Monday Afternoon Links

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- Brian Topp nicely sums up the state of the current competition for votes between the NDP and the Libs:

It seems reasonable to speculate that the New Democrats achieved their more recent success in the first instance simply by persuading former NDP voters, notably in Ontario and British Columbia, to return home. Having achieved that, Mr. Layton’s New Democrats may now be digging successfully into the “left Liberal” vote. These voters are more likely than the general population to have someone unionized in their family. They will nonetheless be more likely to self-identify as “middle class”. They tilt a bit more female and younger than the typical target Conservative voter. They are more likely to vote on “who do I trust” issues. They don’t like Mr. Harper. They find nothing to inspire them in Michael Ignatieff. And they seem to be helping to provide the New Democrats with a pretty solid vote notwithstanding much speculation to the contrary.

This will be distressing to Liberal campaign planners, who have built their most recent attempt to relaunch Mr. Ignatieff around a direct pitch to precisely these voters. Considering the damage the Conservatives are doing to Mr. Ignatieff on his right flank, it seems a bit funny that his campaign team would focus on an appeal to New Democrats via an abrupt, incongruous parroting of Jack Layton’s policies on corporate taxes and pensions. Maybe the idea was to try to “switch” that vote right now, in the pre-election, through a couple of gadgets and tricks. The Liberals could then perhaps hope that this vote would become one of their entitlements, and they could then turn to fighting the Conservatives on their right flank during the campaign itself. Perhaps by parroting Mr. Harper in some way?

If this is the plan, it doesn’t seem to be working yet. Instead, the story seems to be an almost unbroken decline since Paul Martin and his faction assumed control of the Liberal Party. Suburbanites, new Canadians, “Reagan democrats” in Canada, left Liberals, and – above all – francophone Quebeckers have all been walking away from Mr. Ignatieff’s increasingly small red tent over the past decade, leaving that party with a shrinking base of traditional voters who vote for it, although they can’t articulate any particular reason for doing so these days.

- Meanwhile, the NDP could hardly have asked for a better contrast in the ads that came out today. Here's the Cons trying to paint their picture of a Canada entirely unlike the one they've put in place while in power:

We're lucky to live in Canada, a land where merit means more than privilege, where who you know matters more than who you know or where you came from.

(As an aside, the whole ad looks to be ripe for appropriate annotation.)

But here's the opening salvo in the NDP's national ad:

Q: Is it just me, or has Ottawa stopped working?

A: It sure looks that way. These days, lobbyists, Senators and insiders are getting all the breaks, while more and more seniors are struggling just to pay their bills. We have to do better.

So with one cabinet minister facing censure for misleading our representatives in Parliament, a couple of Harper-appointed Senators facing charges, and nobody's views but the Cons' figuring to be included in the budget that looks likely to provoke an election, which of those messages seems likely to strike voters as more plausible?

- And speaking of privileged Cons in trouble, John Geddes is the latest to chime in on the meaning of the Oda ado:

(A) minister under siege has traditionally fallen into one of three categories: “on the ropes” over errors they’ve made, but not over serious ethical or character lapses; “an embarrassment” because of some glaring instance of poor judgment, but possibly worth saving; and “guilty of a firing offence,” of which the undisputed examples are talking to a judge about a case or “deliberately and obviously misleading the House.”

At least, those used to be the undisputed firing offences. If Oda survives, misleading the House might have to be downgraded to Reid’s second tier of awkward but not necessarily fatal. Of course, the Conservatives aren’t conceding that Oda lied. They offer the following explanations. She was asked in a House committee who had inserted the word “not” in that document, and honestly said she didn’t know, but would have fessed up to having ordered the alteration had she been asked how the change came to be made. And when she said in a written answer to an opposition question that de-funding Kairos was a “CIDA decision,” she meant in the sense that “CIDA encompasses both officials and the minister responsible for CIDA.”

Milliken must now decide is there’s merit in those fine lines of defence. The House Speaker has been asked to rule on an opposition motion claiming Oda violated MPs’ privileges by misleading them. She might eventually be found in contempt of Parliament, which would be unprecedented for a cabinet minister. Yet Carleton University political science professor Jonathan Malloy isn’t sure even that would matter much. Malloy says Canadians generally view Parliament now mainly in terms of party wrangling. They cheer for one side or the other based on their partisan inclinations. “If this goes further as a contempt-of-Parliament matter,” he says, “it just becomes an extension of the partisan battle.”

And that might be an acceptable outcome for the Prime Minister. Casting the Oda affair as a mere partisan squabble over parliamentary niceties could allow him to save a minister, and avoid handing his enemies a win on a point of principle, with a possible spring election in the wind. If he succeeds, any cabinet minister’s future missteps will have to be viewed in the changed light of their much improved chances of surviving scandal.

- But of course, the Cons themselves have plenty left to do to try to cut down groups who they think have it too easy at the moment. Take for example victims of rape and domestic abuse. (Cue Jason Kenney: "Please!")

- Finally, Armine Yalnizyan points out how a free trade deal with Europe may add billions more to what are already unnecessarily-high costs for prescription drugs:

The government of Canada is in the process of negotiating a free trade agreement with the European Union–the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) — which it hopes to have concluded by the end of 2011.

One of the things the Europeans hope to get from this deal is changes to our drug patent laws and regulations. Specifically, they’d like to see an extension to the exclusivity of patents on top-selling drugs. Pharmaceuticals account for 15.6 percent of total exports from Europe to Canada, with a value of more than $5 billion annually.

In early February a study by Professors Aidan Hollis and Paul Grootendorst, two of Canada’s top academics on pharmaceutical policy, showed that the changes sought by the European Union would add $2.8 billion to our annual expenditures on drugs.

The federal government is calling the shots, but it won’t shoulder the costs. Almost all the cost impact of the new rules will be borne by provinces, private insurers and individuals paying directly.