VANCOUVER -- Justin Trudeau kicked off his election campaign in Vancouver by promising to fight for the middle class, while cutting perks for the richest Canadians.

"When the middle class does well, so does the entire country," the Liberal leader told a crowd of reporters and supporters in Jack Poole Plaza on Sunday.

Just hours after Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked for the dissolution of Parliament to touch off an 11-week election campaign, Trudeau charged that the Conservative leader has failed his country.

“We are working harder and harder to make ends meet, but falling further and further behind. Those few who have done well have done very, very well, but for the middle class, and those hoping to join it, the truth is that folks today are more likely to fall out of the middle class than they are to join it,” Trudeau said.

His plan to reverse that trend hinges on cutting off the universal child care benefit for “millionaires” and raising taxes on the wealthiest Canadians.

"After all, they've had a pretty good 10 years," he joked.

Trudeau claimed his party's economic plan would leave nine out of 10 Canadians in better financial shape than they would be under either the Conservatives or the NDP.

“A family with two kids, making $90,000 a year, will get $2,500 more, tax free. Low-income families will see 315,000 kids lifted out of poverty,” he said.

Trudeau also took aim at New Democrat leader Tom Mulcair’s economic plan.

“The NDP’s other answer to everything is to make the company you work for pay more in taxes. That means fewer jobs and less investment, all while our economy is stalled,” he said.

Trudeau was the last major party leader to speak after the election writ was dropped, but he said it was important for him to keep his promise and catch his flight to Vancouver to march in the Pride parade.

Playing to local ego, Trudeau called Vancouver his “second home” and promised that “B.C. is extremely important to me, personally.”

The Liberal leader was mobbed by supporters an hour later as he waited for the Pride parade to get under way. Trudeau posed for photograph after photograph as he waded through a sea of red t-shirts and rainbow flags.

He was joined by Hedy Fry, the longtime Vancouver Centre MP known for her outrageous Pride costumes. For the 2015 parade, Fry was dressed in a sparkly red and silver superhero costume emblazoned with the transgender symbol, and walked beside a float with a banner reading “Gender is a Spectrum.”

Mulcair had planned to make an appearance at the Vancouver Pride parade as well, but that visit was cancelled Saturday as it became clear the writ was about to be dropped.

Constance Barnes, the NDP candidate for Vancouver Centre, announced the news in a Facebook post: “This means one thing for me — we’ve got to step it up to fill his absence. That means we need to dance and party harder than we ever have.”

Mulcair chose to kick off his campaign in Gatineau, Que. instead, promising to prioritize affordable childcare.

On everything from protecting and restoring the environment and providing fair treatment to Canada's Aboriginal Peoples to creating jobs and doing away with political corruption, the NDP is a better choice than the Conservatives, Mulcair said..

Despite his emphasis on the differences between his party and the Tories, however, Mulcair seemed to take his cues from Harper’s famously close-mouthed media strategy, refusing to take questions from reporters at his campaign launch.

Trudeau made hay of that approach at his campaign kickoff, answering an unlimited number of queries and joking, “Unlike the other guys, I tend to take a lot of questions.”

Even Harper was more open than Mulcair as he announced the beginning of the campaign in Ottawa. He was peppered with questions from the media about why he wanted to subject Canadians to such a long, costly election season, answering that his opponents were already campaigning on the public dime.

With files from the Canadian Press

blindsay@vancouversun.com

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