to switch gears after a stream of bad news in the first
half of the tight three-way election campaign.
Most polls show his right-leaning Conservative government
locked in a three-way race against the center-left Liberals and
New Democrats in a campaign that has focused on the nation's
tepid economy, the global refugee crisis, and the high-profile
corruption and fraud trials of Harper's former allies.
A former Harper aide went on trial for influence-peddling on
Monday in Ottawa, adding to the scandal that has helped
undermine the Conservatives. They have already weathered the
high-profile bribery and fraud trial of a Conservative senator
in August. ID:nL1N11K15I
Bruce Carson, who worked as a policy advisor to Harper from
2006 to 2008, is charged with improperly lobbying the federal
Indian Affairs ministry in 2010 and 2011 over the proposed sale
of a water filtration system to an aboriginal group.
Carson, who pleaded not guilty, says he was not acting for
any one company in particular but was interested in improving
the poor conditions that many aboriginals have to endure.
($1 = 1.3262 Canadian dollars)