With the election finish line starting to appear in sight, Prime Minister Paul Martin tried to put on a brave face on Saturday.

"Well, you know we've got some time to go in this campaign," he said Saturday in Montreal.

Voting day is 16 days away, on Jan. 23, but the leaders' debates loom ahead on Monday and Tuesday.

National polls give Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's party a slight lead in popular support -- and a big edge in momentum.

"If you look at all the data out there, it's a statistical dead heat,'' Harper told reporters Saturday as he informally chatted with them at the rear of his campaign plane.

His main announcement on the day was that a Conservative government would cut taxes on donations of stocks to charities.

Harper said neither his party nor the Liberals are in a position to form a majority government.

"Our people feel the momentum, but it would be crazy for anyone to speculate on any particular outcome."

One problem the Liberals face is fighting through a constant stream of bad news that takes time away from their policy announcements. Martin's latest is a $1-billion, 10-year plan to clean up waterways.

Some attribute the kickstart in Tory momentum to an RCMP announcement that it had commenced a criminal investigation into the income trust announcement from late November.

The latest development is that investigators with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are following up on an NDP complaint of possible insider trading in the hours before Finance Minister Ralph Goodale made his announcement.

"There are all kinds of market experts who have already given their opinion on that and simply said ... this is the way markets work," Martin said.

A new RCMP probe is looking into what happened to federal government cash given to a national unity group called Option Canada before the 1995 Quebec referendum.

Claude Dauphin headed the group. Martin later hired him as a senior adviser in the federal finance department.

Martin said his friend did nothing wrong.

"What he said what his job was in fact to raise money, that he was not involved in the administration and that's what he said to me," he said.

"The only thing that I've done was ask for some grants for the organization, for Option Canada," Dauphin told CTV News. "But I don't recall signing any cheques because I wasn't taking care of the management of that."

In yet more controversy on the Quebec front, Environment Minister Stephane Dion seemed to suggest it would be okay to vote Conservative or NDP.

"The key point is vote for candidates who believe in Canada to not vote for the Bloc," he said.

Layton

In Vancouver, an old woman berated NDP Leader Jack Layton, saying: "You stop telling people to not vote Conservative, because they are going to form the next government and beat out the Liberals. Don't do that anymore."

Layton could possibly hold the balance of power in Parliament when the election is over.

He put the Conservatives on notice that he won't accept their tax cuts -- particularly their plan to rescind a Liberal income tax cut for low-income people.

"The fact this has come forward should give every Canadian citizen pause as to what kind of an agenda is here, and certainly it's the wrong way to go,'' Layton told reporters after a rally in Vancouver.

However, he also took shots at Martin's Liberals.

"How about Paul Martin's record of making families wait for a national child care program? Everyone impressed?"

On ethical issues, Layton said: "We think there's an ethical issue that there are 1.2 million children in this country living in poverty, without access to good childcare."

The NDP are in a three-way fight with the Conservatives and Liberals in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.

While Martin has one event scheduled for Sunday, the other main party leaders will be using the day to prepare for the debates.

With reports from CTV's Robert Fife and Rosemary Thompson