OTTAWA–Prime Minister Stephen Harper's opponents say a closed-door speech in which he says a majority is within Conservatives' reach and laments the possibility of left-wing ideologues in federal courts and agencies reveals his true colours.

"There have always been two Harpers," Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said yesterday. "The real Harper always comes out when he thinks he can't be heard."

Ignatieff said a video of Harper speaking to a Tory audience last week shows him as "contemptuous of other political parties" and "spiteful" toward the "institutions that guarantee our freedoms."

"He treats every adversary as a public enemy who has to be destroyed, and so you wonder why it's difficult for me to continue to support him?" Ignatieff told a Montreal news conference.

While Harper's language in the Sept. 2 meeting with Conservative supporters is blunt, his message about a majority is one internal party polls suggest has resonance after five years of minority governments, sources say.

His political rivals say the tape is proof Harper never intended to make Parliament work.

Ignatieff said a student taped the Sept. 2 speech in Sault Ste. Marie, was "shocked by what he saw," and gave it to the Liberals who gave a copy to CBC.

"He's got a public discourse where he says he's trying to work with the other parties," said deputy New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair. "But then in private we find out he's the same sectarian, narrow-minded, venom-spewing Stephen Harper that we've always known."

On the tape, which runs 9 1/2 minutes, Harper says the coming election is a clear choice between a tax-and-spend Liberal government "propped up by the socialists and the separatists" and a Conservative government that will produce a balanced budget without raising taxes.

If the Liberals were still in power, "imagine how many left-wing ideologues they would be putting in the courts, federal institutions, agencies, the Senate – I should say how many more they would be putting in," he says.

Harper made similar comments – and was widely panned for it – near the end of the 2004 election campaign, and this spring in a speech to a Conservative think-tank.

"They will deny this till they're blue in the face in an election campaign," Harper said last week.

"But I guarantee it, if we do not win a majority, this country will have a Liberal government propped up by the socialists and the separatists. That government may not last long but every day it's in office it will do long-term, real damage to this country. This country cannot afford a government like that.

"If they get together and force us to the polls, we have to teach them a lesson and get back there with a majority and make sure their little coalition never happens to this country," Harper said to applause from the partisan crowd.

When Harper first mused aloud about a majority in the 2004 campaign, his party sank in the polls.

In the 2006 and 2008 campaigns, he sidestepped any mention of a majority, saying only he wanted a "strong mandate" from Canadians.

Harper says he's confident about the 143 ridings held by Tories. To form a majority, a party needs 155 of the 308 Commons seats.

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Asked by reporters if he rules out forming a governing coalition with the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, Ignatieff said he has already been "very clear" on that.

He said he "already refused a coalition" last January because he didn't think it was "in the national interest," and he does not believe he has to revisit that question.

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