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Tom Bateman - Report Card Results

Week Seven Results (Monday 15th - Sunday 22nd)

Political Parties
B	B	C+	A-

Bloc Quebecois

The Bloc has learned, with the Liberals, that they profit by the absence of a national party competitive with the Liberals. It appears that the surging Conservatives have eaten into a good share of the Bloc vote. Duceppe's attempt to link the Conservatives with the Option Canada scandal is weak but necessary.

Conservative Party

The Tories were done no favours by the Globe's pollster, Allen Gregg, whose polls stuck the Conservatives in majority territory, while other national polls pegged them at around 37%. This energized the Liberals and invited a damaging interpretation of Stephen Harper's mid-week analysis of separation of powers doctrine Canadian-style.

Apparently off script, Harper said that there is nothing to fear in a Conservative majority government, not least because the other institutions of government in Canada - the Senate, the senior civil service, and the high courts - are controlled by personnel appointed by the Liberals. There can be no reckless Conservative steamroller, he suggested. Others filled in the blanks: the Liberal-dominated Senate in 1991 did defeat a Conservative abortion bill. Those with a longer memory may recall that when Joe Clark's took over in 1979, a hand-written sign in the PMO presciently said, "We'll be back." And so they were.

But if anything has damaged the Conservative push in the last week, it was the fallout from this remark. It allowed the Liberals to suggest menacingly that the Conservatives will act to place their frothing-at-the-mouth ideologues in all those institutions, thereby "politicizing" them. Thus Paul Martin - the only one talking about abortion in this campaign - got some traction on the claim that Harper's Conservatives have a sinister grand design to penetrate the Canadian state, not just be the government.

Harper's analysis of Canadian political institutions is very American, revealing a sophisticated appreciation of separations of powers and countervailing ambitions. It is as if he was recently reading The Federalist Papers. Alas, the other leaders were not his intellectual equals, or chose not to be. Instead they played to Canadians' naivete, even their ignorance.

Harper has not entirely doused the scary-man image. Many Atlantic Canadians harbour deep suspicions of him. Many voters for Conservative will have been pushed to the party not pulled to the party.

Liberal Party

It is a truism that Liberals campaign left and govern right. It usually works. The Liberals, better than the other parties, know and dwell in the ambivalent centre of Canadian politics.

Marks for exploiting Harper's minority majority remark discussed above.

Marks off for appealing to the worst of democratic instincts: fear. This may save them some seats, but it will cost the Canadian democratic system some long-term moral capital.

Marks off for failing to imagine a country characterized by political diversity. The Liberals' long-time identification of their party with the Canadian state itself has really got to their heads.

Marks off for failing to recognize political diversity in their own party. Liberal MPs are on both sides of the SSM and abortion debates.

All in all, Liberal tactics last week may very well have staved off a slim Conservative majority. You have to admire the Liberal Party's survival instinct.

New Democratic Party

The NDP has adjusted its game to the vagaries of the electoral system quite expertly and is poised to do well. But this party is typically the victim of marginal voter volatility. In tight races with Liberal fear-mongering at high pitch, the NDP will suffer. Oddly, but understandably, the NDP has attacked the Liberals vociferously while ignoring the Conservatives. Canadian voters unfamiliar with the operation of the electoral system will be forgiven for being confused: aren't the Harper-types the really scary people?

Refreshingly, the NDP has kept the criticisms of the other parties civil and substantive.

Past Political Party Grades

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