The 2008 Canadian Election- Merged Thread

[Kalatzi]

Conservative minority - Number say 130

Liberals in minority

Given recent news in the states the big issue is likely to be ECONOMIES.

I can understand the noises that the liberals are making about folding.

Whoever gets in is likely to hav e to deal with some brutal times.

US gets a cold...

Bye Bye Jack and Child care. Good riddance.,

Bye Bye Stephan and Green.

Prediction for next election. A BIG conservative majority

And I tend to be liberal

 

[Edward Campbell]

Predictions (SWAGs) Updated:

• Greymatters: Conservatives 181 seats – effective landslide
• GAP: Conservatives 178 – substantial majority
• Old Sweat: Conservatives 162
• ModlrMike: Conservatives 158
• E.R. Campbell: Conservatives 155 – bare majority
• Thucydides: 154 – barest possible majority
• SeaKing Tacco: Conservatives 136 - minority
• Kalatzi: Conservatives 130 seats – minority, only slightly better than 2006

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail and based upon the most recent polling (26/27/28 Sep 08) is an assessment of the Conservatives’ strategy for the last two weeks of the five week campaign:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080928.welxnmajority29/BNStory/politics/home

Majority movement gains speed as Harper's lead soars

HEATHER SCOFFIELD

Globe and Mail Update
September 28, 2008 at 9:14 PM EDT

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is entering the final two weeks of the election campaign with a much different pitch to the one the electorate heard at the start.

With the polls showing that his party is within striking distance of a majority, Mr. Harper's overarching message these days is: A majority is essential if the Conservatives are going to keep the country on the right track.

“I say we need a strong mandate. I could say a stronger mandate,” Mr. Harper said on Friday.

“What we have seen increasingly is the other parties working together … and certainly all articulating a direction for the Canadian economy that would be totally different than this government and that has me very worried obviously about the pressure that they could bring to bear.”

The new focus – that Mr. Harper needs and deserves a majority – is subtle but growing louder, as he seeks to turn voters' anxiety over the U.S. financial crisis into political support for strong leadership.

It's a 180-degree turn from the start of the campaign, when the Conservatives made a point of predicting that the next government would be a minority government – be it Conservative or Liberal.

Then, their aim was to avoid scaring off voters with the prospect of a Tory majority, and send queasy prospective supporters into the arms of the Liberals. Mr. Harper avoided all mention of the word “majority.”

Now, as polls show him with a sizable lead above the Liberals, he has abandoned that underselling approach. Indeed, in the leaders debates this week, Mr. Harper will wear his sweater-vest, sit tight and aim mainly to “survive” the confrontation with the four other leaders piling on top of him, his communications director, Kory Teneycke said on CTV's Question Period Sunday.

“I imagine there will be a lot of desperate smears made, particularly by Mr. Dion. We expect there will be a desperate smear this week on abortion. The last four campaigns, the Liberals have launched a nasty abortion attack from a women's event in Toronto. … I imagine that's what we'll be seeing.”

New results from polling firm the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV suggest the Tories have stalled in the key battleground of Quebec, while the most detailed poll from the province, a new Leger Marketing poll, shows the Tories just seven points behind the Bloc Québécois.

The poll, with a huge sample size of 3,624, was taken between Sept. 19 and 27. It shows the Bloc with 33 per cent of the vote, the Tories with 26, the Liberals at 23 and the NDP at 12. It has a margin of error 1.9 per cent 19 times out of 20.

In the last election, the Bloc was 18 points ahead of the Harper Tories, who made a breakthrough in the province by electing 10 MPs. The Bloc won 51 of the 75 seats. The Liberals elected 13 MPs with 20 per cent of the vote in the province in 2006.

The Tories have seen their fortunes improve in Ontario, with a solid lead over the Liberals.

“The issue is not so much whether the Conservatives are going to win or not, but whether they're going to win a majority. That's a very open question,” said pollster Peter Donolo, partner at the Strategic Counsel.

But Mr. Harper's pitch for a majority is fraught with risk, he said, because it could galvanize anti-Harper voters to rally around the Liberals and boost their support.

Mr. Harper may be hoping to fragment the opposition and drive some of his detractors into the arms of the NDP, but that's a gamble, said Mr. Donolo.

Despite the new-found confidence of New Democrat Leader Jack Layton, the NDP in most key ridings, he said, is running firmly in third place – or fourth, in many parts of Quebec.

“As it stands now, it's difficult to see the Liberals losing second place.”

Plus, the electorate has come to terms with minority governments, and may read Mr. Harper's thinly veiled talk about majorities as a sign of arrogance, said Allan Tupper, political science professor at the University of British Columbia.

“It could be read by neutral people as excessive confidence,” he said, pointing specifically to Mr. Harper's comments recently that the Liberals had “collapsed” in British Columbia.

But Mr. Harper's assumptions that he is by far the front-runner may serve to underline that the centre and the centre-left in Canada are floundering at a time when Canadians want firm direction, said Antonia Maioni, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

“His message is, ‘you have the centre-left in disarray and the only party that can govern well is the Conservatives,'” she said in an interview.

As the Conservatives adopt a discourse of assumed victory, the Liberals are talking like they're losing – and they need voter support to temper Mr. Harper's power.

“When you get into a situation like this, people who generally don't like the government or the Conservative Party, for whatever reason, tend to vote strategically when it comes to election day. And in most ridings, the party most apt to defeat them is the Liberal Party,” Senator David Smith, a Liberal campaign co-chairman, told Question Period Sunday.

“I think you'll see a lot of people thinking very seriously about voting Liberal if they don't want to see a Harper majority in particular.”

There are signs the Liberal Party is feeling its vulnerabilities. When asked to predict if Mr. Dion could actually win the election, Mr. Smith said: “When you wish upon a star. … I could give you that quote. But of course I hope he will.”

With a report from Jane Taber in Ottawa

I think here will be some strategic voting on the ‘left’ but I suspect it will counter-balance itself. I’m guessing that many BC Liberals will jump to the NDP (leaving the Liberals with only two or three seats in Vancouver) while, in Ontario, the ‘jumps’ will go both ways. Strategic voting will hurt Harper’s Tories but it will do much for either the Liberals or the NDP. I’m also guesstimating that there will be much soul-searching in Atlantic Canada next week: how long can one, voluntarily, stay on the outside looking in?

 

[The Bread Guy]

Predictions (SWAGs) Updated:

• Greymatters: Conservatives 181 seats – effective landslide
• GAP: Conservatives 178 – substantial majority
• Old Sweat: Conservatives 162
• ModlrMike: Conservatives 158
• E.R. Campbell: Conservatives 155 – bare majority
• Thucydides: 154 – barest possible majority
• Milnews.ca: Conservatives 140 seats – minority, bit more than last time, though
• SeaKing Tacco: Conservatives 136 - minority
• Kalatzi: Conservatives 130 seats – minority, only slightly better than 2006

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail web site, are some insights from polling firm experts:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080928.WPollsters29/BNStory/politics/home

Pollsters' Corner
Some of the country's leading public opinion experts give their take as the federal election campaign enters its final two weeks

Globe and Mail Update

September 28, 2008 at 11:28 PM EDT

Tim Woolstencroft (Strategic Counsel):

We see some key trends affecting this campaign:

1.) At the start of the campaign, it appeared that the Conservatives were going to make significant gains in Quebec and secure a majority largely from that province. But over the past week, the Bloc Quebecois vote has been trending up while the Tories' support has declined. A brutally negative air war waged by the three Opposition Parties has eroded Conservative support there. In addition, the very negative media coverage of the Tories' decision to cut funding to arts and culture and the negative reactions to their promise to deal with violent crime among juveniles has contributed to the erosion in support. While much of the slippage has occurred within Montreal, it is not yet clear how much damage has been done outside it.

2.) In contrast, support for the Conservatives has been increasing over the past week in Ontario, where they have the opportunity to make significant gains. In fact, it could be Ontario that makes a Tory majority a possibility. That would be ironic, given the resources and attention to Quebec from the Conservative government over the past two-and-a-half years.

3.) With two weeks left in the campaign, left of centre voters remain soft. That is, high proportions of them indicate a high likelihood to switch. In our latest poll, about one-in-two Green supporters say they are open to voting for a different party. By contrast, the Conservative vote has hardened over the past week.

4.) Virtually all of the national polls suggest that Liberal support ranges from 22 to 27 per cent, depending on the day or poll. These levels of Liberal support have not been seen in at least 50 years. While the party has slid in all regions, the largest declines have occurred in Quebec, primarily in Montreal. These levels of support suggest that the 2008 campaign may come to be viewed as a historic election causing a possible realignment of Canada's political structure.

5.) Finally, the party leaders face vastly different expectations about their performances in the leaders' debates to occur Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Stephen Harper faces his toughest challenge of this election to date - the high expectations that he'll perform very well. (Even the partisans of opposition parties expect that Mr. Harper will perform best.) He faces an even tougher challenge given that four party leaders are likely to aim much of their fire at him. By contrast, it seems that Stephane Dion just needs to show up for the debate. Expectations of him doing well are incredibly low; even Liberal voters are skeptical about Mr. Dion's debating skills (in both official languages). If he manages to fare well in these debates, he might have an opportunity to halt and possibly reverse declining Liberal support, particularly in Quebec.

Tim Olafson (Angus Reid):

It's debate week, and If Liberals aren't panicking, now might be a good time to start.

Our polling from last week (three different polls for a total of 3,800 Canadians) shows enough of a dip for the Liberals and enough of a gain for the New Democrats to produce a second-place tie. "How could this be?" asked one reporter. In a word, leadership. Have a look at some of our numbers from last week:

-Canadians who think Stephane Dion would make the best Prime Minister: eight per cent (last among all leaders).

-Canadians who approve of his performance as leader of the Liberal Party: 12 per cent (last among all leaders).

-Canadians who find him most inspiring — three per cent (last among all leaders).

-Canadians who believe he is most decisive — seven per cent (third-place behind Stephen Harper at 43 per cent and Jack Layton at 13 per cent).

-Canadians who believe he is most in touch with voters — six per cent (tied for last among all leaders with Gilles Duceppe).

-Canadians who find him most likeable — 5% (tied for last with Mr. Duceppe).

It should be noted that Mr. Duceppe does significantly better in Quebec than nationally.

Perhaps we're putting too much emphasis on leadership. Or perhaps not, since we found that 86 per cent of Canadians consider the party's leader as an important factor when deciding how to vote.

The debates will be absolutely critical to Mr. Dion and the pressure to perform well will be intense. If this is his opportunity to turn things around, he will need to show a very different Stephane Dion than what Canadians have seen to date.

Frank Graves (Ekos):

In chaos theory we see how very small initial events can produce huge changes to the dynamics of complex systems. While the mathematics for exploring butterfly effects in political systems is generations away, we get the feeling that there could be big things afoot. Whether this is much ado about nothing or in fact the signal of profound trajectory shifts in the Canadian political system is an interesting question.

The initial response is to favour the first answer. Despite the furious machinations of the parties and their legion of spinners and apologists, things look very similar to the conclusion of the 2006 election. The Conservatives seem to be permanently cemented to the magic 36.3 level of voters who selected them in 2006 (plus or minus 3 per cent, as the pollsters say). Every time they peek above the majority threshold the electorate seems to recoil slightly and restore them to their new natural equilibrium point of 36 or so points.

Encouragingly for the Conservatives, we may be seeing new rules for majority formation. A more fragmented and ideologically polarised political arena means that even their current levels steer them very close to a majority.

This leads to a second observation about the election. The largest change in the campaign to date is the Liberals falling back from the 30 points achieved in the last election to roughly 25 points. Hardly a precipitous plummet in arithmetical terms, but given the overall political dynamics in Canada today this modest shift has opened the door for much larger future changes.

Similarly, the NDP has not exactly rocketed to new heights under Jack Layton's stewardship; it's up two or possibly three points from 2006 and still well behind the heights achieved during its salad days under Ed Broadbent in the 1980s. Even the initial discussion of a fading and irrelevant Bloc Quebecois seems to have been replaced by a steady recovery in Québec which now sees the Bloc at basically the same level as it achieved in 2006. The Greens have grown significantly, but have plateaued and may well remain seatless. So how does such an apparently placid political landscape possibly signal a profound shift?

The answer lies in the Liberal decline - one that becomes even more troubling for Liberals when coupled with their dismal performance in attracting first-time voters. This may be an interesting illustration of a butterfly effect as we probably would have had a Rae-led Liberal party if only a single Dion supporter had favoured Gerard Kennedy instead. This is important, as the overwhelming conclusion of the campaign to date is that the Liberals have faded largely as a result of an underwhelming reception to their new leader. This has opened the door for previously implausible scenarios such as an NDP or Bloc leader of the opposition.

The CPC has clearly become the only party which constitutes anything resembling a national consensus and it appears to be heading steadily to victory, while wobbling in and out of majority territory as a more poll-literate and strategic electorate weighs the prospect of giving the Tories clear authority to steer the country for the next four years.

Notwithstanding this fact, there are some very daunting and new divisions evident in Canada. Most crucial is a growing generation divide with the post boomer cohorts showing muted enthusiasm for the Conservatives or federal politics at all. This may explain declining levels of attachment to country that we are observing. In the absence of an Obama-like magnet for younger voters, it is difficult to predict how this growing rift will play out in the future.

We are also seeing a large divide across the more educated and diverse residents of Canada's largest megapolis and the main street "middle Canada" more comfortable with the Conservatives. The familiar East-West divide remains, with the Conservatives' stranglehold over Alberta extending to a firmer embrace of B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Finally, the optimistic (for federalists) scenario of the death of sovereigntist sentiments in Quebec appears premature as the BQ once again rises to the clear lead. This is coupled with the lowest-ever levels of Quebecker attachment to Canada that we have witnessed, and a still resilient 50 per cent of Quebeckers who would vote yes to the 1995 referendum question.

These divides pose a series of challenging questions regarding the very glue which maintains the country. So is it just the gentle changes we see on the surface or is this the beginnings of a butterfly effect which will profoundly transform the country? Stay tuned.

It appears that Trudeau, Chrétien, Martin and Dion have managed, over a generation, to reduce the once proud, mighty and, above all national Liberal Party of Canada to a regional rump: with real ‘strength’ only in downtown Toronto (20± seats), Montréal (15± seats) and Atlantic Canada (20± seats). What a sad legacy from four successive lightweights. Laurier, King and St. Laurent must be despairing in whatever corner of whatever comes after is reserved for successful politicians.

 

[GAP]

Fired candidate: Was Liberal lefty clobbered by her own swing?
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD cblatchford@globeandmail.com September 27, 2008
Article Link

The most wonderful thing about the Lesley Hughes story is not that Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion finally asked her to step down yesterday, or her odd beliefs that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job and that the war in Afghanistan is the result of "lengthy failed negotiations between American business and the Taliban over access to drugs and oil," or even her bewildered, injured insistence yesterday that her firing "is so incredibly unjust."

No, what is wonderful is that Ms. Hughes has had such a good go of being such a proper little Canadian lefty (I rarely use words like this, but there ain't no other way to describe her) that I have no doubt she's genuinely bewildered.

She's played by all the rules as she knew them, embraced all (well, okay, almost all, the Sept. 11 conspiracy theory, being a shade out there) the right causes, and what, now this kick in the teeth?

Not even a Raging Granny, one of those women who with hideous regularity show up at protests and the like to sing hideous ditties, could have summoned up greater righteous indignation.

As a perfect illustration of the peculiar sort of Canadian-ness Ms. Hughes seems to embody was what she said yesterday when a TV reporter broke the news to her that Mr. Dion was giving her the boot, and then, it being television, asked her how she felt.

"I guess this is how soldiers die in trenches, eh?" she said. "This is how it must feel."

Only a particular kind of Canadian woman of a certain age who has spent her life in the safe and cozy confines of Winnipeg, making a decent living and reputation as a caring social activist and never coming within a hair of a battlefield could compare her suffering as a cruelly aborted Liberal candidate to that of a dying soldier.

Ms. Hughes is by my count the eighth candidate to be given the boot in this campaign. She joins two other Liberals, three New Democrats and two Conservatives who have stepped down, under threat of being stepped upon, as a result of dope or dopey statements. She's the one who most interests me, however, because she was so good.

She is a journalist, a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists, a former writer at both her hometown papers, for a time a popular columnist with the city's free paper, and for a decade ending in 1995, the co-host of Information Radio, a local CBC show.

She was fired in 1999 by the Sun, apparently for taking the paper to task in a column for what she considered its "anti-Cuban bias" during the Pan-Am Games, and promptly launched a complaint with the provincial human rights commission; she ended up winning a settlement of $1,000.

When, in 2003, she was bounced from her job at the free paper, she said she would launch another complaint, but I couldn't find any record of whether she did, and what the resolution was, if any.

Even a sympathetic columnist in the Sun noted that Ms. Hughes's work "stood out for its fiercely anti-establishment views and she has often been labelled stridently left-wing."

Now, she is a member of the "collective" that runs Canadian Dimension magazine (which bills itself as being "For people who want to change the world" and describes itself as an "independent forum for left-wing political thought and discussion") and is a frequent contributor to it, too, as well as a co-host of the magazine's online radio show, where she and her fellow host still sound for all the world as though they were reading for the Mother Corp.

In Winnipeg, where she has raised two sons (one of whom, Geoff, is an actor and proud pro-marijuana activist who credits his mom with teaching him "to fight for what I believe in"), she appears to have led a rich life.

She has taught at the University of Manitoba (journalism basics in the school's continuing education side), been the media liaison for the Lieutenant-Governor's Advisory Council on Children with Disabilities in Manitoba (and was publicly thanked by the L-G three years ago in a speech for her writing on fetal-alcohol issues), and is routinely described as a passionate advocate for various causes, including women's equality and aboriginal rights.

She is a member of the Ba'hai faith, whose cornerstone, she said in a 1998 online report of a "Faith in the Newsroom" workshop, "is that the law is love."

Two years ago, she was a supporter of the United Nations Platform for Action Committee (Manitoba), or UNPAC for short, and did a radio interview with the "Femme Fiscale", a superheroine created by the group, who "flew into the Manitoba Legislature to ask how Budget 2006 would make life better for the province's women."

She also has written a one-woman play, Bloomberg's Radio, launched in 2002 at the city's famous Fringe Festival.

It was there that the first glimmer of what was to come may have showed itself, for in an interview, Ms. Hughes told the writer Morley Walker, "Both U.S. and Canada have become quasi-security states" because of laws passed since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We just haven't found that out yet," she said. "And the mainstream media in North America are doing little to challenge this."
More on link

Lesley Hughes is coming across as a real nutter. If Christie Blatchford can quickly find this much garbage, whatever happened to the vaulted vetting process of political parties?

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is a column by Lawrence Martin that I members may find interesting:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080926.wcomartin29/BNStory/politics/home

Incrementalism in a time of upheaval

LAWRENCE MARTIN

From Monday's Globe and Mail
September 28, 2008 at 11:25 PM EDT

Changing world out there. Dramatic swirls. But not many changes on the table here. Stephen Harper is running on the status quo - and winning. Book title for the election? The Triumph of Incrementalism.

The biggest financial crisis in the United States since the Depression hasn't stirred things up. Nor has the shift in the global power dynamic toward China. The campaign, Conservatives being conservative, is about staying with the old ways.

Politically speaking - and for the Great Tactician, what other speak matters? - there's something to be said for this. With all the precariousness in play, good time to hunker down. Keep the agenda small. Talk about things like modest improvements in crime fighting. Target voters with a few bucks here and there. Give that bowling league in Fredericton a new set of duck pins.

The vision for Canada, some might suggest, should be The Global Society, not the parochial one. In this century, it's about interdependence. Why not show the way in pursuit of it, in tearing down walls instead of reprising the clash-of-civilizations approach of George W. Hopeless?

Some favour the old alliances. But do the old alliances have the power, the relevance any more? In this context, Paul Martin was on the blower holding forth, given his experience as finance minister, about how we should be responding to America's tumult. He isn't alarmed. The Americans will get through it, he said, and so will we. But for our long-term interests there's a lesson, he was saying, to be had. In a word, it's "diversify."

Mr. Martin may not have been good at being prime minister, but one thing he is good at is global markets. He's a global guy who sees things in the broad framework. Thirty years ago, Canada could afford to be narrow-focused economically. It was us and the Americans and it was fine because they could carry us. There was all that effort made, Mr. Martin recalled, to find a third option to lessen our dependence. But in reality, there was no alternative to the United States. Japan simply wasn't in its stratosphere, nor was Europe. So securing the American market was the thing to do and Brian Mulroney did it.

That was then. Today, there's a whole new set of circumstances. "Today, there is a massive third option and we should be going flat out at it. That's why it's so inconceivable, Stephen Harper's attitude, toward not just China, but India as well."

Mr. Martin hadn't gone out of his way to harpoon Harper economics, but on this point, he heated up in a hurry. We're moving too slowly? "It's not go slow," he said. "It's turn your back. It makes no sense. And what is happening in the United States is an added argument ... Why in heaven's name would you put all your eggs in one basket when there is another market that is begging for you to sell to them?" To get special access, he said, his government signed framework agreements with China and India that have never been followed up on.

The former prime minister isn't down on the United States. Its recuperative powers have been demonstrated time and time again, he said. "But the subprime crisis essentially means that the Western world can no longer lecture the emerging economies. We have now got to sit down with them on the basis of equality."

Canada should be able to escape the big hurt from the current crisis because "Canadian banks have been incredibly well managed." But because of the credit crunch in the United States and Europe, Canadian enterprises that operate around the world are going to feel the pain. "That is going to slow our economy down."

Besides pursuing other markets, Canada should be cutting income taxes, not consumption taxes, he said, and building a strong balance sheet by investing in infrastructure and culture - things that increase productivity. The Montrealer has been pressing his ideas on the Liberal leadership. If the party forms a government, he said, given the fragility of economic conditions, he would be prepared to take on a special advisory capacity to Stéphane Dion or do anything he was asked - how about coming back as finance minister? - to help.

That eventuality, a Liberal return to power, is not likely to happen, nor is the Martin idea of a concerted push for diversifying markets. Stephen Harper is an old-alliance guy in no rush to chase after new horizons. In this campaign, he need not talk much about the new world out there because he isn't being challenged on it.

In a time of upheaval, it's a campaign about increments.

Canadians as I never fail to mention, are timid; we are averse to big ideas; we like a small, narrowly focused, indeed “parochial society” and we are unwilling to jump into ”The Global Society”, not, at least, until almost everyone else including Belgium and New Zealand are already there – proving it’s not too dangerous. Harper knows us; Martin doesn’t – neither Lawrence Martin nor Paul Martin.

 

[a_majoor]

What might the future hold?

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1081808.html

Tory win could force a merger on the left

By DAN LEGER
Mon. Sep 29 - 6:09 AM

BY OCT. 14, Canadians will have spent more than four years deciding who should be running their country. It’s been the longest period of national indecision in a generation. That’s about to change, with huge implications for the future of politics.

It looks almost certain that on election day, Canadian voters will finally turn their backs on a rugged old brand and go with something newer.

After decades of Liberal dominance in Ottawa, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are going to get their majority. Their 21st-century cozalition of Westerners, rural Canadians, suburbanites, business people and conservative Quebecers is making it happen.

Internal dynamics in the Tory camp are proving to be significant too. The fractious Conservatives have finally sorted out 15 years of differences and rallied behind a leader emerging as a force in his own right.

Just as important, the opposition has splintered. The Liberals, NDP and Greens are squabbling over the same voters. They’re carving up 50 to 60 per cent of the total vote, leaving a Tory plurality and a probable lock on power.

Things have changed since the hung-jury election in 2004. The bare-minority Tory win in 2006 crowned Harper as prime minister. It turns out that was the game-changer because, like him or not, the current politics revolves around Harper.

Along the way, Harper has defined the debate on Afghanistan, spent liberally while cutting taxes, talked tough on crime and made nice with Quebec, all the while keeping his notoriously unruly party on a short leash. If he keeps that up, there’s the potential for many years of Tory majorities. Unless, that is, the left-progressive parties get their collective houses in order. To do that, they will probably have to merge.

Jack Layton’s people in the NDP were happy with the party’s organizational readiness for this election. The party is better organized and financed this time around than in 2004 or 2006. So Layton and the NDP have a lot at stake this time out.

But what if the NDP just holds the 17 per cent of the vote suggested by all the polls and its 20-odd seats? It will be stagnant, and Layton’s pretensions to the prime ministry will seem ludicrous. Will people question the NDP’s purpose?

Same goes for the Liberals. Stephane Dion is finished after this election; he won’t get a second chance. Perhaps if nothing is done to bring the NDP and Liberals together, Canadians of the leftish persuasion will ask why there are still two parties with such similar points of view. A Liberal-NDP merger makes sense the way the PC-Alliance one did on the right. They would have competing interests, but a common larger goal. Perhaps the combined new entity will line up with the Greens and tap into a long-term wave of public interest in the environment.

The last decisive federal election was in 2000, when the Liberals won 172 of 301 seats with 40.8 per cent of the vote. Just under 38 per cent was split among the Canadian Alliance-Reform and Progressive Conservatives. The shoe is now on the other foot.

A marriage of convenience between progressive parties might make their members want to gag. But if they can hold their noses and get the job done, they can counterbalance long-term dominance by Conservatives. Canadians generally reside just to the left of the political centre. Those voters are the key to winning elections.

A combined party on the left lined up against the Conservatives might also polarize politics, encouraging extreme positions. We can only hope that the great wisdom of Canadians will keep the two sides vying for reasonable and practical positions instead of extreme ones.

Still, it’s amazing how the planets are lining up for the Tories.

The retreat of separatism freed voters from their attachment to the Liberals in Quebec. All parties have policies to appeal to the former Liberal constituency among new Canadians. And Dion is not cutting it as leader.

So Harper can afford to wear sweaters and make soothing campaign sounds. Barring some unforeseen calamity, demographics, fragmentation of the enemy parties and the Liberal leadership crisis will keep him in steady work, perhaps for years to come.

( dleger@herald.ca)

Dan Leger is director of news content for The Chronicle Herald. The opinions expressed here are his own.

 

[a_majoor]

Globalization, the economic crisis and job creation can all be tied together in one neat package. Too bad the Progressives will froth at the mouth over any mention of this solution (and see where it is being proposed!)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122264826575484095.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

The Stockholm Curve

With the economy struggling, at least some people are urging a pro-growth tax cut. Too bad they live in Stockholm. As a recent headline in Agence France-Presse put it: "Sweden Announces Income Tax Cuts to Boost Jobs." The government is planning to cut business taxes and the personal income and payroll tax.

"The corporate tax is one of the taxes which large companies really study when they plan to set up business somewhere," says Jan Björklund, leader of the country's Liberal Party, in promoting the tax cut plan. The corporate tax reduction will bring the Swedish rate down to 26.3% from 28%, continuing its fall from a high of 57% in 1987. This means that Swedes will soon have a corporate tax rate one-third lower than the U.S. average of 39.5% (the 35% federal rate plus the state average).

Sweden remains a high-tax country overall, with individual rates well above 50% plus pension and payroll obligations. Maria Rannka, president of the Swedish think tank Timbro, has reported that entrepreneurship had become such an alien concept that more than half of Sweden's 50 largest companies were founded before World War I and only two after 1970 -- the period when taxes and social welfare programs proliferated.

Now, however, Sweden is discovering that it must cut taxes to compete with Ireland, Eastern Europe and fast-growing Asia. Three years ago Sweden eliminated its inheritance tax. The U.S. death tax rate is still 45%. John McCain cited Ireland's low rate in his Friday debate with Barack Obama, who continues to insist that U.S. business is undertaxed.

If Mr. Obama wins in November, maybe his first foreign trip should be to Stockholm. He could use the tax tutorial.

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

Globalization, the economic crisis and job creation can all be tied together in one neat package. Too bad the Progressives will froth at the mouth over any mention of this solution (and see where it is being proposed!)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122264826575484095.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

The article you've presented dramatically oversimplifies the situation and omits something so important, it makes the rest of the article downright silly....

Sweden has now accumulated Net Assets of >20% of GDP, so they can afford to cut taxes as not only do they have no net debt-servicing costs, they have asset-derived income.

Australia, New Zealand, Denmark as well as Singapore and a good chunk of the Persian Gulf and Asia are in similar situations and as long we remain in the "Yes we have debt camp", we'll fall further and further behind those other nations on a competitive basis because they can afford to cut taxes where we can't.




Cheers, Matthew. 

 

[Greymatters]

Mr. Pickens is quick to clarify, though, that he doesn't consider Canada a “foreign” oil and gas source. “It's considered North America – we're all one big happy family.”

Not everyone has the same opinion on that subject:

From June 2008
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/256576
U.S. Mayors pass boycott of Alberta oil sands-derived gasoline

 

[Greymatters]

A merger - and then Layton potentially being the leader of the Lib/NDP party?

Sounds like something from Turtledove...

 

[GAP]

There is absolutely no way the rank and file will join with the NDP, other than to take their voters.....

There may be a lot of talk, but it really amounts to nothing.

 

[dapaterson]

There is absolutely no way the rank and file will join with the NDP, other than to take their voters.....

There may be a lot of talk, but it really amounts to nothing.

Just like Reform and the Progressive Conservatives will never merge?

Just like a party can't go from a record-setting majority to two seats in only two elections?

Just like Bob Rae could never run federally after his tenure as Ontario's premier?


Never is a long time in politics...

 

[The Bread Guy]

Just like Bob Rae could never run federally after his tenure as Ontario's premier?

Or just like "Ontario'll never have an NDP government"?  (Although if you qualify it by adding "again in a long time", you'd be closer).

 

[GAP]

Just like Reform and the Progressive Conservatives will never merge?

Just like a party can't go from a record-setting majority to two seats in only two elections?

Just like Bob Rae could never run federally after his tenure as Ontario's premier?


Never is a long time in politics...

All true....but can you imagine the power brokers and back room boys acceding to a merger?

 

[Edward Campbell]

All true....but can you imagine the power brokers and back room boys acceding to a merger?

Yes.

They, the Liberals power brokers, know that the only reason Jean Chrétien won back-to-back-to-back majorities was because the ‘right’ was fragmented. They understand that three successive Harper majorities will change Canada in ways that will make it very, very hard for even a moderate centre-left party to achieve power and govern.

BUT: 60+% of Canadians are ‘lefties’ of one sort or another and united – even with a consequential ‘hard left’ cast off - they can run the place almost forever.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Liberals are, finally, with only two(of only five) weeks to go, running a sensible campaign: stressing their economic record in the Chrétien/Martin years – which Canadians remember fondly. But they have wasted three of those five weeks. Does anyone really think Celine Stéphane Dion is fit to run a country?

 

[Edward Campbell]

The abortion ‘question’ is, of course, being asked by “gotcha journalism” types who are trying to provoke controversy where none exists, but, as this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act demonstrates, it still works:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080929.welxnabortion0929/BNStory/politics/home

Harper says no to abortion debate

JANE TABER

Globe and Mail Update
September 29, 2008 at 12:45 PM EDT

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper is ruling out re-opening a debate over abortion law for a future Conservative government, saying today there are too many other important issues to manage.

“We have a lot of challenges in front of the country,” the Conservative leader said this morning during an announcement about arts and fitness funding for children.

“We have a difficult world economy as we all know. That has to be the focus of the government and I simply have no intention of ever making the abortion question a focus of my political career.”

He said that some of his caucus members would like him to do so, and so would some Liberals: “But, I have not done that in my entire political career. Don't intend to start now.”

“I have been clear throughout my entire political career I don't intend to open the abortion issue,” he said. “I haven't in the past; I'm not going to in the future.”

Mr. Harper sounded more definitive today on this issue than he has in the past. The issue dogged him in the 2004 election campaign when there were questions about the party's social conservative beliefs.

He said then that he would not table an abortion law but he always said that members of his caucus had a right to their own beliefs, leaving the door open for private members' bills.

After today's event, however, Mr. Harper's spokesman Kory Teneycke clarified in an email to The Globe and Mail that Mr. Harper would “whip” his front bench so that none of his cabinet ministers would support any private member's bills that could re-open the debate.

“We can't prevent private members' bills from reaching the floor,” said Mr. Teneycke, “but the government would not support them.”

In late August, just before Mr. Harper dropped the writ, his Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced they were abandoning support of a bill that would make it a separate offence to kill the fetus of a pregnant woman in a violent crime.

Mr. Nicholson said at the time the government would not re-open the abortion debate.

The abortion issue came up again today as a result of several recent protests in which the Harper government has been accused of trying to bring back abortion by stealth. Mr. Harper's statements today appeared to put that question to rest, at least for now.

And Mr. Teneycke predicted on CTV's Question Period yesterday that the Liberals would resort to “desperate” smears on abortion during this week's debates as there is little time left in the election campaign.

The issue of restricting abortion rights does not play well in Quebec, a province where the Tories need to win big if they want to form a majority government.

Recent polls are showing the Tories stalling in the province. The party has also recently been attacked vigorously for its cuts to arts and culture and Mr. Harper's comments about arts galas being for the elite.

He is to travel to Quebec later this afternoon for a rally tonight.

Interestingly, Mr. Harper today announced a new Children's Arts Tax Credit, which the party says is worth $150-million a year, aimed at helping families put their children in music, drama and others arts programs.

In making the announcement, he noted that when his party makes cultural promises it's for programs that will benefit “”all of society and families” and that he is using taxpayer's money “effectively.”

“When we've reduced some funding for some cultural programs it's based on independent analysis that has confirmed that those are not effective programs,” he said. “Likewise we are putting money into things that we know benefit our society in the cultural area.”

He dismissed a follow-up question as to what sort of independent analysis he used to cut the other programs.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Just in case you think all the Green Party candidates are loony left fruitcakes, check out this fellow.