Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Yes, it's noteworthy enough that Jack Layton is surging ahead as Canada's first choice for Prime Minister. But perhaps the most stunning news is that the first of those polls comes from Ipsos-Reid - the pollster which regularly places Conservative support (and one would think by association Stephen Harper's) higher than any other. And if even the most Con-friendly of polls is showing Layton ahead, there doesn't seem to be much prospect of the Cons getting any good news as the campaign winds down.

- Meanwhile, the party polling is looking no less promising for the NDP.

- John Duffy notes why the NDP's gains don't figure to be ending anytime soon:

There is no reason to believe...that this has to come to a halt. Fact: various polls are now showing the NDP eating not only into the Liberal vote (as in Ontario) but also into the Conservative vote pretty much everywhere outside the prairies. Analysis is catching up. Fact: the NDP surge is showing no sign of abating. Fact: The NDP has a great, upbeat "closer"-style spot on television right now, while the other parties have ads that are not resonating. Fact: The Conservative response, which would probably be impressive, is nowhere to be seen, plus they just lost one of their best strategy guys at the worst possible moment. Meanwhile, the Liberals are starting to fall off the coverage radar. Fact: earned media campaign coverage is about to go dark for the Royal Wedding and the final weekend.
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I am seriously starting to wonder whether some sort of massive genie hasn't been let out of the bottle here. Mr. Harper has framed the campaign and its run-up as an anti-politics exercise. Putting words in the PM's mouth, I described his core pitch as being, "The heck with these elections we've all come to hate. Vote for a Harper majority and all this political crap gets out of your hair for four years." What appears to be happening here is that the anti-politics appeal has found its audience, and it's expression is "the heck with Harper and Ignatieff." The response seems not to have taken the form of Liberal voters sourly staying home and throwing the election to the Conservatives. Rather, it appears the anti-politician mood that the Prime Minister stoked has created an immense opening for Mr. Layton's positive, uplifting, take-a-chance-on-me offering.

- Douglas Bell rightly points out that the NDP's surge is based at least as much on the party's appeal to Canadian values as to any protest vote.

- And Bell also passes along Liam McHugh-Russell's end-of-campaign prediction:

I told you two weeks ago that the NDP would need just a glimmer of hope to finally take off, and now they've gotten it. They're finally heading toward their ceiling and that ceiling is high indeed: 130 per cent the height of the Conservatives or the Liberals. You want a seat count? NDP 115, Conservatives 110; Liberals 65; Bloc 18. In the end, politics is possible and suddenly, so are these results. Me, I am still rooting for the NDP because I believe they're serious about us having the Canada we already have, except better. But it's also very exciting that the result we do get five days from now will be determined by the question I said mattered when this whole thing started: whether Canadians believe it's possible for them to have the government they want. And it seems increasingly like they can – and that they will.

- Armine Yalnizyan offers a reminder of the Cons' choice to gut the long-form census - and points out the wide range of Canadians affected by their inexplicable disregard for thorough and accurate census data.

- Stephen Whitworth expresses some restrained displeasure with the Globe and Mail's train wreck of a Con endorsement.

- And finally, Les Perreaux debunks the efforts of political opponents and media alike to make an issue of the NDP's potential wave of new MPs.

Wednesday Morning Links

Assorted post-debate material for your mid-week reading.

- Douglas Bell notes Liam McHugh-Russell's appeal for people to vote for what they really want:

Today, people love Layton and they aren't afraid of an NDP-led government: if there is an option for an NDP-Liberal coalition, people prefer Layton and his party to lead more than two to one. The problem is, they just don't think it's going to happen.
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So the question to Canadians is: why not vote NDP, leave the Liberals in the wilderness, strike a blow against Quebec separatism and get the government you want? All that's stopping you is the belief that it can't happen.

- Susan Delacourt posts on the unfortunate rewards consistently reaped by politicians who simply pretend that embarrassing questions don't exist. And sadly, the result of last night's election debate looks to fit the pattern.

- Meanwhile, there's another addition to the list of blatant Harper government lies which the Cons will presumably ignore until it's too late to hold them accountable, as draft documents show a border security agreement in the works months before the Cons directly denied that anything of the sort was under discussion.

- Finally, a double dose of Dan Gardner: first on the importance of the public debate which the Harper Cons are so eager to stifle...

often the disagreements of our representatives reflects disagreements among Canadians. We have different values and priorities, different visions. Very simply, we disagree.

That's fine in a mature democracy. We disagree, we debate, we discuss and negotiate. And if we still can't find a reasonable compromise, we vote. It's all good.

But not to Stephen Harper, it seems. Underlying his comments, particularly in the first half of the debate, was a tone of disdain for Parliamentary "bickering." It was all so annoying to him. As head of government, he had important things to deal with. Why should he be bothered with this bickering? Give him a majority so he needn't bother.
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Surveys tell us that half of Canadians are so clueless about Canadian governance that they actually think the people elect the prime minister. Rather than sweep away that ignorance, Harper makes use of it. Indeed, he fosters it in order to advance his immediate political interests.

You want to hear squalid? Don't listen to Parliament. Listen to Stephen Harper talk about the constitution of Canada.

...and second, his reminder that the Cons' attempts to take credit for an economic recovery are utter nonsense on multiple fronts:

(I)f Harper deserves credit for the economic recovery, shouldn't he also be blamed for the recession? The Liberals tried to make this argument but it never really stuck. And rightly so. The recession was obviously caused by forces beyond our borders.

But the same is true of the recovery. "We don't have a lot of independent control over our economy, for good or for bad," Don Drummond, former TD chief economist told me last month. "The bad part of it is the rest of the world dragged us into this mess. But the flip side of it is that for Canada's economy to repair itself is largely dependent on what happens in the global economy."
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Look at Australia, our economic and political cousin. As one may guess, Australia's prime minister is not Stephen Harper. And yet, Australia survives. Indeed, it thrives. Thanks mainly to commodity prices, Australia's economy is booming.

Australia also underscores a final, critical point. Canadians have an exaggerated sense of how well Canada is doing. Yes, as Conservatives like to note, the latest OECD report shows Canada's economic growth is among the best in the G7. We're doing relatively well, no question. But we're hardly leading the world, a fact evident in the statistic that people care the most about. Canada's unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent in January. That's better than the 8.4 per cent OECD average. It's better than Spain, Ireland, the U.S. and Italy. But it's about the same as the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Finland, and even Belgium, which has been without a government for almost a year. And it's much higher than the unemployment rate in Austria, Germany, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands -where the rate is 4.3 per cent.

In Australia, the unemployment rate is five per cent. A sudden increase to the Canadian level would be considered a national disaster.

If there is indeed a uniquely sunlit island of tranquillity in the world, it's not us. And Stephen Harper cannot take the credit.