Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Maude Barlow comments on what's needed to rein in the worst instincts of the Cons' new majority government:

What is needed now is a coming together of progressive forces in civil society and the labour movement as never before in our country's history. Social and trade justice groups, First Nations people, labour unions, women, environmentalists, faith-based organizations, the cultural community, farmers, public health care coalitions, front line public sector workers, and many others must come together to protect and promote the values that the majority of Canadians hold dear. And we must work with, and demand the active representation of, the opposition forces in the House of Commons. In particular, the NDP must oppose the Harper agenda with the full weight of its new power and the Liberals must redeem themselves by working alongside the NDP in defending the interests of the people of Canada.
...
(S)upport for the Harper agenda is paper-thin, as most Canadians do not share the values of this agenda. This then is our task: to work hard over the next four years to protect the laws, rights and services that generations of Canadians have fought for from being dismantled; fight the corporate-friendly, anti-environmental, security obsessed agenda that will come at us; and prepare the way for the kind of government in four years that does in fact, express the will of the people -- one with an agenda of justice and respect, of care for the earth, of the more equitable sharing of our incredible bounty.

This will be hard work and will take a great deal of courage and commitment. But really, what more important thing do we have to do?

- Paul Wells' review of the campaign is of course a must-read. But I'll take particular note of this observation:

When Ignatieff hired them, Donolo and Sorbara had asked for a year to get ready for the next election. By the fall of 2010, the year was up. Liberals started to tell one another it would soon be time for an election, and then, being Liberals, they began to tell reporters. Late last fall, La Presse ran a column by Vincent Marissal in which he quoted senior Liberals who said they didn’t intend to let the next Harper budget pass a confidence vote if they could help it.

The Conservatives took Marissal’s column as gospel, and pounced. “If the Conservative party wins again, I think the single biggest strategic mistake the Liberal party made was telegraphing their intentions to bring down the government in the fall of 2010,” a senior Harper strategist said. “This basically gave the Conservative party and the operatives and the people who control the money licence to do two things: one, delay the budget as long as possible; and two, start an attack-ad campaign as early as possible and run it as long as possible.”

Jim Flaherty had delivered the 2009 budget on Jan. 27, a not unusual time. This year he waited and waited before finally admitting he would deliver one on March 23. The Conservatives filled the space with by far the longest and heaviest anti-Ignatieff advertising barrage they had ever run. Earlier campaigns had run a few weeks. “This one went on for part of January, all of February and almost all of March,” the Harper strategist said. “And the Grits actually did that to themselves.”

- Of course voters weren't allowed to find out about a massive oil spill which by all rights should have constituted a major late-campaign discussion point until after the election was done with. After all, who can accept having such an inconvenient disaster influence public opinion when it counts most?

- Just a thought, but if a party is at the point where it has six steps to pass through before getting to "finding a purpose for existing", doesn't that speak rather poorly for the likelihood it's worth anybody's time?

- Finally, Glen Pearson's post-mortem is well worth a read in general. But I'd highlight in particular how Pearson's late-campaign revelation about the Cons' tactics fits with Stephen Harper's view of politics as a one-way flow of information:

At doors I canvassed I kept hearing certain stories about how I spent too much time in Africa, or that my voting presence in the House wasn’t too impressive. When I informed them that I only spent one week a year on that continent (Sudan), and that I take it on my holiday time over New Years and on my own dime, I could sense the hesitation in their voice. “Oh … that’s not what we heard when the Conservatives phoned us last night.” Something that hadn’t been an issue heretofore was suddenly looming large in the final days. It was frustrating, but I didn’t know who to talk to. It was only when the election was over that a good Conservative friend informed me that they had actually been utilizing a central office for phone calls and that none of them emanated from London itself. They had poured big money from afar into influencing my riding. What I had thought to be a local campaign had suddenly taken on national dimensions.

I should have figured it out earlier. While the opponents from the other parties were front and centre in the campaign, the Conservative candidate had been AWOL, appearing at only one televised debate in the entire five weeks. Instead, the Conservatives opted for phone calls and signs – no replacement for flesh and blood candidates, but they were looking to win from a distance.

It’s hard to describe this. Across the country, news trickled in that Conservative candidates refused to be present at debates; what was supposed to be an exercise in local democracy had become a faceless excuse for a campaign. It’s never easy being so accessible, but all the other candidates believed it to be their democratic duty. Not the Conservatives, however.

Now, I'd hope that most candidates (Pearson included) would see direct public engagement as more than just a matter of duty, but also as an essential opportunity to interact with constituents and potential supporters. And while the Cons unfortunately managed to win by launching smears at as many opponents as possible through mechanisms which left no opportunity for correction or accountability, there's surely some reason for hope that a concerted effort to cultivate real and direct links to voters over the next four years will beat out any attempt to replicate their campaign.

[Edit: fixed link.]