As the possibility of a federal election looms large, Green Party leader Elizabeth May wants her party to fully understand what her priorities are:
They all hinge around herself; winning her own seat.
So she won't be walking the national campaign beat as hard as the other federal leaders. While Canada's other federal leaders are helping their candidates get elected, May will be focusing all her time on herself.
As it turns out, getting May elected is the top priority of all Green Party candidates. May seems to expect that getting elected themselves will come second for all other Green hopefuls.
"The Green Party nationally has decided this is a priority for all of us," May declared. "I am not going to be required to be crisscrossing the country as much as I did in the 2008 election."
"So, I can stay home, keep knocking on doors."
This leaves virtually all of the Green Party's candidates at an even greater disadvantage than they would have been otherwise: with next to no support at all from their party leader, they'll struggle to create a coherent federal brand for voters to respond to.
No one should be terribly surprised: after all, she is the same leader who butchered her party's own constitution so she could guarantee herself her position as the leader.
For Elizabeth May, the Green Party is all about her. Nothing else.
For embattled political leaders, the omnipresent spectre of an election isn't merely a boon -- it's a survival instinct.
This seems to be the case for Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who is attempting to head off a leadership challenge by telling Green Party members that an election is imminent.
Green Party members are beginning to organize to dump May's leadership -- a prospect that seems grim for May as she continues to fight to avert a mandatory leadership review, due for this autumn.
A vote to avert the leadership review will be held at the Green Party convention in August.
“Some resolutions would cause an immediate leadership race, forcing me to resign - even before the next election,” May writes in a letter to Green Party members. “It is entirely up to you, our members, whether I remain as leader through the next election or not. If members want me to step down, so be it. It will have been my honour to serve you since 2006.”
“There’s an election on and this one really matters,” May later added.
Problem being of course, that there's no election on right now -- and the prospects for an election seem grim, with a governing party that seems to have little incentive to call one, with recent polls indicating that the Conservative Party is still shy of majority government territory.
Of course, election fever is in the best interests not only of Elizabeth May, but also of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff -- whose party is languishing as low as 25% in recent polls.
Keep followers agonizing over the prospects over an election that may still be as much as two years away seems to be in the best interests of embattled political leaders. And with nothing to show for her four years of leadership of the Green Party, there's no reason in the world why May shouldn't be embattled.
As with all things, May's description of her motivation are typically self-aggrandizing and self-serving.
“My motivations are very much based on what will make Canada’s democracy work better," May insisted.
Yet it seems that whenever Elizabeth May does something that will advance her own political career, and increase her own public profile, she always insists that it's for the betterment of Canadian democracy.
May's democratic motto could be said to be "l'estat c'est elle".
After all, subverting the rules of the Green Party to shield her leadership from scrutiny isn't at all in the best interests of Canadian democracy, or even in the best interests of her own party.
It's in Elizabeth May's best interests. Full stop.
If May needs to provoke a perpetual state of election anxiety amongst her party membership in order to satisfy her best interests, so be it.
Speaking to a Liberal party fundraiser in Kitchener, Liberal MP Justin Trudeau seemed to be confused over who, precisely, is jockeying for an election in Canada and who isn't.
Trudeau said that he believes there will be an election very soon.
“My suspicion is [the election] will be before Christmas,” Trudeau predicted.
“Mr Harper wants one desperately and he is going to try and bring this House down,” Trudeau insisted.
If the Conservatives do want an election, one thing is for certain -- they aren't talking about it.
In fact, the Conservatives have consistently denounced an election as "irresponsible". If the Tories had to justify themselves before a cynical electorate -- and Canadians very much know a poison pill when they see one -- they know full well that they would be the ones to look irresponsible.
Justin Trudeau must understand this -- or he must be confused. After all, Canadians know full well who it is that really wants an election right now.
Michael Ignatieff may be disappointed in a few days' time when he watches his fellow opposition parties vote on the ways and means measure being introduced by the Conservative party.
NDP leader Jack Layton has tenuously voiced his support for the motion -- although he's noted that "the problem with the Conservatives [is that] the press release comes out, but then the devil is in the details."
Now Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe has followed Layton's lead and announced that he will support the bill -- the last fiscal bill the Conservatives will introduce before the Liberals' planned confidence motion at the end of this month (or early in October).
The Conservative party will remain secure in office for at least that time, pushing the time for a possible election back to mid-November or early December.
But there is one thing that even Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff will have to admit when he watches the BQ and NDP prop up the government to fight another day: it undermines any credibility for Ignatieff's own promised non-confidence motion.
In Parliamentary terms, there tends to be a word reserved for the sentiments of the opposition whose fiscal bills they support:
Confidence.
It would be hard for the NDP or Bloc to jump behind a Liberal non-confidence motion when they've been helping that government advance its fiscal agenda -- in this case, extending additional Employment Insurance coverage to long-tenure workers and supplying funds to pay for the Home Renovation Tax Credit.
Regardless of whatever campaign strategy-related goals are actually motivating the Bloc and NDP -- and speculation has been all the rage for weeks -- this dilemma is particularly distressing for Michael Ignatieff.
Ignatieff needs to establish himself as a "warrior king" before he gets saddled with the wimpy label applied to his predecessor, Stephane Dion.
Ignatieff once seemed to think that being a warrior king was a lot like being a philosopher king, just with tougher words.
But, as Wente notes, "The trouble is that up till now it's been all talk. You can only bluff and bluster so many times without looking silly."
"It's not hard not to conclude that Canada is a stage set for Mr Ignatieff's fantasy life," Wente continues. "He has always been torn between being a man of letters and a man of action, pulled between the ivory tower and the battlefield. He has spent time in nasty war zones."
Wente notes that Ignatieff lacks the political instincts and the killer instinct to defeat Stephen Harper in an election.
"Stephen Harper does not deserve such luck," she concludes. "His opponent is yet another man who vastly overestimates his own abilities. Mr Ignatieff is looking more and more like Mr. Dion, without the accent."
If the opposition parties cannot muster enough confidence in Michael Ignatieff to support his non-confidence motion they'll essentially be painting themselves into a confidence corner.
If they aren't willing to pull the plug on Harper sooner by voting down his fiscal bills, it will take a matter of substantive consequence later to convince them to vote him down at all.
In the meantime, it seems that Stephen Harper may enjoy greater confidence than Michael Ignatieff does as opposition leader.
That bodes all kinds of troublesome for the would-be philosopher king.
"I find it curious that after weeks of berating the idea of a coalition, the prime minister seems to be hard at work forming one himself and with people that he referred to until this morning as socialists," Ignatieff mused. "I'm just wondering whether the prime minister could confirm his new-found love for socialism."
That's Ignatieff's recent take on the aborted Liberal-NDP coalition that finally managed to force former Liberal leader Stephane Dion out of office.
See, Ignatieff's take on the coalition is that it was a bad thing.
"Let me be very clear," Ignatieff said last week. "The Liberal party would not agree to a coalition. In January, we did not support a coalition. And we do not support a coalition today or tomorrow."
Of course, this wasn't the time when the coalition agreement was signed.
Apparently, Ignatieff's thoughts about who could lead the country at the head of a coalition government haven't changed much. Ignatieff apparently decided that he himself couldn't lead the country at the head of a Liberal-NDP coalition.
Back then, when Dion was at the helm of the Liberal party, however, things seemed rather different. Back then the coalition was a good thing, and that only seemed to change in Ignatieff's mind when he himself became party leader in the wake of a likewise-aborted leadership contest.
It takes a particular kind of leader to think himself second in leadership ability to Stephane Dion, and not particular in a good way.
Jack Layton, on the other hand, seems to see the willingness to try to make Parliament work as the benchmark of good leadership.
"If Parliament is working, and we are getting things done ...I'm sure Canadians would prefer there would not be an election and we got results for them," Layton said.
"The [EI] announcement today appears to be a step in the right direction," he added, and noted that the Conservatives will have to keep moving in what the NDP deems the right direction in order to emjoy their support. "Make no mistake about it, we have no intention of giving this government a blank cheque like Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals did. We will be studying the bill and considering it very, very carefully."
So, despite Ignatieff's complaints, there is a world of difference between the agreement that his party struck with the NDP and whatever relationship the Conservatives have with the NDP from this point on.
As Canadians will remember, the Liberal-NDP coalition included a shared cabinet and a reckless agreement with the Bloc Quebecois. The Conservative-NDP "coalition" is being conducted on a case-by-case basis -- the NDP's support could end at any time.
Or it could never crystalize in the first place. Canadians could still be heading for an election. But whatever Jack Layton thinks he stands to gain by teasing otherwise at this point is largely unclear.
"We'll side with the Canadian people, that's who we'll side with," Layton said. "I guess I'm looking for results for Canadians. And I'm not ready to say that an election is somehow inevitable. We should be trying to make Parliament work."
"In a minority Parliament you either work with people or you go into an election. That's a choice that Stephen Harper has got to make," Layton added. "I think leadership would suggest that he should work with other Parliamentarians."
"I'm calling on Stephen Harper to show leadership, and choose a path which would make Parliament work, and that means you've got to work with other parties," Layton said later in the weekend. "There's still time for the prime minister to do the right thing."
Reportedly, Stephen Harper has decided that the right thing to do is to extend 20 weeks of extra employment insurance coverage for workers who have worked at their jobs for seven of the last 10 years -- what they are describing as long-tenure workers.
If passed, this legislation could provide coverage for 180,000 additional Canadians. It may be enough to get Layton's support.
This may be out of support for the legislation itself, or simply an out for the party. As Strategic Counsel's Peter Donolo suggests, the NDP may be assessing their situation much as the Liberal party is and seeing a different picture for them.
"The Liberals have made a calculation that I think makes sense for them -- that the longer they keep on supporting the government, the less they can differentiate themselves and set themselves up as an alternative," Donolo said. "In Canadian history, minority governments have always had third parties keeping them in office, not the official opposition."
"Mr Layton's probably considering that," Donolo added. "Mr Layton also has to consider how the NDP might fare in an election going forward."
If the NDP has enough votes to carry the balance of power, it wouldn't do to be seen not using it. At a certain point simple obstructionism isn't enough to obtain enough political capital to win gains in an election.
The NDP's obstructionism in Parliament has been counter-intuitive enough that this sudden change has been enough to surprise many Canadians, including Conservative house leader Jay Hill.
"When Jack Layton came out of the meeting he had on August 25 with the prime minister, he said the NDP would be the least likely of any opposition party to support the government," Hill reflected. "They've been bragging for three-and-a-half years that they've voted against government at every opportunity. They voted against this year's budget when they had the opportunity to at least read it before they voted against it."
"They've been completely obstructionist with Parliament."
This move by the NDP would mark a shift from functionally being the official opposition in Parliament to effectively reclaiming the balance of power from the Liberals.
While no one should read too deeply into the affair until the EI legislation is passed and the Liberal non-confidence motion defeated, the many Canadians who don't want an election must be seeing some light at the end of the electoral tunnel.
"My background is very diverse and so is this riding," Hetherington explained.
Indeed, much of her commentary on her research -- "temporal, spatial, and cultural impacts of fluctuating climate on paleoenvironments and human evolution, migration, and behavioural adaptability" -- sounds like utter jargon, but the diversity of her work speaks for itself.
As the former executive director of the Sierra Club, May has certainly also addressed a wide diversity of topics in the course of her activist career, as well as her political career as Green party leader.
To Hetherington, the competition between herself and May will be about who can actually be an effective force in Parliament if elected.
"As a potential governing party, we [the Liberals] have the power to effect change," she noted.
Elizabeth May, meanwhile, leads a party that is not terribly likely to effect any kind of change, except by the charity of another political party -- what else was Stephane Dion's decision not to run a Liberal candidate against her in Central Nova but charitable? Likewise, May understands her party is not a potential governing party -- again, her 2008 endorsement of Stephane Dion for Prime Minister attests to that.
The battle between the Liberal party and Green party in Saanich-Gulf Islands is almost certain to be about which party is better poised to be the standard bearer for environmentalism in Canada.
But don't expect a victory in this regard by either party to mean much -- Gary Lunn is still likely to win the election itself.
A fall election wasn't plan A for Lewis Cardinal. Far from it.
But if the NDP's candidate in Edmonton Centre has to fight an election against Conservative MP Lawrie Hawn in a few weeks' time, he's prepared to do it.
Cardinal would have much preferred to contest the election in the spring of 2010. But with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff rattling the election sabre and no one willing to cross party lines to keep Canada's minority parliament going, it seems he'll need to be ready.
A 200-vote defeat in a 2007 Edmonton civic election hasn't deterred Cardinal. Even though he would have liked more time, he's been working hard on setting the stage for a victory in Edmonton Centre.
"I'm in for the long haul. This is what I want to do, I want to work at the federal level," said Cardinal.
"If we would have had a few more days, it would have been a different story," Cardinal said about his 2007 defeat. "We captured the imaginations of a lot of people."
But according to Grant MacEwan College political scientist Chaldeans Mensah, Cardinal may be hard-pressed to match Hawn's energy.
"The difficulty for Mr. Cardinal is that riding has an incumbent ... who's going to be difficult to defeat," Mensah explained. "By all accounts, Laurie Hawn is one of these candidates who will go to as many doors as possible, a very tireless campaigner."
Cardinal is certainly looking to replicate the success of Linda Duncan, who defeated Rahim Jaffer and averted the Conservative sweep of Alberta in 2008. But Duncan herself is far from a shoo-in to win.
"She's got the power of incumbency, (and) name recognition," Mensah said, but it may not be enough. "The Tories are going to throw everything at her just to get that seat back."
Duncan herself doesn't consider an election to be plan A -- but if there's going to be one, she's ready to contest it.
"I think people would like Parliament to work," Duncan recently said. "If the government won't co-operate, what are the alternatives?"
Duncan's Conservative challenger, Ryan Hastman, has already been working hard in the riding, and is carrying the Conservative nomination in the riding with confidence.
Like his competitors, Hastman doesn't consider an election to be the best option, but is simply concentrating on being ready.
"Most people are shocked that the opposition is talking about an election," Hastman mused. "Probably the No. 1 thing they ask me is, 'Are we really going to have another election?'"
Looking forward to the campaign, Hastman is expecting that strategic voting could be a factor. "I think that people have all sorts of reasons for voting. Obviously there was a bit of a strategic campaign," he said. "We don't worry too much about last time. ...Rahim still managed to get, I believe, 42 per cent of the vote."
Considering that Duncan's margin of victory was less than 500 votes despite the strategic vote in the riding, a Conservative party surge in the riding may deliver it back into their hands.
Ryan Hastman and Lewis Cardinal are both carrying the hopes of their parties into what very much looks like it will be a November 2008 election. Either can deliver on those hopes, but both will have to fight hard to accomplish that task.
"We will absolutely not reduce transfer payments to the provinces," announced John McCallum, the Liberal party's Finance Critic. "It's true that this is something we have done in the past — but we have learned from our mistakes."
Canadians have been waiting a long time to hear the Liberal party admit that their cuts to provincial transfers were a mistake.
McCallum went on to claim that the Conservative government has blemishes of its own as it pertains to provincial transfers -- that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government cut billions of dollars in transfers meant to finance a day care program, and cultural funding and general funds for aboriginals.
Some of this money, McCallum reportedly noted, would have gone to provincial infrastructure. Apparently, despite the fact that it was intended to be spent on financing a day care program and on aboriginals.
Some of this even casts doubt on Michael Ignatieff's claim that the Liberals conquered the Mulroney-era deficit (which originated in the Trudeau era) without raising taxes.
As the Herald notes, then-Finance Minister Paul Martin raised government revenues by closing taxation loopholes worth $800 million. While that certainly wasn't an explicit tax increase, the additional billion levied against Canadian corporations the following year certainly was.
Fortunately for Martin and Ignatieff, few people shed crocodile tears for corporations when they're taxed.
John McCallum's pledge not to slash federal transfers again may have come in the wake of realizations that doing so would effectively be political suicide in the province of Quebec.
"It's clear that there's one thing the government of Canada cannot do: that's to touch federal transfers," said Quebec's Finance Minister, Raymond Bachand. "We recently heard [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper say he wouldn't touch federal transfers to rebalance the budget in Canada. ...I'm certainly expecting the Liberal Party of Canada to make the same guarantee."
Of course, if the Liberal party did break their pledge not to cut provincial transfers, it wouldn't be the first time they broke such a promise. In 1993 the Liberal party promised to abolish the GST, then promptly went back on their promise.
But that's beside the point. Apparently, Canadians can rest assured that the Liberal party learns from its mistakes -- it just takes 16 years for them to admit to them.
Yesterday, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff essentially told Canadians to brace for an election. Maybe.
"I cannot support this government any further," Ignatieff announced. "We will hold Stephen Harper to account and we will oppose his government in Parliament."
"Mr Harper, you have failed all four tests," Ignatieff continued. "You've failed to protect the most vulnerable. You've failed to create jobs. You've failed to defend our health care. You've failed to produce a plan to restore our public finances."
Which is odd, considering that most Canadians didn't know Canadian health care was even at risk.
"We've inherited a $50-billion hole from Mr Harper and we will clean it up without raising taxes," Ignatieff added. But when asked how he would do that, Ignatieff could only answer "wait and see".
Which is very likely a theme of this election push. Canadians will have a difficult time figuring out what, precisely, this election will be over.
"We're not having an election on [Employment Insurance]," Liberal party campaign co-chairman Senator David Smith said last week. "I don't hear Canadians clamouring for an election on this issue."
"I don't think there's a presumption that every time there's an opportunity to have an election that you have to do it," he added. "You can't push the election button every time ...I think that is irresponsible."
So with the NDP echoing Ignatieff's election rumblings, it seems that only one more opposition domino -- the Bloc Quebecois -- needs to fall in order for the Liberals to have their election.
Canadians will almost certainly be wondering: how will you erase the deficit without raising taxes, Michael?
Wait and see.
Canadians will almost certainly be wondering: what's the election about, Michael?
Wait and see.
The truth is that this election is really about getting to the polls before the Liberals slip as far behind the Conservatives as they were this time last year. But don't expect to hear that from Michael Ignatieff.
To say that Toronto has been a Conservative party wasteland for the last 10 years would be an understatement.
Since Mike Harris merged the various municipalities surrounding Toronto into the modern "megacity" of Toronto, the Conservative party has never elected a single candidate in the city -- neither provincially nor federally.
The nomination of Sue-Ann Levy -- a "married lesbian" and frequent critic of Toronto mayor David Miller -- seems to have given the Ontario Progressive Conservative party a very real opportunity to break the long shut out suffered by Conservatives in the city.
Coming from the Toronto Sun, one would be tempted to discard that kind of speculation. But when it appears in the Toronto Star, it quickly becomes apparent that the hype may well be real.
Levy has a variety of issues she can attack the McGuinty government on. Before one even looks at the eHealth scandal, there are the matters of a slew of new municipal taxes for which Levy blames the provincial government.
There also seems to be a lack of faith in Liberal candidate Dr Eric Hoskins' will to match Levy blow-for-blow.
"It's a smart candidate for Hudak," admitted a Liberal insider. "She'll be a puncher and will Hoskins be a counterpuncher? I don't know."
There is also the matter of Dr Hoskins' defeat in his 2008 bid to become the Member of Parliament for Haldmand-Norfolk, a contest he lost to Diane Finley. There are also questions about whether or not Dr Hoskins' previous work -- he's a co-founder and the current President of War Child Canada -- will be of use in Queen's Park.
If Levy manages to emerge victorious from the September 17 vote Canadians can expect Michael Ignatieff to think twice about making a play for a fall election. But at least he'll be better off than Dalton McGuinty. For the current Ontario Premier, that could prove to be the beginning of the end.
The most recent rumblings out of La Belle Province are that Premier Jean Charest is going to have the National Assembly dissolved in favour of an 8 December election.
"It was quite clear from statements made by the ADQ and Parti Quebecois that they're not in a mood to co-operate with the government," Charest recently announced.
Of course, Charest insists that an election isn't necessarily his option of first choice.
"We think the only responsible thing for the this government -- and for this premier -- at this time is not to call an election, but to look for solutions to the crisis," he insisted.
Quebeckers -- and Canadians at large -- may be forgiven if that sounds familiar. It sounds remarkably similar to Stephen Harper's comments prior to dissolving Parliament and calling the recent election that won him a strengthened minority government.
Or, with the separatist Parti Quebecois holding a 21% lead over the current Official Opposition, the Mario Dumont-led Action Democratique du Quebec, Charest may find himself in a more uncomfortable position after the election -- in a minority government, facing a Pequiste Official Opposition.
Or, worse yet, an election that many view as unnecessary and launched only for partisan gain could swing enough support to the Parti Quebecois to help them regain power in the National Assembly -- and put a separation referendum back on the agenda.
As Chantale Hebert notes, "Before precipitating an election to achieve his dream of reducing Mario Dumont's ADQ to third place in the National Assembly, Jean Charest should ask himself whether a campaign that even some of his closest advisers think is unnecessary is worth the risk of finding himself, afterwards, on the opposition side of the legislature next to Mr Dumont.”
It's a very real possibility. A recent poll has shown that 70% of Quebeckers don't want an election -- and certainly not one this soon after a federal election that, in the eyes of many, still seems inconclusive.
Aside from this, time may seem right for Charest to call an election. His party caucus was recently bolstered by the defection of two ADQ members, Andre Riedl and Michel Auger to the Quebec Liberals.
It would also likely strengthen Charest's claims to definitive leadership of the federalist cause in Quebec, deflating the electoral fortunes of the ADQ -- even if it winds up weakening federalism overall by vaulting Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois into the office of the Official Opposition Leader.
If Jean Charest insists on playing with fire and calling an election, he may, like Stephen Harper, come away from it with a stronger mandate. But if he gets burned, he won't suffer alone.
Canada will surely get burned right alongside him -- or may simply get burned in his stead.
In the 2005/06 federal election, many people hoped Jack Layton and the NDP would play softball with the Liberals, hardball with the Conservatives, and keep Stephen Harper out of office.
Instead, the NDP focused their efforts on the Liberals, shrank the Liberal caucus returned to the House of Commons, and -- some say -- helped Stephen Harper get elected Prime Minister.
Of course, Layton understood well what he was doing when he targeted the Liberal party -- he was attracting disaffected soft Liberals to support the NDP instead.
Now, less than a day before the call of a 2008 federal election, the NDP has once again chosen to err on the side of the opposition, releasing a new attack ad against Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.
Following a trip to the Democratic National Convention, Layton seems to have decided to adopt the kind of strategy that helped deny Al Gore the White House in 2000 -- portraying the two mainstream parties as lacking in meaningful differences.
The ad takes aim at the Conservative party tax cuts (taking note of "$50 billion in corporate tax cuts" while strategically ignoring the tax cuts for middle- and low-income Canadians), and taking a page out of the old Liberal party playbook by complaining about child poverty.
The ad addresses one in five Canadians who reportedly don't have a family doctor and, predictably, the Fort MacMurray tarsands.
This ad follows a recent round of branding ads by the Conservative party, and are thus an excellent example of an attempt at counter-branding. In this case, branding the party as bad for low-income Canadians, cutting corporate taxes at their direct expense.
However, those who pay close attention to the ads will notice something else: a striking resemblance to the infamous 2006 Liberal attack ads, including the one that helped sink their entire campaign, featuring heavily drum-laden music and even the same woman providing the voice-over.
In the end, Jack Layton appears against an NDP orange backdrop, and concludes that Canadians need "a new kind of strong". "The new strong is about fighting for what's right for you," Layton says. Presumably, the kind of strong leadership that will be provided by Jack Layton and the NDP.
Of course, this depends all on how one defines "strong", and perhaps that's the real genius of the ad -- challenging what many people consider to be "strong" leadership, and taking direct aim at the legion of polls that find that Canadians regard Harper as the best of the country's federal political leaders.
It's an interesting mix of political strategy: simultaneously attacking the Conservatives' biggest weaknesses and what many consider to be their greatest strength.
With Liberal spots sure to hit the air within the next couple of days, this impending election is apparently going to start hot.
Speaking at the University of Alberta yesterday (more coverage of this will be offered at The Nexus in the near future), Stephane Dion took some time out of his pre-campaign stop to question the legality of tomorrow's (seemingly inevitable) election call.
"[Harper] gives a bad example to Canadians by not respecting his own law," Dion insisted. "Some constitutional experts are saying this election will be illegal."
But for his own part, University of Ottawa consititional political historian Michael Behiels isn't quite so eager to agree. "I am not sure [Harper] is a law-breaker," he demurred but suggested that Governor General Michaelle Jean should consider rejecting Harper's request that she dissolve Parliament, reportedly due tomorrow. "If she goes along with him, she, in a sense, is supporting his violation of the law. You're putting the Governor General into a situation that you should never put the Governor General in."
Certainly, when a government passes legislation, one expects that they will respect it. But when one passes a law with loophole this pronounced, one questions the genuity of the act in the first place.
Queen's University constitutional scholar Ned Franks would remind individuals such as Behiels that because the fixed-election law doesn't effect the power of the Governor General to call an election, it sets very little in stone. "The convention is that the Governor General only dissolves Parliament at the request of the prime minister," Franks notes.
And, of course, Behiels is right about one thing: Michaelle Jean certainly could refuse to dissolve Parliament.
However, one would expect that a constitutional political historian would remember the King-Byng affair, wherein then-Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, in the midst of a debate in the House of Commons regarding censure, asked then-Governor General Lord Byng of Vimy for a dissolution of Parliament.
This was, of course, in the midst of a coalition government the Liberal party was sharing with the Progressive party. The Liberal party held a scant 99 seats to the Conservative party's 116. A man with proper respect for Parliament would not have been serving as Prime Minister under such circumstances in the first place.
Byng refused to call the election and instead called upon the Conservative party -- under Arthur Meighen -- to form the government instead. King accused Byng of political interference, and campaigned heavily on the alleged outrage, using the episode to rally Canadian nationalists and anti-Imperialists to his side.
The Liberal party was returned with a majority government in the election.
At the 1926 Imperial Conference, King used the affair to help push through a resolution denoting the Governor General as a representative of the Monarch, as opposed to a representative of the British Imperial government.
Future political developments in Canada -- culminating with the 1982 patriation of the British North America Act -- eventually transformed the Governor General into a purely ceremonial position.
And therein lies the rub.
For Michaelle Jean to decide to refuse to dissolve Parliament -- a decision she clearly has in her power to do -- she would have to make a political decision. But the office of Governor General is not a political office. It's a ceremonial office.
Calling upon Michaelle Jean to refuse to dissolve Parliament is putting the Governor General in a position she should never be in.
One can like it or not like it -- and for the record, this writer doesn't. But the seeming fact remains that nothing in the fixed election law prevents the Governor General from calling an election, and nothing in the fixed election law seems to prevent the Prime Minister from seeking it.
History has already shown us that disingenuous politicians will campaign on the topic of the Governor General if given the opportunity. And what is a politician who tramples his own fixed election legislation, if not disingenuous?
With an election call seemingly mere days away, the Conservative party is trying to jump the blocks a few days early with a trio of new pre-campaign ads.
The rationale is actually very simple: the Conservative party has more money than they can spend in an election campaign. So the best way for them to spend that money is for some pre-campaign advertising -- before the campaign spending limits kick in.
The ads cover three general topics, one of which will certainly be raised as an issue by the Opposition parties, one of which probably will be raised, and one on a traditional Conservative party strength.
In other words, two of the ads address percieved Conservative weak points, while the third plays to the party's strength.
As with the previous ad, these are enthusiasm-themed ads, as opposed to the attack ads the party has used over the previous 18 months.
Cumulatively, all four are part of the Conservative party's campaign branding -- the effort to concoct an electoral identitiy for the purpose of wooing voters.
The first of today's batch of ads deals with immigration:
In the ad, Harper outlines his ideas regarding immigration: he's clearly excited about the enthusiasm many immigrants to Canada show for their country.
More over, the ad itself is more than just empty platitudes, as many politicians are prone to offer on the topic of immigration. Harper has a clear agenda: he wants to make changes to the system under which Canada recognizes foreign credentials -- one that currently keeps thousands of qualified professionals out of work.
He also reminds viewers that it was his government that reduced the right of landing fee.
Of course, Harper doesn't mention the controversial changes to immigration law smuggled through as part of the most recent budget. In response to an ad clearly intended to brand the Conservative party as "warm and fuzzy" on immigration, expect Opposition parties to counter-brand with this.
The second ad addresses another potential Conservative party weakness, veteran's issues:
This spot addresses what some would think should be a Conservative strong point. But they may want to think twice about that.
With the war in Afghanistan continuing to remain a hot-button topic, many Opposition candidates -- or at the very least opposition activists -- will likely attempt to counter-band by portraying the government as callous toward the deaths of Canadian soldiers, even while the Liberal party (in particular) continues to support the war officially.
They'll also insist on overlooking the fact that the Canadian soldiers actually fighting in Afghanistan continue to overhelmingly support the mission. If they can't accomplish this in a coherent fashion, they'll turn their hostility against Canadian troops and their families once again.
The third ad is a typical "family values" ad. This is one that will actually tough to counter-brand against.
After all, it's hard to attack a candidate's family life without making oneself seem like a common political vulture. Those who have focused the bulk of their partisan attacks on Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain are learning this the hard way right now -- or are at least due to find out all about it in short order.
This branding effort by the Conservative party will inevitably be followed by a counter-branding effort on behalf of the opposition. One disadvantage the Conservatives are placing themselves at by campaigning so early is that it will give the Liberal party campaign strategists plenty of clues as to what the Conservative party message will be.
That being said, the Liberal party would have to attempt such a counter-branding while also branding themselves. And while going negative early has never troubled the Liberals before, consistently being seen as the first party to go negative will set over time and become an inexorable part of the party's identity -- if it hasn't already.
For the Conservative party, the ads offer one further potential difficulty: the ads tagline, "We're better off with Harper" imply a distinctive lack of positive confidence in Stephen Harper: not that voters should support Harper because of his effectiveness as a leader, but rather because of an abundance of negative confidence -- confidence in his percieved superiority to the alternative (see Stephane Dion: not a leader for an early version of this pitch).
The Conservatives will need to be wary of these unintentional underlying messages. Even messages not intended to be part of the brand identity can become entangled within it.
There is little question the campaign has unofficially begun. Now the so-called fun begins.
Since its release last week, a lot has been made about the most recent Conservative party advertisements.
First off, with Stephen Harper rushing to trample his own fixed election date legislation, they are clearly pre-election campaigning. There is no question about that.
But the theme of the ad bears some obvious consideration.
In the ad, numerous "main street Canadians" lavish praise on Stephen Harper and his government. This enthusiasm-themed ad -- a stark contrast to the various negative ads the party has released over the past 18 months -- features various people in rather ordinary settings -- a blue-collar worker at his shop, a man leaned against his pickup truck in what appears to be his driveway, a woman at the park with her kids.
But for an ad that goes to such lengths to appear to portray ordinary Canadians in ordinary settings, there's something very off-putting about the obviously-scripted nature of their comments.
Certainly, this is an election spot. And while one certainly expects this sort of thing from election advertising, they at least expect the producers of the ad to at least try to be a little less obvious about it.
Aside from that, there has always been something unsettling about politicians who insist they're "on your side".
For some Canadians, it may seem comfortable to know there's someone "on your side" -- or at least insisting they're on your side. But it begs an inevitable question:
If this particular candidate, this particular party, is "on my side", who isn't?
Has partisanship really become so deeply engrained in our politics that we're literally choosing sides?
Sadly, when followed through to its logical conclusion, the taking sides mentality goes far, far beyond political partisanship. After all, anyone who isn't hopelessly naive understands that there are some people who simply will not agree with them on any number of topics, if not at deep, fundamental levels.
Theoretically, we choose our political affiliations based on who best empathizes with our particular concerns and beliefs. Of course some people do choose their political affiliations based on a much more fickle basis, as evidenced by those who vote for a particular party because it's "cooler" to do so, or refuse to vote for a particular party because they "won't win". But for the most part, we expect individuals to support particular political movements because they believe in them.
Ergo those who hold different beliefs, concerns and priorities than ourselves will inevitably choose political movements that differ with our embody beliefs, concerns and priorities. But our movement -- be it a party, protest organization, or community foundation -- is "on our side". And the others, well, aren't.
In the minds of those most prone to such thinking, those who aren't with us are against us. And that's where half the problem lies.
This "on your side" mentality only breeds parochialism into our politics and, ultimately, into our communities.
The "with us or against us"-"on our side/not on our side" mentality only divides citizens who should otherwise be working together in an effort to build a better country for all Canadians, not merely the country preferred by those who are "on our side".
Perhaps some day our politicians will come to understand this. But in order for this to happen, voters have to stop rewarding politicians for sewing the seeds of partisan parochialism in our country and in our very communities.
A good citizen is on everyone's "side". A healthy democracy depends on it.
Green party supporters across Canada have likely spent the last two days feeling a little better about their party.
Not becuase they finally managed to elect an MP, or stands a chance of actually electing an MP in the upcoming election, but because of the suspicious agreement of a former Liberal MP to become the newest member of the party's federal caucus -- bringing the grand total of its members to one.
"Joining Elizabeth May and joining the Green Party feels a lot like coming home," announced Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country MP Blair Wilson shortly after dawning his brand new Green Party button. "One-point-five million Canadians support the Green Party," he added. "They deserve a strong voice in the House of Commons and they deserve a strong voice in the leadership debate."
Of course, if 1.5 million Canadians supported the Green party as Wilson insists, 1.5 million people might have actually voted for the party the last time they had an opportunity to do so, as opposed to the 664,068 people who actually did.
But that aside, it's hard to see Wilson's "defection" to the Green party as anything but another convenient arrangement between Stephane Dion's Liberal party and the Green party -- one that would strengthen Elizabeth May's insistence that, despite having never elected a single MP, she should be included in the leader's debate.
Wilson's initial comments ironically suggest he felt some dissatisfaction with the Liberal party. And that may very well be so. But it isn't why he left the party caucus.
But far from holding a grudge against the party, Wilson has insisted he would await an opportunity to rejoin the party.
"I await [Stephane Dion's] decision and the decision of the national caucus as to when, in fact, I can rejoin the fold and maintain this riding as a Liberal seat," Wilson announced at the time.
Now, Wilson has rejoined the party -- in a manner of speaking.
After all, the ties between the Liberal party and the Green party were already solid even before Wilson's "defection". In support of her bid to unseat deputy Prime Minister Peter MacKay, Stephane Dion has already agreed not to run a Liberal candidate against the Green party in Central Nova, imagining that all the Liberal party faithful in the riding will rush to vote for Elizabeth May.
Now, with a federal election call seemingly only days away, it's terribly convenient that Wilson has decided to don the Green Party label in Parliament. It will be interesting to see if the Liberal party nominates an opponent for Wilson. To date, no such candidate has been nominated.
In the meantime, it's impossible to see Wilson's convenient defection as anything other than another Liberal party attempt to prop up its proxy Elizabeth May and her Green party.
Unsuprisingly, Wilson has announced that his seeming new leader should be included in the leaders' debates. "Not only do I embrace the policies of my new party, I will feel that all my past difficulties are justified if, by my actions, I can make a real difference by ensuring Elizabeth May is included in the leaders' debates."
What makes it doubly unsurprising is that only one other party favours allowing May to participate in the debate -- Stephane Dion's Liberal party.
The Liberal party and the Green party's intentions vis a vis Blair Wilson are utterly transparent. Almost any Canadian with an ounce of sense should be able to see through it.
Stephen Harper insists that his intent to call an election is not for partisan gain.
How could it be? The Conservatives and Liberals remain statistically tied in the polls, and another minority government -- be it Liberal or Conservative -- remains a near certainty.
Harper has also indulged himself in some intellectually dishonest excuse making for his relentless push to call an election before 2008 finally writes itself into the history books, but his true intent remains something of an enigma.
The alleged need for a renewed mandate does indeed make a lot of sense. Then again, so do the clues offered today by University of Calgary political scientist (and former Harper adviser) Tom Flanagan.
Namely, that Harper is out to score another TKO over his Liberal rivals.
“I don't think Harper has to be thinking about a majority at all,” Flanagan told the Globe and Mail. "Strategically, this is sort of a prolonged war of attrition.”
Flanagan historically divides Harper's ongoing battle with the Liberals into three acts: act one took place in 2004, when Harper rendered Paul Martin's inherited majority government into a minority. In 2006, Harper won a minority government in act two. Now, in 2008, Harper thinks he's ready for act three.
Of course, the third act is the one that really matters. Few people remember acts one and two. But everyone remembers act three.
As such, Harper has only one option: victory.
“You can fight a war with some objective less than total victory,” Flanagan said.
Of course, a victory in an upcoming federal election will almost certainly represent significantly less than total victory. It certainly won't destroy the Liberal party, but it will give the numerous Liberals who want to dump Stephane Dion an excellent opportunity to do so.
Such a victory "would be enough to throw the Liberals into turmoil and give Harper ... a virtually free hand in Parliament for quite a while and really handicap his main opponent.”
Much of this holds true. After all, the Conservative government was at its most effective when the Liberal party was leaderless in the commons. Even though replacing Dion will almost certainly pave the way for a stronger leader -- likely Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae -- the Conservatives would have a much easier time in the Commons.
Not that this is a reasonable excuse to trample his own fixed election date legislation.
But a desire to utterly crush the Liberal party seems to underly many of Harper's move. Consider the promised lawsuit against the Liberal party for the excesses of the Sponsorship Scandal. If the Liberal party were held responsible for all the funds stolen under Adscam, it would certainly be a significant setback for the cash-strapped party.
It would possibly even cripple the party in the long-term.
In fact, Harper has an often-disturbing proclivity for wanting his political opponents utterly destroyed.
Flanagan's musings about Harper's motivation should give many Canadians cause to think twice about Stephen Harper's leadership of the Conservative party -- and whether or not they're still comfortable with him leading the country.
Many Canadians, Conservatives and non-conservatives alike are all asking themselves the same question right about now:
How can it be so hard for Stephen Harper to abide by his own fixed election date legislation?
The answer according to Harper: the fixed election law only applies to majority governments.
To a certain extent, this argument could ring true. After all: a minority government could be defeated at almost any time -- a lesson former Prime Minister Joe Clark learned the ahrd way -- triggering an election. A fixed election date law could certainly be viewed to be rather empty.
But then one should be asking how it is that Harper would bother passing legislation fixing the next election date at October 19, 2009.
Clearly, Harper intended the legislation to apply to his own government. After all, he knew full well that he had a minority government when he set the next election for October 2009. There is simply no question of this.
So one has to ask themselves why Harper would want to call an election right now.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives maintain a very slim four point lead over Stephane Dion's Liberals -- the kind of lead that could quickly disappear during an election, leaving Canada staring down the barrel of the Liberals' Green Shift policies (policies the Canadian people cannot trust the Liberals to implement as promised).
Harper may be closer to the truth when he refers to the apparent need for a renewed governmental mandate.
"I think you really have increasingly in Parliament two different visions of where we should be leading the country, particularly during challenging economic times, and that's something I'm going to have to reflect upon," Harper mused. "It's not a question of wanting to go to an election, it's the reality,"
Harper may be right. There may be a need for a new round of elections in order to clear the air and clarify the national agenda.
But many Canadians may understand the realities of minority government quite differently, and Canadians know it works something like this: the government tries to govern, the Opposition opposes. If an impasse between the two emerges, the government will be defeated and the Canadian citizenry will judge the merits of that impasse in an election.
But, frankly, parliament hasn't reached such an impasse. Right now Canada has a government that will not effectively cooperate with the Opposition, an Opposition that will not oppose the government (choosing instead to abstain from various confidence motions instead of voting against the government).
Harper will have a hard time trying to sell the Canadian people on the notion that parliament is in crisis. And even if parliament is in crisis, most Canadians realize that Harper has as much to do with it as his Opposition colleagues.
With an election call seemingly only days away and spurious opposition to Bill C-484 -- the Unborn Victirms of Crime bill -- stubbornly refusing to abate, the Conservative government is moving to try to disperse what it seems to fear is a coming storm.
"We've heard criticism from across the country, including representatives from the medical community, that Mr. Epp's bill, as it is presently drafted, could be interpreted as instilling fetal rights," announced Justice Minister Rob Nicholson. "Our government will not reopen the debate on abortion."
Bill C-484 would, indeed, introduce fetal rights. However, because of the fact that the bill contains an explicit clause forbidding its use in cases of abortion or against any act (of commission or omission) of the mother, those rights would not supercede a preggnant woman's right to choose an abortion. The fetal reights recognized by Bill C-484 would begin and end with an unborn child's right to be protected from crime.
Naturally, the fundamentally intellectually-dishonest pro-abortion lobby refuses to acknowledge this.
Nicholson has promised new legislation that would require judges to consider a woman's pregnancy during the course of sentencing. Right now judges can, and often do, but law still cannot recognize the tendency of many offenders -- such as Jared Baker and Gary Bourgeois -- to target unborn children intentionally.
Fortunately, however, Bill C-484 is not a government bill. Rather, it's Elk Island MP Ken Epp's private member's bill. He isn't obligated to withdraw it, and it's the last thing he plans to do.
"I definitely will not be withdrawing my bill," Epp announced. "They're quite different. I don't intend to let up."
If Nicholson is looking for an easy way out, he isn't going to find it. His government will either have to stay the course with Bill C-484 and endure the (actually very necessary) debate over abortion, or defeat its own member's bill, as it did with Leon Benoit's Bill C-291.
Ken Epp is well within his rights to stand his ground will Bill C-484 and not allow the government to introduce a watered-down bill protecting the unborn. This bill has passed two readings already -- in a parliament devoid of ideologically-grounded party discipline, this bill very much could pass.
Yet the Conservative government seems to be intent on ducking the abortion/fetal rights debate in the name of winning an election it isn't supposed to be calling in the first place.
Fortunately, Ken Epp isn't backing down. Nor are the other supporters of Bill C-484.
