By Randall Palmer
MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Canadian Liberal
leader Justin Trudeau, the frontrunner in the race to the Oct.
19 election, said on Friday one of his top priorities if elected
will be to repair Canada's relationship with the United States.
Trudeau said relations with Canada's largest trading partner
had been damaged by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's
singular focus on promoting TransCanada Corp 's TRP.TO Keystone
XL pipeline - which President Barack Obama has not backed.
"If I earn Canadians' trust in four days' time, it'll be one
of my most crucial priorities to begin once again having a
productive and constructive relationship with our closest ally
and neighbor," Trudeau said during a campaign stop near Toronto.
The center-left party, once in third place, is now more than
7 points ahead of Harper's Conservatives and 13 points in front
of the left-leaning New Democrats, according to some recent
polls.
Trudeau, campaigning in the vote-rich suburbs of Toronto,
said a Liberal government would focus on increased environmental
oversight and reducing climate change emissions in assessing
projects like the XL pipeline.
The TransCanada Corp pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels a
day of mostly Canadian oil sands crude to Nebraska en route to
refineries and ports along the U.S. Gulf. It has been pending
for more than six years. Obama vetoed a Republican bill
approving the pipeline in February. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N11S2J3 urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N0VY2KT
Foreign relations have emerged as a key difference in the
platform of the frontrunners, with Trudeau saying he would take
a more multilateral approach to global issues than Harper, who
has distanced Canada from the United Nations.
Harper sent troops to Afghanistan and signed up for the
mission against Islamic State with allies including Britain and
the United States, but the prime minister said on Friday he was
not considering full ground-troop involvement in a combat
mission against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
"We do need people on the ground from the region to take on
ISIS but in the short term the reality is this - that area,
without military pressure on it, will be a significant risk to
Canada for the planning of terrorist attacks not just in the
region, not just against our allies, but against our country,"
Harper said during a campaign stop in Quebec.
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Graphic-Canada votes http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/15/canada-election/
FACTBOX-Five facts about Canadian Liberal leader Justin Trudeau
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FACTBOX-How Canada's electoral system works urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12F33H
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