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Tom Bateman - Week One Grades

Political Parties
B	A-	C	C

Bloc Quebecois

Once again the BQ has a straightforward, simple message to proclaim: sovereignty for Quebec. Duceppe’s tone so far echoes the serenity he cultivated in the past, avoiding the provocations regarding the Conquest and more recent sleights that make everybody surly. But the notion that there ought to be a Quebec national hockey team, while sensible when seen in the context of Scotland’s participation in international sports competitions, may become an unfortunate metaphor for the sovereignist project. For in this realm, if not in any other, while Quebec and ROC players are strong together, apart they may never stand on a medal podium.

Conservative Party

On the night of the confidence vote, Harper got out of the gate with talk of change and vision. Equally important was his warning to his caucus: the Liberals would say all the nasty things about him that they said 17 months earlier. Harper’s keeper line was that when the Liberals start attacking his person, then the Conservatives will know the Liberals are on the ropes.

But the announcement of the week was surely the pledge to reduce the GST. Even the CBC’s best efforts to discredit the plank have not taken the sting out of this one. Harper forced the other parties to rise in defence of the GST, practically intoning that Canadians like taxes. Harper has taken the initiative early. But he was caught saying that he hates all taxes. Offhand remarks like this will help others believe he is a Hayekian mad man

There are two blemishes. The first is that apparent miscommunication between Harper and Peter MacKay dissipated the effect of the announcement of an independent prosecutor’s office to investigate Sponsorship-related crimes.

The second is that Harper’s promise to reduce wait-times for access to health care should have been much bolder. Because the Supreme Court of Canada used the Charter to cast a constitutional shadow over Quebec’s ban on private health insurance, Harper has been given a golden opportunity to get on to the politically correct side of health care policy while addressing the judicial imperium.

His plan is for provinces to guarantee wait time limits and pay for out-of jurisdiction care when those limits are exceeded – just as the Kirby report recommended. The Tory plank should have been fashioned to include the use of s. 33 of the Charter to protect any reform of the health care system from further Supreme-Court induced meddling. Any critic of the Conservatives’ promise to use s. 33 would then have to defend the Supreme Court’s near-invalidation of private health insurance in the Chaoulli case of June, 2005.

This in my opinion is the Conservatives’ golden opportunity missed. Standing up for s. 33 in health care reform would affirm the CPC’s constituency; bolster Conservatives’ earlier criticisms of judicial power that were so pilloried in reference to the same-sex marriage debate; potentially make s. 33 more useable n the future; restore Canadian parliamentary democracy by returning policy power to the politicians; put the Conservatives in defence of public health care financing; and box in the other parties. Too bad.

Liberal Party

Given that the Liberals have been campaigning – as all incumbent parties are wont to do – for weeks and weeks prior to the election call, they came through week one on the defensive and shop-worn. Paul Martin’s remarks to his caucus last Monday night were almost a tape recording of the Liberals’ lines in 2004. Surely the Liberals’ defence of national unity is problematic in light of Gomery I. So the Liberals love Canada. Maybe it is possible to kill with kindness.

The Liberals are the incumbents and generally have the national media behind them. This gives them a huge advantage. But Liberals Jean Chretien and Jean Pelletier in their court actions against Gomery are keeping the Sponsorship Scandal on the radar and ths is to the Tories’ advantage. Now Harper need not raise the issue incessantly and become subject to the criticism that he is negative all the time. There are now Liberals going negative for him.

But the Liberals know Canadians well. They occupy that great middle space on the Canadian ideological spectrum and can be for spending and tax cuts at once. They can buy both big military planes and little day care spaces. They are for cities and for “communities” – who’s left? They play to Canadians’ instinctive suspicion of ideological backbone and rigidity.

New Democratic Party

The NDPers are the enigma of the week. They punched well above their weight for 18 months, wresting concessions out of the Liberals and in so doing recalling the NDP’s glory days of the 1960s. But on Monday night Jack Layton was flat, even sullen. Perhaps he was coached not to be too “exciting” and smiley as he was in May, 2004. If so, this was an over-correction.

Harper’s GST gambit caught Layton flat-footed, putting him into the position of having to say that Canadians do not really like tax cuts. Oh? And while Buzz Hargrove’s comments were borderline sensible, the media spin has hurt the NDP. In that vexing calculus of power and principle into which the single-member plurality electoral system pushes all the parties, the NDP always suffers. One wonders if the NDP will now have to start saying touchy-feely things about Harper to get him to steal votes from the Liberals so the NDP can go up the middle in some ridings.

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