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Tom Bateman - Week Two Grades

Political Parties

Bloc Quebecois

For the Bloc, this election is a bit like playing hockey against a team whose players have no sticks. In the Bloc’s universe, Quebeckers demand significant fiscal autonomy in the federation, and this is only as a stepping stone to full political sovereignty. At the same time, Quebeckers are appalled at attempts by others, especially the federal government, to buy their affections. The Liberals are supposed to act like Quebeckers are in it for the money, but cannot think like Quebeckers are in it for the money. This is an impossible game to play. No wonder the Liberals can’t score.

The only question now will be how big a trouncing the Liberals will get in Quebec.

Conservative Party

Assuming “momentum” is a quality a political party can possess in an election campaign – rather than a metaphor borrowed from physics that projects into the future trends evident in the recent past – then the Conservatives have it. As challengers to the incumbent Liberals, they have largely played in the offensive zone. Martin’s Liberals have had a hard time getting out of their own end of the rink. And on the polling scoreboard, the Conservatives’ style of play has helped them. The Conservatives have tightened the race considerably and indeed are to be leading in Ontario, where one-third of House seats are located.

Harper has run a disciplined campaign and has only had to deal with a few cases of open-mouth disease by his candidates. Early in the campaign the issue was official bilingualism. More recently it has been third-party counseling for women seeking abortions and whether the Tories would use the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to repeal access to abortion and reverse a court decision affirming same-sex marriage. Early indications are that Harper’s reactions to his candidates’ remarks have been effective; the remarks have attracted media attention and the predictable outrage from the predictable groups, but there is little evidence yet the Conservatives will be harmed. Harper can reach into the Reform-Alliance past and trumpet the virtues of free votes in Parliament to empower MPs and the constituents who elect them. He can remind voters that Paul Martin has proclaimed himself the champion of freer voting in Parliament too.

But the Conservatives are vulnerable. They have released the whole of their campaign platform and it looks a little like the Reagan formula from the 1980s: lots of tax cuts combined with lots of public spending (producing debilitating deficits down the road). Harper argues that there are billions of dollars in surpluses the Liberals do not report, and these billions will balance the Conservatives’ budget. I would not take these promises to the bank. But it is also true that Canadians are not paying close attention to the Conservatives’ promises – yet.

Clearly we are in minority government territory. The Conservatives could be the major party asked to assemble a government. The Tories can really only rely on the Bloc Quebecois. This will be a pact with the devil. On practical matters, the Tories promise the provinces more health care dollars but more conditionality too. Quebec wants the money without the conditions. Harper is an instinctive decentralist, and has said he is committed to redressing a “fiscal imbalance.” But his constituency is in Canada outside Quebec, and people there will worry about a gutted federal government. And the Bloc contains social liberals who are horrified by whatever social conservatism there is in the Tory party. How the Tories would reconcile their platform with the Bloc’s objectives is anything but clear. More fundamentally, the BQ has an ideological interest in making Parliament and Canada fail. Accordingly it makes a poor partner in any party’s coalition.

To date Harper and his candidates have withstood all the scare-mongering and personal attacks that have been dished out to them. But these latter will continue. Harper’s worry must be that his party has peaked too soon in the polls. He is up 1-0 in the game with a lot of time left on the clock.

Liberal Party

Paul Martin cannot be blamed for his absence from the campaign to attend the D-Day commemoration in France. In other circumstances, such statesmanlike optics would benefit an incumbent. But Martin has not garnered any bounce from this. Perhaps his presence on the campaign trail may not have made much difference either, such is the state of the Liberal campaign. Rumours of internal Liberal dissension, even disorganization, abound. On several occasions Martin has attacked Harper’s campaign promises, giving his opponent all the attention and credibility such attacks confer. Martin realizes he is in trouble.

Early in the week, some Martin cabinet ministers dogged Harper and intruded on his photo-ops like teen-aged anti-globalization protesters (quite a stretch for former bank economist John McCallum). However solid were the merits of their criticisms, the impression created was one of desperation, as Harper intoned afterward. Then came the media stories covering the recriminations about the decision to send the cabinet ministers into the trenches. Bad story line for the Liberals.

This campaign has become a fight the Liberals will be hard-pressed to win. The question for the party is whether there is enough resolve to dig in and do the right things to turn the thing round. One tactic is to go negative, and this may harm more than help. The alternative must be inviting – let Harper win one, struggle through a short term in office, break a pile of promises, allow ridiculous back-bench MP comments to enter the public record, while the Liberals retool for another election, perhaps this fall.

New Democratic Party

What was this Clarity Act repeal issue all about? Whose votes would the NDP expect to gain from a comment like this? The best interpretation is that Layton made the remark to open a wound within the Liberals by dividing the Martinite distinct society advocates from the Trudeau-Chretien wing that has always been hard on Quebec nationalists. If this is true, then the hope is that the Liberals would do very badly, lose the election to the Tories, who would fail to form a lasting government, and propel the country into another election in which the liberals would do better and require the NDP to govern.

Meanwhile the NDP has to watch its left. The Greens could be a surprise and many of their votes will come from NDP supporters. The New Democrats are democrats, presumably, and so should stand up for the inclusion of the Green leader Jim Harris’s participation in the televised leaders’ debates next week. But this matter of principle could damage them electorally. Hmmm.... Principle or power, what will it be?

The Green Party

Grade: B+

Doing well, given grave limitations of size. They are getting favourable free press which is golden for any party. And it is not just their size that gains them such favour. Other small parties are simply ignored. In a summer when a blockbuster movie about the dire consequences of global warming will fuse entertainment and environmental consciousness, the Greens can only benefit.

Past Political Party Grades

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