Higher learning experience

With the winter campaign resulting in both challenges and opportunities not normally present during campaign season, all parties are having to adapt their strategies...and one has to like the NDP's early focus:

University students will be a new factor that could influence the upcoming election, predicts NDP leader Jack Layton, who notes that previous early summer elections have not allowed for campuses to get out the student vote.

Speaking to a small gathering of students at the University of Toronto campus, NDP leader Jack Layton said his party would restore what he estimates was $4-billion in cuts to post-secondary education made by the Liberals in the 1990s.

Mr. Layton said the new spending would be paid for by scrapping the corporate tax cuts the Liberals announced in this fall's fiscal update.

The combination of one of the best NDP issues and a ready pool of potential voters is one that could do wonders for the party in university ridings. An NDP forum at the University of Saskatchewan last month has already received some media attention, and it's great to see the strategy now being applied nationally.