The blurred Liberal-Conservative distinction

Bruce Anderson's latest polling analysis, culled from the most recent  Harris-Decima survey, may go a long way to explaining the ongoing state of paralysis in the horse race between Conservatives and Liberals. 

Anderson writes about future voting intentions as they are revealed in the poll -- as opposed to the usual survey question about "if an election was held today..."  When you look at those numbers, you see that most Canadians don't think of themselves as died-in-the-wool party members. Only a small proportion of voters would never consider casting a ballot for Conservatives or Liberals. As Anderson writes: 

One of the things that's remarkable about these patterns is how much they contrast with the polarization south of the border. We tend to blend our values, and around the middle of the spectrum more than the edges. Almost half of Canadians say they lean right on economic matters but left on social questions: a massive, rich political fishing ground. A social liberal is not always a big-L Liberal, a fiscal conservative not always a big-C Conservative.

All those armchair political strategists out there might want to take note.  It's become common for Liberal commentators to complain that Michael Ignatieff isn't doing enough to be clearly different from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Similarly, there are complaints in Conservative quarters that Harper is being too Liberal, abandoning his hard-right-Conservative principles to pander to voters. (Notable exceptions: census, abortion, etc.) 

But as Anderson notes, Conservatives and Liberals should be keeping their eyes  on a big, mercurial mass of voters, who could change their vote at any time. Conservatives have to sound a bit like Liberals to keep their attention; Liberals must demonstrate a little conservatism to the same end. 

So while it's encouraging that Canadians aren't into polarizing politics, by and large, this also explains the frustration that big-C conservatives and big-L Liberals are feeling about the lack of clear distinctions between Harper and Ignatieff. As long as that big voting mass remains hard to  pin down, so it will go with the Conservatives and Liberals. Why risk taking a stand that could repel valuable (if fickle) voters? 

Harper interview

The Prime Minister gave an interview today to Dave Rutherford (a frequent interviewer, as is clear from the friendly tone.) Here's a word cloud (courtesy of abcya.com) and transcript, (courtesy of PMO) for the curious.

DAVE RUTHERFORD (CHQR): Good morning, I’m Dave Rutherford, Corus Radio Network. Thanks for joining us this Friday the eighth of October. Lots on our agenda today, but I want to get to my first guest very quickly.
Time is limited, down to the second when you deal with this gentleman, because his schedule (inaudible). I want to welcome to the program Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Prime Minister, thank you for being with us.

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER (Prime Minister of Canada): Nice to be here, Dave.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: You’ll be reading to some school kids this afternoon, Prime Minister.

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: That’s what I understand.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: (LAUGHS) Is it going to be the federal budget?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Oh, I think it’ll be, I suspect, something a little more interesting than that for them.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: All right. Prime Minister, listen, several issues sort of on the agenda I want to talk to you about, and not the least of which is the current debate about these jets that we’re going to buy for our country, the F-35, Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets.
Yesterday, Prime Minister, you were in Winnipeg. I saw you talking about the complaints by the opposition about this acquisition, and I haven’t seen you that angry for quite some time. We are going to spend $16 billion, possibly, on the acquisition and on the servicing, and the demand is that there be some sort of competition now for these jets.
Haven’t we already done that?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: We absolutely have. First of all, Dave, just on the price tag you mentioned, one has to understand, these are for purchases beginning 2016 that will serve the country through to the year 2050. So this is over a very long period of time. In terms of the competition, that’s absolutely correct. Beginning in 1997, the previous government worked with our allies on the selection of a company to develop and build this next jet. We completed that process in 2002; in fact, the previous government spent $150 million on it, and we have, as I said, not only run a competition; we have since been involved in the actual development of the airplane. In fact, our country has won contracts, as I understand it, twice the size of the amount of money we’ve actually put into this. So to pull out now, besides running the risk of grounding our aircraft when the CF-18 reach the end of their useful life, would basically kick us out of the development process, kick us out of future contracts, and we’d end up having to buy a new plane anyway. So you know, this is just, Dave, this is really just a political game. The Liberals know full well that they endorse this approach, and now to satisfy their allies in the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois, they are doing something that simply is not in the interest of Canadian taxpayers, not in the interests of Canadian industry, and certainly not in the interest of the men and women in the Canadian Air Force.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: Prime Minister, the leader of the Liberals, the opposition leader has gone so far as to say that this deal is undemocratic. What could that possibly mean?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: I don’t know what it means, but I do know, Dave, what the strategy is behind it, which is simply what we see from the opposition these days. Everything they do is to appeal, in this case, to the anti-military types that are in the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois. It’s all part of the coalition that they want to put together, hopefully...in their mind, hopefully after the next election, and it is just a blatant attempt to appeal to that element of the Canadian spectrum, and do it in a way that is simply not in the interests of Canada.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: You talked about the coalition. You’ve been talking about the coalition specifically. I saw you speaking in the summertime.
You’ve been saying it repeatedly ever since, and now we’ve got the revelations from Gilles Duceppe in a new book that in fact he and the NDP and the Libs were planning this long before the financial update controversy back in ’08. Prime Minister, you sound pretty convinced that there is a bona fide coalition at work here.

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Well, we see these guys working together, Dave, on almost everything, and of course, as I say, we see a series of issues, whether it’s, you know, whether it’s these anti-military policies they’re coming out with, whether it’s the soft on crime policies that they’re going back to, whether it’s calls for a 45-day work year to be paid for by Employment Insurance premiums, whether it’s calls to raise taxation on business, on employers, these are all, all of these things are blatant attempts to pull together, to keep together an alliance with the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, and you know, Dave, I think we can all, we all know very simply what all of these policies mean. It means...all these things would mean higher taxes for Canadians, fewer jobs, and quite frankly, a government with a very significant role for the Bloc Quebecois that is not in the interests of this country.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: Talk about undemocratic, Prime Minister, it seems galling that a leader of a separatist party is engineering a coalition to upset a sitting government. I mean, there are probably descriptions for that.

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Well, you know, it’s...what’s amazing about it is that of course, you know, it came out this week, Mr. Duceppe claimed that the whole idea was his. More significantly, Dave, as I think some of your listeners will know, you know, he actually said he ran the whole agreement past Mr. Parizeau to ensure that the agreement would actually advance the cause of Quebec separation. Mr. Parizeau agreed it did. But what’s amazing about this is Mr. Duceppe, the Bloc Quebecois claims credit, and what does the NDP do? They jump and says, “No, it wasn’t them who started, it was us!” They try and take credit. (LAUGHTER) You know, it’s really just extraordinary, but I think Canadians just need to know that this is a real significant risk for the country. I think they can know with our government that even though we’re a minority situation and even though we face incredible political pressure to do some things that are very bad, not in the interests of the country, that we will not do those things, and they can know that with Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberal Party, they will make whatever concession is necessary to the NDP or to the Bloc Quebecois to get in power.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: Prime Minister, I want to talk about some of the big responsibilities of a federal government; clearly, security of the people in Canada, but also our position around the world. In Afghanistan, we’re coming home in 2011, and you’ve said that repeatedly.
It’s an act of Parliament, and you’re going to stick to it. You’ve seen some success in Panjwaii, the area we’re now responsible for, and we’ve got NATO saying no one will back...no one will fill that hole when we leave. Prime Minister, is there any argument that could persuade you to change that withdrawal?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: You know, I think Parliament and I think Canadians have been pretty clear. We’ve given ten years to this mission, and we’re certainly going to contribute...continue to contribute to development and to peace in Afghanistan. But as you know, we extended our mission on two occasions, and I think we’ve been very clear on that.
There’s been, you know, some suggestion of non-combat roles, but I think it’s very clear that, you know, Canada’s...the role we’ve played to this point, Canada is going to be moving out of that in 2011, and I think that’s broadly supported among the Canadian population.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: I see that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, is in negotiations with Taliban officials for some sort of concessions, some sort of peace agreement. Is that a way we should be going, Prime Minister?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Well, you know, there’s...it’s always been the policy of the Afghan government, supported by the allies, that you know, we ultimately would like to see a peaceful resolution of this conflict.
That would involve all parties agreeing to abide by the democratic and constitutional process and renounce violence, and that’s the basis on which the Afghan government has from time to time had discussions with elements of the Taliban. You know, I think...to be frank, I think that’s still a very long shot, but we always encourage them to keep an olive branch available on those terms.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: So even if we left and there was no satisfaction of a peaceful, stable, democratic, accountable government in Afghanistan, even if we left, would our job have been done, worthwhile?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Well, I think we’ve made...I think we’ve made tremendous progress, Dave. We’ve made not as much progress on security as we would like, but certainly that situation is starting to improve somewhat with the arrival of, you know, vast numbers of reinforcements from some of the other NATO countries. We’re seeing definite progress in terms of health indicators, in terms of economic growth and development, but ultimately, you know, I’ve said repeatedly, Dave, and I think this is something all of the allies are going to have to grapple with, that, you know, eventually to really make this a secure and stable situation, Afghans themselves must be responsible for security. I do not believe it is feasible in the long term for foreigners to be responsible for the basic security situation in Afghanistan. That is in and of itself inherently an unworkable and unstable situation. So you know, our emphasis over the past three, four years has been to train the Afghan forces, to take a bigger and bigger role in their own security, and you know, we will obviously continue in that vein, but that has to be the eventual outcome here.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: A couple more minutes with you, Prime Minister.
Obviously the economy clearly is of a major concern to your government.
We’ve got some jobless numbers out today, a pretty much flat unemployment rate about eight percent. In the United States it’s far worse, almost two points higher in the United States. Going forward here now, you’ve always said it’s fragile. I think that’s probably the word that’s been most said about our economy. As we look forward, though, are there darker days ahead?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Well, I just would say what I’ve said before, Dave, which is it’s fragile. There has been a recovery going on globally. You know, our own domestic economy and our domestic indicators have remained fairly reasonable through most of this. None of the problems we’re facing originate in this country. I think everybody knows that. The global situation remains fragile. There are some promising signs. There’ve been certainly...if you look back over the past 18 months, some significant improvement. There are also some worrisome signs, which is why, you know, individually as countries and collectively as members of the G20 and of the global economy, we cannot take our eye off the ball here. You know, I can...I...my own take on this tends to be a little more on the optimistic side. I think things are much better now than we would have thought they would be if we look back some 18 months ago. Things have come along more quickly. I agree, you know, today’s job numbers are not as good as we would have hoped, but they are reasonably stable, and we’re beginning to see some stabilization in the US job market. As you know, while we’ve been picking up about 400,000 jobs over the last year, the US has continued to lose jobs. That situation seems to be stabilizing, finally, and if we can start to turn that around, that will be very good for our economy.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: But we can’t do much, even though we have domestic security, we can’t do much about the US economy. If it drags down, it will drag us, right?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Well, you know, I guess directly, Dave, of course there’s very little we can do, but to the extent that we are in a globalized economy, and to the extent that, you know, we’ve found that throughout this recession that we’ve had to work with other countries to coordinate our policies, indirectly we can do things. You know, obviously in early...late ’08, in early ’09, we embarked on major stimulus spending across the world in a coordinated fashion to end the deep crisis we had, the deep crisis of confidence. We’ve since gone forward collectively on some significant reforms to the financial sector that have helped stabilize that situation. It was never a problem in Canada, but once again, helping stabilize it globally has helped the situation. We...at Toronto, at the last summit, as you know, we began to tackle some of this issue of the enormous debt burdens that some major advanced countries have. That’s another problem where, you know, as I say, the problem doesn’t originate here, but we’re trying to be part of a global solution that will benefit all of us.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: And no more stimulus, Prime Minister? We’re done, right?

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: You know, that’s the approach we’re taking.
I’ve always said, Dave, you know, we will watch the situation very carefully. The plan we have, it was a two-year plan that essentially, most elements of it wrap up in March of next year. If you ask me today, there is nothing today that would indicate to me that we should look at another, quote, “stimulus package”. I just don’t think the circumstances now or the circumstances in the year to come are likely to be anything like we had in late ’08 and early ’09. But as I say, we will always...we will always make sure we’re watching this carefully and we’re flexible if situations change.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: Prime Minister, thank you very much for your time.
Enjoy your day, and we’ll talk next time we have an opportunity. Thank you very much for today.

RT. HON. STEPHEN HARPER: Thanks for having me.

DAVE RUTHERFORD: Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Who's afraid of liberals?

Many commentators have picked up on the parts in Lawrence Martin's book that deal with the Prime Minister's "visceral" hatred of Liberals. My colleague Chantal Hebert has  explored it more  today, comparing it to Gilles Duceppe's antipathy toward the Liberal party, while the Globe's Jeffrey Simpson sees shadows of Nixon in all this.

Because I've been covering Harper all the way back to the early 1990s, I remember when this hatred had another target(s). First I remember it was Brian Mulroney and the federal Conservative party at the time. Harper was fixated on their destruction. Then, when he parted company with Preston Manning, his contempt was directed at all the Manning loyalists in the Reform Party. (Have you noticed that their praise of their old friend and co-worker, now in power, is quite faint?) Then, when Harper  came back to Ottawa to lead the Canadian Alliance, I remember it was impossible to have a conversation with him without getting some withering ridicule directed at Joe Clark and the Progressive Conservative party. And it really was withering -- Harper does contempt well.

Now it's the Liberals. And here's the secret to Harper -- he doesn't value people with whom he shares friendships or old associations (that's why you get former  loyalists like Tom Flanagan, Gerry Nicholls on the outs with him). He values people who share his enmity and his single-minded fixation on destroying his enemies of the moment. Look at his favourite word in the Commons (see previous post) and that of his most loyal lieutenant, John Baird. 

His former press secretary, Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, is Exhibit A in this regard. (She's now a senator.) I never understood why someone who was so bad with the media was kept within the Harper circle while very smart communications folks --  who actually had an understanding of journalism and a professional attitude about them  --  were repeatedly churning in and out of that office. Then, on the first prime ministerial trip to Afghanistan in 2006, I figured it out. 

We were at a stopover in Pakistan and I approached Stewart-Olsen to get clarification on something. She started explaining where Harper stood and then went off on some crazy tangent about Liberals. She was awfully angry; this seemed personal -- not to mention, totally off-topic.  I had no idea why we were suddenly talking about something a Liberal backbencher had said or done three years ago. I wanted to say: "Calm down. You won. You're in power now. Relax." 

By now, nearly five years later, we in the media are used to this. The worst thing you can call someone in Harperland is a Liberal. Hence, Lawrence Martin is dismissed as a "big-L Liberal" by the PMO after his book is released.  Being a liberal, small-l or big-L, is something for which people, in Conservative Ottawa, should be deeply ashamed. There's an element of hysteria to all this too -- witness the slightly off-the-rails, anti-Liberal  rhetoric of Lawrence Cannon and Jim Flaherty in recent speeches to non-political audiences. 

A few months ago, I saw a quote that keeps rattling around my head. It's from philosopher Eric Hoffer, a man himself who apparently celebrated his standing as an anti-intellectual, anti-elite outcast. Here's the quote: 

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you." 

 

That is enormously useful information in the hyper-partisan capital right now. The more that the word "Liberal" is used as a swear word, the more I wonder where that fear is coming from. 

MPs' favourite words

Someone just tipped me to this amusing diversion: The openparliament.ca website, a great resource in itself, is able to figure out the words most used in the Commons by individual MPs. The results are amusing and perhaps instructive. Here are a few:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper: liberal

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff: public

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton: going

Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe: Quebec

Government House Leader John Baird: liberal

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley: help

Industry Minister Tony Clement: health

Deputy Liberal leader Ralph Goodale: respect

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau: young

Liberal MP Bob Rae: question

NDP MP Olivia Chow: child

Heritage Minister James Moore: air

Independent MP Helena Guergis: women

Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc: important 

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty: tax

Treasury Board President Stockwell Day: fact

Update: Here's Justin Trudeau's take on the favourite words, made in the members' statements before Question Period on Thursday.

M. Justin Trudeau: Monsieur le Président, malgré le fait que nous faisons face à un gouvernement pour qui l'opacité et l'obscurcissement sont la norme, une analyse des interventions dans cette Chambre s'avère bien révélatrice.

 

After eliminating words common to all, openparliament.ca reveals that the word most commonly used by the member for Edmonton East is “war”. While we might understand the finance minister's overuse of the word “tax”, why the ministers for seniors and immigration favour “tax” too is beyond me.

 

 

...    Notre ministre des Affaires étrangères, au lieu d'être tourné vers le monde, est plutôt obsédé par le Bloc.

 

Among the words that Liberals prefer that do not appear from Conservatives are “development”, “respect”, “care”, “jobs”, “children”, “change”, and my own word, “young”, but the most telling contrast is that while our Leader of the Opposition is most focused on the interests of the public, our Conservative PM is instead obsessed with opposing Liberals.

 

 

Distemper of our times: a polling report

On Monday night, the Canada 2020 organization held a gathering at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, featuring three major national pollsters: Bruce Anderson of Harris-Decima, Nik Nanos and Frank Graves. They pulled in a big crowd, and rewarded them with tons of fuel for thought. 

Anderson had a neat, new survey on whether a Tea Party could thrive here in Canada. I've written a story about it here. But I've also thought it worth sharing with you some words from Nanos, about what he calls "disturbing forces" under the numbers all the pollsters are  gathering about the current state of politics in Canada. It's long, but really worth a read. 

Now what I’d like to do is shift gears into what I consider at least the powerful, dangerous forces that we’re going to have to deal with and they’re not ideological. They have to deal with what I consider emerging trends that are kind of coming into clarity in the public mind. 

Those are the forces of disaggregation, the forces of discontent and the forces of dilution ... of power. 

And I think these three forces actually represent what’s really happening and all the numbers that we’re seeing are simply symptoms of these forces at work. 

Now first: the forces of disaggregation. Think of how we consume media now. Right? In the past, we’d be exposed to a diversity of views. Think of it this way, with the increasing number of Canadians that get their news online, they’re getting mass customization of their news, a variation of drinking their own bathwater, listening to views that are their own. How can you compare that to a model where, every morning, Canadians open up their newspaper and not only do they read the stories that they’re interested in, but they are exposed to other views, other information, other pieces of data on a wide diversity of issues? How do we rally Canadians for a great national cause when we all have our own customized news feeds?  What does that mean for political discourse, when we’re at war, when we’re at peace, when we’re in battles. I would say that our ability and the ability of politicians to coalesce and find solutions, to kind of take up a national cause, has actually been diminished by what I consider the forces of disaggregation. And it’s made it more difficult for other parties to deal with this.

When we look at other parliamentary democracies, similar to our own, they’re all having minority governments -- the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada. What do you think is going on there? They’re dealing with the same forces that we’re dealing with. 

And another thing to put on the table. I talked about one possible scenario that could be disruptive to Canada, if a particular federal party was in power and something happened provincially.

You know the last time Canada fought the referendum and separatists, that was before the Internet. Right? The next battle will take place on the Internet  and it will be very different than the past. It will be very difficult for national voices, newspapers, television, radio, to get their message out. And it won’t be pleasant, in my view. 

Now in terms of the forces of political discontent, I think there’s a fundamental disconnect between the everyday lives of Canadians, and democracy. That they look at what happens in the House of Commons and they don’t see themselves.  And the other thing is that our democracy, the House of Commons for example, is losing its exclusivity as an intermediary of democratic dialogue. That the Internet is now a challenger. That for young Canadians, who are not happy with what they see at Question Period, what they see our politicians do, or how they see parties operate, that they can engage in democratic activism without being a member of a political party, without watching what happens in Question Period, but by participating in democracy on the Internet.  And a lot of this is fed by what I’ll say is the discontent they see in our traditional democratic structure. 

The other manifestation of the forces of discontent is what I would call “vote suppression strategies.” You know what? If you can’t persuade someone to vote for you, the next best thing is to try to keep them home. Right? We’ve seen Conservatives being very effective, at not necessarily trying to persuade  or attract voters, but to actually repel voters from their challengers. And I think the last election was a case in point. About 875,000 fewer voters among the Liberals -- the Conservatives were very effective , not necessarily at persuading people to vote Conservative, but at repelling people,  from the that time Liberal choice. 

And in terms of what I’ll say the third force, which is the force of political dilution, this is a good kind of segueway to talk about the Green Party.  And I think the Green Party and also the New Democrats have a fixation on being a national party. Well, the thing is that they are not a national party. They do run candidates in each riding across the country, but I think the challenge for the Green Party is getting over that first member, electing that first member is actually going to be quite difficult. .... But I can’t see a major breakthrough for the Green Party, not because there isn’t appetite or interest in voting Green, but just because there aren’t what I’ll say boots on the ground, so to speak, in terms of organization. 

So to wrap up: expect political instability and turbulence. I believe we’re at a risky but unintended place  in  our democracy -- that the forces of disaggregation are undermining our national ethos and capacity, that the forces of discontent are undermining the relevance of party politics and party leaders to Canadians, and the forces of dilution are undermining our political parties. 

Bob Rae: up close and personal

This is actually a fascinating video -- Bob Rae, talking about his own battle with depression and how he feels about life in Ottawa right now. He doesn't connect the two -- in fact, he says he's fine, but there are similarities in the way he describes the condition of a depressed person and a depressed community. In a way, he's putting words to a vague sense that I've heard expressed in other quarters in Ottawa too -- from all political stripes.  It's a feeling that something is missing -- some say it's purpose, some say it's joy. 

Some folks have noticed that Bob Rae has been very quiet the past few months (certainly I have).  It's fed the usual (and tiresome) mischief that he's plotting a mutiny against Ignatieff. Personally, I don't think Rae is that stupid -- he's been around long enough to know that an internal revolt would be a death blow to the Liberal party. This video is worth watching if you want to know Rae a little better, and get a glimpse of how an intelligent, reflective fellow looks at the current state of politics and his place in it. Coincidentally, it comes just as Rae marks the 20th anniversary today of his swearing-in as Ontario's first NDP premier. 

And I wholeheartedly endorse his thoughts on people reading their questions in the Commons. It makes them all look like hostages.