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 history repeating

I haven't yet commented much on Ontario's provincial election campaign - and readers interested in the race will find plenty of noteworthy observers on the blogroll.

That said, it's worth noting the parallels between this campaign and a couple of the NDP's other recent breakthroughs.

To start with, Ontario's 2018 election seems to be offering an answer to one of the more interesting hypotheticals about the 2011 federal election.

In that campaign, the NDP started out well behind the Cons and Libs - but with an experienced and trusted leader who was able to contrast his own image against that of two self-perceived frontrunners who spent most of the campaign attacking each other (or three in Quebec).

By the end of the race, Jack Layton had emerged as by far the most popular of the federal leaders, including by winning over a strong plurality of Quebec voters and expanding the NDP's potential voter pool from coast to coast to coast.

But he reached that position only well into the campaign. As a result, the Libs maintained some residual support from voters accustomed to their being the default alternative to the Cons - particularly in Ontario where strategic voting campaigns based on past electoral results actually helped the Cons win three-way races. And the result was Stephen Harper's one and only majority government - albeit challenged by a strong NDP opposition.

The great what-if for the NDP was thus what would have happened if the 2011 campaign had lasted just a couple more weeks. And we may be getting our answer. 

This year, Andrea Horwath's campaign is following in Layton's footsteps. She too was largely ignored at the start of the campaign as two highly-flawed parties and leaders tried to run only against each other; she too has expanded the NDP's potential voter pool far beyond what most outside observers anticipated; she too has managed to see an already-positive reputation improve in comparison to her opponents.

But after making her move in the polls somewhat earlier in the campaign, Horwath has had enough time for voters to get comfortable with the concept of an NDP victory. And yesterday's effective concession by Kathleen Wynne means that late-deciding voters will have no doubt as to which party is actually running to provide an alternative to a Doug Ford government.

For another historical precedent, that suggests David Climenhaga might be right on the money in his long-standing comparison to Alberta's 2015 election - right down to the divided and unpopular right-wing party whose only apparent late-campaign move is to hope that voters will defer to corporate insiders in casting their ballots.

Of course, there are still some important obstacles in Horwath's way - particularly the uncertainty as to the efficiency of her party's support. But it looks entirely plausible that Horwath's wave may have crested at the right time where Layton's fell just short.

On changed messages

Paul Wells highlights the major change from the Cons' messaging in 2011 compared to today, as the party which spent years doing nothing about obsessing over (and demonizing) the possibility of a coalition has suddenly gone mum except in front of the most partisan of crowds. But it's worth noting that there's another factor beyond those mentioned by Wells which might explain the change - and it involves the message backfiring to some extent the first time it was used.

Wells notes - as confirmed by the polling set out here - that even at worst, roughly half of the Canadian public supported the prospect of a coalition to oust the Harper Cons. And that held true through the 2011 election campaign - even though the governing party was using all of its resources to attack the idea, the apparent default alternative did everything in its power to repudiate any cooperation, and the only strong defence of a coaltion came from a party broadly perceived as an afterthought.

By the end of the campaign, of course, the NDP was seen rather differently. And its success in convincing voters that a willingness to cooperate represented change for the better (rather than some abomination against the inherent nature of politics) forced at least some observers to recognize that discussing a coalition wasn't so toxic after all. 

Unfortunately, the Libs still haven't learned their lesson. But if the Cons are no longer pretending it's a winner for them, that's probably an admission worth noting - and it likely signals an opportunity worth taking not only for the opposition parties, but also for voters primarily concerned with replacing Harper.

The more things change...

Tim Naumetz' comparison between the NDP's place before the 2011 federal election and its current position is worth a read. But what's perhaps more noteworthy is how little has changed.

Remember that the 2011 campaign was initially portrayed as a two-party race between the Cons and the Libs. And looking solely at party support numbers until midway through the writ period, that conclusion might have seemed justified.

(In that respect, the NDP is in a much stronger position now than four years ago. Even its worst recent poll results are well above the low-teens numbers which caused so many in the media to think Jack Layton would avoid a 2011 election at all costs. And all available Quebec polling suggests that at worst, dozens of seats will remain in NDP hands.)

Going into 2011, though, the NDP knew that factors beyond simple party support were working in its favour as the campaign began.

It could point to a significant advantage in leadership. Not only was Jack Layton more popular than his competitors to start with, but his political experience and development positioned him to win additional support as voters took a closer look at their options.

And it could point to a detailed set of policies developed over years of careful consideration and associated public trust on issues, in contrast to the Liberals' hastily-assembled set of campaign gimmicks.

Those proved to be important advantages for the NDP as it rose to Official Opposition status. And both are equally applicable now.

For all the adulation Justin Trudeau has received in some corners of the media, Tom Mulcair is at or near the top of leader rankings for net and overall approval. And as Thomas Walkom notes, the NDP's strong substantive platform for 2015 also includes plenty in common with the party's offering from the previous election.

Of course, none of the above is to suggest that the NDP is where it intended to be at the start of an election year. No doubt the hope after earning the role of Official Opposition was to be able to run from ahead rather than behind - and that looked entirely possible after Mulcair's post-leadership bump in the polls.

And we can't expect the other federal parties to be as unprepared for the NDP's winning strategy as they were last time - making their response an important unknown.

But if the main difference for the NDP since the last election cycle has been to exchange the element of surprise for a combination of Quebec support and incumbency advantages, that's surely not a bad tradeoff. And we'll find out before long how much the NDP can build on what it's already accomplished.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Janet Bagnall neatly dissects the Cons' plan for dismantling public services:

The Harper government is nothing if not predictable in how it goes about dismantling a program or service. It starts by denigrating the program and the program’s beneficiaries, and telling Canadians that they’ve been played for fools by the beneficiaries. Once that message has been drilled home, and the government judges that the moment is right and Canadians’ attitudes changed, it proceeds to get rid of the offending program – no matter how impractical, immoral or ultimately costly the exercise might prove to be.

- Dan Leger discusses Gwyn Morgan's efforts to poison Canada's political discourse in service to the Harper Cons.

- Heather Mallick is the latest to weigh in on the Republican-style anti-labour attitude of the Canadian right. And the Globe and Mail does its best Conservadem impression by declaring that teachers' unions should accept massive cuts from a Lib party which is at best pretending to play nice as the price of avoiding Tim Hudak's overt hatred and contempt.

- Finally, Alice takes a look at party spending in the 2011 federal election. And perhaps the most interesting note is that both the Libs (at the national level) and the Bloc (at the riding level) managed to increase their spending over 2008 in a losing battle to hold their previous ground.

Friday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- Dan Gardner nicely sums up how any Con cabinet shuffles are utterly irrelevant since Stephen Harper prefers ciphers to functional ministers in any event:

In the past, parties in power always had factions, and ministers with their own political clout, and these provided at least a modest check on the power of the prime minister. “In the old Progressive Conservative (party), you had Flora MacDonald who ran for the leadership and had her own base of support. You had Joe Clark, who was a former prime minister,” Hicks says. When Mulroney said he was going to cut foreign aid, Clark threatened to resign. Mulroney backed down. That’s inconceivable today.

There’s nothing like this in the Conservative party because it is new and Stephen Harper built it from the ground up. “It’s a corporation in which one person controls all the mechanisms for fundraising, for distribution, for marketing, for organizing nomination contests in everybody’s riding. It’s all centralized. That’s unique to this party.”

Harper has never had to deal with ministers who wield their own political clout. “The closest one you had was Peter MacKay,” thanks to his leadership of the Progressive Conservative party. But when the PMO told MacKay he couldn’t hire the man he wanted to be his chief of staff, MacKay bit his lip and did as he was told. Ever since, he’s been a loyal soldier. Today, he has the political stature of a hobbit.

Next to the prime minister, all the cabinet ministers do. That’s not an accident. Napoleon suffers no rivals.

...
So what are reformers left with? We’ll have to wait — for the Emperor to meet his Waterloo in 2015, or to retire when it pleases him.

- And the Economist (which, let's not forget, managed to make the "Mr. Dithers" label stick to Paul Martin) is also rather less than impressed with Harper's anti-democratic actions - including a "tendency to play fast and loose with the rules".

- Aaron Wherry starts digging through the 2011 Canadian Election Survey data and finds yet more evidence that actual voters need less convincing to consider the NDP as an option than some seem to want to claim:

 During the campaign and in a post-election survey, the CES asked for respondents to identify their second-choice party and in both cases the NDP bested all other parties—28.4% during the campaign and 28.7% after. During the campaign, respondents were asked if there was a party they would never vote and only 10.4% identified the NDP (compared to 18.8% for the Liberals and 33.1% for the Conservatives).

- Which is to say that there isn't any reason to think for a second that trying to change the NDP's successful set of values would accomplish much of anything. But as Bruce Anderson notes, if there was ever a need for the NDP to try to look more moderate, the Cons' hard-right radicalism is largely doing the job already.

- Finally, Pat Atkinson points out that we can't take Medicare for granted. And that of course holds true for all of the social gains that are now under attack by corporate interests who look to the robber-baron era as a model.

On timeless recipes

Alice offers a thorough discussion of the ingredients behind the NDP's Quebec gains in 2011. But the most important part of the story may be that one of the key factors had in fact been in place all along - and may only help the NDP all the more in election cycles to come:

Worth as much as the values and leadership questions combined, however, were Quebeckers' positions on three key policy issues that matched up well with the NDP. According to CES researchers, issue positions rarely turn out to be the explanations of vote choice – usually it's values, partisanship and leadership. But this time was different, and three key issues drove support to the NDP in Québec in 2011 (in order of influence)

• support for increased healthcare spending
• support for increased spending on the environment
• support for higher corporate taxes

Because these were all popular positions with Quebeckers, it was a big pond for the NDP to be able to fish in, and most of the gains again came at the expense of the Bloc Québécois, especially in the first two cases.

What's only hinted at in the above explanation is that the difference between 2011 and previous elections when it came to the NDP's policies was their place as a deciding factor in voting decisions - not any apparent change in underlying support for the policies themselves. In effect, 2011 served as compelling proof of the fit between the NDP's policy agenda  and Quebec's electorate that party supporters have mused about for decades - just as long as voters actually decide based on policy in the face of far too much coverage based on other factors.

And there looks to be plenty of potential for a virtuous cycle as the party looks to consolidate its gains. The more we discuss policies which are already popular and suggest that voting decisions should be based on those rather than personality or leadership, the better the chance of both building a party policy brand that can't be dislodged by opponents, and firmly entrenching Quebec support for the NDP for a long time to come.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- There's still plenty more emerging on the Robocon election fraud scandal. The reporting combinations of McGregor/Maher and Chase/Leblanc/Mills have both discussed Elections Canada's latest court filing showing that Con campaign officials openly discussed implementing U.S.-style vote suppression efforts - including exactly the forms of fraud that materialized last year. Meanwhile, Sixth Estate wonders just how far the rot spread within the Cons' organization, while Alison has been providing a history lesson on the party's efforts to manipulate voters.

- And speaking of history lessons, Amy MacPherson serves up a dose of reality which the Cons will surely ignore. 

- But for all the criticisms of the Cons, let's never say they don't get noticed in the world. Just look at how they've managed to earn our science writers an award for press courage in the face of repression normally directed toward reporters dealing with dictators - and how they're standing out in obstructing the work of the U.N.'s Right to Food initiative as Canada becomes the first developed country to face an investigation.

- Finally, there hasn't been much reason to accuse Andrew Coyne of being too light on the Cons in recent years. But given that the Cons' crackdown on charities has taken place entirely in conjunction with their attempt to demonize anybody who's ever spoken positively of the environment, I'd defy anybody to suggest they've earned the benefit of the doubt on this rather crucial point:

It's a safe bet that a good many of the more well-known advocacy groups in the country, including the various think-tanks of the left and right, are operating in excess of this standard, and have been for years. As long as it's even-handed, I see nothing wrong with simply enforcing the law, as the government proposes.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Friday reading.

- Alice posts the full party spending numbers from May's election. And the story in fact looks to have been near-maximum spending by each of the four parties then in Parliament - which of course failed to produce much return in two cases.

- thwap is understandably skeptical of the effect of the Occupy protests alone. But I'd again point out that the protests are just one step in what looks to be the wider process of change: by calling public attention to inequality and corporate control, they create an opportunity for political parties and others to carry the message into the arenas where it's possible to bring about substantive change.

- Meanwhile, there's no denying thwap's point as to the importance of protecting workers' rights. And Doug Allan notes some intriguing numbers from the past few years showing a modest rise in unionization rates since the 2008 downturn.

But the more noteworthy part of Allan's analysis relates to the fact that part of that gain results from overall job losses. After all, if it's true that union jobs have been more secure than non-union employment through a period of economic turmoil (which looks like a reasonable reading of his numbers), then that looks like a great argument for workers to make the effort to unionize before the next downturn hits.

- Finally, Eric Howe documents how investment in First Nations education would produce far greater returns (both economic and otherwise) than the corporate giveaways of the Sask Party.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Aaron Wherry profiles how some of the NDP's youngest MPs won a place in office, and the work they're doing now that they hold the role.

- It isn't the kind of endorsement against type that would have the largest possible effect on the leadership race. But Alexa McDonough's support for Peggy Nash nonetheless figures to solidify Nash's place in the top tier of leadership contenders.

- Yes, Sun Media's report about the Libs' campaign spending looks more like an effort to breathe life into an end-of-campaign non-story than anything of substance. But it's particularly worth noting that if there was a $1 million gap between the Libs' campaign limit and their actual spending, that's $4.5 million less than the comparable gap in 2008 - meaning that the Libs pulled out more of the stops in their 2011 fall to third place than in the previous election where they conspicuously held back.

- Meanwhile, Bob Hepburn points out that the Libs' attempt to earn attention in the midst of the NDP's leadership race really reflects nothing more than a road map to nowhere. And it's particularly worth questioning which of the policy priorities cited by Bob Rae as forming the basis of his party's existence hasn't been better dealt with by the NDP for years.

- Finally, it's great to see Occupy Regina standing firm in the face of the City's efforts to shut it down.

The new baseline

In this year's federal election, the NDP took 32% of the vote in Saskatchewan - but didn't win a single seat as other parties dropped off the map and the Cons consolidated public support in all but one riding.

And in last night's provincial election, the NDP again took 32% of the vote - only to lose more than half its seats as other parties dropped off the map and the Sask Party consolidated public support across the province.

Needless to say, that leaves plenty to be done over the next four years to get the NDP back on track to win seats federally and government provincially. But building from 32% is far from the worst challenge a political party can face - as long as that base is willing to do the tough work involved in winning over the next 20-30% of voters needed to succeed in what can only be seen as a de facto two-party system.

Monday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Once again, the NDP's popular support is holding up in the face of plenty of predictions to the contrary. But I'm sure we'll hear all about how the leadership race will do what the scrutiny of an election campaign, the transition to Official Opposition status and the death of Jack Layton didn't.

- It's sure a good thing our federal government is so well-attuned to the needs of business...

The almost unbroken flow of disappointing economic news has prompted economists at one major Canadian banking investment firm — Scotia Capital — to warn that Canada could be the first of the big industrial countries to slide back into recession.

And some other Bay Street economists, while dismissing fears the Canadian economy has — or is about to — slip back into recession, still question the wisdom of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s preaching and pushing a public austerity agenda here and abroad.

“The market’s big concern now is not the outsized budget deficits in the U.S., or Japan, or even much of Europe,” BMO Capital Markets senior economist Douglas Porter noted. “Its big concern is not inflation. Its concern is lacklustre or worse economic growth.”

- Of course the story is being spun around Thomas Mulcair's complaints rather than his proposed solution. But is there actually any argument against a party-wide push to boost the NDP's membership numbers during the course of the leadership race - other than to suggest that it shouldn't be limited to Quebec?

- Finally, Alice sets out the arguments for against the theory that the Cons benefitted from a rush of Lib voters in Ontario late in the May federal election campaign.

On improved positions

Last week, I noted the top-line results from Angus Reid's latest federal polling. But perhaps even more important than the stability in Canada's party polling numbers is the question of which party is living up to the expectations underlying its popular support. And for all the work some have done to attack the NDP in its new role as Official Opposition, the poll results show respondents happier with the NDP than with any other party.

To start with, the party momentum scores show the NDP leading the way in the number of respondents saying their opinion of the party has improved. In fact, the NDP's 23% score on that from matches the Cons, Libs and Bloc combined. And the NDP also saw fewer respondents indicate a worsening opinion than any of those parties - putting the NDP's momentum score at par, compared to -11 for the Cons, -25 for the Libs and -33 for the Bloc.

So rather than disappointing its newfound voters, the NDP has actually done far better than any other party at living up to and exceeding voters' expectations. But what effect might that have on actual voting patterns in the future?

Well, the poll also included a question as to how many 2011 voters actually do regret their choice to the point where they'd prefer to have supported another party. And a stunning 20% of those who voted for the Libs now say they'd rather have supported the NDP.

Translating that to the Libs' share of the popular vote, roughly 4% of voters can be classified as having voted Lib, only to wish that they'd supported the NDP - by far the largest group of respondents with regrets about their voting choice. And the Lib/NDP swing looks to be the only one with such a massive imbalance as to who's having second thoughts: while most of the inter-party swings tend to be roughly equal on either side, the number of voters who would now switch a vote from Lib to NDP is more than double that which would go in the opposite direction (roughly 4% to 2% of voters).

So for all the well-spun talk about how the NDP would fall flat on its face, the truth is that it's exceeded expectations and left plenty of voters with the sense that they'd have been better off supporting the party. And one could hardly ask for a better set of public perceptions as the NDP looks to build on its election result.

Not quite comparable

Alice notes that all three official parties in Parliament amassed record fund-raising totals during the course of this spring's election campaign. But it's worth adding one asterisk to the raw numbers.

While both the Cons and the NDP mostly raised money within the context of their broader electoral campaigns, the Libs' numbers include two major pushes where they elevated fund-raising above all other concerns - including a blitz at the start of the campaign, and then an effort to tap the party's bigger donors before election day (which coincided with the Libs' decision not to spend to the national limit in an attempt to pinch pennies). And while that difference doesn't mean the Libs have any less money to show for the campaign, it serves as reason for caution in presuming they can keep up the pace.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Andrew Jackson attacks the myth of expansionary austerity, particularly from a Canadian perspective:

(T)here is very rarely any such thing as expansionary austerity, according to IMF staff economists.

In a careful review of the historical evidence, they find that, typically, a 1 percent of GDP fiscal consolidation reduces real private consumption over the next two years by 0.75 percent, while real GDP declines by 0.62 percent.
...
For Canadians this is surely sobering. We face no fiscal crisis – our net debt is far below the OECD average. Austerity cannot produce lower interest rates – short term rates are near zero and the 10 year Government of Canada bond rate is at a near historic low of under 3%. And, with the dollar hugely over-valued and the US teetering on the edge of another downturn, there will be no offset to fiscal contraction from higher exports this time around.

As we begin the 2012 federal Budget debate, Flaherty must be asked why his planned cuts do not risk derailing an already very fragile recovery.

- Maude Barlow highlights the sad truth that third-world conditions - including a lack of running water - are still a reality in Canada, while our government is using its energy holding out against a global consensus on the right to water and sanitation.

- Linda McQuaig points out some of the pluses of the NDP's decision to make Nycole Turmel its interim leader:

"I think (it's) a great choice," said Linda McQuaig, a Toronto-based journalist and writer who recently co-authored The Trouble With Billionaires. "She's a union person, and a public sector union, at a time when the public sector is really under attack. She's a woman, and a staunch defender of pay equity."

She said that the appointment of Turmel sends "a good, clear message where NDP is coming from," in light of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's series of cutbacks to women's programs.

- The Fraser Institute runs into reality yet again. And the results aren't any prettier than usual.

- Finally, for those looking for a fix of political information to pass the summer, Kagro's 2011 election maps are well worth a look.

Not yet satisfied

Eric highlights Environics' polling as to how happy supporters of various parties are with last month's federal election results. And the findings look to bode about as well as possible for the NDP's prospects of expanding its reach over the next few years:

Conservative supporters felt very positively about the election result - and why not. Their party won a majority. Fully 82% are quite happy.

But New Democratic voters aren't as pleased as you might expect. Their party made a historic breakthrough in Quebec, won the most seats and votes in their history, and are now the Official Opposition. But only 27% of their voters are happy with the results.

Though it is somewhat surprising it is as high as it is, 13% of Liberal voters and 10% of Bloc voters feel positively about what happened on May 2nd. Thirty percent of non-voters are also pleased with the result.

As for having negative feelings about the election result, only 2% of Conservative voters have some regrets. That is miniscule. Surprisingly, only 21% of non-voters feel the same way (36% are, understandably, indifferent).

Despite their historic outcome, fully 42% of NDP voters feel sad or fearful about the election results. And despite being reduced to third party status, only 54% of Liberal voters feel negatively. It is a majority, but you'd expect Liberals to be a little more upset, along the lines of the 73% of Bloc voters.

Now, it's important enough that a substantial number of NDP voters were hoping for more rather than expressing satisfaction with the party's position. After it's surely easier to build a movement when supporters are concerned about the direction of the country and motivated to change it, rather than seeing reason to get complacent.

But the level of satisfaction with the election result among the opposition parties is especially significant when paired with the NDP's post-election polling boost. In effect, it looks like a number of the Lib voters who already looked like promising NDP targets have already made the jump - and are apparently finding a landing pad which fits their own attitudes about the election.

[Edit: fixed quote.]

One of these things is not like the others

One of these things just doesn't belong. See if you can spot the difference in the following single-election results - and consider what it might mean for each party's future strategy...

Vote Share	Seats	Provinces w Seats	Provinces under 20%	High Prov%	Low Prov%	Rebates
30.6%	103	8	2	42.9%	15.4%	306
25.5%	66	5	5	58.9%	3.9%	182
30.2%	103	9	1	52.5%	15.3%	283
29.6%	99	8	1	61.7%	8.8%	251

For those wondering, the parties who posted those totals are respectively the NDP in 2011, the Canadian Alliance in 2000, the Libs in 2006, and the Cons in 2004. And of course, each party served as the official opposition following the listed general election.

So let's ask the rhetorical question: is there an obvious reason why one of those parties might have had both a glaring need to pursue a merger, and an obvious opportunity in doing so?

And conversely, is there an equally obvious reason why the other three might see fit to work from an existing national base, rather than pursuing wrenching structural changes?

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The McGill Institute's Election Content Analysis includes plenty of interesting information on how this month's federal election was covered. But the most noteworthy point looks to be the lag time between developments in the public and coverage by the media: the key developments in the polls for the NDP - reaching rough parity with the Libs around April 21, and passing them early in the week of April 25) - were followed by a roughly proportional boost in first mentions and overall mentions only several days later. (And indeed, even the last week of the campaign saw the Libs getting more overall mentions than the NDP.)

Of course, it's also worth noting that the lag time also offers an indication that we shouldn't be unduly concerned with the volume of media coverage: after all, the NDP's surge built up without any particular help on that front.

- And the NDP should anticipate that it'll mostly need to keep building outside the corporate media as well - a point which looks all the more clear in light of Sixth Estate's analysis of opinion-page content.

- Meanwhile, much of the punditocracy's response to the NDP's rise was to declare that it was out of touch with a perceived consensus on issues such as, say, its willingness to revisit Canada's constitution to secure Quebec's support. Too bad nobody thought to ask the public until now:

After almost two decades of constitutional peace, The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey indicates a majority is now willing to risk re-opening the constitutional can of worms to accomplish some specific goals.

For instance, 61 per cent said they're prepared to re-open the Constitution to reform or abolish the appointed Senate.

And 58 per cent said they're willing to offer constitutional amendments in a bid to finally secure Quebec's signature on the Constitution. That includes 66 per cent of Quebecers and 55 per cent of Canadians outside the province.

Fifty-eight per cent also said they're willing to open up the Constitution to change the country's electoral system.

- Finally, Jim Stanford rightly slams the corporatist line that executives should be entitled to take credit for "creating value":

But my bigger point has to do with his claim that he “created value” for investors. This self-important shorthand is regularly invoked by business leaders to justify whatever it is they are doing. But do CEOs really “create value,” even if the share price of whatever organization they are in charge of happened to increase in a certain time period? A more accurate and neutral statement would be that Mr. Underwood was in charge of this REIT during a year when the market value of its unit price increased. Does this mean he “created value”? Of course not.

The market value of those units could increase for all kinds of reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Underwood’s talents: like a renewal of low-interest credit creation being used for speculative purchases of real estate-related financial assets (gee, I’ve seen that movie before, and it doesn’t end nicely), overall investor sentiment, the impact of low interest rates on capitalized real estate prices, the impact of tax loopholes on the value of income trusts (indeed, Mr. Underwood’s firm would not even exist where it not for the enormous and blatant tax loophole for income trusts which the federal government is finally now partially closing), and other macro factors.

The only people in Mr. Underwood’s industry who actually “created value” are the workers who actually build and maintain the structures which his firm owns, operates, and markets. Needless to say, the compensation for these genuine value-creators did not increase by 475% last year.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Doug Saunders nicely describes how centrist brokerage parties across the developed world have undermined their own relevance by putting their efforts into a failed corporatist experiment:

(T)he parties of the centre-left, like the Liberals in Canada and Labour in Britain, attempted an experiment in the 1990s and 2000s that they hoped would bring both rising equality and rising prosperity: A largely free and unfettered market economy, combined with low government debt and big investments in social services. The idea was that the booming economy would finance a state-supported rise in equality. The experiment mostly failed: While life did improve for the poor in the West, it didn't change at all for the middle class, and often got worse, as they watched the wealthy become ultra-wealthy. The increasingly angry “squeezed middle” are the people who tend to vote in elections, and many were driven to distrust the big parties whose experiment failed them.
...
The new, more open and borderless world of the past 20 years has meant that the big centrist parties continue to work well for the winners, for the in-groups that benefit from their specific programs. But for those who become disconnected or distanced from the state, who have no daily need for government (as the very poor do) but also do not feel its benefits (as the wealthy do not), the big party no longer means anything.

“Since the opening up of the world after the end of the Cold War, we've see that mainstream parties find it increasingly difficult to present political programs that address winners and losers at the same time,” says Mr. Cramme. “You basically have both left and right-wing mainstream parties essentially speaking to winners – and all those who are left behind due to globalization, technological change, cultural disaffection, are not adequately represented by mainstream political parties, so we see a surge of extremist parties on both the right and the left.”

- Boris catches Stephen Harper playing dress-up once again, this time with a uniform normally reserved for trained military air crew members. But I suppose after a campaign where he successfully convinced the media to portray him as a "steady hand" despite his track record of getting his party and country into trouble for no particular reason, Harper can't see much limit to the false labels he can wear.

- Bruce Johnstone criticizes Gerry Ritz for his anti-democratic plan to undermine the Canadian Wheat Board:

Ritz's comment about respecting democracy is a bit rich, considering that he has done everything in his power to undermine the CWB since taking over as minister responsible for the board in 2007. This includes issuing "gag orders" on the CWB from promoting the benefits of the single desk in director elections, to arbitrarily changing voters' lists on the eve of director elections, to allowing Tory MPs to disseminate anti-single desk propaganda during election campaigns.
...
The act says if the minister responsible for the CWB wants to change the single desk or the types of grains the board markets, he must first consult with the CWB's board of directors and hold a vote among producers. In Goodale's view, that means asking producers two simple, straightforward questions: "Do you want the CWB's single-desk marketing system for wheat: yes or no?" and "Do you want the CWB's single-desk marketing system for barley: yes or no?"

No trick questions, like the barley plebiscite in 2007 that asked three questions, including whether farmers would support a strong, voluntary CWB - a red herring designed to muddy the waters around the single-desk issue.
...
So why would the Tories risk breaking the CWB Act by not holding a plebiscite, or killing the single-desk by ramming legislation through Parliament with their majority? Because they know they wouldn't win a plebiscite, a fair plebiscite that asks farmers to vote for or against the single desk, nothing more, nothing less.

- Finally, Orphaned Voter provides a nifty cartogram of Canada's 2011 election results in noting that a stunning 71% of votes failed to contribute to the election of any MP.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your afternoon reading.

- Trish Hennessy's election discussion continues with a review of how the NDP managed to counter the Cons' fear campaign:

Fear can be paralyzing, but fear is usually looking for someplace to go, and sometimes the antidote to fear is hope. It certainly helped some Canadians view Jack Layton differently in this election. Jack, with his warm smile. Jack, with his Canadien hockey shirt, hoisting a beer. Jack, risen from his sick bed to do what we all hope in the face of health adversity: fight the beast down with grace, with pride, with the fortitude it took to become an electoral David to Harper’s Goliath. In Quebec, le bon Jack.

Jack Layton had captured, if for a brief moment in time, the aspiration that resides alongside the slow simmering worry in Canada: the hope that we can overcome adversity and thrive. That cane he hoisted above his head at rallies became a symbol of strength; of defiance against long odds.

And, for a few days, Canadians sat on the edge of their seat wondering whether a phenomenon no pundit or pollster had predicted, this NDP tide of support dubbed ‘the orange wave’, would crescendo into an ‘orange crush’.
...
Election campaigns are designed to tap into emotion. In the 2011 federal election, worry was a strong undercurrent – and the politics of fear drove some new voters toward Stephen Harper, in search of economic stability. But it also drove some new voters toward Jack Layton, in search of a counterpoint to the politics of fear.

They voted based on deep Canadian values: pragmatism, fairness, caring. For some voters, Harper tapped into the first value. Layton tapped into the second two.

- Greg points out how eager the Cons and their surrogates seem to be to try to erase Quebec from Canada's map.

- Thomas Axworthy notes that one of the easiest ways to balance the federal budget may be to stop the trend toward hiring temporary and contract workers to do permanent jobs:

The length of time and number of hoops a manager has to go through to make a hire has led to an explosion in the number of temporary workers and consultants. The Public Service Commission in a 2010 report found that temporary help services "were improperly used to address long-term resourcing needs." Instead of coming in to temporarily fill jobs left vacant by a serious illness, for example, nearly 20% of the "temporary" hires were for durations exceeding 52 weeks, with the longest being 165 weeks.

The use of temporary workers to get around complex human resources system is also expensive. I have interviewed several "temporary" consultants, whose daily rates are consistently higher than the normal cost of the job. Expenditures for temporary help tripled in the past 10 years, rising to an annual cost of over $300-million in 2008-2009. Harassed managers needing to fill key spots are judged on the speed and quality of the people they find, not rising costs to the taxpayer. With a budget gap of $28-billion, such perverse incentives for the public service human resource systems are all wrong.

- Murray Mandryk rightly questions the Sask Party's interference with union decisions:

Lost on the government MLA is that union dues and how the union conducts its affairs is none of her business. After all, would Heppner dare tell a businessman how much he should pay his employees or that his social club fees are too high?
...
it's the absolutely height of hypocrisy for government MLAs to be criticizing anyone for taking the wages of others "to pay for a political agenda they don't support" when the Sask. Party does the exact same thing with taxpayers' money to pay for caucus political ads. Hell, the very political press release in which Heppner registered her complaints against the SGEU comes courtesy of ever-increasing tax dollars going to caucus staff to produce political propaganda.

- Finally, Dan Gardner points out the consistent test the Harper Cons seem to apply to drug policy:

(H)eaps of evidence suggests Insite saves lives, while the federal government has acknowledged before the Supreme Court of Canada that it hasn’t evidence to the contrary.

From the moment the Conservatives came to power in 2006, they insisted that the decision on Insite’s future would not be guided by politics or ideology. The evidence would settle it. But as the evidence of Insite’s effectiveness steadily mounted, the Conservatives’ hostility to the facility never wavered. They wanted to close it then. They want to close it now.

And so what we witnessed last week at the Supreme Court was nothing less than a naked admission that Stephen Harper’s government doesn’t give a damn about evidence.
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In a paper published a few years ago, Peter Reuter, one of the world’s leading experts on drug policy, summarized the evidence: “Research has almost uniformly failed to show that intensified policing or sanctions have reduced either drug prevalence or drug-related harm.”

No matter. Every year, huge sums are spent trying to deal with illicit drugs and the vast majority of that money goes to law enforcement.

And Stephen Harper is fine with that. In fact, he wants more of the same. But that modest, inexpensive, rigorously studied, scientifically validated, life-saving program in Vancouver? He wants it closed.

Which says so much about Stephen Harper.