Despite a determined effort to restore Canadians' confidence in government, support for the ruling Liberal Party continues to slide. A new poll shows support for the Liberals has fallen another four points since Thursday.

The Ipsos-Reid poll completed for CTV after Prime Minister Paul Martin's weekend public relations blitz, shows the Liberals would be able to count on only 35 per cent of decided voters across the country.

The new Conservative Party of Canada appears to be the big beneficiary of the Liberals' misfortune. They gained another three points, pushing their support among decided voters to 27 per cent.

In contrast, the NDP slipped a percentage point to 17 per cent, while the Bloc Quebecois edged up a point to 11 per cent.

When the numbers are broken down regionally, they paint an even more dismal picture of Martin's re-election prospects.

In Quebec, the sponsorship fiasco has hit the Liberals hardest. In only four days, the party dropped nine points to 31 per cent of decided voters. The effects aren't confined to Quebec. From Ontario west, province after province registered a Liberal decline.

Only in Atlantic Canada has the Martin message seemed to be working. Voter support in the Maritimes actually increased five percentage points to a convincing 47 per cent of the decided vote.

Treasury Board president Reg Alcock told Canada AM that he thinks Canadians are justified in their anger about the scandal.

"It's not a big surprise. Canadians are angry and they have a right to be angry. But when you begin to look at where responsibility lies, you realize that Paul is the guy who is trying to fix this," he said.

Nevertheless, the results are sure to be disappointing for the prime minister and his team, in light of the concerted damage-control campaign waged even before Auditor General Sheila Fraser released her scathing indictment of the government's mishandling of a federal sponsorship program designed to boost Canada's profile in Quebec.

Martin has been spearheading a textbook crisis management strategy designed to saturate the airwaves with his message. He has empathized with Canadians' outrage, and even expressed some measure of his own anger, all the while presenting the impression of total public disclosure and complete media availability.

Alcock says the strategy is working.

"When I ask people across the country, 'Do you believe that Paul Martin is responsible for creating this mess?' they don't. They know that's not Paul Martin's style of government. They know he has been working to fix this," Alcock says.

And yet the numbers paint an interesting picture of blame. Ipsos-Reid found that 22 per cent of those polled still blame Martin himself for the sponsorship fiasco. Another 29 per cent point a finger at former prime minister Jean Chretien, while 16 per cent single out former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano.

According to Chretien's former communications chief, the previous prime minister would have handled the situation much differently.

"There was a lot made of how articulate or inarticulate he was and people underestimated often how much of that was by design," Donolo told CTV News, reflecting on Chretien's inimitable public persona.

Donolo says it may now be time for Martin to take a page from his political rival's book.

"It's kind of what I call 'the rule of holes,' when you're in one, stop digging."

The poll was conducted over the last five days, based on a sampling of 1,055 adults. It's considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.