Early election campaign delights Charlottetown NDP candidate

Charlottetown NDP candidate for Parliament Joe Byrne is looking forward to the federal election campaign, which officially got underway Sunday.

"We have a great message," Joe Byrne told CBC News.

"Now that the campaign is officially on Canadians will start paying a lot of attention to the choices in front of them."

With the campaign announced Elections Canada rules on spending come into effect, and the Conservatives have the most money to spend. Under fixed election date legislation, it has long been known the election would be on Oct. 19.

Byrne said his team is prepared for the campaign and he's already been talking with the people of Charlottetown for months.

"It is an exceptionally long campaign. So I don't expect that we will be campaigning with the same intensity in the next couple of weeks as we will towards the end of the campaign," he said.

While he is excited about officially being on the campaign trail, Byrne said the long campaign is too expensive for Elections Canada and the Americanization of Canada's parliamentary heritage.

There has never been an NDP MP elected on P.E.I.