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Harold Jansen - Report Card Results

Week Seven Results (Monday 16th - Sunday 22nd)

Political Parties
C+	C+	C	B+

Bloc Quebecois

The Bloc campaign has worked fairly well all election, but Duceppe and friends seem to have been totally caught off guard by the Conservative surge in that province. To be fair, I don’t think anyone saw that coming, but the Bloc has been trying to adjust its campaign for the new realities. The week began with Duceppe backtracking from his goal of winning a majority of the vote. He tried to deny that he’d ever made that promise. The problem for the BQ is that the raised expectations themselves. For the election to be seen as a big success, they need to increase seat totals and popular vote, something that looks likely so far. Duceppe has spent most of the week attacking the new Conservative threat, but the Harper-led Tories are a much less scary creature for Quebeckers than the Liberals are. The Bloc is partly a victim of circumstances, but they have not been very adaptable thus far.

Conservative Party

This is the first week of the campaign where I can say that the Conservatives made a reasonably serious blunder. Harper’s comments about Canadians not having to worry about a Conservative government because of the checks and balances in place (the courts, the Senate, the public service) seemed to imply that the Conservatives wanted to do things that needed checks and balances. This is not the right message to be sending when you’ve been spending the entire campaign trying to convince Canadians that you have no hidden agenda and are pursuing moderate policies. A better way to go about it would have been to emphasize that you plan to reform Ottawa so that the Prime Minister and government face real limits to their power. Although some media pundits have said that this week may have turned a majority into a minority, I don’t think so because I don’t think a majority was ever there in the first place. Was this week bad enough to cost the Conservatives the election? I don’t think so, but it certainly didn’t help matters.

Liberal Party

Prime Minister Martin jumped all over Harper’s comments about checks and balances and, I thought, hit it out of the park. That was his best moment on the campaign. Of course, the Conservative blunder was quickly overshadowed by some sound bites on the Liberal campaign and, once again, they weren’t good ones. The Liberals have to wonder whether the NDP and the labour movement set them up by having Buzz Hargrove join their campaign! Hargrove’s comments required Martin to distance himself from his ally at the same time as he is desperately trying to court NDP voters. To top it all off, the major Paul Martin video clip that made it to the nightly news was the Prime Minister telling the cameras what a committed federalist his opponent was. The good news for the Liberals is that the campaign is almost done and the bleeding will stop soon.

New Democratic Party

I give Layton a lot of credit for the energy he’s shown in going after Liberal voters and trying to shore up the NDP support in the last couple of weeks. The man has been relentless. We’re at the stage of the campaign where there are no new policy announcements and the parties hope that there are no surprises. We’re down to determination, will, and energy by the leaders. Layton has shown all of those things this week. He has recognized the danger of strategic voting and is engaging the argument. He seems successful so far at preventing an “anybody but Harper” movement from taking place, which could hurt the NDP big time. Also, the NDP shows its traditional strength at targeting its message geographically in the last several hours of the campaign.

Past Political Party Grades

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