OTTAWA - A man with a lot of experience at demolishing a federal budget deficit says he doesn't believe Stephen Harper's Conservatives can balance the budget without major cuts to services.

Former Liberal prime minister and finance minister Paul Martin jumped into the election campaign on Saturday night as he joined Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff in Edmonton.

"They can't find that money without major cuts," Martin said in response to a question by a reporter.

"I can tell you that one area that clearly is in danger is ... in fact the health-care budget because Stephen Harper has said, unequivocally, that he does not think that ... health-care is a federal responsibility."

Later, Martin was the opening act in front of a lively Liberal crowd.

"The current Conservative government is the biggest spending government in Canadian history." he shouted over the applause. "That's the result of their so-called great economic management."

Joking and comfortable in front of the partisan crowd, Martin smiled as he told the crowd not to worry.

"Liberals have had a lot of experience at cleaning up the messes created by Conservative governments, and we'll fix it up again," he said to loud applause.

Martin isn't the only help Ignatieff is expecting on this campaign, former prime minister Jean Chretien is also lending a hand.

The two Liberal war horses are wading into the election fray to try to scuttle the notion that the Conservative leader is the most qualified helmsman to steer through stormy economic waters.

That notion is supported by polls and Harper has tried to build on that strength in every speech he makes by drawing attention to Canada's relatively strong performance compared to other G8 countries.

However the re-emergence of Martin and Chretien as the country's most successful deficit slayers is also casting a spotlight on a less flattering aspect of the Liberal record: massive cuts to health care payments to the provinces.

But if Canada has emerged relatively unscathed from the global recession, Liberals contend that's thanks to Chretien and Martin.

Chretien inherited a $42 billion deficit from the Mulroney Conservatives when he took office in 1993. He and Martin, first as finance minister and eventually as prime minister, turned that deficit into a string of surpluses.

"We handed the Harper government a $13 billion surplus and the best fiscal fundamentals of any country in the G8," Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff boasted Saturday during a campaign stop in Regina.

"We don't have to burnish our fiscal credentials. Our fiscal credentials are a matter of historical fact and common historical memory to Canadian citizens."

Chretien is expected to speak at a rally of Liberal troops in Toronto during the last week of the campaign.

Martin has already delivered a speech seeking to remind voters that Harper made two wildly inaccurate economic predictions in the last election: that there would be no recession and that his government would never run a deficit.

Within four months of the 2008 election, Harper was forced to embark on a massive economic stimulus program that dug the country into a record deficit hole.

The Conservatives dismissed the reappearance of the two former prime ministers as a sign of Ignatieff's desperation in the face of polls showing the Liberals trailing.

And Harper attempted to turn it into a debate over which party can be trusted to preserve Canada's cherished universal health care system. He zeroed in on the fact that the Chretien government eliminated the deficit in large part by slashing health care transfer payments to the provinces by 25 per cent.

"The Liberal party has a shameful record of deep cuts in health care," Harper said during a campaign event in Vancouver.

By contrast, Harper said his government has increased health transfers by 30 per cent and is promising to continue pouring in an additional six per cent per year.

"Conservative party has increased, will increase health care. Liberal party cut it, will cut it. Those are the facts."

However, Ignatieff retorted that Harper has only increased health funding because he was bound to do so by a 10 year federal-provincial accord negotiated by Martin's government.

"Mr. Stephen Harper has not put a dime, a red nickel, a red cent into health care since he came into office. Every single dime spent by that government is money booked by Paul Martin in the 2004 accord," Ignatieff said, reiterating his own commitment to maintain the six-per-cent annual increases.

Harper is promising to eliminate the deficit by 2014 by cutting $4 billion a year in unspecified government spending. He maintains it can be done by cutting waste and inefficiency and through increased revenues from economic growth.

But the Liberals have launched TV ads warning darkly that Harper will have to slash health care spending to dig the government out of the deficit hole.

The looming cuts haven't stopped the Harper government from offering pay raises to political staff.

Harper defended new rules which went quietly into effect on April 1 and which could produce a win-win situation for Tory political aides whether the Conservatives win or lose the election.

The rules increase the maximum salaries ministers can pay their political aides and boost by 50 per cent the separation pay that can be offered to staffers should they wind up out of work.

Harper acknowledged some individuals will receive fatter pay cheques but he said the overall budgets for ministers' offices will be cut 11 per cent. Liberals disputed that figure, contending ministerial office budgets have actually risen more than 16 per cent over the past two years.

NDP Leader Jack Layton was in St. John's, N.L., while the Bloc's Gilles Duceppe spent most of the day in the Quebec City area.

Layton joined the other federal leaders Saturday in backing federal loan guarantees for the multibillion-dollar Lower Churchill hydroelectric project. The project would transfer hydroelectricity from mainland Labrador to Newfoundland and elsewhere in Atlantic Canada.

Both Harper and Ignatieff have already promised some sort of support for the Lower Churchill. The project is popular in the province and the NDP hopes backing it will win them votes.

The New Democrats hold just one seat in the province, St. John's East. Jack Harris won easily by a margin of some 26,000 votes.