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Tom Bateman - Week One Grades

Political Parties

Bloc Quebecois

The sponsorship scandal has breathed new life into Gilles Duceppe’s BQ. Not long ago observers agreed that the party was without a mission. But the scandal has led some Canadians outside the province to think of Quebec politics as irremediably corrupt, and the BQ represents Quebeckers’ resentment of this particular consequence of the scandal. The whole sponsorship program was born of a need to impress Quebeckers with the federal governments’ presence in their lives, and the Bloc resents the implication that Quebeckers’ affections can so easily be bought..

Duceppe is a more confident leader as time passes. His party is a regional bloc par excellence, confining itself to regional/nationalist preoccupations, content with protest-type rhetoric, unconcerned with developments outside the province.

In Quebec, this campaign is really a contest between the BQ and the Liberals. Perversely, the other parties have an interest in a BQ rout, for this would drain Liberal seats and increase the chances of a Liberal defeat on June 28. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

Duceppe’s best line of the week came when he responded to the old Liberal line that Canada is the best country in the world. It is not, said Duceppe. Italy is the best country for Italians, Canada is the best country for Canadians, and Quebec is the best country for Quebecois. The Bloc’s fundamental approach to Canadian politics is summed up in this bit of Herderian philosophy.

Conservative Party

In contrast, the Conservatives have benefitted from low expectations. First, the Conservatives under Stephen Harper have put up a united front despite years of bickering over a need to unite the right. Second, in the first week, the Liberals’ accusations that the Harper Conservatives are right-wing fanatics has not had much traction.

But Harper, despite years in Parliament and the publicity of the last six months, is not known by Canadians. The party’s TV ads attempt to repair this be ending with the solemn invocation, “My name is Stephen Harper.” He is running a tightly controlled media campaign, preferring not to interact with voters directly. He said as much last weekend when he described to a reporter the greater efficiency in talking to microphones and cameras rather than real people. This bit of candour may come back to haunt him.

Harper is an intelligent, well-spoken leader, but is criticized for his lack of charisma and flair. This observer considers this no particular vice. Compared to other choices the political right has made in its leaders, a straight-up, substantive, thinking politician is welcome. Harper has offered a moderate policy platform to voters, but he has not backed down on controversial statements he has made in the past. He defended his Atlantic Canada “culture of defeat” remark of 2002 by insisting the culture of dependency is policy-induced and that in any event Paul Martin has said the same things in the past. He defended his firewall letter of 2001 by referring to understandable Alberta reactions to incompetence and corruption in the federal government. This is someone who will not be bullied.

Harper also got off the best lines so far in the campaign. After Paul Martin started off by telling Canadians that the Liberal platform is the most Canadian, Harper replied: “My Canada will be as Canadian as any other candidate’s. You know, in this country you can be a Canadian without being a Liberal.” When Martin decried the Conservatives’ tax-cutting proposals, Harper interpreted the Liberal position to be: “Tax me and waste my money. I’m Canadian.” Harper also let it slip that he pays his taxes in Canada – a nice populist touch.

Harper’s problem is to reconcile his tax-cut plans – for which by the way, there is not a gold mine of electoral support – and the great temptations to promise more money for this and that vote-getting initiative. An old maxim is, Sin now and ask for forgiveness later. The Conservatives as a born-again brokerage party can taste political power. But ask Dalton McGuinty if this is good theology.

Liberal Party

The Liberals can be judged a bit more stringently than the other parties. As the governing party, they have a record on which they can be judged, and the Prime Minister has invited Canadians to judge the Liberals on their record, and particularly Paul Martin himself on his record as Finance Minister in the Chretien years. The governing party is also able to use the largesse of government spending and communications capacities to campaign for re-election before the writs are issued. And the timing of this election is also a prime ministerial prerogative, meaning that the Liberals have more control over the circumstances in which the campaign is held.

Judged against these heightened expectations, the Liberals have done poorly. Martin has been unable to closet the sponsorship scandal during this campaign. A majority of Canadians and even 30% of decided Liberal voters at the start of the campaign consider that the Liberals called the election now to avoid more damaging electoral conditions later. One thinks of a looming judicial inquiry into the sponsorship scandal set to begin this summer. Martin made promising gestures about democratic reform earlier this year, but none of this has been discussed in the first week of the campaign. Instead, a long-time Liberal, Alphonso Gagliano, files a lawsuit against the Prime Minister at a time calculated to do the most political damage. Martin has succeeded where other Liberal leaders have failed – widening fissures in the Liberal fold just when unity and resolve are at a premium.

The Liberal campaign has opted for tried and true rather than bold and new. Health care dominated Martin’s first week of speech-making, and the Liberals promise billions over ten years. But while a plurality of Canadians say this is the most important election issue, it is exceedingly complex and Canadians do not associate any one party with a solution to the system’s putative woes. And can a government credibly promise ten years’ worth of conditional funding in an area of provincial jurisdiction? Think of the vast swings in Canada’s fiscal fortunes over the previous ten years, and think also of the endless federal-provincial acrimony over health policy and funding over the same period.

Martin’s Liberals have done the same old, same old: pre-election pork, lots of promises to Canadians for new funding; identifying the Liberal Party with the essence of Canada itself; and asserting itself as the “balanced” alternative to scary right-wingers and profligate NDPers. Martin has been worked too hard by his team. By the end of the first week, he appeared tired and in one speech spoke of the hundreds of millions of people between Canada’s coasts. Oh? Canadians will soon tire of his hyperbole. His speaking style has come to take on some of John Turner’s nervous quirks.

New Democratic Party

The NDP has its best leader in years in Jack Layton. He is smart, articulate, likeable, seemingly with a perpetual smile on his face. And to match the contemporary politics of image and personality, the party itself has a platform defining a clear social democratic platform that helps to make this a campaign of ideas. For health care, the NDP wants proposes “innovation, not privatization,” a slogan that begs many questions but emphasizes the need for change while adhering to New Democrat principles. From a clear position on the left, Layton is able to paint Martin and Harper as corporate, privatization-friendly birds of a feather. These two prongs – the leader’s personality, and a platform of clear policy ideas – can develop into a an effective vote-getter. They may drain votes from the Liberals and help Conservatives as a result.

The NDP’s opening rally in Ottawa appeared tepid and Layton’s mid-week accusation that Paul Martin is responsible for the death of Toronto homeless people has met with as many jeers as plaudits. The party’s deficit-free spending plan hits the right rhetorical note but has not yet convinced Canadians that the New Democrats can be trusted with stewardship of the economy. And the proposal for an inheritance tax is a welcome injection of new ideas into the campaign, but its chief failing is that it will be most attractive precisely to those people – young Canadians – whose voter turnout hovers around 25%.

The Green Party

Grade: B

If the Liberals are to be judged stringently according to their control over the electoral agenda, The Greens must be judged leniently for having little control at all. The Greens’ leader Jim Harris, will not be allowed to participate in the televised party leaders’ debate, which is unfortunate because this party represents much of what can make this campaign a contest of ideas. This is a small party, polling around 5% of Canadians, and its chief effect, aside from elevating the level of debate about Canada’s fundamental policy options, may indeed be the Nader-like torpedoing of its ideological cousins in the NDP.

But one must respect the Greens’ philosophical integrity in the face of electoral imperatives. While most Canadians fume at high gasoline process, the Greens proposed to add a 10 cent per litre tax. Not exactly a vote-getter. And the Green candidate from Saanich-Gulf Islands, Andrew Lewis, was a most able and articulate guest on CBC radio’s “The House” on Saturday May 29. While the Greens’ platform may not win them any seats, they may win them votes, and these, under the terms of the new political financing regime in effect for the first time in this election, are money in the bank for future political contests.

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