(Adds Harper rally with former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, adds
TORONTO to dateline)
By Rod Nickel and Randall Palmer
TORONTO/HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Canada's
political leaders began their final weekend dashes on Saturday
before voters decide on Monday whether to grant Conservative
Prime Minister Stephen Harper a rare fourth consecutive mandate
after a long and hard-fought campaign.
Harper attended a Toronto rally that was organized in part
by controversial former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who admitted to
smoking crack during his time in office. Now a city councillor,
Ford's small-government, anti-tax message has kept him popular
in parts of Toronto's vote-rich suburbs.
Harper was introduced by Ford's brother, Doug, who has said
he would consider a Conservative leadership run if Harper left.
"We need to stay strong and we need to re-elect Stephen
Harper as prime minister on October 19," Ford said, adding that
it would be an "absolute disaster" if Liberal leader Justin
Trudeau became prime minister.
At an earlier rally in Quebec, Harper touted his economic
track record and dodged questions about his relationship with
the Fords.
The Liberals are leading the Conservatives by as much as 8
percentage points in polls, sitting as high as 38 percent, very
close to what is needed to win a majority in Parliament.
"This is going to be a close election," Trudeau, son of the
late former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, told about 1,000
supporters in Halifax, on Canada's east coast.
"We're on the verge of accomplishing something big," he
later told reporters.
Thomas Mulcair, leader of the left-leaning New Democratic
Party, took aim at Trudeau and the ethics of his Liberal team.
Trudeau's campaign co-chair was forced to resign last week
over controversial advice to an energy company on how to lobby a
future Liberal government. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12F10U
The NDP leader, whose party is in third place in polls,
likened the situation to a corruption scandal that unfolded in
Quebec a decade ago when the Liberals held power.
"This is the crew that was thrown out of office the last
time for that very reason, and now they're saying 'promise,
cross our hearts, we won't do it again.' But what we've learned
is they're already planning to do it again," Mulcair said at a
rally in British Columbia.
Ipsos pollster Darrell Bricker cautioned, however, that the
tradition in Canada is to report all eligible voters, rather
than likely voters. An Angus Reid poll on Friday that looked at
likely voters put the Liberal lead at only 1 point.
An Ekos poll released on Friday said the Conservatives had a
narrow lead among those who had voted in advance polls.
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FACTBOX-Five facts about Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12F340
TAKE A LOOK-Canada heads to polls in hard-fought election
urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12F2OK
FACTBOX-How Canada's electoral system works urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12E2KN
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(With additional reporting by Josephine Mason, Andrea Hopkins
and Jeffrey Hodgson in Toronto; Editing by Paul Simao and
Matthew Lewis)