What is happening in Ottawa?

These Chretien-Broadbent talks are a fascinating bit of crack for a Canadian political junkie like me. Paul Wells thinks that Harper will blink first on the proposals in this economic update. I wonder though if that will be enough. If the Liberals and the NDP realize that there’s a chance here to boot Harper, could they just say “screw it” and put up a non-confidence motion in the hopes that the GG will ask them to form a government. Of course if the GG sends everyone to the polls again over this, both parties are screwed. Either way Harper looks to have believed a little too much of his own propaganda about being a master political tactician.

To my Liberal friends

This is the first in a series of posts I’m planning to do on what the Liberal Party needs to do in order to win again. I’m going to focus on the Liberals here because I believe that they represent the best chance to put a more progressive party into government. Jack Layton and the NDP tried hard to convince Canada that they were the new mainstream progressive party – but so far voters remain unconvinced. So in the spirit of progressive pragmatism I’m going to address these words to Liberals. Here goes:

Big Ideas: Don’t get any

I thought that the Green Shift wasn’t a bad idea. Insofar as something needs be done about our environmental impact, it seemed like a reasonable solution. The problem though was that it was complicated in practice. I think if you follow politics closely, it’s easy to lose sight of how little many people pay attention to these things. I pushed hard on this blog for electoral reform in Ontario. I thought that the proposal was easy enough to follow – vote for a candidate, vote for a party. Done. Easy. When I tried explaining it to a number of people who weren’t close politics watchers, they furrowed their brows and waved their hands “Who can understand this complicated and weird new system?!” was essentially their reply to the question of electoral reform. Simple, incremental platforms seem to work the best.

What was Chretien’s defining idea? The deficit reduction? He only decided to wipe out the deficit one he got into power, he was way less aggressive on it in the ‘93  campaign than either Campbell or Manning were. What was Harper’s defining idea? Not much, just that the Liberals were stale in government. Canadians seem to prefer go-slow incrementalists to big ideas and crazy dreams. Look at Brian Mulroney: he got the lowest poll numbers of any sitting prime minister in Canada and was defined by two big ideas: constitutional reform and free trade. The Liberals should ditch the idea of an over-arching grand scheme and look for progressive solutions to ordinary problems. It’s not sexy, but it’s something that can generate votes.

Party leaders and conventional wisdom

I was hearing yet again from another left-of-centre Canadian that they would like to see the end of Harper’s government yet they expressed doubts about Dion being able to be Prime Minister. This got me to thinking about the criticisms levied at Dion, that he’s somehow just not fit to be a party leader. In turn, that got me to thinking about federal party leaders in the last ten or fifteen years.

The conventional wisdom on Jean Chretien was that he was past his prime, his moment was 1984 and that by 1990 it had surely passed. How would Canadians ever vote for an inarticulate old man? In 2002 the conventional wisdom on Stephen Harper was that he was an aloof right winger whose views were well outside the mainstream and who was therefore terminally unelectable. Chretien the country for a decade and Harper completed a Reform takeover of the old PC Party and brought his Conservatives to power.

Contrast to some of the politicians with more favourable buzz: Stockwell Day won control of the Canadian Alliance based on buzz that sometimes rose to the level of Trudeau comparisons. This ended when he had open his mouth and actually talk about stuff. Even better press surrounded Paul Martin – seemingly from the time he first became finance minister. He was thought a sure bet to deliver another decade of Liberal rule.

All this is to say that the negative conventional wisdom around Dion probably means next to nothing.

Why can’t we drive this LAV all the way to a majority?

Scott has posted on the utterly craven reasoning behind Conservative military spending with a choice quote from a National Post story:

“Some Conservatives have also complained the funding the government has directed for new defence equipment has not translated into additional support for the party at the polls.”

Boo-fucking-hoo. I thought we needed all this stuff to fight a war. If the high-profile purchases of things like Boeing C-17s were really attempts to buy votes, it’s really far more expensive than Chretien’s custom golf balls. This quote above is enough for someone to do a really careful audit of every military expenditure approved under the Conservatives. The military is not a slush fund and our soldiers are not campaign signs.

Harper Getting Ready

The Star says that the Conservatives are prepping their buses for a campaign right after the throne speech. It ought to be apparent now that Harper has chosen this fall as his time to go. The throne speech he’s crafting is probably going to walk a fine line between being unsupportable by the opposition but still acceptable to Canada’s political mainstream. He’ll hem and haw about how the opposition forced him into a campaign, and yet it ought to be apparent by now that he wants one. It’s probably the Chretien strategy of hitting the new guy before he gets established, and Harper’s going to try to use it to grab a majority.

Outremont and the Liberal Party: Plus ca change…

There is this sort of meme now that Iggy is going to really go after Dion for the leadership job. It would be ludicrous if this happened. Part of what undid the Liberals 13 years in power was the sort of fratricidal undercurrent between Martin and Chretien. These new guys though, they can’t even wait till they get into office. The party probably does not have enough time to install another new leader before an election. I don’t have any strong feelings about the Liberal party, but this sort of infighting is what could potentially put Harper in majority territory.

John Tory’s "Stanfield" Moment

That’s what I call what he did today with his teach-what-you-want approach to science in the newly taxpayer-funded religious schools of this province. Many religious schools may want to dispute evolution but now that taxpayer money is involved, it’s a different story. Moreover what if Scientology sets up a school teaching children that Lord Xenu dumped a bunch of alien souls in volcanoes and that’s where we came from? I’m sure there are other examples and indeed ones that just about anyone would not want to be supported by their tax dollars. John Tory this is your Robert Stanfield fumble. Not as spectacular as telling people not to vote for Chretien because he’s ugly, but pretty bad nonetheless.

What the Attack Ads Say

Paul Wells has posted several interesting observations on the Conservative attack ads as they appear in Quebec. Notably, he critiques the mention of Chretien:

“When I see an attack ad based on Chrétien and Dion, I think: the Liberals’ best two years in Quebec in the past 15 were the ones when that old bleu, Lucien Bouchard, was fuming about Chrétien and Dion.”

I think that Harper may believe his own propaganda about Chrétien. I think he perceives Chrétien as a really awful Prime Minister and would like nothing more than to be able to continue dragging his name through the mud.

Here We Go Again

Remember how everyone said that they wouldn’t buy another war being sold by Cheney and company on false pretenses? Well, it’s happening again, only this time with Iran.

The only question now is whether Stephen Harper will take us along for the ride. Remember his words on Iraq:

“Today, the world is at war. A coalition of countries under the leadership of the U.K. and the U.S. is leading a military intervention to disarm Saddam Hussein. Yet Prime Minister Jean Chretien has left Canada outside this multilateral coalition of nations.

This is a serious mistake. For the first time in history, the Canadian government has not stood beside its key British and American allies in their time of need.”

Once again, I believe this to be one of Chretien’s better legacies.

Tyranny of the Minority

One of the things that strikes me about the cutbacks that Harper’s gang announced today was how it illustrates the increasing irrelevance of parliament. I think that most of these changes could not have been voted through the House. Had they been announced as part of any budget, they would have been revised to pass the same budget. Instead this is just something that cabinet announces as a fact to us, the plebians in the electorate.

This was the kind of thing that would have been criticised by people like Harper in the days of Chretien. While Chretien’s Liberals never won a majority of the popularity vote, they could at least command a majority in the commons. Now we have a government that is not even close to a majority that is seriously altering spending priorities and nothing is to be done about it.

For someone that promised democratic accountability, Steve sure acts like an elected dictator once he has a whiff of power. This is a minority folks, a party that got what? 1/3 of the popular vote the last time out?