On history repeating

With the Libs floundering in an election campaign where they considered themselves entitled to waltz into power and the NDP making a push toward the top of the party standings, commentators haven't been able to avoid some comparison to 2011. But that's always come with a caveat - that Justin Trudeau is no Michael Ignatieff.

To which we should ask: are we sure he isn't?

On a closer look, there may be more similarities to the Libs' position today and their standing ten years ago than has yet been discussed. And voters should be at pains to avoid the same mistakes that resulted in our missing out on the best Prime Minister Canada never had due to a save-the-furniture-and-torpedo-the-NDP campaign by the Libs.

In both cases, let's start by examining what happened in the election cycle before the one at issue. In 2008, the Libs under Stephane Dion took their usual rigid position against any cross-party cooperation. Even in the midst of an economic meltdown, Dion considered it more important to keep the NDP out of any power-sharing coalition than to replace Stephen Harper in responding to the crisis. 

But circumstances changed after Harper held onto power, then used an economic calamity as an excuse to try to attack his political opponents. And with the Libs lacking any framework for cross-party cooperation, the NDP stepped into the breach and facilitated an agreement which would have created a Lib-NDP government supported by the Bloc to replace Harper's toxic Cons.

Michael Ignatieff signed onto that agreement, if only begrudgingly. But once Dion was removed and Ignatieff assumed the Libs' leadership, he decided he didn't want to be in charge under conditions which required another party's support. So instead, he left Harper (and his antisocial judgment) in power to rebuild from the economic crisis, without requiring any accommodations for any other party's input. 

By 2011, Ignatieff had to wear that decision while having no record of accomplishment to point to. And so instead of forcing voters into a binary red door-blue door choice, he opened up the opportunity for the NDP's message of pragmatic cooperation to position it as one of the primary contenders for government. And we'll never know for certain how much strategic voting based on the Libs' past results may have contributed to the Cons' majority - though it's highly likely that Jagmeet Singh would have been one of the NDP candidates to beat out a Con competitor if not for a coordinated effort to back a Lib who ended up in third place.

Let's then look to the parallels in more recent events. While Justin Trudeau was able to hold power in a minority Parliament in 2019, he stuck to his party's refusal to discuss formal support arrangements, instead choosing to engage in Harper-style brinksmanship. And that could have led to serious problems if there had been any trouble getting support behind a response to the COVID-19  pandemic when it hit in 2020.

Fortunately, that didn't prove to be a meaningful issue. All parties were willing to work on at least some urgent measures - and more significantly, Singh and the NDP made abundantly clear that they were willing to maintain confidence in the Libs as long as they worked toward supporting Canadian people and implementing the types of promises which had been put on hold during Trudeau's term of majority government.

Like Ignatieff, Trudeau decided that cross-party support wasn't enough: he wanted to be able to unilaterally shut down investigations, and pivot his entire government's direction on a dime if he saw the opportunity to to do. And so he called an election which he thought would hand him a majority.

Needless to say, that hasn't happened. And there may be a couple of associated reasons for it.

Most importantly, anybody voting based on policy has had nothing but reason to be wary of Trudeau. It never made sense to try to run on promises which could have been kept in the existing Parliament. And the Libs' insistence on an unaccountable majority has only opened the door for skepticism that the result would be another Chretien/Martin attack on Canada's social supports.

But there's another aspect of Trudeau's choice which doesn't seem to have received much attention. If one buys into the Libs' raison d'etre that the essence of politics is the pursuit of power, then there can be no less defensible choice than to deliberately abandon power which one is already in a position to exercise. 

Both Ignatieff and Trudeau tried to justify their choices with the claim that they'd be better positioned to secure more power later on by choosing not to govern in the short term. But both have left Canada to problematic government in the midst of a crisis - and both have given voters reason to view them as less than prime ministerial in repudiating the opportunity to show what they could do with the title.

In turn, voters will need to recognize that a leader who has abandoned his post isn't likely to recover support in the midst of an election campaign. And particularly given Singh's work following in Jack Layton's footsteps as a leader determined to use every bit of influence available to provide for what Canadians need, we should be eager to take up the opportunity we missed in 2011 to see how that mindset plays out in government.

On judicious outrage

Following up on this post, let's take a look at the flip side of the possibility that political parties can help themselves out significantly by taking umbrage with competitors' treatment of them - which is the success (or lack thereof) of exactly that strategy over the past decade.

As I've pointed out before, while 2004 might be the last example of an outrage-based strategy substantially shifting poll numbers, there are more recent cases where it's been tried.

Indeed, the Libs have regularly attempted to make political hay out of the claim that the Cons aren't playing fair. And it's undoubtedly been a fair allegation.

But the general public has never accepted any of the Libs' recent complaints as a reason to either support the Libs or turn against the Cons. While there may be some moments where calling out an opponent for playing politics offers a meaningful chance to tell a leader's own story, a failed attempt to tug at the public's heartstrings can backfire significantly by making the leader appear to be out of touch with voters.

To be fair, there is one other noteworthy goal in raising a complaint about an opponent even if it falls short of earning a response from the wider public: it might manage to rally partisan forces, offering a sense of shared grievance which might help keep current supporters in the fold while also serving as practice to amplify a party message for when a more compelling issue comes up. And it's possible the Libs' past complaints about Con unfairness have accomplished that much.

I'd also note as an aside that concerns about fairness are far more likely to be useful as a defensive rather than an offensive maneuver. 

Particularly during the course of an election campaign, though, I'd think a party would want to avoid spending meaningful time and political capital highlighting all but the most obviously-intolerable personal slights - lest it otherwise be seen as missing the point of what voters care about for themselves.

Attack and response

Earlier this week, Andrew Coyne mused on Twitter about how parties seek to make hay out of attacks by their opponents, with particular emphasis on the Libs' response to PC and Con attacks on their leaders in 1993 and 2004. But I'd think it's worth noting some distinctions between then and now which may make the tactic rather less effective than it might once have been - as well as discussing the circumstances where it might still work.

To start with, let's look at the threshold a party needs to cross to be seen as going too far - and how it may have been altered by the last decade in Canadian politics.

If the attacks mentioned by Coyne gave rise to a public backlash, it's surely because they represented a significant departure from what Canadians had seen in the time preceding them. In 1993, any political ads between elections would have been utterly unknown, making a seemingly personal image sprung without warning during a campaign look like something far beyond the realm of the familiar and acceptable. And in 2004, Stephen Harper's attacks on Paul Martin likewise came out of the blue.

But now, the situation is rather different - whether the consequence was intended or not.

The Cons' habit of launching personal attacks early and often might once have been explained by the instability of minority Parliaments. But they've continued the pattern throughout three terms in office including one as a majority government - meaning that few voters now figure to be taken by surprise. And the Cons can hardly be said to have been punished politically for doing so.

Moreover, especially over-the-top ads such as the glittery ones which mocked Justin Trudeau may actually leave room for campaign attacks to appear reasonable and measured by comparison.

I'd thus argue that the Cons have not only planted their specific messages in the public consciousness, but also substantially moved the bar as to what will actually inspire public outrage. (Indeed, the exact same charge which arguably hurt Harper in 2004 didn't seem to do much lasting damage to the Cons when it became part of their message while in power.)

Now, it's true that the Cons' credibility is in tatters - and it may be that attack fatigue represents a contributing factor. But there's a difference between weariness with an incumbent and a willingness to be outraged on behalf of a competitor. And while we can't rule out the prospect that something during the course of the campaign will still manage to cross a line which the public won't tolerate, we shouldn't be under the illusion that the line is in the same place now as two decades ago.

Juxtaposition

The current Liberal leader, who apparently saw no reason to think his actions in the present might result in the loss of his party's self-proclaimed brand:

Trudeau said he finds Canadians he talks with when he travels are open to the idea of balancing security and rights. But he conceded that he may have underestimated the backlash, partly because he thought that as a Liberal he wasn’t vulnerable to being seen as lax on defending the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (The Charter was, of course, introduced as part of the constitutional reforms ushered in by his late father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, in 1982.)

“I quite frankly—and this is maybe where I made a strategic or a calculation error—I didn’t think that people would be so divisive and so aggressive as to somehow make it seem like the Liberal party doesn’t care about the Charter,” he said.

The fate of the previous Liberal leader, in whose caucus that current leader served (via Paul Wells, The Longer I'm Prime Minister at p. 253-254):

(T)he truly striking gap was on the response to the question about which leader respondents regarded as "a patriotic Canadian". Harper's advantage there was thirty-four points, nearly double his next-widest margin.

Shortly before EKOS released that poll, I received an e-mail from a Harper advisor:

The simple fact that we are debating the "Canadianness" of the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada is a victory for Conservatives. Iggy is now playing defence on the #1 brand attribute of the Liberal Party of Canada. Even after the sponsorship scandal the Liberals still owned being the "Canada Party." The party with the pan-Canadian vision. The party best able to keep the country together...Attacks on Iggy related to "arrogance and elitism" (e.g. the "arrogance spot") and/or "tax and spend" (e.g. the "economy" spot) are standard operating procedure - the personalization of negative brand attributes associated with the party itself. But the attacks on Ignatieff's long-term commitment to the country are much deeper and much more problematic for a Liberal.

On complexities

Bruce Anderson writes that as some of us have long suspected, a true three-party federal race is developing which will create some new complications for the Cons and Libs alike. But it's worth pointing out one area where the Cons are in much worse shape than they've ever been.

Before the 2008 and 2011 elections, the Cons managed to render Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff radioactive with voters - with those leaders' approval ratings running far below the Libs' party polling results. And over the course of the campaign, an expected convergence between those numbers led to a natural decline for the Libs, while Jack Layton's personal popularity couldn't make up the gap for the NDP.

But now, while the NDP and the Libs are on an equal starting point in terms of popular support, their leaders are also well ahead of Harper (with Mulcair rating as very much liked and Trudeau roughly neutral) - meaning that the inevitable campaign focus on leadership will work to the Cons' disadvantage this time.

Put another way, to the extent the Cons have normally relied on a desperately unpopular Lib leader to lower his party's support level throughout a campaign, Trudeau isn't quite the punching bag his predecessors were. If priority one for the Cons has been to turn Trudeau into Dion or Ignatieff, that job isn't yet done.

Yet to the extent the Cons have counted on the NDP to face an insurmountable deficit in voter support which can't be made up by the public's favourite leader, that's no longer a plausible assumption either. (On that front, note that not only is the NDP higher in the polls than at the start of any recent election campaign, but Mulcair is also far more popular now than Layton ever was at the same point in any election cycle.)

So the public's appetite for change is large enough for the Cons to face serious challenges from two parties and leaders with more appeal than their own. And it doesn't look like there's anything the Cons can do to undermine either of the plausible alternatives without substantially benefitting the other: a more pointed attack against Mulcair and the NDP will only help Trudeau and the Libs, and vice versa.

Based on that conundrum, I'd think the Cons might be best off taking their chances with something truly novel for the Harper cadre: a campaign primarily oriented toward a positive case for more of the same to expand their own voter universe (however slightly) and working toward favourable splits, rather than the usual plan based on relentless attacks against a single perceived opponent. But it doesn't look like the formula which has worked in the past is going to have the same results this time.

[Update: fixed wording.]

On alternative explanations

In 2011, one of the turning points in Canada's federal election campaign (at least in determining which party would form the Official Opposition) came when voters learned about Michael Ignatieff's refusal to show up for work in the House of Commons.

One might have expected the Libs' next leader to avoid leaving himself open to the same criticism. One would have been wrong.

But tonight, we may have seen Justin Trudeau's answer to the same point in 2015:

"Of course I don't show up to Parliament. Why bother when my party can't remember what it's supposed to do there anyway?"

New column day

Here, on how Michael Ignatieff's empty vessel politics might become the norm if voters don't respond with due skepticism to increasingly sophisticated vote-swaying tactics.

For further reading...
- The year's two must-reads on the evolution of politics are Sasha Issenberg's The Victory Lab (referenced in the column) and Susan Delacourt's Shopping for Votes. And both provide clear narratives to the effect that consumer-focused politics are becoming more and more pervasive.
- Links to the commentariat's take on Ignatieff's political memoirs can be found here. And I deal with a few additional implications of empty vessel politics here.
- Finally, I'll consider yesterday's speech from the throne to be an ideal example of the contrast between politics focused on the common good and politics focused on a few swing voters. It may well be true that the Cons have simply written off the issues seen as most important by voters - but I'd be shocked if they haven't thoroughly focus-tested most of their policy baubles to see whether they might have a comparatively strong effect on persuadable voters.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Glen Hodgson and Brenda Lafleur explain how Canada's lower and middle classes alike have been left out of any economic growth as a result of increased inequality:

We believe the more accurate interpretation is that after worsening in the 1980s and 1990s, income inequality and poverty in Canada remained stuck at a relatively high level during the 2000s. This interpretation should prompt the question, “Can anything be done about it?”

The 1990s were a difficult decade for Canadians. By the late 1990s, real median after-tax income fell to its lowest level in more than three decades, and income inequality reached its peak. Yet even though higher commodity demand and prices helped Canada’s economy grow faster from 2000 to 2010 than most of its peers, including the United States, income inequality did not decline.
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Furthermore, the gap between the top and bottom income quintiles increased the most in the 1980s and 1990s. The top 20 per cent got relatively richer, and the bottom 20 per cent got relatively poorer. The gap between richest and poorest quintiles grew more slowly in the 2000s, but it clearly did not shrink. The top income quintile increased its share of total after-tax income from 43.4 per cent in 1998 to 44.3 per cent in 2010. The share going to the bottom income quintile remained the same (4.8 per cent), while the share going to the three quintile groups in between (which could be broadly defined as the middle class) fell.

In short, it is statistically accurate to say that the middle class – at least as defined by having a mid-range income – is being squeezed in Canada.

And what about low-income Canadians, including those in poverty? Using Statistics Canada’s Low Income Measure (LIM), the share of Canada’s population in low income is somewhat smaller than during the mid-1990s, but it remains higher than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Even if the income share of lower-income Canadians was stable in the 2000s and their incomes are rising modestly, Canada’s performance is far from stellar. When put in the context of a relatively healthy Canadian economy from 2000 to the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, lower-income Canadians did not get that much further ahead.

- Meanwhile, Rick Smith duly mocks the promise of a "consumer first" Throne Speech from a government which has gutted the federal regulatory system and trashed any meaningful consumer protections introduced by other parties throughout its stay in power.

- And on the subject of public accountability, Thomas Walkom recognizes that the real story behind the planning of Toronto's Pan Am Games is the danger involved in handing matters of public interest over to unaccountable private actors.

- Vaughn Palmer discusses British Columbia's reasonable concerns about the threat of bitumen spills on land and water alike. And CBC reports on Justice Marceau's finding that Alberta's exclusion of environmental groups from the review of tar sands projects resulted in an unfair and invalid process - which may be particularly important given that the Cons have imposed exactly the same standard at the federal level in order to remove critical voices from pipeline assessments.

- I'll have more to say about the flurry of discussion set off by Michael Ignatieff's book launch over the weekend. But for now, the essential recent reading on Ignatieff's tenure and departure includes: Paul Wells on Ignatieff's lack of substance; Bob Hepburn on his apparent state of denial; Frances Russell on his complete misapprehension of a parliamentary system; and Chris Selley's brilliant assessment of Ignatieff's combined sense of entitlement and appetite for self-aggrandizement.

- Finally, Paul Krugman offers his theory as to how the Republicans ended up where they are - and it's a lesson that we should watch for within our own party structures as well:

Coming back to the class warfare issue: my working theory is that wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing — correctly — that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people.

And nobody knows how it ends.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that to start the new year.

- Lynn Stuart Parramore discusses the dangers of needless means-testing for basic social benefits:

When I spoke to Joseph Stiglitz, he discussed the idea that “means-testing is mean.” Programs like Medicare and Social Security, he explained, are matters of political economy. They are important to social cohesion, where support comes from the fact that everybody is participating. “We don’t means-test public education,” explained Stiglitz, “because we believe that we want people to have the same opportunities and we lose out on that with means-testing.” The same is true of our belief that everyone deserves a dignified retirement and adequate medical care in old age.

Medicare and Social Security are not handouts to the needy. They are not even intended to be a safety net. In their design, they promote the fundamental notion that dignity and good health in old age are not special privileges that can be bestowed or taken away. They are fundamental rights that every working American who has contributed productively to the economy can expect to enjoy. As James K. Galbraith told me in an email, “It’s insurance, not charity.”

Means-testing runs against this fundamental idea by turning Medicare and Social Security into welfare programs that become bargaining chips for politicians. The programs become provisional rather than fundamental. President Franklin Roosevelt understood this point well, which is why he designed Social Security to be attached to a payroll tax so that “no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”
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By turning Medicare and Social Security into welfare, means-testing feeds right into the Romney view of the world, an us-against-them mentality that pits the self-righteous wealthy against ordinary people. Means-testing would divide the population and further emphasize the difference between the haves and the have-nots by transferring a sense of receiving handouts to those getting Social Security and Medicare. 

- Paul Adams' look at the Libs' right-wing positioning has received plenty of attention already. But the most important observation is that Justin Trudeau looks to be following directly down the path that led the Libs to third-party status in the first place:

Of course there are a couple of narrower, more tactical reasons why Trudeau in particular may be tacking to the right. In the short term, it may be a feint designed to shake people’s preconceptions of him during the leadership race and carve out a political image distinct from that of his father.

But Liberal supporters should be concerned that it is the germ of a general election strategy: to position Trudeau not as a centre-left alternative to the Conservatives, but as a more likeable, open, honest, youthful successor to Stephen Harper. A change in personalities, in other words, rather than a change in policies.

This was essentially the strategy of Michael Ignatieff, and it didn’t work. It didn’t work in part because Ignatieff’s inexperience contrasted with Harper at a nerve-jangling time in the economy. It also didn’t work because it forced Ignatieff to tack jerkily left in the election campaign when it was apparent that the only pool of voters actually available to the Liberals were there — further muddying the already murky Liberal brand.

- Aaron Wherry looks back at 2012 in Canadian politics - and points out that there's plenty of reason to think a more meaningful democracy is well within reach:

If our democracy is not quite the vibrant construct we wish it was, there are glimmers. The government and the official opposition are led respectively by erudite policy wonks who like to imagine themselves as pugilists in the rhetorical ring—and for the first time this particular former has a comparable rival in the latter. Elizabeth May has taken up residence in the far corner and made parliamentary democracy her cause. Megan Leslie often asks questions and Michelle Rempel periodically responds. The chair of the ethics committee is 21 years old and among the most prominent members of the official opposition are half a dozen women who were born in the 1980s. Brent Rathgeber has a blog. Michael Chong and Irwin Cotler are still here, as are various other men and women of whom their constituents can be proud. And by next summer the third party will likely be led by either a man blessed of good genes, great hair and immense potential or an astronaut.

So if it is not all good, it is also not all bad. But if this past year was about anything it was that fight—those fights and that they were had and what they might amount to. In those hours and hours and hours of standing and sitting and standing and sitting for C-38 and C-45 was something like the essence of parliamentary democracy: the governing party testing the limits of what it might get away with and the opposition doing everything in its power to subject the government’s actions to scrutiny. In the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Auditor General were necessary stalwarts. In the hashtags and shouting was the public, or at least segments thereof, imposing itself on the proceedings. The fight is not quite an end in itself. It should amount to something. Change, if decided to be necessary, must be realized. The process of perfecting this grand measure requires more than 140 characters. But it is the fight that keeps this blessed mess alive and the flame lit. Short of utopia, the fight must be had, over and over and over. (We might wish that the fight was fought on nicer or wittier terms, but we should neither expect nor desire that advancing ourselves forward won’t involve some kind of fight.)

A few months after the 2011 election, after the principles of Westminster democracy were apparently set aside in favour of a strong, stable, national government, a sizeable number of citizens paused to mourn the passing of a thoroughly political man—an individual whose last act as leader of the official opposition was to launch a 58-hour filibuster. If that week of public recognition seemed to show we were not quite yet entirely consumed by cynicism, 2012 perhaps showed the fight is not yet out of us.

- Meanwhile, the Star's review of the year in environmental policy highlights "austerity and obscurantism" as all we have to show for the Cons' decisions and actions. But on the bright side, Bruce Stewart's look at the year for the NDP reaches some rather more positive conclusions.

On questionable advice

Shorter Zach Paikin:

In order to avoid the fate of the Ignatieff Libs, the NDP should totally abandon any principles and re-run Ignatieff's "we stand for nothing, but at least we're not that guy!" campaign.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Thomas Walkom highlights the lesson we should draw from the economic devastation caused by the shutdown of an Electro-Motive plant which was supposed to serve as a poster child for corporate giveaways:

Using tax breaks to encourage domestic production is a standard prescription. Yet, ironically, that’s exactly what the Harper government did.

In 2008, it offered tax write-offs worth an estimated $5 million annually — not to Electro-Motive (which, at the time, was owned by two hedge funds) but to Canadian railway firms that used locomotives.

The idea was to encourage companies like CN to replace their engine stock more quickly. And if it hadn’t been for globalization, the scheme might have created a few more jobs in London.

But globalization does exist. Canadian railways can still get those tax breaks on new locomotives. It’s just that now they will buy them from Indiana and Mexico.

None of this means that manufacturing has to be doomed. Ottawa could take a leaf from the U.S. and pass Buy Canadian legislation. The province (which is not tightly bound by international trade agreements) could penalize companies that purchase goods from jurisdictions with unfair labour laws.

Governments could even copy the tactic of Trudeau-era trade minister Ed Lumley, who famously threatened to hold up the import of Japanese autos until companies like Honda built assembly plants here.

But Canadian governments don’t do such things. To be seen as anything but avidly free-trade spooks both politicians and business.

- Meanwhile, Erin notes that artificially low royalties are doing nothing at all to spur resource development, but plenty to ensure that the public doesn't benefit when resources are exploited.

- Barbara Yaffe theorizes that the NDP should abandon its environmental principles in order to try to win seats in the West. To which I can only offer a reminder what happened - in Western Canada and elsewhere - to the last official opposition to try to appease the oil sector rather than providing some meaningful alternative to a government which acts as a wholly-owned industry subsidiary.

- pogge wonders whether any self-pronounced speech warriors will take up the cause of environmentalists singled out for silencing by the Con government for the content of their message.

- Finally, Frances Woolley compares the relative effects of RRSPs and TFSAs. But it's worth pointing out that the people who benefit most from the multiplicity of tax-sheltering devices are those who don't have to choose between them, but can instead take advantage of all of them.

What might have been

Wilf Day offers up one what-might-have-been scenario based on proportional representation. But as one astute observer pointed out at the NDP's Vancouver convention, there's another alternate set of possibilities which wouldn't have required a different electoral system - only some better choices by the then-leader of one of the parties which has seen its fortunes decline most.

When Michael Ignatieff decided he preferred keeping Stephen Harper in power to working with a progressive coalition in 2009, his operating assumption seems to have been that the Libs simply needed to bide their time in order to become the next government down the road. But what he seems to have missed was that the coalition itself offered an opportunity to entrench a set of party rankings that worked in the Libs' favour.

Indeed, there isn't a single plausible outcome of Ignatieff seeking to take power under a coalition that wouldn't have been a far better result for the Libs than where they ended up instead.

At best for the Libs, Ignatieff would have had a chance to govern for a year and a half with an NDP coalition partner and Bloc support - not only effectively neutralizing any criticism from any other party to the left of the Cons, but ensuring that the comparative popularity of Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe served to reinforce the argument that the Libs belonged in power after a subsequent election. And if the coalition had held together, the likely result would have been either a change in leadership for the Cons, or at least a serious loosening of Stephen Harper's hold on his party - weakening the Libs' strongest opponent at the time while strengthening their own hand.

What's more, even the less desirable outcomes from Ignatieff's standpoint would figure to have positioned the Libs in a secure second place for the foreseeable future. If the coalition had taken power but its underlying support structure had fallen apart, the Libs would have been able to blame whichever party withdrew its support for breaking a deal to keep the Cons out of office - which would have given them a particular opportunity to rebuild in Quebec where the coalition was most popular. And if a coalition had been stopped in its tracks by defections to the Cons or by a snap election that resulted in a Con majority, the Libs would figure to have had no trouble at least locking in their second-party standing for the duration of the majority mandate.

Instead, by deciding that he couldn't stand to rule with another party at the cabinet table, Ignatieff sharpened distinctions which played to the NDP's advantage - while ensuring that the Libs would be seen as enemies both by the Cons for agreeing to the coalition in the first place, and by the other parties and their supporters who wanted to see Harper toppled. And in retrospect, that offered the NDP exactly the opening it needed to establish itself as the true opposition to the Cons in seat count as well as in principle.

Of course, the NDP deserves in taking advantage of the opening. But it's hard not to see the Libs' fall as the product of Ignatieff's original sin. And while there's some reason to hope the long-term result will be a political system that better reflects the values of progressive Canadians, it's still worth a reminder which party blew its opportunity to change the Harper-ruled status quo.

Moved to action

It remains to be seen how far the NDP will get in pushing for all parties to engage in meaningful discussion about policy. But if you're wondering whether there's already evidence of progress in the first days of the new session of Parliament, look no further than the Libs' budget subamendment.

By way of comparison, the Libs' budget amendment strategy since the 2008 election had ranged from not even bothering to present one, to procedural nit-picking which left the Cons' policy direction untouched, to serving up content-free disapproval which they weren't even willing to back up with votes.

Now, the Libs actually seem to have put some effort into finding policy areas not covered by either the Cons' budget or the NDP's main amendment, and taking the opportunity to bring them up for debate. (And there's little reason for the NDP to disagree with the amendment the Libs put forward - just as the Libs figure to have every reason to back the NDP's more general amendment.)

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Alice's CPSA wrapup is well worth a read in general, but one bit of post-election analysis looks to have plenty of potential to carry over into the new Parliament:

From Ipsos-Reid’s work on leadership, Michael Ignatieff had been so far behind both Harper and Layton prior to the campaign, it begged the question for Darrell Bricker as to why the Liberals had pushed for an election at all. On key questions about preference for a coalition versus a Harper government, voters split 50:50 prior to the election (and the Conservatives finished up with 40 of the 50, and a majority government). But when asked whom they believed – Harper who said the opposition would form a coalition, or Ignatieff who said they wouldn’t – survey respondents sided with Harper 62:38.

And when asked pre-election who would have made the best prime minister of a coalition government, 59 per cent picked Jack Layton, while 27 per cent preferred Ignatieff and 14 thought Duceppe would. Moreover Layton was winning on every measure of likeability (including as the leader respondents would most like to have a coffee or a beer with), though Harper always topped the list on measures of competence (“who will get things done”). Bricker said the Liberals must have been seeing the same numbers, and said it was no surprise the NDP would have wanted to go to an election if they saw the same thing as well.

Of course the Libs no longer have to worry about public perceptions of Ignatieff - and it may be that an interim leader will avoid the worst of the ad blitzes that undermined their previous two standard-bearers. But there's little indication that they'll be able to avoid a leadership disadvantage for a long time to come, which may only help to entrench the election alignment going forward.

- Scott Stinson recognizes that Stephen Harper's political strategy is based on playing Canadians for suckers - leaving only the question of whether he'll remember the lesson by the next time Harper puts on a facade for electoral gain:

Over the last five years, anyone inclined to rationalize Stephen Harper’s latest foray into decidedly non-conservative territory always had the minority government to point to. His hold on power was tenuous, one could say, so there were times he just had to choke down his principles and take action to protect his party’s station.

So, when David Emerson crossed the floor in 2006, it was only so B.C. could have an experienced voice at the Cabinet table. When the Conservatives created a regional slush fund — sorry, economic development agency — for southern Ontario in 2009, it was simply a way to shore up votes in a key area. And when he began appointing partisans to the Senate in 2009 — in big blue dollops — it was just so his government could ensure that House legislation wasn’t held up by an unelected body.

He didn’t like doing these things, you see, but they just had to be done. Couldn’t be helped. Hold your nose, look away, and await the day when this unpleasantness was no longer necessary.

That day was supposed to have arrived on May 3. But as Wednesday morning’s events in Ottawa have made brazenly clear, the Prime Minister is not about to do a damn thing differently. Those of us who thought he might? There’s a word for that: suckers.

- But in fairness, Kady notes that the history of Conservative Senate reformers abandoning their principles when the opportunity for patronage arises is as old as Canada itself.

- Finally, Andrew Leach is right to note that reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions will require some significant action (which the Cons are only exacerbating by ruling out a cap-and-trade system). But the more important message is that continued delays out of the Harper government will only make matters worse:

Mr. Kent’s decisions will determine whether or not we are in a position to meet our Copenhagen commitments, and determine either the costs we incur to meet our targets or the costs we incur as a result of not meeting them. Meeting them will require the most aggressive GHG reduction efforts undertaken by any economy in the world, and the challenge gets tougher with every day we do not act. Not meeting them may limit access to markets for our exported products and access to capital for our investment projects. Inaction could also provide other nations with justification for the imposition of low carbon fuel standards or border adjustment tariffs on our products.

If we are not going to meet our targets because we are not prepared to impose the regulations which would be required, then we need a significant shift in our strategy internationally. We should recognize that the gold standard for global effort on GHGs, the EU, has imposed a carbon price on their economy which only amounts to about $20/ton today. Canada would be much better served by committing to match our effort to theirs, rather than committing to do more and delivering less.

With a majority government in hand, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mr. Kent can and should set a clear path forward for Canada on GHG emissions. Whatever choices they make, they will not be easy ones.

On reason for optimism

Not that it matters all that much now that the Harper Cons have a majority government. But perhaps the most interesting part of Linda Diebel's campaign followup is the fact that Michael Ignatieff had apparently come to the right answer to the open question as to what the Libs would do if faced with the choice between supporting Harper or Jack Layton's NDP in a minority Parliament:

(O)n election night, addressing the Sheraton Centre crowd before the vote, Ignatieff promised: “I will play whatever part that the party wishes me to play as we go forward to rebuild, to renew, to reform.”

The senior adviser says Ignatieff meant he would stay. That coincides with scuttlebutt among Liberals that Ignatieff was still reasonably upbeat because he’d been told they’d win 65 seats and still believed a minority Conservative government and a coalition with the NDP were possible when he hit the stage on election night.

Mind you, we might well have reached the result Ignatieff apparently wanted if he and his party hadn't spent virtually the entire campaign reinforcing the Cons' spin as to why it was unacceptable.

But at the very least, we now have direct evidence that even the Libs' leader who destroyed the previous coalition eventually came around to the idea that an NDP-led government was the best outcome for Canada. And hopefully that recognition will spread to enough historical Lib supporters to ensure that an NDP government comes to pass in 2015.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Greg picks up on some of the positives of the NDP's youthful new caucus. But the appeal should be broader than campus outreach: after all, what better contrast could one build to a theme of "tired old politics" than to be able to point to plenty of bright, young MPs as the future of both the NDP and the country?

- Meanwhile, in the department of old and outdated politics, Brigitte Alepin notes how tax laws have utterly failed to keep up with widespread evasion techniques. And the answer is to coordinate on laws and enforcement mechanisms, not to buy the corporatist line that we should instead give up on taxing wealthy individuals or businesses or entirely.

- Have you prostrated yourself sufficiently before your Conservative overlords? Apparently Michael Ignatieff hasn't.

- Finally, while I don't agree with all of Sixth Estate's analysis, I'll heartily endorse this suggestion as to how we can put the wave of interest in politics to good use:

For the moment the Internet is considerably more democratic than the rest of the media. That gives us some room to move, and about the only good thing about a majority is that we can say for certain we have time to work with. There will be at least one more election in Canada — contrary to what some scared people are saying, there will probably be many more. This is good, because the core Harper team is so demonstrably, inexplicably corrupt and incompetent (batting one for three against the weakest Liberal leaders in generations) that there is a very real chance this party will spectacularly self-destruct in the future, much like the Tories did in 1993 and in 1935. We’ve got until that happens to change the political climate of this country so that whoever replaces him is forced to make real reforms, not just mouth platitudes and turn his back on the electorate like, say, Barack Obama.

I don’t want to understate the magnitude of the problem. It’s very serious. The media are openly arrayed in favour of Conservative government because it is pro-business and because it has mastered the art of simple, misleading, headline-driven stories. The polling system makes coordination vital, to an extent that progressive and centrist Canadians are going to have extreme difficulty. And we’re running out of time, probably no matter what Canada does...

But I also think it would be wrong to underestimate the tools we have available to us. Right now it is a trivial matter for me or another blogger to build a site that could be read by every politically conscious Canadian on a regular basis. Not that every politically conscious Canadian would want to, of course. But it could be done. When it comes to information and communication, the technical disparity between elites and dissidents is now lower than it has been in literally thousands of years. The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and the failed revolutions in Iran, Bahrain, and several other countries, are a testament to this. And we don’t have to worry about the army shooting at us, like they did. The problem we have is coordinating our efforts and getting people to notice. Those are big problems, but not as big as the problem the Internet solved for us in the first place.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The good news from the polls just keeps on coming, as Angus Reid and Ipsos-Reid both show the NDP at 33% across Canada (within 5 points of the Harper Cons). But perhaps more importantly, both also place the NDP in second place in Ontario - signalling that any damaging vote split has either already resolved itself in the NDP's favour, or can easily do so by Monday.

- Judy Rebick calls for Canadians to join the NDP's people-powered wave of support while noting the effect of social media in spreading the message:

People are fed up with politics as usual. That’s the sentiment that brought Rob Ford to power in Toronto and as strange as it seems, it’s the same sentiment fueling the NDP vote. Just as economics have been taken over by corporate shills, politics have been taken over by cynical operatives who see elections as number crunching and spinning (another word for lying).
...
...I do like Jack and I’ve known him for 30 years. He is a passionate, committed, politician who believes in equality and social justice and has fought with all his energy his whole life for what he believes in. People can see that, which makes him the choice of those who want to get rid of Stephen Harper. Once Quebec broke to Harper, everyone else started to see that the strategic vote and the heart vote was one and the same.

But more importantly, Jack is riding an unprecedented wave of democratic participation. Not since the 1988 free trade election have we seen a greater participation of citizens in an election campaign. Not since the Charlottetown Accord in 1992 have we seen a more profound revolt against the political elites of this country.

But unlike 1988 and 1992, no organization or individual is leading this revolt. It is happening through You Tube, through Facebook, through Twitter, through Vote Mobs, through web sites, through the creativity, humour, audacity of mostly young Canadians. It is the first time we have seen the dynamic of networked politics, which I wrote about in Transforming Power: From the personal to the political work in Canada

No-one over 40 who has a progressive bone in their body can fail to be inspired by the energy and passion of those vote mob videos. And thanks to the willingness of the people of Quebec to take a risk, Jack Layton and the NDP are now the most viable option for those of us who would do anything to get rid of Stephen Harper and his desire to be President for Life of Canada.

- Meanwhile, Glen Pearson is absolutely right in noting that a key driver of the NDP's surge has been the fact that Jack Layton has performed well in response to a genuine opportunity to define himself which the Libs' contenders have lacked ever since the Harper ad-bombing strategy became the norm:

Which I think helps to define Layton’s rise in the polls. Is he a good man? Absolutely. Does he care for people? For sure. A good leader for his party? Yup. His rise in popularity comes in part because Canadians have been permitted to judge him with a collective open mind – something that should come standard with any political campaign. I bet you the Conservative Machiavellian types in their war room now wish they had spent millions passing their untruths on to the Canadian people about the NDP leader. But it’s too late; they, like the rest of us, didn’t see it coming. They are now scrambling, realizing that they’re not so smart after all.
...
I’m glad for Jack, to be truthful, because every leader deserves a fair shot at power. His rather obscure rating at the beginning of the campaign has now provided him with an open field to display his skills – he was never placed in a box. Every party leader should have been afforded that opportunity, and in Canada that used to be a given. Jack deserves his freedom; Ignatieff should have had that right too. Regardless of the this election’s outcome, the best thing that could happen wouldn’t just be an opposition win as it would be a sending of the Republican strategists back across the border and a Conservative government humbled by the Canadian people for its deeply devious way of treating its citizens.

- But Adam Radwanski notes that whatever the end result, the election campaign should indeed result in some substantial change for the better in how political parties approach Canadian citizens:

Stephen Harper’s push for a majority government has revolved around the idea that to most voters, the “air war” – the party’s communication efforts, their exchanges with each other, the media’s coverage of it all – is just a lot of white noise. So he has made no effort to engage us collectively. On the contrary, the Conservatives have tried to foster indifference with a stultifyingly boring and repetitive central campaign – all the better to allow them to micro-target just enough swing voters in just enough ridings to win a majority government.

Many pollsters, and some insiders from other parties, entered this campaign sharing the belief that the vast majority of voters aren’t really in play. It was a depressing experience to listen to them explain why, beyond motivating their bases to come out and vote, parties really just had to worry about targeting a relatively tiny number of swing voters in swing ridings.
...
(T)he Conservatives, who thought they had this election fully gamed out, have not been nimble enough to respond (to the NDP's surge). They have watched as anti-Harper support has consolidated behind the NDP, putting in jeopardy some of the seats they were counting on, and until the last few days seemingly refused to believe it was happening. And because they didn’t think it was worth speaking to most self-identified supporters of other parties, they’ve been unable to woo many of the disaffected Liberals leaving that party in droves.

None of this is to say that Mr. Harper won’t get his majority. The vote splits could still break that way. And if they do, the strategists will no doubt pat themselves on the back.

But they cannot seriously claim any more to have had the electorate all figured out. And in future campaigns, all parties will know better than to treat us as quite the automatons the Conservatives thought we were.

Friday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- Toby Sanger puts the NDP's track record as Canada's most responsible party in balancing budgets into handy chart form.

- Anna Jarvis offers her case for the NDP:

Jack Layton and the NDP have earned their opportunity. Layton, who heads the latest leadership survey measuring vision, trust and competence, appears genuinely passionate about his social democratic beliefs. He has connected with Canadians across the spectrum and reinvigorated voters. He started this campaign after cancer and hip surgery. As usual, the race was framed as between the Conservatives and Liberals. But Layton persevered.

People were told to vote strategically. He said vote for whoever you want.

Coalitions? He said he'll work with whomever Canadians elect.

I like the NDP plan to end tax cuts for large corporations (whose profits don't always stay in Canada and whose CEOs make obscene salaries) and instead use the money for tax breaks for small businesses. The party has at least identified health care issues such as home care, long-term care and prescription drug costs. It's the only party with a firm plan for capping greenhouse gas emissions. It's offering much more for pensions. Layton is already doing what nobody else has: bringing Quebecers into the fold.
...
(Con Jeff) Watson delivered a lot of money to this region (or the Conservatives did to shore up his seat). But despite "delusions of grandeur," according to observers, he's not likely to get even a minor portfolio. He'll always be a backbencher.

Put me down for an alternative.

- Meanwhile, Susan Riley sees the possibility of replacing the Harper Cons as the start of a new opportunity for growth in Canadian politics:

it will not start raining frogs if Layton has more influence in a postelection Parliament. It is nonsense to suggest he would embrace environmental measures if they would bankrupt the economy and even more absurd to suggest that the watchful, cautious Michael Ignatieff would start raising taxes willy-nilly.

Here is what could change, though, at least for non-Conservatives: the big dark cloud that hangs over federal politics might lift with Harper's departure.

A Liberal/NDP coalition -admittedly still a less likely outcome than another Conservative government -would bring confusion, but might also inject much-needed optimism in public life, and, we can only hope, more co-operation.

Whatever happens, spring is a good time to clean house. And the first thing to go should be those outdated myths, distortions of history that obscure any vision of a happier future.

- Finally, no Lib swoon would be complete without some public infighting. And for all their other failings, Jane Taber and John Ibbitson at least provide that:

But as Liberals try to refocus in these last crucial days, the infighting is beginning with some senior Liberals blaming a disconnect between the leader and his national campaign team.

They blame the polling – arguing that it misdiagnosed the concerns and attitudes of voters.

But pollster Michael Marzolini said “it’s news to me.”

“How do they think I have misdiagnosed? The only thing I failed to predict was Layton’s debate performance – and that kind of prediction isn’t my job.”

Others are blaming the flurry of confusing messages.

A senior Liberal complained, for example, that while the party’s health-care ads were being run on television, Mr. Ignatieff was talking about “rising up” and calling the Tories anti-democratic. He was repeatedly blown off message and seemed to come up with new themes almost daily, from concern-for-democracy to health care to wasted spending on the G8 and G20 summits. This confused voters.
...
(S)o far, the Liberals are not yet directly blaming Mr. Ignatieff – there is a view that he has done an admirable job. The blaming may come on Tuesday, however, if the polls are correct.

They write letters

And if they aren't contributing to an NDP-led government, I heartily endorse the prospect that the Libs' top figures have plenty of time to keep right on writing open letters by this time next week.

On broken links

So far, the Cons have stayed remarkably quiet about the NDP's national surge, following up on their first weak response with a single ad attacking the NDP only as a secondary part of the usual "higher taxes" line against the Ignatieff Libs. But while the Libs' responses look to have failed mostly because they come out of nowhere, the biggest problem for the Cons may be that their attack on the NDP is so similar to an existing message linked to the Libs.

Obviously the Cons are well aware that an attack needs some time to sink in, and that it only figures to work if voters link a particular leader they might be considering to the attack when they vote. (Otherwise, their years of direct shots at the Libs' leaders would figure to have been a waste of money.)

But having so deliberately branded Michael Ignatieff with the "higher taxes" label over a period of years in the general public, the Cons figure to have an awfully tough time suddenly transferring that same label to Layton in the last week of the campaign. Which may reflect another area where the Cons' bubble might have caused them to miss what's happening in the country at large: while they've used the "higher taxes line as a talking point dealing with the NDP in what might be seen as inside-baseball conversations in Parliament and on talk shows, they haven't done anything to reach a broader audience.

And what's more, the job is made all the more difficult by the fact that they're still trying to include Ignatieff in their ads, serving only to dilute the message even more. Which means that the chances of the Cons being able to suddenly attach a negative to a leader whose reputation has been carefully built over nearly a decade look to be rather slim.

Of course, the Cons are presumably hoping that some combination of "coalition" messaging and general visual association between Layton and Ignatieff will be enough to make the charge stick. But there's a real possibility that the Cons have indeed been too cute by half in hoping that relentless attacks on the Libs would clear the field entirely - and we're just now starting to see panic set in on their side as well now that the orange wave is submerging their hopes for a majority.