Here is an excerpt, for the record, from a question and answer session between Stephen Harper and reporters this morning in Fredericton.

The question to Harper: Is Canada becoming more and more a conservative country?

His response:

"Certainly it has since I've been involved in politics.

"You look particularly, and I could look at many things — I think we've seen a revival in pride in our country and not just in things like medicare and the CBC, but in our national military and our other institutions.

"But the thing I look at most noticeably is, when I was first involved in politics — and it's getting to be an awfully long time ago — we were fighting about the idea of 'having balanced budgets,' about 'trade as a good thing,' about 'fiscal responsibility in government,' about the basic precepts of 'getting taxes down' and 'living within a budget,' and trying to achieve objectives by spending less rather than spending more.

"And I think there's been a tremendous change in that regard.

"You know, we saw the Liberal party in the 1990s flip all of its positions on these issues and adopt small 'c' conservative positions.

"As I say, I think one of the things that's surprising to me in this election is to see all of the other parties, including the Liberal party go basically to a kind of pre-free trade, Cold War kind of approach to the economy — where they're against trade, where they want to spend money, they don't care how they finance it, if they have to raise taxes, that's fine. This is not where the Canadian public is in this day and age.

"So I think the Canadian public has become more conservative.

"At the same time, I don't want to say the Canadian public is overwhelmingly conservative or that it is necessarily as conservative as everyone in our party.

"And that means that our party has to make sure it that it continues to govern in the interest of the broad majority of the population.

"That means not only that we want to pull Canadians toward conservatism, but Conservatives also have to move toward Canadians if they want to continue to govern the country."

— Paul Hunter