Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is in the midst of a coast-to-coast pre-budget jaunt which he describes as a "listening" tour. Perhaps he should start by listening to himself. That way, he could be as confused as the rest of us are about just, exactly, where he stands on tax cuts for middle income Canadians.

On the weekend, Ignatieff opened a two-day party caucus meeting in Ottawa by telling his party that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Jan. 27 budget should stay away from tax cutting and focus instead of what he described as "three simple tests that it must pass" or the Liberals will vote it down.

"Will it protect the most vulnerable? Will it save jobs? And most important of all, will it create the jobs of tomorrow?" Ignatieff said.

Seems clear enough.

But then, earlier this month, Ignatieff spoke to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, at the first of his planned series of town hall meetings, and said that if he became prime minister, his priorities for the first 100 days would be fast stimulus spending, reforms to speed up access to employment insurance and - wait for it - tax cuts for low-and-middle-income Canadians.

"We may be looking at tax cuts very quickly, targeted at mediumand low-income Canadians, to boost their purchasing power," he said, responding to a question about Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's promise to put some form of tax cuts in the budget to spur retail and other spending to get the economy moving again.

So which is it? Or, as Shakespeare might have put it, "To cut or not to cut, that is the question."

Then, in a television interview after his Halifax speech, Ignatieff went on to say that he did not want to write a budget in a media scrum, "but I think it's important to give tax relief of a permanent kind, providing we don't increase our structural deficit problem. But I have said clearly I'm in favor of permanent tax cuts for low income Canadians, to increase their purchasing power permanently.

Then in addition, there is the question of whether there is some other stimulus measures that are one time in nature, but I want to make clear that the tax cuts I was talking about then in that answer I envision as permanent."

There, have you got that now? It's easy really. On the one hand, he's in favor of tax cuts because they would act as an economic stimulus. On the other hand, he's opposed to tax cuts, and will bring down the Tory government if it dares to include them in the upcoming budget.

You may find the two arguments contradictory, but hey, that's what being a successful Liberal leader is all about.

Remember, this is the same man who publicly supported the U.S. use of torture in interrogating prisoners in its' war on terror. And the same man who attacked the U.S. for using torture.

It's the same man who condemned Israel for "war crimes" in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war - and who attacked Israel in one of his books for its "unjust occupation and illegal settlements" - only to turn around almost instantly, in the face of strong criticism, to declare that Israel had every right to defend herself against the terrorists.

This explains, at least in part, why even in the midst of the current economic turmoil - and with NDP Leader Jack Layton actually salivating to concoct a governing coalition with Ignatieff and separatist Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe - the latest Toronto Star/Angus Reid survey puts the Tories a full nine points ahead - bordering on majority territory - of the Liberals, with the NDP trailing well back. Indeed, in Ontario, the Tories were running at 42 per cent in decided voting intentions, up nearly five per cent from the election.

And in another result from that poll, only 20 per cent of respondents - compared to 34 per cent for Harper - felt that Ignatieff could manage the economy effectively, perhaps because they - like Ignatieff himself - can't really figure out where he stands on the major issues.

There is no doubt that the Harper budget will contain tons of new government spending - alas - which will make it difficult for the Liberals to precipitate another political crisis.

But it's equally as certain that the Tories will offer some tax cuts to beleaguered Canadian taxpayers, and if Ignatieff really thinks he could win an election by fighting against tax relief well, good luck on that one.