On issues that won't be ignored

Harper's plan to deal with equalization and federal/provincial relations later rather than sooner isn't much of a hit with Canada's premiers, who have good reason to want to get a deal done in the next year-plus:

There is...a sense of urgency among the premiers as the window of opportunity for an overarching fiscal deal may have a short timeframe. The window has been opened by the election of Harper, but it will be closed if Charest, who is trailing in the polls, loses the next Quebec election — expected in the spring of 2007 — to André Boisclair and the Parti Québécois.

As the other premiers see it, they aren't likely to be able to strike a deal with the separatists, whose objective is to leave Confederation, not fix it.

On the other hand, a new fiscal deal that is seen as beneficial to Quebec (as well as the other provinces) could help Charest remain in power.

Now, there's obviously some danger in trying to work out a deal too quickly. But that's only reason to make sure that as much concentrated effort as possible is applied to the issue now.

Given that there's a foreseeable endpoint on when a deal can get done, the only responsible course of action now is to make the fiscal imbalance an immediate priority - rather than something to be revisited at some point in the future when Quebec is unwilling to listen. And if Harper pushes forward on his personal priorities while trying to sweep the provinces' most important issue under the rug until it's too late, then some of the premiers who explicitly or implicitly endorsed him this time out may not be so friendly next time he goes to the polls.

Request granted

Maurice Vellacott has gone public asking for "a modest role" in the Conservative government:

In the two-page letter, Vellacott says he'd prefer to be appointed either a vice-chair or chair of the Human Resources, Aboriginal Affairs, Foreign Affairs or Health committees.

He also says he's concerned that if he were appointed to a senior cabinet role he would be prevented from speaking his mind on certain issues, such as "ethnic outreach, marriage, family and life."

Presumably Vellacott wants to leave a bit more of a paper trail so he can't again be accused of doing nothing as an MP. But given those views that Vellacott wants to be able to speak his mind about, I'm sure Harper will be glad to find him the most modest role possible - preferably one which won't result in any publicly-recorded proceedings to be used against the Cons in the next election campaign.

Pushme-Pollyu

More Saskatchewan political news, as David Karwacki's fight to stay relevant has led to tripartisan agreement to deal with the issue of push-polling, which was apparently due to become a problem in the province any decade now. But while Karwacki's effort has confirmed a lack of intention to use a tactic that apparently wasn't in use anyway, the move may just be conceding the strategy to the other party which is looking to back into the Legislature:

All three of Saskatchewan party leaders have now pledged they won't use "push polling" in the next provincial election...

The issue came up recently when Liberal leader David Karwacki wrote to Premier Lorne Calvert and Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall suggesting several ways the parties could keep the next campaign more positive...

Calvert said the NDP doesn't do push polling and he promised it wouldn't.

"I personally find it offensive," he said. "To my knowledge, we have never used it and so long as I'm leader of this party we will not use it."

Karwacki and Wall pledged they won't engage in push polling either.

I'll note that while CBC uses a fairly restrictive definition of "push polling", it doesn't necessarily need to be negative if it has the effect of presenting a biased picture to a respondent. And with the three main parties all agreed to take the push-polling weapon out of their arsenal, I have to wonder whether a soft push poll might be just the break the Sask Cons need to make a comeback:

"Question 1: Do you consider yourself a Christian?

Question 1A (if answer to (1) is "yes"): Do you believe that Jesus Christ came back from the dead?

Question 1B: Do you believe that a political party can do the same?

Question 1C: Do you believe in Jesus' message of forgiveness?

Question 1D: Would you consider voting for the Saskatchewan Conservative Party in the next provincial election?

Question 2 (if answer to (1) is "no"): Do you believe that that people can be rehabilitated?

Question 2A (if answer to (2) is "yes"): Do you believe that a rehabilitated person should be given responsibility in order to prove he or she has changed?

Question 2B: Do you believe that a political party should have the same chance?

Question 2C: Do you think it's time to give Saskatchewan's provincial Conservative Party another chance at government?"

Not that it's actually likely to work, even if the bulk of the province's voters would presumably be caught by one of the two pushes. But the multilateral disarmament by the other parties is more of an opening than Saskatchewan's Cons have had for awhile - and it's not as if the party's rumoured financial reserves are being put to any better use.

Turnover

The CP reports that Peter Prebble and Joanne Crofford won't seek re-election next time Saskatchewan goes to the polls:

Corrections Minister Peter Prebble and Community Resources Minister Joanne Crofford said Friday they will continue to represent their ridings until an election is called.

Voters aren't expected to go the polls again until 2007.

Premier Lorne Calvert is expected to shuffle his cabinet, possibly within two weeks.

The upcoming shuffle will become all the more interesting now that two longtime stalwarts have indicated that they won't be sticking around. While the experience and knowledge will undoubtedly be missed, it's also a plus for there to be some room for renewal both in the cabinet and the caucus.

That said, the electoral implications remain to be seen. There hopefully won't be too much doubt whether the NDP can hold Prebble's and Crofford's ridings: the party won them by 17% and 41%, respectively, in 2003. But the question of whether the NDP can attract positive attention - both for any new cabinet appointments, and for the replacement candidates - will likely play a large role in whether the Dippers can hold onto government past the current term.

Update: While the NDP's departing members will leave the caucus on good terms, the same doesn't appear to be true of the Sask Party's Brenda Bakken-Lackey:

In a cryptic statement distributed by the party, she says the political system did not always allow her to do what she believed was in the best interest of her constituents and she found that frustrating.

Bakken-Lackey also alludes to how she will not compromise her commitments to accountability and transparency, but she does not elaborate.

Considering that the Sask Party has another chance at forming government within a year, one would have to figure that the problem isn't so much frustration with the opposition benches as concerns with the party itself. And when sitting MLAs are leaving on principle, that could be a prelude to voters doing the same.

Winners and losers

Apparently at least some people have reason to be happy about the U.S.' current economic situation, as increased corporate profits have helped to boost the stock market:

U.S. stocks rallied on Friday, with the Dow and the Nasdaq each up 1 percent, as higher corporate profits, including those of bellwether Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), overshadowed a government report showing slower-than-expected economic growth...

Which is good news for those with substantial share investments. But what about, well, everybody else?

Official figures from the Commerce Department this afternoon showed US economic growth slowed to its weakest annual rate in three years.

Growth for the quarter was estimated at just 1.1 pct, well below the 4.1 pct recorded in the third quarter and expectations of a much more modest slowdown to 2.7 pct...

The Federal Reserve will nevertheless be concerned by evidence of core inflation heating up. The core personal consumption expenditure price index -- which excludes food and energy prices -- rose at an annual rate of 2.2 pct, above the Fed's 1-2 pct target range.

To sum up: Americans generally are paying more that expected to produce less...but as long as the end result is higher corporate profits, nobody's apparently complaining. Or at the very least, nobody with reason to complain seems to be able to find a major media platform to do so.

Ralph unleashed

While he made a couple of embarrassing appearances during the election campaign, Ralph Klein was generally subdued in an effort to avoid torpedoing Harper's chance at government. But now, Klein won't keep silent any longer:

Premier Ralph Klein said his Tory caucus agreed unanimously on Thursday to move ahead with revised laws that would, among other things, allow people to buy private insurance for some procedures. Another of his government's so-called "third way" reforms would allow doctors to practise in both the public and private-health systems...

The provincial government has seven other, unspecified changes it plans to make. Klein admitted that some might violate the Canada Health Act...

To ease concerns during the federal election campaign about his party's agenda, Harper pledged to be a strong defender of the public health-care system.

The jury is still out on how receptive Harper will be to opening the door to more privatization, given his Conservative party's minority status.

It may not have been realistic to think Klein would let the issue stay dormant until the federal Cons were able to pull out a future majority. But the fact that Klein couldn't even wait a week after the election before claiming Harper as an ally in his crusade to tear down single-payer health care does nothing but to give tons of ammunition to the federal opposition parties, and to force into the limelight an issue that Harper would rather see ignored.

Imposing the message

There's been plenty of talk today about Frank McKenna's past anti-choice actions as Premier of New Brunswick. But while there's plenty of speculation about McKenna following the same strategy that PMPM used on same-sex marriage, some Liberals may be looking to tie McKenna's hands instead:

There is a consensus building within the (Liberal) party to have some sort of policy exercise before the leadership convention to replace Martin. But whether it will be a full-blown national convention or smaller ones held across the country is yet to be decided.

The best indication so far, is that the vote to replace Martin probably won't happen any earlier than November.

It strikes me as odd that the Libs would be looking at policy first rather than leadership. Surely if there's anybody in the party who's seen as having a vision worth implementing, the party would prefer to go through a leadership race first, rather than dictating what the next leader will have to say once chosen.

Which isn't to say there's no upside to such a move...assuming that the Libs are resigned to having a leader with serious policy baggage. The effort to come up with a policy platform first could help to inoculate the Libs against the obvious flaws of each of their leaders. From McKenna's anti-abortionism to Ignatieff's warmongering and validation of torture, there's plenty about the Libs' potential leaders that the party will want to suppress - and putting words in the mouth of whoever takes over next could be one way for the party to claim that any public concerns are outdated.

But then, the talk seems to speak more of the Libs' lack of trust in their potential leaders than of anything positive about the party. And if the Lib party apparatus has that little trust that their next leader will be in tune with Canadian values, it's hard to see why voters should believe the next Liberal leader any more than the last one.

Arctic chill

Ambassador David Wilkins makes it clear that anybody expecting the Cons' platform to improve Canada/U.S. relations is headed for disappointment - and Harper will get to decide between pleasing Bushco or defending Canadian territory:

The United States opposes a plan by prime minister-designate Stephen Harper to deploy military icebreakers in the Arctic in order to assert Canadian sovereignty, says the U.S. ambassador to Canada.

"There's no reason to create a problem that doesn't exist," David Wilkins said Wednesday as he took part in a forum at the University of Western Ontario in London.

"We don't recognize Canada's claims to those waters... Most other countries do not recognize their claim."

During the election campaign, which culminated with Harper's win this week, the Conservatives promised to spend $5.3 billion over five years to defend northern waters against the Americans, Russians and Danes.

Now, the promise to defend the Arctic isn't apparently a priority issue for the Cons, which offers a ready excuse to avoid doing anything. But I'd fully expect the opposition parties in Parliament to be all over any delay in action - and to be willing to work with Harper to make sure that Canada is doing its utmost to supervise its own territory.

With Wilkins ensuring the issue into the public eye, we should expect a quick response from Harper as to which parts of his platform he really meant, and which ones will be forgotten on instructions from Washington. The question of Arctic defence will offer the first real test as to whether Harper really plans to "stand up for Canada", or whether he'll accept the U.S.' word that Canadian sovereignty is a non-issue.

Making progress

Good news for Regina residents, as the auto theft prevention strategy put in place a few years ago is producing huge results:

Auto thefts are down by 44 per cent in Regina, a city that earlier in the decade had the dubious distinction of being Canada's car theft capital.

While there were around 3,800 motor vehicles stolen in 2001, in 2005 the number had dropped to about 2,100.

Police attribute that to the Regina Auto Theft Strategy, a policy the Saskatchewan government, the City of Regina and the Regina police department introduced four years ago. The program takes the approach that although thousands of cars were being stolen every year, the majority of the crimes are being committed by a relatively small group of repeat offenders.

The plan includes curfew checks and electronic monitoring for those repeat offenders. It also prepares offenders for work once they're released from custody.

The program helps to demonstrate that while added punishment may not have any effect, a combination of stronger monitoring and positive options for offenders can work wonders in reducing crime. There's still a long ways to go yet, but at the moment Regina is setting the standard in how to deal with car theft. And the lesson is one that shouldn't be ignored when it comes to dealing with other crimes as well.

Contempt of public

Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro's report on the Grewal taping scandal gives rise to some shocking circumstances - but the shock has nothing to do with the facts found by Shapiro, which are basically as expected. From Shapiro's press release about the report:

The report was, in fact, ready for release last Friday, January 20, 2006, pursuant to our normal practice of releasing inquiry reports as soon as they are available. In this case, however, I decided that the report should be released shortly after the federal election had been held, so that my Office would:
- avoid any perception that, on the last day of a volatile electoral campaign, the Office of the Ethics Commissioner deliberately released an inquiry report that contained comments on individuals who were involved in the electoral process; and
- ensure that the report would be considered on its own merit, rather than being used as an electoral spin, and possibly be labeled as a tool for unjustified interference in an ongoing democratic process in which Canadians were engaged.

Let's translate this into plain English. As of last Friday, Shapiro had completed his neutral, non-partisan report into the facts surrounding the Grewal affair. Rather than letting that report be made public according to the normal procedure, he unilaterally decided that the facts shouldn't intrude on the ongoing election campaign, and that instead Canadians should go to the polls with a less than complete picture of the actions of members of two of the parties running for office.

In light of some of the rhetoric surrounding the income trust investigation, I won't be surprised if Lib supporters use Wilson's decision as a model for what the RCMP should have done - suppress the issue until after the campaign is over with, at which time the public can be allowed to know what's going on with its elected officials. But to me, that's the wrong position. Instead, the RCMP handled its side of the bargain properly by ensuring that the public was informed of the facts.

In contrast, an officer appointed by Parliament went out of his way to hide the truth behind the actions of two members of that Parliament, for fear that the public couldn't be trusted with the truth in an election campaign. And in my view, that precedent does nothing but to "(weaken) the public's trust and confidence" in an office which is supposed to keep Parliamentarians honest.

Continued inertia

CBC reports that at least one U.S. environmental group, the Natural Resources Defence Council, doesn't figure the Cons will do any worse in power than the Libs would have. Given that the Cons didn't even care enough during the campaign to bother answering Greenpeace's election survey, that has to speak volumes about the Libs' habit of putting talk over action.

One step back

The CP notes that Marilyn Churley's run in the federal election campaign may result in the Ontario NDP losing official party status:

The NDP lost its eighth member, Marilyn Churley, when she resigned last fall to run in the federal election...

Premier Dalton McGuinty says if the NDP doesn't win one of those ridings the party will lose its party status because — with only seven members — they'll be one short of the requirement.

It helps to have three chances at winning a seat in order to keep the official party designation. But even so, the potential to fall below official status in Ontario, along with the fact that Churley and some other high-profile candidates were't able to turn their recognition into seats in Parliament, indicates that the NDP has plenty of building left to do on all levels. One battle may have ended with some noteworthy gains last night, but the war for long-term influence in Canadian politics isn't getting easier.

On difficult choices

The Cons have their work cut out for them in trying to be seen as anything other than the Bloc's fondest wish - and Gilles Duceppe is only making the job harder:

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said the burden of proof is on Conservative leader Stephen Harper to make good on his promises.

Speaking in Montreal Tuesday, Duceppe said he expects Harper to give Quebec a bigger role on the international stage and to solve the so-called fiscal imbalance between the provinces and the federal government -- a major issue for Quebec.

The Bloc leader also said he wanted to remind Harper that the Bloc holds the balance of power.

The Cons are currently doing everything in their power to kick any discussion of equalization well into the future. But it's clear that Duceppe isn't going to take that for an answer...and that the Cons will face a choice between alienating a good chunk of its newfound support in Quebec, or being seen to give into the wishes of the Bloc when it comes to federalism (not to mention having to deal with a thorny issue generally). Best of luck to PMSH, as it looks like he's going to need it.

Promise and pitfalls

Even with the party falling just short of the balance of power, there's still plenty of opportunity for the NDP depending how the next Parliament shakes out. While both other major national parties will have to deal with significant internal divisions, the NDP alone looks like it'll have an easy time staying united...leaving only the perennial question of how to gain some attention for what the NDP accomplishes.

For the Cons, the major challenge will of course be to govern moderately without offending the party's base. The minority may provide an acceptable excuse for caution to some, but surely there are plenty of people within the party who will demand quick action to radically reshape the political scene while the opportunity is there. And while there's also a clear opportunity to win over voters in the longer term by governing moderately, a desire for rapid change could leave Harper fighting just as much opposition within his own caucus as outside it.

For the Libs, the upcoming leadership race should be extremely interesting with nobody now looking like a particularly good bet to walk away the winner. It'll be an opportunity to win back some of the Chretienite supporters who bled away to the Cons - but also a chance for the contenders to create new rivalries and grudges. The Libs could either unite quickly or fragment in a hurry, and a lot of egos will have to be held in check to avoid the latter outcome.

As for the NDP, there really isn't any comparable potential for internal difficulties. But there's also little more to prove in the party's current state: it should already be obvious that the NDP can get plenty done with a relatively small allotment of seats, so nothing the party does now is likely to be perceived as exceeding expectations. Most of the upside looks to come from the potential for the Cons and Libs to run into internal divisions - and while that offers some hope for the Dippers, it's frustrating to once again see so much of the NDP's future out of its own hands.

So close yet again?

The numbers have been bouncing back and forth all night, but right now it's looking like the NDP is once again just short of the balance of power, pending some BC results. And on a personal level, it's particularly sad to see so many strong Saskatchewan candidates (Nystrom, Dusel, Wiebe, Mason, Kossick and Kovatch among others) running strong second places even as the party is apparently shut out again in the province.

There's still time for a few seats to turn around - and there's little doubt that the party has made plenty of progress since 2004. But unless there is a change in the BC numbers, it looks like it'll be all too easy for Harper to repeat Martin's "two seats short of being able to demand anything" line in the next Parliament.

On curing what ails one

It's been a bad day for Buzz Hargrove so far. But apparently a bit more media attention will make it all better.

On losing one's troops

I'm not quite sure how this went largely unreported until today. But suffice it to say that Gilles Savard's campaign manager was just the tip of the iceberg:

Dozens, possibly hundreds, of supporters of former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien have been quietly working in this election against the party they backed for years, fuelling the Conservatives' campaign in many parts of Quebec.

While a few have been willing to come forward and talk about why they switched allegiance - at least for this election - many others prefer to work in the shadows, bringing the knowledge and talents they honed for years as Liberal organizers to bear for Stephen Harper's Tories...

"If I base it on what is happening here, I would say there are hundreds of people." (a former Liberal MNA) said he recognized dozens of former Liberal organizers at a recent rally for Harper in Montreal. "Liberal organizers, we know each other and we talk," he said. "They were there to take the pulse and offer their services."

Lorraine Dery, a veteran Liberal organizer in the Quebec City-area riding of Louis-Saint-Laurent and a former member of its riding executive, estimates at least half the Liberal organizers in the riding, or about 50 people, have moved to the Tories.

While PMPM's message during the campaign never changed from "stop Harper at all costs", surely it's worth a mention that Martin's leadership of the Libs has handed Harper an election machine in Quebec - and in all probability the keys to 24 Sussex as a result.

If this is Martin's idea of "fighting the Conservatives", then Canada has had about all the Conservative-fighting it can take. Fortunately, voters have a chance today to decide who they most want fighting the battle - and it looks like a good number will choose the general who hasn't handed half his army to the opponents.

Nothing but blue skies

The Globe and Mail notes that today's weather should be unusually calm and warm for winter, which should in turn make it far easier than expected for parties to get out the vote:

"There's an expression used in the weather office where we say, 'There is no weather today,' " David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

"Essentially, election day will be as close as you could have to a no-weather day across the country."

Environment Canada will likely have no weather warnings out on voting day, which is highly unusual for the dead of winter in a country as large as Canada, he said...

As Mr. Phillips put it: "People clearly will not be able to use weather as an excuse [not to vote]."

With the climate not apparently playing a role in influencing who can and can't get to the polls, it's all down to the parties' effectiveness at getting out the vote. We'll find out soon who's best able to get that job done.

Still the positive choice

For all the talk of strategy and polls (and there's certainly been plenty from this corner since the campaign began), the ultimate question still has to be that of which party best reflects one's values. So let's take a look at how the NDP has addressed some of the concerns of Canadian voters.

Worried that the need for better care for seniors has been neglected so far in the campaign? Look no further than the NDP's platform, which features an expanded caregivers program as well as investments in home care and long-term care.

Concerned that womens' issues have received short shrift? In addition to having more female candidates than any other party, the NDP has a sound set of policies to help move toward gender equality.

Wondering if anybody is standing up for Canadian culture? The NDP has that covered as well, with better support for artists as well as measures to make sure that Canada keeps ownership of its own culture industries.

I'd continue, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Of course, the tone of campaign coverage has characteristically been based largely on the personal actions and foibles of the politicians involved. And the NDP has done nothing but improve its standing with the public in that arena as well.

But for Canadians wondering whether the federal parties care about the same priorities as they do, the odds are that they'll find a positive answer in the NDP. And if any significant fraction of the voters who want to see these issues addressed vote accordingly, the NDP will be able to ensure that those voices are heard and those views are reflected in the next Parliament.

And getting closer

SES has the results from the last daily poll of the campaign - and there's lots to like. The NDP is at 22.2% of all voters and climbing, and has even better numbers (23.3%) among "very likely voters". Meanwhile, Layton is within 11 points of both Harper and Martin in the PM index, and has taken a strong first place among the leaders on trust.

Never mind the NDP needing any more momentum - even at those numbers we're likely looking at the party's best result ever. And now that it's clear that voters aren't abandoning the NDP late in the game, the strategic voting admonitions will ring all the more hollow.

So close

There seems to be little doubt that the NDP is picking up momentum going into election day. But the Star's Kenneth Kidd points out that it won't take much more movement for the NDP to achieve unprecedented results tomorrow:

It wouldn't take a lot of votes to give the party its long-cherished breakthrough on the road to replacing the Liberals as an alternative to the Conservatives. Unlike the other parties, the NDP doesn't need a huge jump in the popular vote before it starts raining MPs.

That's because NDP support tends to be concentrated in parts of Ontario, a swath of British Columbia, and chunks of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Or, as (Jamey) Heath puts it: "If you want to vote NDP, chances are really good that your neighbours do, too."...

(In the NDP's best-case scenario), the Conservatives, though still out front, slip in the polls to something like 34 per cent on election day, and the Liberals fail to gain, sticking at 26 per cent. And the NDP? Well, if Layton's strategy works, the New Democrats clock in between 19 and 22 per cent...

The Conservatives would end up with a minority government of 134 or so seats, followed by the Bloc with around 67. And the NDP and Liberals? In a dead heat, each with 50-something seats. That would put the New Democrats tantalizingly close to doing what the Labour party did in Britain in the 1930s: supplant the Liberals as the natural alternative to the Conservatives.

Obviously those numbers would require most of the NDP's serious challenges to go Layton's way. But unlike PMPM's apparent best-case of finding some way to cling to power by shifting the polls by 10 points in a day, they're at least a reasonable possibility given the current trends. And these numbers would leave the Bloc with nowhere to go but down, Harper with no chance of pushing a neocon agenda through a minority Parliament, and the NDP with an extremely strong position both to set the agenda in the next Parliament, and to make a run at government an election down the road.

We're not far from what could be the NDP's best-ever outcome in terms of both seats and long-term policy implications. All the NDP needs now is for its natural voters to remember their justified concern about PMPM's trustworthiness, and to cast their votes for the party which can be believed when it talks about progressive values.

Ouch

On Question Period, John Duffy tried to defend the Libs' chances of winning government by mentioning the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline as evidence of the media's tendency to be overly confident in its perception of election results. In response, Craig Oliver noted that last time he heard that message, it was from Walter Mondale in 1984. And that can't be a precedent the Libs want to see followed this time out.

Meanwhile, one of the underlying themes of the show was discussion about the NDP's gains in the last week as both the Lib and Con votes have stagnated. The message about NDP momentum is out there - we'll now just need to see if it can carry over to election day.

Fighting on

While Liberals are giving up before Canadians' ballots are even cast...

Liberal volunteers, organizers and even MPs are admitting certain defeat tomorrow night at the hands of Stephen Harper's Conservatives barring an 11th hour change of heart by Canadian voters...

"I wish we were going to win, but we are going to lose," said a long-time Liberal organizer working in Toronto who has booked a vacation to a sunny spot next week to lift his spirits. "I wish we could pick up just enough seats to pull it off."...

An MP of 18 years said there's little hope the tide will swing in his party's favour by tomorrow, but he's convinced he'll win his GTA seat...

A Liberal minister's senior aide predicted voters will hand the Tories a slim five- to 10-seat advantage in the Commons, and if southwest Ontario goes blue, then other ridings are sure to follow.

The aide said there's a silver lining to defeat, pointing out a small minority would make Harper vulnerable to defeat on his first budget vote and see a likely Grit comeback.

...the NDP soldiers on as the one party not willing to concede an inch to Harper and company:

Appearing Sunday morning in Hamilton, where the NDP holds one seat, Layton positioned the party as one that would defend the environment, health care and foreign policy in Parliament from Conservative policies...

The Conservatives expect tax cuts will fix Canada's problems, but that's not right. The tax cuts will give dimes to people but dollars to banks and oil companies, Layton asserted.

"Working families are tired of being at the back of the line when they deserve to be at the front of the line," he said.

There shouldn't be much doubt left as to which party is doing its utmost to show Canadians how Harper's values differ from their own - and which one is giving up the fight in hope that the next election will be different.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing

While the base numbers in the latest Strategic Counsel poll don't reflect much change, there's one particularly interesting development underlying the party numbers:

Mr. Gregg said the NDP has grown in support among women voters over the last week. The party of Jack Layton is now supported by 23-per cent of female respondents, up from 16-per cent a week ago.

Mr. Gregg said the NDP is growing at the expense of the Conservative Party in British Columbia. In the Greater Toronto Area, he said, the NDP is stealing some support from the Liberals as progressive voters are trying to find the best way to prevent the formation of a Harper government.

So what's so significant about the numbers among female voters? A couple of weeks back, I discussed a Decima review of the undecided voters within its online survey which isolated various swing voters. The largest swing, representing 8% of all voters, was the following:

Those torn between the Liberals and NDP were more likely to be female, aged 35-54 and members of a visible minority. They tended to think the Liberals were the best choice to govern and that Martin was the best choice for prime minister. However, they also tended to think the NDP had the best approach to issues they care about most.

So what's happened in the time since then? Martin's PM ratings have tanked, removing the main advantage for the Libs within this group. And at the same time, the NDP has won over a significant chunk of female voters. Which tends both to support Decima's identification of the swing group - and to suggest that there's been serious movement toward the NDP within the group.

What about the Con/NDP swing vote? The article on the Decima survey didn't mention the most common characteristics within this group, but at least some voters must also have swung toward the NDP within the group to explain the size of the increase in female support for the party.

More interestingly, it's just yesterday that the NDP's Women's Caucus highlighted the elements of the NDP platform geared toward gender equality...and that fact wouldn't have been picked up by the Strategic Counsel poll. Which suggests that the NDP's existing inroads among undecided female voters may be only the beginning. To the extent that some groups have been concerned about the lack of focus on women's issues within the campaign, there's thus all the more room for the NDP to win the nod of even more swing voters just in time for election day.

The progressive way to stop Harper

While some commentators have gone out of their way to assume that legitimate concerns about Stephen Harper should be equated with endorsements of the Liberals. But the significant critics of Harper at worst never endorsed the Libs over the NDP, and at best have plainly shown their preference for the NDP. And the record is being set straight just in time for the election.

Maude Barlow took the time to correct the misconception herself:

Hebert, like several other media observers, has interpreted the message coming from these groups, which included my own, as a call to vote Liberal. This is entirely inaccurate...

I have spent much of the last twelve years as a vocal critic of Liberal policies. Most of us were cognizant of the important role played by the NDP in the last Parliament in holding the Liberal Party to a more progressive policy agenda and are clear that a return of an even greater number of NDP and other progressive forces to the House of Commons is vital.

For others, let's take a look at their other words surrounding the campaign.

David Miller, mentioned by name by PMPM as someone who supposedly advocated voting Liberal, has endorsed NDP candidate Peggy Nash:

"We don't need another Liberal with no voice. Peggy is our city-builder. We need Peggy Nash to be Toronto's champion in Ottawa."

So what about other members of the Think Twice coalition besides Barlow? The Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada for one prefers the NDP's platform to the Liberals'. Housing advocate Cathy Crowe has endorsed NDP candidate Michael Shapcott. Needless to say, these aren't voices which could reasonably be interpreted to prefer the Libs to the NDP.

There's no doubt that a lot of Canadians want to limit Harper's power as best possible, and I'll gladly count myself among them. But that doesn't answer the question of how best to stop him - and it's being made clear now that virtually nobody besides PMPM himself would rather see the Libs hold than role than the NDP.

On recognizing threats

As if Canadians needed yet another reason to be concerned about socially-conservative Liberals, soon-to-be-ex-PMPM has declared that he won't stop the bulk of his party's MPs from voting to end abortion rights if the issue comes up:

Earlier this week, the prime minister insisted he would instruct all Liberal MPs and senators to vote against a bill that banned abortion and that his new government would stand firmly in favour of a woman's right to choose.

But yesterday, Martin said he would treat a vote on the issue the same way he did last year's decision on same-sex marriage -- by whipping his cabinet, but unleashing backbenchers.

The same-sex marriage vote saw 32 Liberal MPs vote against changing the definition of marriage and, if re-elected, a similar amount are expected to vote against abortion.

It's only fair that as long as PMPM insists on making an issue out of abortion, he should have to answer for his own candidates. And he's now made clear that the loyalty of those candidates is more important to him than a woman's right to choose.

The big question now is whether the issue will get enough public attention to permanently sink the Libs' claim to defend progressive values. Even before Martin's turnaround, pro-choice advocates had tempered their admonition not to vote for the Cons with a statement that disaffected Liberals should turn to the NDP. Now, there are still a couple of days left for Henry Morgentaler and others to acknowledge that some of the greatest threats to abortion rights lie in the Liberal party...and that PMPM doesn't care enough to try to stop them.

(Via Sinister Thoughts.)

(Edit: Correction - it was Carolyn Egan of the Ontario Coalition of Abortion Clinics, not Morgentaler himself, who specifically mentioned the NDP.)

Going dark

The CP notes Stephen Harper's interesting reaction to the last weekend of the campaign, as the Con leader is now refusing all requests from the national media:

Stephen Harper, anxious to protect his party's lead heading into Monday's vote, has cut off news conferences with the national media.

The Conservative leader brushed aside questions from reporters as he campaigned in the Liberal stronghold of Toronto.

His spokeswoman, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, says Mr. Harper no longer has time for formal question-and-answer periods.

Still, the Tory leader says open, accountable government will be one of his top priorities if he becomes prime minister.

As if there was any doubt, the tactic makes it all the more clear that Harper's vision of openness and accountability means revealing only whatever truth will help the Con cause. But leaving that aside, it's also hard to see how the move will help the Cons in the election.

After all, the national media which Harper now refuses to speak to still has a couple of days to report on the campaign before Canadians go to the polls. And Harper's unwillingness to deal with them could readily lead to more reporting on the Cons' general strategy of avoiding public scrutiny than there's been so far in the campaign. Surely a couple more days worth of well-coached soundbites would be preferable to the risk in amplifying Canadians'concerns about what the Cons have hidden...unless Harper doesn't even trust himself to stay reined in until the end of the weekend.

More excuses in advance

While Con candidates in Saskatchewan have spent much of the campaign touting their supposed intention to ensure an equalization accord for the province, one member of the Con caucus has now made it clear that the Cons plan to do as little as possible for as long as possible in response to pressure from other provinces:

The issue is equalization, the complicated system of federal transfers that ensures poorer provinces can provide the same level of services to their residents as richer ones without raising taxes to uncompetitive levels...

Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert, a New Democrat, has offered his veiled endorsement of a Conservative promise that would see non-renewable resource revenue removed from the equalization formula...

Calvert's assurances come from page 43 of the Conservative platform and from Saskatchewan's 14 Tory candidates, who are quick to cite the promise at every turn.

A Conservative government would "work to achieve with the provinces permanent changes to the equalization formula which would ensure that non-renewable natural resource revenue is removed from the equalization formula to encourage economic growth," the platform reads...

Conservative incumbent Tom Lukiwski, chair of the Conservatives' Saskatchewan caucus, has said it could take up to an entire term of government to negotiate the changes.

"It doesn't take four years for a federal government to make up its mind about a federal program," Calvert said.

I'm not sure that anybody seriously disputes the need for change in Canada's equalization system generally. But as Lukiwski points out, the Cons' supposed commitment to action merely papers over the fact that they refuse to do anything until full agreement can be reached on an issue which lends itself to years of contentious negotiations. And that vague long-range promise does nothing to address the nagging matter of what should be done in the meantime.

Meanwhile, the NDP has committed to making sure that however long any agreement takes to reach, Saskatchewan won't get a worse deal than its Maritime counterparts in the meantime. Which makes the prospect of an NDP balance of power in Parliament (particularly if that features a strong Saskatchewan contingent) the province's only hope of seeing action anytime soon.

On the virtues of leaders

The latest SES poll is good enough news for the NDP in terms of the party numbers. But for the even more important development, take a look at the leaders' numbers in the poll - which are supposed to be a fairly reliable indicator of future party numbers.

For Best Prime Minister, PMPM (who has been as high as 33%) is now down to 21% and falling, while Layton (who has been as low as 9%) is now at 18% and rising. Or to put it another way: the incumbent PM, who was PM-in-waiting for a decade before that, is now three points ahead of a man who in the debate less than two weeks ago wouldn't admit to aspiring to move into 24 Sussex Drive. And less voters list themselves as "unsure" than at any other time during the campaign.

Harper's 31% seems to have the Cons well-positioned to win government. But on the likely opposition side, all the momentum is with Layton.

Need more? Check out the leadership indicators, where Layton has (just barely) passed Martin for the first time, 59 points to 58 (Harper is at 75). That's thanks in large part to Martin's woeful 14% trust score, which ranks him in 4th place behind Harper (26%), Layton (23%), and "none of the above" (18%). And that score can't bode well for any chance of recovery: if Canadians trust Martin that little now, there isn't much reason to think that voters will believe PMPM's latest claim that only he stands between Canada and certain doom.

Which means that even voters who believe that the Libs are just as progressive as the NDP have reason to think that PMPM is well past being able to claw his way back into the race. Both the Libs and the NDP have plenty of momentum - but it's Layton's party that's headed in the right direction, leaving only the question of how far the NDP can go in the next few days.

On caring enough to show up

It shouldn't be a surprise given that it's the not far off the position taken by the Health Minister this fall. But here's a reminder that when it comes to defending public health care, Liberals (like their supposed adversaries in the Conservative party) can't even be bothered to appear:

The Nova Scotia Citizens' Health Care Network invited all Halifax-area political candidates to its breakfast meeting on Thursday at St. Matthews Church in the city...

Debbie Kelly, organizer of the event, said she invited the Liberals and Conservatives, but no one from the parties showed up.

"It's very disappointing because the kind of groups that were out here today are the voters, the people who are part of organizations, grassroots community people," Kelly said. "We did get some regrets but some didn't bother to answer, which is, to be honest, disgusting."

Don't worry, though, as the Liberals had at least as strong an excuse as usual:

A Liberal official said the party isn't commenting.

Apparently the Libs have taken a page out of the Cons' playbook in refusing to even show up to events which have the slightest chance of proving embarrassing. And in fairness, I'd be embarrassed to try to defend the Libs' record on health care too.

But for Nova Scotia voters who attended the event to see who's standing up for their access to health care, the Liberals' refusal to appear is only made all the worse by the lack of any explanation. And that apparent apathy is in stark contrast to the NDP, which sent two candidates to the event. Which should work wonders in helping voters decide which party will work to preserve and strengthen Canada's health care system.

Out with a bang

The man who should have been Prime Minister delivers his final public statement as an MP. And Ed Broadbent's words should nicely help to ensure that the current leader of his party won't fall into the same traps that kept the Libs ahead of the NDP during Broadbent's time at the helm:

Mr. Martin accuses the New Democratic Party of partisanship. Were it not for the NDP putting its interests aside and putting working people’s interests first, the Liberal Party would have been fed to voters last spring.

It now is. And it has run a campaign that at best is incoherent, and at worst is deeply offensive. To women. To members of our armed forces. And to people who long for intellectual honesty in politics once more...

Mr. Martin’s team is running a campaign based on intellectual dishonesty. Cynical manipulation. And recklessly using significant issues for the sole purpose of continuing Liberal entitlement.

Like Greg, I agree entirely with Broadbent. But just as important as the strong content is that unlike all too much NDP news, Broadbent's final stand has managed to win plenty of press coverage (currently among the top headlines at CBC News, Canoe's Canada Votes, and Canada.com's Decision Canada page among others). Which means that an essential message from one of Canada's most trusted public figures seems very likely to get through to Canadians just in time for Monday's vote.

On who stands to gain

The CP takes a look at who would stand to benefit most from the Cons' tax-cutting proposals - and it should come as no surprise that Canadians who already make less money stand to get far less than their wealthier counterparts:

By simply offering every family a flat $1,200 for each child under six each year, (the Cons' child-care plan) will inflate incomes of poorer parents which will then trigger clawbacks of other income-based support programs...says (Ken Battle of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy).

That could ultimately leaving these families less well off.

"The face value (of $1,200) ... is an illusion: the scheme's true value for the vast majority of Canadian families would be less than that -- considerably less, in many cases,'' Battle says...

"I don't think they're just focusing on higher income families but -- if you take the child care allowance -- whether they intended it or not, it does end up benefiting one-income and higher income families the most'' (said Battle).

But what of the much-vaunted GST cut?

In a recent report, (Finn Poschmann, associate director of research at the C.D. Howe Institute) determined the lowest-income earners -- people reporting less than $12,500 per year -- would save about $64 each year from the GST cut...

Very modest income families -- between $12,500 and $25,000 annually -- would save about $97 per year, he figures...

"The GST reduction will help low and modest income families, they (Tory policy makers) are not just looking at high-income families,'' he said.

"But in the end, that's who will get most of the benefit.''

And those are the relatively progressive tax cuts put forward by Harper - the article doesn't examine the relative benefit involved in the Cons' capital gains tax policy. Needless to say, as appealing as "less taxes" may sound, there's nothing in the Cons' plan that'll have any real positive effect for lower-earning Canadians...particularly when the likelihood of either additional inflation or compensatory interest rate increases is taken into account.

Not that the Libs have been any better at acknowledging the upper-class bias of their own tax proposals. But there is one party whose tax policy is actually aimed toward Canadians who can better use the help rather than those who will see it as a luxury. And if enough voters realize which party's plan will do the most to help them, then the NDP may just end up in a position to make sure the next government can't carry out a reverse Robin Hood operation.

A party divided

The Libs' effective concession in Saguenay-Lac Saint Jean would be a comical enough development on its own in light of PMPM's admonition that only he can fight the evil Cons. (And let's be clear that while it's obvious that Gilles Savard hasn't dropped out officially, his campaign manager has defected and a federal Liberal spokeswoman merely confirmed the facts rather than stating any objection from the party generally.) But in the larger picture, it only helps to highlight the biggest problem with the Libs: PMPM's party is so determined to be seen as the strongest force against perceived enemies that it can't even be bothered to agree as to which enemies are worth fighting, let alone to stand for anything itself.

Within Quebec, Savard's concession is only a symptom of the Libs' wrong-headed efforts to turn the campaign into a referendum - which has led to far bigger names than Savard's campaign manager suggesting that it doesn't matter who Quebeckers vote for, as long as it isn't the Bloc. Meanwhile, the ROC Liberals have gone all out to vilify the Cons with no regard for the number of Libs who would fit seamlessly into Harper's caucus.

What's missing from the equation, of course, is any reason why Canadians should want to vote Liberal based on the Libs themselves. A party with so many internal contradictions obviously can't claim to hold particularly strong principles. And any time the Libs claim to speak against conservatives, or separatists, or any other group, there's always someone within the party eager to undermine that message in order to demonstrate their devotion to fighting somebody else.

Mind you, this wouldn't be such a problem if the Libs had a strong core of values to which to retreat. But then, unlike each of their competitors, the Libs can't really claim to have that: the Libs' current platform is just as much an incoherent mishmash as the composition of the party, and Martin's one attempt this campaign to present something resembling a Liberal vision was panned by his own party as well as most observers.

That combination has left individual Libs undercutting their own campaign at every turn, whether they mean to or not. And with the Cons poised to win government and the Bloc still solidly ahead in Quebec, the only question now is whether progressive voters will do the same as their conservative and separatist counterparts and vote for the party which actually stands up for their beliefs.

Nice

The NDP Rapid Response is compiling a handy list of the socially conservative Liberals receiving PMPM's support as part of his supposed attempt to speak for progressives. Needless to say, voters in these ridings who want to do their best to promote progressive values have no reason to look anywhere other than the NDP - particularly keeping in mind the likelihood of these same MPs voting with the Cons when presented with a future free vote in Parliament.

Worth a look

Scott Piatkowski is right on target:

Even though many advocates of strategic voting say that they favour a continued Liberal minority with the NDP holding the balance of power, that's not what the Liberals themselves want. If they did, they wouldn't have recruited high profile candidates to run against NDP incumbents. Likewise, they'd be telling people in ridings featuring Conservative-NDP races to support the NDP. You won't hear that from a single Liberal, because they are clearly aiming to crush the NDP. That way, they can return to their habit of campaigning from the left and governing from the right, without anyone to call them on it.

Moreover, even if it happened that we end up with another Liberal minority, I don't support the view that only the total of Liberal and NDP seats matters. I would submit that it is always better to have an NDP MP rather than a Liberal MP to represent your riding. In the last Parliament, there were votes on several key issues in which the Liberals lined up with the Conservatives, including the defeat of federal anti-scab legislation. The only sure way to get an MP who supports NDP policies is to vote NDP.

Not much to add here, other than "amen to that". Give it a read.

On consistency

So let's get this straight. According to Stephen Harper, Canadians don't need to worry about a Con majority doing anything extreme because of the counterbalance offered by the Senate. But at the same time, Harper fully expects that Senate to be as inactive as possible:

"The Liberal Senate in the past was extremely unco-operative when their party wasn't in power so it's a worry," Mr. Harper said.

"I hope that better judgment will prevail and the unelected Senate will play the role that historically it has played, which has been a useful technical role, but will not try to interfere with the democratic will of the elected House."

Needless to say, Canadians shouldn't buy the second line from Harper. If he does manage to win a majority, that will have been based in part on his promise that his actions will be kept in check by the Senate as well as the courts and the civil service. And as a result of that promise, the Senate at least (as the only partisan-based body of the bunch) should hold a solid mandate to use its better judgment as needed on the legislation before it, whether or not that judgment happens to line up with Harper's.

On poor excuses

It should be embarrassing enough for the Liberals that during their reign, Campaign 2000's name has become anachronistic rather than future-oriented, without any progress actually being made on poverty issues. But an election report card on child poverty from the anti-poverty coalition (note for PMPM: see what the term means when it's used correctly?) shows that the Libs aren't even pretending to take positive action.

The Libs receive two "Yes" rankings (both on aspects of their child-care plan) and two "Partial" rankings out of eight issues, with glaring "No" rankings on the Child Tax Benefit, on EI and on the minimum wage. Meanwhile, the NDP wins seven "Yes" rankings and one "Partial". Which indicates that when it comes to poverty issues, in contrast to the NDP's genuine commitment to getting results, the Libs can't even be bothered to put up the appearance of caring. (And that's all the more damning given that even a Liberal promise doesn't tend to lead to action until a decade later.)

So which of the NDP or the Libs is best suited to oppose the Cons' wall of "No"s? Martin may think, as usual, that the right answer is "whatever benefits the Libs". But if you're primarily interested in ensuring that meaningful action is taken to reduce poverty in Canada, the NDP is plainly the party of choice.

(Via Vote for a Change.)

(Edit: cleaned up first paragraph.)

Game over

While PMPM would like Canadians to pretend otherwise, Buzz Hargrove doesn't speak for all unions in the election campaign. And according to a poll commissioned by the SEIU, that's for the best, as Hargrove's voice has ultimately helped the Cons at the expense of both the Libs and the NDP:

While 80 per cent of respondents said Hargrove's endorsement of the Liberals has made no difference to their voting preference, 15 per cent of respondents who identify themselves as traditional Conservative voters say that they were less likely to vote Liberal as an alternative to their traditional party of choice since Hargrove supported 'voting strategically' for the Liberals.

"For some conservative voters, Hargrove's support of the Liberals has been good enough reason to discount voting Liberal all together," says Stewart.

The poll also shows the CAW's advice did not produce the hoped-for momentum of NDP voters toward the Liberals. Only seven per cent of traditional NDP voters said they were more likely to vote Liberal.

"Workers expect clear leadership and guidance from their labour unions, and that is why SEIU has supported the NDP throughout this election. The stakes are too high to play political games, and Buzz Hargrove's ill-advised announcement proved it," Stewart says.

And it looks like the poll was conducted even before Hargrove went off the deep end today. (Sorry to Dr. Dawg in response to the comment to this post, but Hargrove finds no sympathy here: nothing forced him to encourage a vote for either the Cons or the Bloc, as surely somebody with his experience in the public eye should know enough to promote his own party/parties of choice rather than biting on a trap question.) We'll see how long it takes PMPM to shed Hargrove from his entourage now that there's clear evidence to suggest that the Cons have benefited from the affiliation - or whether Martin cares little enough about his supposed progressive coalition to ignore the evidence.

A meaningful endorsement

The Libs continue to trot out Buzz Hargrove and his increasingly-incoherent semi-endorsement as reason to believe they're winning momentum on the left. Hargrove's bizarre outburst today even forced Martin into the position of defending Harper at the expense of whatever credibility he had left.

But with a lot less fanfare, the NDP has won a surprising endorsement based on principle rather than lust for power:

The leader of the Nova Scotia Green Party, Michael Oddy, is sold on the idea of switching allegiances and is urging Green Party members to vote NDP.

"We're in a situation where climate change is running amok and therefore we need to do something soon, and we're going to need some NDP MPs who are going to be holding these guys accountable," said Oddy, who ran federally for the Green Party in 2000 and 2004.

Oddy said the federal Green Party is now more right-wing than the Conservative party on many issues, and that's why he has abandoned it.

Keep in mind just how uncertain Atlantic Canada's voting outlook is at the moment. With so much still up in the air, Oddy's endorsement could provide just the push needed to win some close ridings for the NDP if even a small number of current Green voters are persuaded to shift. And unlike the Libs' star endorsement today, Oddy's message is one that Layton can wear with pride rather than embarrassment.

On best cases

One less-reported note from Layton's Town Hall appearance last night (unfortunately there's no full transcript yet): it was certainly a plus to see Layton mention both the possibility that enough votes for the party could lead to an NDP government, and the fact that the NDP is prepared in case that happens.

I'd like to see that concept (accompanied by Layton's proviso that it's Canadian voters who'll make the decision) mentioned a bit more often as the campaign winds down. After all PMPM's "only we can beat the Cons!" hysteria will look all the worse if, as appears to be the case, Canadians are opening up to the prospect of Layton as a PM-in-the-making.

On failing to attack the Cons

As a followup to PMPM's accusation that the NDP isn't doing enough to counter Harper: let's not forget which party's MPs have encouraged Quebeckers to cast a vote for the Cons.

Of the coerced and the bribed

PMPM fires what's apparently the last bullet left in the Liberal gun, trying against all available evidence to claim to be a coalition-builder on the left:

Martin is calling for a "coalition of progressive voters," to unite behind Liberal candidates in order to deny the Conservative party an electoral victory.

Let's leave aside the questions as to whether or not the Liberals can be considered to be progressive at all, and look mostly at the strategy involved. PMPM's idea of a coalition seems to closely resemble that of another prominent North American politician. Rather than such a coalition actually making room for differing viewpoints and legitimate challenges to Martin's direction, the plan is for Martin to continue to give orders, and for more people than usual to make themselves subject to them.

The problem is that it's exactly that type of attitude that's pushed the Libs into electoral purgatory already. And NDP/Lib swing voters don't have any real incentive to heed Martin's call, only to drive a few more voters into the Con camp in an effort to end the culture of entitlement for once and for all. A vote switched to the NDP, on the other hand, helps to defuse Con support - not only by shifting the balance in ridings where it's the NDP and the Cons slugging it out, but also in giving the wider public a better idea of the fact that there is a progressive choice that isn't mired in more than a decade's worth of scandal.

Mind you, if Martin really wanted to form a coalition, this Dipper for one would be more than willing to play along. (Not to speak for the party of course.) But that would involve the Libs showing some humility, backing the NDP in races where doing so would likely defeat the Cons, and focussing their own resources on the Cons rather than trying to eradicate other progressive voices.

Of course, Martin's ego (along with the number of his pet MPs running against strong NDP opponents) would never let that happen. And Canadian voters have learned their lesson after the scare-from-the-left, govern-to-Harper's-satisfaction strategy the Liberals used in 2004. Which means that while Martin continues to claim entitlement to lead a coalition of the willing-to-be-duped, Canadians know better than to think he speaks for the benefit of anybody other than himself.

On foresight

Within the campaign, this may well be an effective way for Stephen Harper to calm the fears of what he could do with a majority:

As for a Tory majority being able to do whatever it wants in Ottawa, Harper said that isn't the case because of a Liberal-dominated Senate and bureaucracy appointed by Liberal governments.

"There are checks and balances, and that is the reality."

But should somebody point out to Harper that he's effectively invited the Senate to challenge his policies if he does manage to eke out a majority?

For lack of an honest argument...

Does anybody else find it funny that while the Cons were able to mount an entire national advertising campaign against the Libs based on actual quotes and headlines, they couldn't even come up with one anti-NDP ad without making the whole thing up?

While the NDP's Rapid Response looks at the issue as one of Con hypocrisy, even that may understate the significance of the ad. After all, if even the hyper-prepared Con war room doesn't have anything approaching a genuine case against the NDP, surely that has to make voters think twice about whether there's any reason at all not to cast their ballot for the Dippers.

The full message

Kevin Brennan posts another interesting article on the NDP's direction. But while Kevin seems to see his proposal as a radical change of course for the NDP, it looks to me largely like the party's existing plan - if perhaps with a slightly different focus:

(T)he NDP has to do two things: articulate a powerful message, and do it fast. It also needs to be a message that clearly differentiates them from the other parties, and one that can pull in voters. There may be others, but one that I think might be effective is to come out swinging in defence of federalism and the role of the federal government.

Why? Well, it’s a position that is neglected in Canada today. The Conservatives are a decentralist party that wants the federal government to do the absolute minimum demanded of it by the Constitution. The Liberals aren’t a hell of a lot better; in practice, they have drifted to the point where the federal role is mostly economic–redistributing money and balancing growth among regions. Both parties are content to leave most hard decision-making to the provinces, although for differing reasons (Harper because that’s what he actually believes, Martin because it’s easier). But I don’t see any party actively making the case that Canadian federalism is a good thing, and that the federal government should be actively doing stuff–even though a very substantial number of Canadians believe it.

It’s a winning message in Atlantic Canada and in Ontario, at a minimum. I think the only provinces where it would turn off a majority of voters are Québec and Alberta–not exactly NDP strongholds. In fact, it might even improve their vote count in those provinces, since nobody else is campaigning for those voters there. It could hardly cost them seats in either province. And (i)t would give Jack Layton a much stronger message than his current one, which amounts to little more than a collection of small things he wants to do for Working Families.

I certainly won't disagree that the NDP's strongest role in this election is as the true defender of federalism. But I'll have to disagree with the view that the NDP isn't doing that already.

Kevin seems to view the party's current focus on "getting results for people" as being different from an argument in favour of a strong federal government. But even to the extent that the NDP is now able to brag about its record, the party's signature policy accomplishment (the 2005 budget) reflects the NDP's hand in reversing a policy which would have shifted influence from government to the corporate sector, and achieving a positive result for Canadians with the money freed up in the process. And it would have been an awfully empty victory merely to cut out the tax cut with no prospect of putting that money to good use.

Stronger federalism is thus the means; results for people are the end. And it certainly won't do the NDP much good to try to focus on the former to the exclusion of the latter.

So what about the NDP's policy positions within the campaign? The strongest underlying theme within the NDP's platform is again the premise that the federal government is currently failing to take action in areas, ranging from health care to the environment to housing to education, where it could be doing a lot more good if it chose to take action...and the NDP is alone in making sure that added funding in those areas is based on concrete rules and results. In other words, while the NDP promises more funding from the federal government, it's the only federal party proposing to be at least a manager rather than a headwaiter (or worse).

At the same time, though, nobody's going to vote for the party merely because it presents the image of a federal government taking power back from the provinces - particularly if the provinces themselves have time to respond. Hence the NDP also making the case that in the areas where it proposes to exercise more influence, the effect is a genuine improvement in the lives of Canadians - not merely an expansion of power for the PMO.

In sum, the NDP's platform has been based on Kevin's suggestion all along. But instead of an empty argument based on promoting federalism solely for the sake of having a stronger central government, the NDP's platform is based both on showing that federal intervention is necessary, and on showing the concrete ways in which that federalism can help Canadians. Which should be enough to win over anybody primarily concerned about federalism swinging too far toward provincial control - but also to show Canadians looking for more tangible results that the NDP will benefit them as well.

No Show Mo

It's tough to argue with the sentiment behind the Vote Out Vellacott movement, and more than a few bloggers have picked up on the effort. But while there's plenty of reason to criticize Vellacott's positions on the issues, the site's focus on Vellacott's woeful attendance record in Parliament is misguided on two levels.

First, remember the context of the current Conservative campaign, which is apparently operating on the principle that you can't make a fool of yourself if you don't show up. For those with any inclination to vote Con, Vellacott was the poster boy for this year's campaign theme since back when the party was known as the Alliance...and that makes him more likely to be seen as a visionary than a truant.

Second, consider that the Cons are likely to win at least a minority government, which in turn would inevitably lead to at least a few free votes on issues which should have been long decided. If that's the case, then the best hope for same-sex marriage and abortion rights may be for Vellacott and his ilk to sleep through a key vote...so why send the message that his constituents will punish him for doing so?

Sure, I'd love to see Vellacott voted out of Parliament. But there's no indication that either his constituents or the Conservative Party sees his sleep-based strategy as a bad one...and as long as he's all too likely to win, best to encourage him to keep up the nonexistent work.

Block the vote

When I first posted about Elections Canada's last-minute decision to cancel an advance poll at the University of Toronto, I'd optimistically assumed that it was an operational decision of Elections Canada rather than one encouraged by any political party. Sadly, that assumption turned out to be wrong:

(According to student organizer Paul Bretscher,) "(t)he Tony Ianno campaign informed us that it was Liberal legal council in Ottawa that had filed something with Elections Canada that resulted in these polling locations being removed from campus."

Ianno campaign manager Tom Allison says Elections Canada agreed that the impromptu polling sites weren't allowed.

On a quick reading of the special ballot provisions of the Canada Elections Act, it's hard to see any merit to the apparent objection. The statute doesn't distinguish between permanent and "impromptu" polling locations, and doesn't offer any specific authorization or prohibition toward the campus procedure. Section 231 implicitly provides that any elector who wishes to use the special ballot procedure may do so - which suggests that there shouldn't be any strict limitation on where the procedure is applied.

And most importantly, section 179 grants the Chief Electoral Officer discretion to adapt all existing procedures in order to execute the intent of the special balloting procedure. Surely that intent must be to facilitate voting through means other than the standard ballot, rather than to limit access to the polls.

Unfortunately, that seems to be precisely the effect for students at the U of T. Those who live close enough to the campus will still be able to vote easily enough using the standard ballot process - assuming, of course, that polls near the campus are equipped to deal with a rush of students who'd expected to vote elsewhere. Meanwhile, those who are away from their home ridings will have to track down a local returning officer before the end of tomorrow in order to go through exactly the same special ballot process which would otherwise have been available to them on campus.

Note also that similar special balloting went ahead on other campuses - and there doesn't seem to have been any lack of interest from students in making use of these polls. Which begs the question of whether all those students will now see their votes called into question if the procedure used wasn't authorized under the Canada Elections Act.

It's truly sad that on the Day of Action where groups are making an effort to get younger Canadians interested in voting, a roadblock thrown up by the Liberal Party is getting in the way of a significant number of those same voters. Hopefully the move won't dissuade too many of those who planned to vote on campus - and the voters will remember which party considers a procedural objection more important than allowing young Canadians to cast their votes as planned.

A brief reminder

In the aftermath of yesterday's attack in Afghanistan which killed a Canadian diplomat and wounded three soldiers, most of the media focus has rightly been on the efforts of the victims themselves rather than the impact back home. And most of the coverage of this tragedy has thus been completely removed from election talk. But let's not forget that only one federal party insists on public debate before any more Canadians are put in harm's way.

Making one's vote count

I've never been shy about noting that I don't generally see a strategic vote (defined as voting for a party other than the one which best reflects one's own values and priorities) as a viable means of expressing one's democratic will. While other bloggers have done their best to set criteria under which strategic voting makes sense, I tend to the view that it's only in the rarest of cases that a strategic vote can possibly do more good than harm. This post will explain the reasoning behind that view.

My argument starts from the question of what one can actually accomplish with one's vote - and I'll note initially that media coverage of the campaign bears little resemblance to the plausible impact of one's vote. The media coverage focuses largely on who will form Canada's next government, with very little consideration given to the local races that shape such a national outlook, how that government will function or how the country's political spectrum will shift as a result of the election.

I'll accept that there's a lot more to report on a daily basis about what the leading candidates have done in a given day as opposed to what may be relevant in determining Canada's future direction - after all, speculation doesn't make for easy or compelling news. But the focus of the "horse race" coverage, no matter how many parties are included or excluded, is to simultaneously miss both the smaller picture (the races in individual ridings) and the bigger picture (the long-term direction of the country). And that leads to a problem where even for a voter who wants to vote strategically, there's very little information to determine where a strategic vote would could actually have any effect.

But what of the smaller picture? If a person has reliable information that one's riding will most likely come down to parties other than one's first choice, does that justify strategic voting?

Here too, one needs to be careful; no matter how good that information during the course of the campaign, it doesn't necessarily reflect the way voters will ultimately cast their ballots on election day. But if there's a relatively large difference between two parties' marginal chance of winning and a relatively small difference in their apparent values, then in theory a strategic vote could be the most likely to produce a positive result.

The problem with this view is that a vote does more than to just decide one's local riding. Let's take a look at some of the effects of an individual vote beyond merely electing a local candidate:

Your vote helps to allocate party funding until the next election. Granted, that $1.75 per year alone won't make a huge difference - but then neither is an individual vote likely to be the deciding factor within a riding. And the effect of systematic strategic voting can be a massive transfer of money from one's first choice to one's second choice. In 2004, the NDP's share of the vote dropped 2% from most of the polls to election day based largely on strategic voting. If those votes had stuck with the Dippers, then the NDP would have had an extra half a million dollars per year in the meantime with which to make itself heard - instead of that money being in Liberal hands to try to scare voters away from the NDP.

Your vote helps to influence governments and party platforms. The more popular a given party's platform appears to be, the more likely other parties are to adopt similar measures in the next election - or even to implement them while in power in order to appeal to the greatest number of voters possible. See e.g. the Liberals moving quickly toward balancing budgets in response to pressure from the Reform opposition in the mid-'90s. If, on the other hand, your vote goes to a party with an "appealing to everybody" type of platform (which in most cases will be the party most likely to benefit from a strategic vote), then that gives parties no real information as to your policy preferences - and helps to ensure that those preferences are ignored when political parties choose their future direction.

Your vote helps to influence the way your preferred party treats your riding in the next election. Frustrated with the fact that your first-choice party doesn't seem to be running a winnable campaign in your riding? There are probably many people similarly frustrated - but if the party doesn't see potential for growth in the riding, it's not likely to do anything other than write off the riding all the more in future elections. On the other hand, if a relatively weak campaign manages to win more votes than expected, then the party will see the riding as more fertile ground that it may have before. And that may mean a more "electable" candidate and a better campaign next time out.

Your vote helps to shape the media narrative surrounding the election. While all parties do their best to spin election results, it's ultimately the media which makes the final call - and however a party's results compare to the initial expectations becomes part of the conventional wisdom surrounding the election. Regardless of how many seats a party wins, it's likely to win credit for its campaign strategy if it can pull out more votes than expected...and that only makes it easier for that party create momentum for itself in the next election. In contrast, the late 2004 losses for the NDP have put the party on the defensive this time out, as the party has had to spend far too much time and resources trying to prove that an election-day switch to the Libs isn't inevitable.

Ultimately, in deciding whether or not to vote strategically, a voter gets to choose between the following priorities:
(1) the chance that, if the presumption of a strategic voting situation is accurate, one's vote may help to elect one's second choice ahead of a lesser choice; or,
(2) the certainty that one's vote will benefit one's first-choice party in terms of finance and public perception, along with the chance that the vote will affect the riding result due to the preexisting assumption being wrong.

Given that balancing of factors, it seems to me highly unlikely that strategic voting can lead to the best outcome in any but an exceptional case. And that's true regardless of which party stands to gain or lose from a strategic vote.

I leave for another time the question of how to determine which party best shares one's values: I certainly wouldn't suggest taking any political party's platform at face value and ignoring a track record which casts reasonable suspicion on the sincerity of a party's claims. But where a voter can identify a party which best fits that voter's vision for Canada, it's never a wasted vote to cast one's ballot accordingly - and all too likely to be a wasted vote to vote otherwise.

Independently unverified

The Conference Board of Canada has qualified its conclusion that the Cons' platform can be sustained within a balanced budget, as some of the elements within the Cons' platform were never included in the plan submitted for evaluation:

Paul Darby, deputy chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada, originally concluded that Stephen Harper's Conservative platform "is affordable in each fiscal year from 2005-2006 through 2010-2011."

The Conservative party promoted that conclusion last week as evidence its election platform had been "independently verified" by the Conference Board, an Ottawa-based think-tank.

But Darby says the version of the platform he was given to vet didn't include a Conservative party health-care guarantee which states patients will be transported to another jurisdiction if they can't get timely care at home.

It also omitted a Tory platform promise to redress the so-called "fiscal imbalance" between Ottawa and the provinces.

The Conference Board's representative noted that since those platform planks weren't costed, he assumed that they weren't serious commitments from the Cons. But the Cons themselves have claimed otherwise, justifying the lack of any current numbers for these commitments based solely on the fact that their amount would remain to be negotiated.

It may be fair to say that it's tough to know the amount of those commitments in advance. But a budget predicated on a zero cost for those items is bound to look a lot different when any real numbers are put in place. And that means that the Cons' "independent verification" has really only confirmed that the Cons can't keep their promises without going into deficit or passing along the cost to Canadians in other ways.

Higher political education

The Canadian Federation of Students claims that Elections Canada decided to eliminate special ballot voting for University of Toronto students with next to no warning, leaving students wondering how to cast their vote:

The Students' Administrative Council, the central undergraduate students' union at the University of Toronto, had been working with Elections Canada to ensure that students living in campus residences could vote by "special ballot" in the Federal Election from Sunday, January 15 to Tuesday, January 17. This voting accommodation for was meant to ease the confusion among students living away from home during the election and improve voter turn-out amongst youth.

Elections Canada had officially notified the students' union, as well as candidates in the riding, that special ballot student voting would occur over three days, at seven locations in campus residences. The students' union had widely publicized these arrangements, in an effort to encourage students to participate in the Federal Election. On Saturday, January 14, at 9:45 pm, the evening before voting was set to begin, Elections Canada informed the students' union that these voting arrangements were being cancelled. No explanation was provided.

I'd certainly hope there's either a very good explanation or an alternative means of voting in the works. But for those students who may feel that their input through voting isn't valued, Elections Canada has done nothing but to reinforce that impression.

That said, it isn't yet too late for students to take initiative for themselves - though it will be soon. According to the Elections Canada website, any student wanting to vote through the special ballot process (which they'll have to if they're outside their home riding) will need to:
- register for the process through any Elections Canada returning officer by 6:00 PM Tuesday; and,
- ensure that the ballot reaches either the Ottawa office of Elections Canada, or the returning officer for the student's own riding, by 6:00 PM on the 23rd.

In sum, if students wait until the end of the period when Elections Canada was supposed to be on campus, it'll be too late to register for the special ballot process . Hopefully word will get out soon enough for students to find another way to register - and Elections Canada's sudden reversal won't affect the results in Trinity-Spadina or elsewhere.

On knowing one's power

The CP answers the question of whether writing a letter to the PM's office can make a difference with an all-too-definitive "no":

Altogether, Prime Minister Paul Martin received more than two million missives from Canadians in the year leading up to the Nov. 29 election call.

And their complaints and concerns bear little resemblance to the issues popping up in the headlines and newscasts of the last seven weeks.

Internal monthly analyses of this tsunami of correspondence, obtained under the Access to Information Act, show that water exports, an Arctic national wildlife refuge and debt relief for developing countries have been uppermost on the minds of correspondents.

Gun control, income trusts and taxes -- favourites of the campaign trail -- are far, far down the list of issues prompting Canadians to sound off directly with the prime minister.

The article doesn't draw the connection directly. But it seems fairly obvious that the issues which were subject to a great deal of letter-writing compared to little media exposure (particularly that of water exports) weren't the subject of meaningful action, while the ones which received media attention (e.g. income trusts) were subject to immediate action even if there was no particular groundswell of letter-writing.

Which means that for Canadians wanting to send a message to their government, a pen and paper won't do much to make a dent in the status quo. Instead, the main tools which may actually make a difference are the media, to the extent that an individual has access to such a platform; and the ballot box, in its ability to register the voters' desire for a government which responds in a different way. And Canadian voters, particularly those who have seen their concerns build up in a pile in Paul Martin's mail room, get their chance next week to send a message that no future Lib government would dare to ignore.