Part of the reason for the timing of the election was given as strengthening Conservative poll numbers coupled with the desire to take advantage of the perception that Harper has "better leadership qualities than Liberal counterpart Stéphane Dion".

Rumours of a possible fall election were further fuelled by Harper's announcement of a fourth federal by-election for September 22 in the Toronto riding of Don Valley West.

[3][4] On August 27, 2008, Harper asked Governor General Michaëlle Jean to cancel her trip to the Paralympic Games in Beijing, adding fuel to speculation that the Prime Minister would seek a dissolution.

Jack Layton took a more forceful approach than previous elections, in which the New Democratic Party has just tried to maintain a high number of seats in Parliament to influence government.

Layton has made it clear he will campaign for the position of prime minister itself this time, but also returned to a longstanding NDP theme: alleged abuses by big business.

[21] Layton also criticized Dion for his lack of accomplishments as official opposition during the minority government, and his party's previous leader's broken promises in areas such as Child Care and Pharmacare.

[21] Harper also said he had erred in calling for Canada's participation in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, saying "It was absolutely an error, it's obviously clear", adding that the claim of weapons of mass destruction proved false.

[22] Reporter Julie Van Dusen said that Harper managed to take the hits calmly, as "someone must have told him ... if you fight back or get too partisan, you're going to alienate voters, especially women".

The Conservatives have stated that the money is being reallocated to other arts and cultural programs, including various official languages projects, the 400th anniversary of Quebec City and projects connected with the 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Winter Olympic Games, although the Conservative's refusal to have a parliamentary review of their cuts and for a moratorium on the measures until the House of Commons Heritage Committee had a chance to hold hearings on culture and arts funding has most opposition members calling foul.

[24] On September 29, Harper unveiled a new tax credit plan worth an estimated $150 million a year to encourage parents to enroll their kids in arts programs like music and drama.

Harper said that "[the Conservatives] spend a lot more on culture and arts" but "in a way that we ensure is an effective use of taxpayers' money and ultimately, in this case, benefits families and all of society as well".

Harper has come under criticism when the week before he expressed his opinion that "ordinary working people were unable to relate to taxpayer-subsidized cultural elites when they see them at a rich gala on television".

[25] In early 2008 it was alleged that Independent MP Chuck Cadman of Surrey North, who was terminally ill with cancer at the time, had been offered a million dollar life insurance policy in exchange for voting against the proposed Liberal budget in May 2005, which he turned down.

Accordingly, Opposition Liberal party Intergovernmental Affairs critic Dominic LeBlanc asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in February 2008 to investigate this allegation.

[29] The Conservatives chose former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Bruce Koenig to analyze a tape of reporter Tom Zytaruk interviewing Harper on the Cadman bribe attempt.

[33] On September 23, Montreal and Toronto mayors Gérald Tremblay and David Miller laid out their demands for urban municipalities, describing cities' current financial problems as a national issue, saying that cities have become the country's economic, social and cultural development engines and need appropriate support, and that they need better "fiscal tools" to continue their role as Canada's economic engines or the country will suffer.

They listed Homelessness, traffic gridlock, crowded buses and overstretched police departments as just a few of the symptoms, that "These problems are too big and too important to be solved on the backs of property taxpayers" and that "in order to remain competitive, transport goods efficiently and attract new talent, our cities require quality infrastructure, affordable housing and first-rate recreational and cultural facilities".

[6] In return, the Conservatives criticized the Liberal party's decision to use a 29-year-old Boeing 737-200 for campaigning, saying that the older airplane's poor fuel efficiency demonstrates hypocrisy on environmental matters.

[60] Duceppe has called Harper's comments a "double standard", saying that many English-speaking politicians have little or no ability to speak French, yet francophones are somehow always expected to be perfect, and that the attack was an attempted "low blow".

[64] The Public Service Alliance of Canada revealed to the media that the Conservative party plans to cut federal funding to meat inspection programs by $3 million, effectively ending their operation in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

[68] On October 6, the Conservatives contended that Dion had also committed plagiarism when, as Minister of the Environment in 2005, he went to a United Nations conference on climate change to deliver a speech which had substantial similarities to the executive summary of a year old UN report.

In one case, Brossard—La Prairie, the judicial recount overturned the reported victor, giving the seat to the Liberals' Alexandra Mendès instead of the Bloc incumbent Marcel Lussier.

Chris Reid, the Conservative candidate from Toronto Centre, resigned over controversial statements on his blog, which advocated revising Canadian gun control legislation to legalize concealed carriage of handguns.

[90] Andrew McKeever, an NDP candidate in Durham, announced on October 3 that he would resign from the election campaign after it was revealed that he had posted comments on Facebook in which he called one war activist a "fascist bitch" and threatened to beat up another person.

Julian West, the candidate for the riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands, dropped out of the race after details surfaced about an environmental event he attended 12 years ago when he went skinny-dipping and asked two teenagers to body-paint him.

Two other candidates in British Columbia who were proponents of marijuana decriminalization — Dana Larsen and Kirk Tousaw — resigned earlier after videos they had produced for Internet site Pot-TV were released to the media.

One of the videos, filmed in 2000, showed Mr. Larsen, former leader of the BC Marijuana Party, preparing to light up a joint before driving a car, after having taken the short-acting hallucinogenic drug DMT earlier in the evening.

At an all-candidates debate staged for a high school student audience in Sudbury on September 29, independent candidate David Popescu responded to a question about same-sex marriage by stating that "homosexuals should be executed".

His remarks were widely criticized across Canada, and the Greater Sudbury Police Service announced an investigation into whether the comments constituted a crime under Canadian hate speech legislation.

[104] Ignatieff soon ended the coalition agreement with the other two parties, motivated largely in part by Harper's publicly indicating that he would advise Jean to hold a new election (which, under the precedent set by the King–Byng affair, she would have been obligated to do) rather than recommending that Ignatieff be allowed to form a minority government should the government lose a confidence vote,[105] and polling indicating that any such election would almost certainly result in the Conservatives winning a strong majority.