Worth the Fee to Read It

The saliva drools on page after page written by media personalities and bloggers alike. Regardless of faction, the motif is the same: let’s go to the polls, now!

Well, yes, let’s do. But be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

All sides, of course, see an advantage in going now. The Conservatives believe the most recent set of charges laid by the RCMP in the ever-dragging sponsorship matter will remind everyone that the Liberals are not to be trusted — and they’re happy (as the Prime Minister himself noted in a speech) to go to the polls over their planned changes to our Immigration practices. The Liberals believe that this week’s raid by the RCMP on behalf of Elections Canada at Conservative Party headquarters shows the Conservatives to be at least equally corrupt, and that they will have the better of the Immigration issue in any event.

Ah, but is a vote in the NDP’s interest? Or the Bloc’s? For the Conservatives tied their own hands — I do think it would be a suicidal move to plead the need for an election given their legislation mandating a fixed election date (are you regretting this now, Mr. Harper?, because you ought to be) — and the Liberals need support. Despite both the posturing of Stéphane Dion and other Liberal consigiliere of both front bench and back room whisper, the Liberals cannot, on their own, do anything. They will need to bring the other Opposition parties along with them — at least one if the Government fails to whip itself for the vote, and both of them, in force, if the three-line whip is in place.

For the Bloc, of course, the issue is simple. Are they ready to take enough seats? If they are, they can vote as they please; if they are not, they will keep this Parliament running. (Note, please, that I did not say they would topple the Government if they’re ready: they will determine which outcome — maintain current practices or make the proposed changes — better serves their interests (which are expressed as les intérêts du Québec, naturellement. It may well be that they find the proposed changes as something they can make show as “another victory”.)

So ignore the Her Majesty’s Prime Minister and the Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition. Instead, cast your gaze firmly upon the Hon. Jack Layton, leader of the New Democrats. What is in his interest here?

Recent polling data suggested, for instance, that the Liberals were making gains in two places the NDP needs to have strong three-way races to win seats: British Columbia and Ontario. Going into electoral battle against such a surge (were it to be maintained to voting day) would not serve the NDP well. On the other hand, voting with the Government means the NDP would also be aiding and abetting the implementation of the budget, something they voted against. A difficult situation, indeed!

Frankly, if there’s a party that needs the economy to weaken further, it is probably the NDP. A downturn would take some of the heat off any environmentalist trends — work and money concerns usually override more abstract causes (as any student of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would know) — and given the lack of clear Liberal policy the NDP would have the opportunity to stake out a “citizens’ economic platform” in contradistinction to both of the larger parties. Just as the Conservatives would like to go into an election now — before tougher and more turbulent times come — even if it meant another minority as the outcome, so, too, the NDP are probably better served by waiting, both on the Green flank and on the “green” flank, so to speak.

Then, too, with both the Conservatives and the Liberals flinging mud and splattered head to toe with it, there will be those voters who are ready to say “a pox on both your houses” and take their custom elsewhere. On the other hand, given the House schedule, there will be few additional opportunities to vote non-confidence in the Spring session. That puts the Government in control of the agenda over the summer, and a gear-up period in the Fall sitting before confidence motions are again on the order paper. So do you go now, or hope you can build momentum quickly come late September?

Layton’s challenge, of course, is the usual one: gaining attention. This is a double-edged sword: to get attention, he generally must be somewhat outrageous (the joys of sound-bite media), yet that makes him seem to be reacting rather than offering a well-thought-out alternative (or just shouting to be heard at worst). It’s why, for instance, you seldom see him in the newspaper or on the news: the bully-bites offered up from both the Conservative and Liberal benches, and the presumption that Dion is master of the House’s fate (something he, alone, is no more capable of controlling than is the Prime Minister) means that Dion’s threats to topple are taken seriously instead of being challenged as reason suggests they should be.

There’s little question but that we are not being well-served by our current Parliament. It is well past its best-before date, and should be, as with Fortunado in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, bricked up in the dungeon and seen no more. But here is the question, will Layton take up Montressor’s bricks, mortar and trowel and do the deed?

It may serve the NDP better to wait, but the dangers in that course of action say to me that Jack Layton’s moment to risk all has come. When the carnival comes and the vote is pressed, it is time to press the brick home and lead us to the polls.

That is, of course, if the Liberals deign to even show up to vote (in numbers more than a handful).

A week has passed since the by-elections of March 17, and in a week Parliament will resume, with the four new MPs being presented in the centre aisle. Already, though, the drum beats of renewed bluff and bluster, storm and fury, and threat upon threat again takes up the airwaves and hectares of highly processed dead tree delivered daily at the door. All that noise — and the speculation of near immediate leadership change and policy change in one or more parties from the pundit gallery.

We return to the possibility of real governance in Canada facing multiple parties hoist high and fluttering in the breeze of their own rhetoric, leaks and ambitions. This faces the Harper Government no less so than those on the other side of the aisle, although it is, perhaps, working its way out differently within the ranks of the Conservatives. Leaving them to the end, then, let’s look at the others:

It Should Have Been “May is Not a Leader”, Perhaps?

After a year of Conservative advertising under the tag line “Dion is Not a Leader”, it would be difficult to use the line elsewhere, if only for fear of being copied. Yet there are numerous circles of thought in Canada today which coalesce around the following: “the Green Party would be worth a look-in were it not for Elizabeth May”.

Goodness knows May has done a number of strange things: having placed second, last time, in London North Centre (and second with a chance of taking the seat in future, not a “second to Bob Rae’s 59%” as in Toronto Centre last week), she has eschewed running there. She struck a bargain with Stéphane Dion (detrimental, certainly, to the Liberals in setting the Green Party up as a viable alternative to the local Liberal — a move that almost cost Joyce Murray her chance to parade next Monday, what with the 3:1 growth of Green votes, mostly from the Liberals, in Vancouver Quadra) to enable her to carry out a quixotic tilt against Peter MacKay in Central Nova, a seat closer to an inheritance than a contest. She could even have sought a seat in one of the four by-elections just held — one of the comments regularly heard in Quadra was “Dan Grice is doing well, but why didn’t May contest this seat: she’d have won and have made it to the Commons”. (Nothing against Grice, mind, simply a recognition that this was a likely opportunity to succeed and that the leader of the party didn’t take it.)

Then there’s the positions she has spoken on, far more Liberal-me-too than charting positive reasons to vote Green.

Come the next election, the battle will be over media time, and participation in the debate. May’s job since the election of 2006 has been to (a) create those positive reasons to look at her party so that (b) the demand to expose the party in the debates would be there (in the newsrooms as much as in the streets) and (c) get a Green into the Commons, much as Reform got Deborah Grey into the Commons. Even one seat makes a difference.

At a time when Canadian politics is showing the early signs of realignment (consider the sheer number of MPs crossing the floor — and winning re-election under their new colours! — this decade) the Green leader had, above all, the responsibility to become a viable destination for those seeking alternatives. In this she has failed.

Jack! Wishes Paul Martin Was Back

Do you recall when Jack Layton became NDP Leader in 2003? Since then, he’s been consistent: he has claimed, over and over again, that the Liberals have moved too far to the right, and that the New Democrats are their successor on the centre-left of Canadian politics. The NDP popular vote has risen in both the 2004 and again in the 2006 general elections. However, there is a huge difference to the NDP in facing a Conservative minority Government and facing a Liberal minority Government, one that Jack Layton has bet everything on — with little to show for it.

Layton’s strategy for the past two-plus years with the Liberals on his side of the aisle has been to try and convince Canadians that the Liberals are not needed. This is, of course, a welcome move from the Harper Government’s perspective: the squeezing of the middle term in the three-party equation by both ends potentially helps lead to a Conservative majority — and, if BC politics (where this squeeze occurred back in the 1950s) is anything to go by, such a squeeze would make the Conservatives the “natural party of government” and the NDP into the strong-yet-almost-never-good-enough “Permanent Opposition”.

The problem Layton’s facing is, despite the reams of truth he dispenses — his party votes against the Government while the Liberals abstain and abstain; his party raises a non-confidence motion against the Government while the Liberals avoid anything so direct; his “Canada’s Effective Opposition” tag line reflects the reality of a Liberal party silenced by its loss, going through a leadership process, then never really settling down after the convention to the task of constructing its own policy positions — the message is fundamentally rejected by the Canadian people and the Canadian media. The media rejects it both because it comes from what, in their book, is generally considered “the filler at the end of the story” (the fundamental story being the horse race between the leading parties and the knifings and back-stabbing potentials within them), and because they know it’s irrelevant: Canadians are often followers of tradition and vote from habit more than from constant consideration of the issues.

Then, too, some elements of NDP policy — even those these are consistent with who the NDP are deep in their roots — don’t sit well with the public. “Out of Afghanistan” may sound noble to many ears, but even many of those (judging by call-in radio) who don’t support being there and don’t want to stay also don’t want to be seen to cut and run. There’s a constant sense that “Working” or “Ordinary Canadians” is code for people who earn less than me: that makes some of the notions on offer seem dangerous, especially since it’s those in that family income between $40,000 and $140,000 range that are feeling stressed, yet feel Jack Layton may be talking about them paying more to transfer to others.

Jack’s best days were when he faced off against Paul Martin, with his sense of entitlement, his wealth, his dithering “all over the mapism” to be exploited (especially in a minority situation), and with the fracture lines the Chrétien-Martin wars dug deep into the Liberal party. None of these face him now with the Harper Conservatives in government. He must either position the NDP squarely with positive attributes and reasons why voters should choose them on their merits, or he will find his party squeezed.

After all, only a few Canadians per hundred spend time thinking about politics between elections. All his actions in the House since 2006 will be dust in the wind once a general campaign is underway.

Anything to Say About the Bloc?

Well, frankly, no. First, I am no expert on Québec and can’t say one way or the other whether Bloc voters are tiring of the game of blocking action in Ottawa rather than being (potentially) a part of it. Second, if Duceppe wasn’t forced out after his dalliance with moving to the PQ (and dashing back to the Bloc within a week) then the post is his regardless of performance, for neither his caucus nor voters (in the three Québec by-elections of 2007) seem disposed to make him the issue.

Tomorrow: the Liberals and the Conservatives.

It’s been a very interesting night, actually, watching the by-election returns come in. If nothing else, tonight’s returns show just how isolated Toronto has become from the rest of the country — and, with it, the ideas of the Toronto élites in the various parties.

Toronto Centre and Willowdale were never, of course, in doubt: a political earthquake of extreme proportions would have been required to shake these loose from not only the grip of the laurels of incumbency being passed on to two new candidates (both of whom had received great quantities of news coverage not that long ago as the Liberal leadership campaign carried on). Indeed, both have (as of the 20:39 PT reading from the Elections Canada website) achieved a 59% true majority from the electors — slightly less than one in four — who turned out today. This puts two more possible alternatives to Dion on the Liberal benches for all to see, each and every day in Question Period: I do wonder why my mind’s eye keeps seeing Gaius Julius surrounded by his friends. Probably clapping as the knife goes in, too.

Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River, where Stéphane Dion’s hand-picked candidate, Joan Beatty, was expected to have a tough go of it tonight, but the battle was expected to be close for all of that. Nevertheless, this riding voted consistently, from poll to poll, to elect the Conservative, Rob Clarke. It would, in point of fact, have taken just about every NDP vote to have gone to the Liberal (I do recall more than one news article and blog post in the past few days who thought it would be a Liberal-NDP battle here!) to close the gap. (It may well be that that outcome does eventually come about — a Liberal & NDP merger, not unlike the Canadian Alliance & Progressive Conservative merger that gave us today’s Conservatives. Goodness knows there are enough former New Democrats already on the Liberal benches.)

“DMCR”, as one Maclean’s blogger put it, has another distinction: the highest turnout of the four by-elections. Still only 25%, but solidly so, not under the mark as in the Toronto ridings — or in Vancouver.

Which brings me to Vancouver Quadra, still a battleground at the time of writing (there are still 64 of the 237 polls to report, and although the Liberal Joyce Murray has been ahead often the lead has see-sawed). I am expecting (but not personally happy about) Murray to win it. However, Stephen Owen’s +20% legacy has been dissolved. The next go around in this riding should be more interesting, indeed. The Greens are coming out of Quadra with 15% as well — they and the NDP have traded the also-ran laurels all night long — and I suspect this represents the future general election in BC, at least along the coast: a four way battle.

The Aftermath

If there is a big loser tonight it is Jack Layton and the NDP. Across three of the four ridings (Toronto Centre, Desenthé-Missinippi-Churchill River and Vancouver Quadra) the party is in the 13-17% range, not enough to lead to more seats. True, all four of these ridings were Liberal pre-tonight, but if the NDP’s message — with its anti-war core and NDP opposition exercised in the Commons (no abstentions amongst the abstentious, so to speak) can’t make headway in a by-election, where both the prior incumbents and the current government could be sent a message, then they are unlikely to do so in a general campaign. The party has come to be seen as mostly “against”; it is going to need to be known as being “for” a coherent, integrated programme, or that merger with the Liberals is going to looking more and more appropriate as time goes on.

Our Opposition Leader, Stéphane Dion, also has failed to reinforce his position tonight, and may in fact have weakened it substantially. Four-for-four was — as with those who run websites and data centres — the price of admission. There will be those who link DMCR to Outremont and ask what other losses wait in the wings. The tussle amongst sitting MPs over whether to try and trigger an election or continue to avoid losing by winning a non-confidence measure will continue. No doubt the morrow will bring new analysis — perhaps first and foremost from the recently-installed President of the Central Region of the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario) — but things are at a point with Dion where his supporters end up being countered not only by those who do not support the Liberal Party, but by those who do (and fear for it). In other words, the storm of sound and fury, signifying little to nothing, we have lived through for weeks will continue.

On the other hand, the Greens can see decent results in Toronto Centre (where they came second) and in Vancouver Quadra (where Dan Grice put on a solid showing). Both these results earn the party funding support for the next battle, having 13-15% of the total vote: this puts them on a part with the NDP. (The other two ridings showed a more standard breakdown of support.)

Finally, the Conservatives. Not only does Stephen Harper come out of tonight with a new MP on the Government benches, but it is clear that none of the attempts to plaster his party with goo — Schreiber, Cadman, etc. — have done any real damage. Neither have any of the decried “self-inflicted wounds”: income trusts, denial of the RESP tax change, etc. Whatever reservations may keep Harper from achieving a majority, he is also not losing ground. This is particularly important when we remember that by-elections give voters a safe place to “spank the government”. We come out of tonight with a government unspanked. Food for thought should the government fall in the near future.

The Anomaly That is Toronto

I close this piece by returning momentarily to the city of my birth, Toronto. There should now be little question but that Toronto has a political culture that is atypical. It was, as Ontarians well know, Toronto that has thrown up the “Progressive” end of Progressive Conservativism, both provincially and federally. Yes, there are other places that live and breathe a Liberal-NDP axis: Ottawa, West Island Montréal, the City of Vancouver. Toronto, however, exemplifies this. Couple that with the fact that many of the most influential Liberal bloggers are either transplants to Toronto, native Torontonians, or located just outside it in Southern Ontario, and that most of the English-language main stream media in the country is located there, and the disproportionate influence of the Toronto political calculus on national affairs starts to be seen.

But that influence wanes the closer the Liberal Party as elected comes to be the Toronto & District party. Tonight’s results move the Liberals a little closer to that: winning Vancouver Quadra, a seat where, from 1988 to 2006 inclusive, a box painted red with an “L” on it could have been elected with a 10%+ margin (and actual candidates did significantly better), by the less than 4% Joyce Murray is tracking to, suggests that urban Vancouver may be more susceptible to new types of races (against the Conservatives here; against the NDP elsewhere; every riding facing a growing Green challenge). The future, in other words, is changing: eventually, Toronto — even with its gerrymandered riding boundaries that split opposing party strengths to allow Liberals to sneak through (for Toronto is not monolithic) — will come to change, too.

For Toronto worships at the twin troughs of power and money, and eventually goes where these can be found. When they do, the Liberals as we know them are toast.

So here’s the real question from tonight: can the NDP (or the Greens) figure out how to compete successfully enough to tip the balance and make the residual Liberals the supplicants, when the time comes?

On this question the nation’s political future rests.

Update @ 21.41 PT: Vancouver Quadra takes the laurels for largest turnout and the gap between the Liberal Murray and the Conservative Meredith is closing. Nothing like a little “end of the night” (there are only 34 polls still to report) excitement, although I’m not expecting an upset here — just an extremely close result.