A Short Assessment of Federal Election 2011 Results

With the election over and a Conservative majority government, one can expect to see a continuation of current federal economic policy with respect to lower corporate taxes, targeted spending programs, as well as a more explicit articulation and implementation of a philosophy of smaller government. 

The international and domestic investment community and financial markets will welcome this in the immediate term.  On the other hand, while a majority government will be seen as stabilizing after the fractious minorities of the last few years, the move towards a more explicit two party system means the polarization of Canadian politics into more extreme policy positions that may generate longer term uncertainty about Canada.   Should the Liberal Party decline be permanent, in the long run the choice between a Conservative or an NDP government may mean more abrupt policy shifts than the traditional choice between Liberal and Conservative governments both which have tended to govern from the center.   However, in the short term there will be little effective intellectual opposition to the Conservative majority.  The NDP has a newly expanded caucus with the bulk of its members from Quebec and will be kept busy building an opposition role and a disciplined caucus while the Liberals and the Bloc have been decimated.  One point to watch will be transfer payments.  The Conservative majority has been built on a coalition of Western and Ontario voters but is less well represented in the more transfer and equalization dependent regions.  This may indeed signal a new phase in the regional divide in the Canadian federation based on regional wealth distribution.

Comments

[Mitch]

Interesting times.

For better or worse, it seems Canadian politics is no longer as 'boring' as it once was.

[Shangwen]

Personally, I am looking forward to not hearing about imminent elections for 3.5 years. Health care was not much of an issue in the campaign, but I have a brief comment on it on my own blog.

[Jacques Krzepkowski]

I have yet to be persuaded by the argument that the new state of the House of Commons represents a polarization of Canadian politics. Not two weeks ago, the NDP was trailing the Liberals in the polls. The move leftward was more likely a rejection of current Liberal leadership than anything else. Further, the losses in Ontario, and principally in the GTA is more likely to represent a Canadian politic that is shifting slightly to the right. Rather than being a polarization of political views, this election show that the Liberal party was unable to find an identity within the Canadian political centre and that its commitment to the centre-left may need to be reconsidered as a move to the centre-right. If it is able to find a leader that represents the centre articulately, they are likely to return as Canada's natural ruling party.

[Linda Welling]

If I were to put money on it, I would predict a more serious move to an NDP-Liberal coalition/merger/whatever. Four years on will see a Conservative party more to the right, leaving room for a centre-left coalition.

[Brandon]

Why would we expect more abrupt policy shifts in the future? If the marginal voter is in the middle, both parties - NDP and Conservatives - will move to the center. This is would reduce the future policy volatility. The US doesn't experience large policies swings when the President/Senate switches from Republican to Democrat.

I think that many commentators still see the NDP as a hard-left wing party. Voters, on the other hand, see its current formulation as center-left, which is likely more accurate - e.g., Layton spoke about fiscal responsibility in his speech.

[Phil Koop]

@Jacques Krzepkowski, that seems as broad as it is long. Why should I not say: "I have yet to be persuaded by the argument that the new state of the House of Commons represents a rejection of the current Liberal leadership. Not two weeks ago, the NDP was trailing the Liberals in the polls."

Suppose that the mainstream hypothesis is correct: the increased electoral success of the Conservatives is due to a leftward shift in the electorate that split the remaining votes. Is there not some risk that the outcome of this process might exacerbate the divide between the solitudes? The Quebec electorate may observe that in voting for a left-leaning national party they were rewarded with right-leaning government. Is that not sufficient reason to demand control of one's own affairs?

[Jacques René Giguère]

The increased electoral success of the right? A mere increas of 1,8%. 30 seats in GTA decided on the split. Canada ( and Britain) is the only place in the Western world to permit such insanity. In any european country, 2006 and 2008 would have resulted in a coalition Liberal-led coallition including the Bloc ( neither Switzerland, Finland, Spain or even Belgium permits the level of animosity and outright hatred between ethnic groups that Canada finds normal).
You may have watched the last election coverage on CBC-RC since there will no longer be a Mother Corp and I'M not sure about elections either ...
Business community , for all the talk about free markets, love dictatorship. In November 1944, De Gaulle met the Conseil National du Patronat Français (the National Employers Council), a good number of them having made a pile out of Nazi contracts. He began his speech " Didn't met lots of you in the Maquis, didn't we?"
Stats will be as reliable as China, science ( especially social sciences) will essentially disappear.
Whether you are Canadian or Québécois, you will not recognize your country.

[Nickel]

Fwiw the markets reacted with a slight dip in the TSX. I read this as a statement that the markets were indifferent between a tory minority and majority and that oil is a bigger driver of the economy than a few percentage points of corporate tax cuts, but we probably shouldn't overinterpret the stock market, even though the national press in Canada treats the NDP as the second coming of Karl Marx.

[Bob Smith]

"Why would we expect more abrupt policy shifts in the future? If the marginal voter is in the middle, both parties - NDP and Conservatives - will move to the center. This is would reduce the future policy volatility. The US doesn't experience large policies swings when the President/Senate switches from Republican to Democrat.

I think that many commentators still see the NDP as a hard-left wing party. Voters, on the other hand, see its current formulation as center-left, which is likely more accurate - e.g., Layton spoke about fiscal responsibility in his speech."

I think that's probably right. People who predict some crazy, let's go nuts, swing to the right from the Tories are kidding themselves (although, one of my former Tory cronies send me an email this morning to the effect that it was "time to dust off the hidden agenda and go to town!").

As for the NDP, I'm of two minds on them. I can see them evolving as a mature, responsible, social democratic party (similar to some of the more civilized European social democrats). But I can understand people's skepticism, since in the past (and not just in the past) they've taken some pretty far out there positions, and they have no shortage of wingnuts in their party. Ok, fair enough, people said the same thing about the Tories in 2004, but then Tories had to establish their non-wingnut bona fides (and seem to have succeeded after 7 long years). It remains to be seen whether the NDP can do the same thing. If they follow the examples set by their provincial cousins in Nova Scotia, Manitoba or Saskatchewan, (although, it's worth noting that the NDP lost seats in Manitoba and were blanked, again, in Sask.) and generally behave like pragmatic centrist parties (with a touch of pink in their policies), they may do well for themselves. I suspect, however, that they'll take after their Ontario cousins (i.e., ideological loons in the pockets of labour unions - think British Labour party circa 1979), and couldn't successfully run a lemonade stand, much less a government.

[Marc Labbé]

Now the Tories have a majority, the nuts from the Reform will go wild. Harper will not be able to control them. They will alienate everybody who is not at the right of the ''Tea Party''. The NDP is ADQ replayed.
Then we will go back to a liberal government in 4 years.
And Denis C. will have is months of Glory

[Mlabbe]

Working?

[Andrew F]

Centrist Conservative and NDP parties mean lots of really disaffected die-hards on the flanks. That might be okay in the US where the system utterly punishes any attempts to create a third party. But Canada has a long history of rising and falling (or co-opted) third parties. Ironically, if your party tries to gain power it usually becomes to watered down that you'll hate the result. Quite often, small 30-50 seat parties have done more to tug the national debate in their direction, such as the NDP with many socialist policies in the 70s and 80s and Reform in the 90s. So game-theoretically, there is incentive for the fringes to split with the broad centrist party. They may not hold power but they can tug the national debate in their direction.

That's why if the NDP merges with or merely replaces the Liberals as centre-left, the left wing will become extremely dissatisfied and is liable to schism at some point. Maybe the Green becomes a relevant political force, picking up 15 to 20% of the electorate. Canada doesn't seem to support stable political duopolies.

[Bob Smith]

Sorry Marc, but you're wrong about the current Tory party. As I pointed out to a friend of mine today, many of their new people (i.e., people who have been elected since 2006) are people who, in 1997, would have been Liberal candidates. Think about it, people like Peter Kent, Chris Alexander(who, keep in mind, Iggy tried to recruit to run for the Liberal party), Julian Fantino (who Dalton Mcguinty tried to recruit provincially), Kelly Leitech, Leonna Aglukkaq, Peter Peneshue (to name a bunch of recent electees who are shoo-ins for the next Cabinet) aren't ideological candidates, they're the sort of high achieving Canadians who want to be in government and who, back when the Liberals were the natural governing party, ran for them. Let's face it, when you elect 73 MPs in Ontario, those aren't "nuts".

But I suspect your attitude is probably indicative of a lot of the thinking in the Liberal party - who seem to have treated the Tory rise to power as a temporary aberration that will soon correct itself (notwithstanding that the Tories have steadily expanded their seat and vote count for 4 elections running). Look where it's gotten them.

[Gregory Sokoloff]

Bob, if "I suspect, however, that they'll take after their Ontario cousins (i.e., ideological loons in the pockets of labour unions - think British Labour party circa 1979), and couldn't successfully run a lemonade stand, much less a government." is not tongue-in-cheek, do you believe that's a defensible assessment of the history based on the facts?

I remember Bob Rae's government fighting a major battle with the civil service unions over so-called "Rae Days". By the way, "Rae Days" look a lot like the Kurzarbeit program that Germany used so brilliantly to maintain employment through the recent recession.

I suspect the Ontario NDP record in government has taken on a kind of urban myth status at this point. Everybody thinks they know it, but what they know has little to do with what actually happened. A story ripe for a revisionist treatment by some enterprising academic or journalist.

[Jim Sentance]

I think the Conservatives have already gotten a good bit of mileage for Alberta and Ontario out of Transfers with the cap on equalization and the move to equal per capita cash transfers on the rest. My prediction for the next term would be a move on EI.

[Bob Smith]

Greg,

Yes,Rae did fight a battle with Ontario public sector unions. But, you know well that there's more to it than that.

First, he introduced Rae Days only after jacking up public sector wages in the first couple of years of his term (at the behest of those self-same public sector unions). It was only when it dawned on him (and, more importantly, Ontario's bondholders) that Ontario was drowning in debt that he reversed course. The fight with the public sector unions was so bitter precisely because they had expected that the NDP government would be "their" government. As you say, everyone thinks they know the story about the Rae government, but what people know has little to do with what actually happened.

Second, you'll note that Bob Rae is no longer a member of the NDP. And part of the reason for that is that the NDP (at least in Ontario) is filled, as I said, with ideological loons in the pockets of labour unions. There was no place in it for a pragmatic politician like Rae (and certainly, Rae's time in power made him a pragmatist PDQ). The NDP politicans I had in mind are were the far less competent specimens who have followed him.

[Marc Labbe]

Bob, In Alberta there are something called ''The Wildrose Alliance'' and there are still a bunch of these characters, and they not all come from Alberta, in the Tory party.
There are the ones who will made many of the newcomers since 2006 to go away or, else, they will go away to reform '' the Reform'' :-)
Then, the next (2015) government will probably looks like a Lib gov.. I do not care if it is call red, pink, yellow.....

Also, remember some people come to politics with an agenda and they do not care if it is the Tories, the Libs or else that will give them the means to achieve it

[Nick Rowe]

To back up Bob Smith's comments:

Just been reading about some of the new Quebec NDP MPs.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/05/04/the-really-new-democrats/

My previous (CPC) MP here in the Pontiac was Lawrence Cannon. A competent guy who was Minister of Transport then Foreign Affairs. My new (NDP) MP Matthieu Ravignat ran as a candidate for the Communist Party in 1997. I wonder which party has the hidden agenda, and which one has been infiltrated by extremists?

[Jacques René Giguère]

Nick
Your new Mp may be and probably is a nuts but he is in no position to influence policies and laws. Unlike those guys who imposed hands on a Lib MP in an anaphylactic shock on the plane from Taiwan...

[Marc Labbe]

I do not think Peter Kent (example) will or would infiltrate any party, he will made it clear at the beginning. ''If you want me to be a candidate... i would really like if you will considerate adding this or that to your program or platform''

I call it bargainning power

[Bob Smith]

That's the beauty of the "hidden agenda" myth. If you're inclined to believe it, the fact that there's absolutely no evidence of it is proof that it's being carefully hidden not that it doesn't exist.

As an aside, my theory has always been that Harper does, in fact have a real hidden agenda, namely that he could care less about the socially conservative issues that appealed to many in the old reform base. During the early years following the Tory/Alliance merger, he paid lip service to those issues - for example, gay marriage - in order to smooth the consolidation of power, but he never had any intention of addressing them. Unknowingly, by attacking Harper's supposed "hidden agenda", the Liberals have managed not only to alienate those socially conservative groups who used to vote for them - immigrants and english-speaking catholics - but also to boost Harper's standing amongst social conservatives, notwithstanding that Harper has done almost nothing for them, other than tossing them the occasional bone.

As for the "nuts", well very party has it's share of nuts, that's the reality of our "big tent" political system. The NDP probably has a greater share of nuts in parliament right now, if only because they had a lot of "filler" candidates who were nominated to serve as warm bodies, not because they were ever expected to win and therefore aren't neccesarily the strongest of candidates (for example, the assistant bar manager from Gatineau, who spent the campaign in Vegas, and who now represent a largely francophone riding in the middle of Quebec despite, apparently, not speaking French). In the past, parties that came out of nowhere to win lots of seats in the house tended to be over-represented in the loon catagory - think Reform and the Bloc in 1993, the Tories in 1984 or the creditists in 1962 (there's a story - perhaps an urban myth - about the newly elected crediste MP's showing up for work at the assemble nationale in Quebec city in 1962). Mind you, if the party survives and does well, that it is typically able to attract stronger, more credible, candidates, and the loons get squeezed out.

In event, we'll see. But if I were the Liberals (less so the NDP), I'd drop the "Tories are a bunch of scary loons" line of attack, because if you look at the numbers in places like, say, Ontario, the people who voted for those "scary loons" are the same people who, 11 years ago, voted for Jean Chretien. Demonizing the Tories as being beyond the pale both (a) undermines Liberal credibility amongst voters (including key swing voters) who don't see it that way and (b) insults those key swing voters who used to vote Liberal but now vote Tory. Moreover, the Liberals (and the NDP) don't do themselves any favours by presenting the Toris as the reincarnation of Ghangis Khan since that creates low expectations for the Tories that are easy to exceed.

[Nick Rowe]

Bob: "...and therefore aren't neccesarily the strongest of candidates (for example, the assistant bar manager from Gatineau, who spent the campaign in Vegas, and who now represent a largely francophone riding in the middle of Quebec despite, apparently, not speaking French)."

Hey, she's one of our Carleton students, so she must be good! (Think she was the one who poured my pint too, last time I was in Olivers.)

[Tim]

The other thing I'll note is the tradition in Canadian politics used to be for many decades that Liberals ruled Ottawa and Progressive Conservaties ruled the Ontario provinical government. This essentially broke down in the mid 1980s with Mulroney and Peterson and despite some detours it seems like now the governing pattern is Liberals in charge of Ontario and Conservatives in charge of Ottawa.

Now conventional wisdom is that McGuinty is going to lose in October. I'll make a few personal comments about that. First running a highly negative campaign against someone who has already won two majority govts is risky as you are basically saying people who previously voted for McGuinty were stupid to do so. Second the real goal seems to be get PCPO supporters more enthusied about supporting the party which goes to show far the PCPO has fallen since Bill Davis or even Mike Harris. The most recent PCPO party convention was as at a relatively small suburban Toronto ballroam whearas in the Davis/Robarts/Frost era PCPO party conventions were massive affairs that could fill up almost all of Maple Leaf Gardens.

[Ian Lee]

Jacques Rene Guigere: You may have watched the last election coverage on CBC-RC since there will no longer be a Mother Corp and I'M not sure about elections either ...
Please see today: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/05/03/bc-moore-cbc-funding.html where the Heritgage Minister announced that: "the CBC as a key cultural institution". "We believe in the national public broadcaster. We have said that we will maintain or increase support for the CBC. That is our platform and we have said that before and we will commit to that". (Likewise no changes to health care, per Harper’s comments, on election night and the following morning news conference.
As Harper said during the campaign, the "Conservative hidden agenda is on the House of Commons order paper". They are going to balance the budget, end xenophobic protectionism of telecom to induce competition and bring down sky high cellular rates, kill the Wheat Board and if we are really blessed by the Gods, kill agricultural protectionism that drives up food prices for low income and all Canadians, sign a free trade deal with EU and India (and if there is a God - with China), open up the protected airline industry, create a National Securities Regulator and reduce corporate income taxes to enhance productivity and economic growth.
But we have seen a very similar movie before - under the Libs with MacKenzie King & St. Laurent-CD Howe and then Chretien-Martin. As King used to say, "lean to the left, lean to the right and straddle the centre". Ignatieff went off script by going left and blew up the model.
Harper is strategizing to become the new Conservative version of MacKenzie King – both were/are as dull as ditch water – but both highly intelligent, highly analytical and strategic. (That is why he will not privatize the CBC or cut health care or re-debate abortion or gay marriage or capital punishment).
And one agent of their success will be those on the left who suffer from what George F Will calls, “conservative derangement syndrome", who try to demonize Harper (cf the unhinged comments in Globe & Mail and CBC in response to some of the election news stories) and thereby drive some centrist voters to the Conservatives, as Bob Smith suggested above. See the blue Libs' shift in the GTA where the vote climbed significantly in the last 3 days in fear of an NDP coalition. Restated, the demonizers make everyone else appear, by contrast, highly rational and normal.

[Bob Smith]

Nick "Hey, she's one of our Carleton students, so she must be good! (Think she was the one who poured my pint too, last time I was in Olivers.)"

I stand corrected. If she were one of your economics students, she might even be a front runner for the finance critic post! :)

It seems like she's attracting all sorts of unwanted attention (http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/985610--ndp-facing-calls-for-new-vote-on-controversial-quebec-mp?bn=1) as her constituents are only now realizing who they voted for. On one level, I feel sorry for her, it's not like she make her constituents vote for her (or did much of anything to encourage them to vote for her - heck she spent have the campaign in Vegas). They have no one to blame but themselves if they feel "humiliated" (to quote one of her partisan critics) by her election. Still, why would you run in a riding when you don't speak the local language (and, perhaps more importantly, why would the NDP let her run in that riding?). Her voters aren't the only ones who didn't think this through. Well, who knows, maybe she'll turn out to be a superstar.

Of course, the joke is that, originally, the NDP had a much stronger candidate lined up, but moved her to run against Corderre in Bourassa. That candidate lost, but Ms. Brosseau won. Oops. Well, if nothing else, Ms. Brosseau (and some of her colleagues) are embodiments of the greatness that is Canadian democracy where, literally, ANYONE can be an MP!

[Bob Smith]

Tim,

It's funny, I was talking with a friend of mine who is heavily involved in the Ontario PC party. He pointed out that the federal election will have all sorts of positive spin-off benefits for the provincial Tories. The provincial party should be able to leverage off the experience of federal volunteers, the federal voter identification databases, etc. (even if the two parties don't formally cooperate, in practice, there's a good deal of overlap at the riding level). Now that may also be true on the Liberal side, but really, these days, whose machine would you rather be hitched to in Ontario that of the Federal Tories or the Federal Liberals?

Moreover, a negative campaign against a two-term government doesn't neccesary involve attacking its voters, it involves attacking the governments record. The Liberals have had a number of spending scandals (which are the sort of things that stick in people's minds) which a negative campaign could go to town on. That's the problem with being the government, no matter how good you are, eventually stuff sticks to you.

On that note, there was a story in the Globe this afternoon which could be the kiss of death for the McGuinty government (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontario-gave-secret-wage-hike-to-public-sector-workers-documents-allege/article2009740/). Essentially, the allegation is that when they settled with certain public sector unions a few years ago, the actually agreed to pay increases greater than they had originally announced, with the proviso that those increases wouldn't come into effect until 2012 (i.e., after the election) and wouldn't be included in the collective agreement (so that no one would know about it). Now, this promises to be explosive on a number of levels. First, public sector salaries are always a hot-button issue, but more so during a recession, so offering higher pay increases (at a time when private sector wages are stagnant and unemployment remains high) is likely to be unpopular. Second, the allegation that this was kept secret, if true, is devastating. This is the sort of thing that allows opposition parties to ride into power on a wave of "transparency". Third, this doesn't do much for the NDP - what are they going to do, criticize the McGuinty government for increasing the wages of unionized workers?

[ian lee]

Bob Smith said: That's the beauty of the "hidden agenda" myth. If you're inclined to believe it, the fact that there's absolutely no evidence of it is proof that it's being carefully hidden not that it doesn't exist".

"As an aside, my theory has always been that Harper does, in fact have a real hidden agenda, namely that he could care less about the socially conservative issues that appealed to many in the old reform base. During the early years following the Tory/Alliance merger, he paid lip service to those issues - for example, gay marriage - in order to smooth the consolidation of power, but he never had any intention of addressing them. Unknowingly, by attacking Harper's supposed "hidden agenda", the Liberals have managed not only to alienate those socially conservative groups who used to vote for them - immigrants and english-speaking catholics - but also to boost Harper's standing amongst social conservatives, notwithstanding that Harper has done almost nothing for them, other than tossing them the occasional bone."

Exactly and precisely. The Libs - unwittingly - assiduously worked very hard to drive immigrants to Harper per their criticism of those social values, and at the same time drove up the vote by social conservatives for Harper, per Bob's arguments above.

And then, "just to make sure", they shifted left on their platform to meet the NDP and floated trial balloons about a coalition, to ensre and really frighten the blue Libs to switch their vote to Harper - which they did in the final 3-4 days, which pushed Harper over the top to a majority.

It is very clever if you can get your opponents to do the heavy lifting to highlight your positions to voters and thereby elect your party. This is the genius of Harper.

[Tim]

Bob:

I guess the point I was trying to make is yes the conventional wisdom would seem to be that success at one level of government should help that of the same party at another but in practice that never seems to be the case. Since McGuinty came to power in 2003 with a considerable majority Federal Liberal support has done nothing but gone down in much of rural and surburban Ontario even though it would "seem" that McGuinty's organization should have been helping to stem this decline. On the inverse Harper's success since the PC Alliance merger in Ontario has done very little for the PCPO up to now.

My sense at the grassroots level there is a lot of commonality between organizers at the different levels of govt but as you get higher up there tends to be a lot more jealousy and rivalry between the different wings. For example, I have heard pretty strong rumors that there are still bad feelings between Jim Flaherty and Ernie Eves for the two divisive leadership campaigns Flaherty ran against the parties annointed candidates carnival wheel in all only made worse by Flaherty going on to bigger and better things in the Federal party after the PCPO was essentially in the gutter. I have also heard "dark rumours" that Harper and McGuinty are far more friendly and alike than most of there respective supporters would like to know. Again a lot of this is pettiness Mike Harris wanted history to show he was the dominant conservative figure in Canada at the start of 21st Century not Stephen Harper.

[Bob Smith]

Tim,

All fair points. On the other hand, do we know that McGuinty's organization did nothing to help their federal cousins? After all, in 2008, half of the federal Liberal caucus came from Ontario, while Liberal support nose-dived elsewhere in the country. We can't know the answer, but could it have been worse in 2008? It might not be a coincidence that the collapse of the federal Liberals has coincided with the decline in support (at least as measured by opinion polls - though after this election, query how much confidence we have in those) of their provincial cousins. In any event, I gather that the relationship between the Federal Liberals and Provincial Liberal parties is (or, historically, has been) very different from the relationships between the federal NDP or Tories and their provincial cousins (traditionally, for the latter parties, the provincial organizations have been the stronger of the two), so we shouldn't neccesarily assume that those relationships will be symmetrical between the Liberals and the Tories.

As for the cooperation between Harper and Mcguinty, I think that's pretty well known, and on a lot of issues they have common interests/agendas (which emphasizes the point that the distinction between the Tories and the Liberals is often a difference in rhetoric rather than substance). That shouldn't come as a surprise, after all, there's considerable overlap between their Ontario ridings (for the same reason, the dynamic between Chretien and Harris was quite similar). On the other hand, the same would be true of Harper and Hudak and given Harper's goal of stomping out the federal Liberal party, I think he'd be quite eager to see its provincial cousins wiped out (stretching already thin Liberal resources needed for rebuilding even further).

Moreover, the introduction of fixed election dates suggests that, at least in Ontario, we should expect to see more coordination between the two levels of political parties. After all, if the next Ontario government is a majority (admitedly, not a given), the 2015 federal and Ontario elections (and the elections in a number of other provinces) will occur within a few weeks of one another. Given that possible overlap, the parties would be crazy not to work together.

[Jacques René Giguère]

Ian Lee and Bob Smith:
Nobody would be happier than me if S.H turns out to betray his laying-on-hands base to govern from the center as the numbers are in Ontario.
Still, yesterday, climatologists at Environment Canada were told of immediate reductions in staffing,conferences and even review subcriptions. Maybe his only lunacy is about global warming. But you can also see a larger and obedient MotherCorp telling you that the ice pack as always been there, as never been there, in fact there never was an ice pack in the first place...

[Ian Lee]

Jacques Rene - I won't belabour this. But I have long believed that Harper is taking a page from Reagan who said a great of nice, complimentary, laudatory utterances to the social, religous right - which made them very very happy and ensured their unwavering support - and then did absolutely nothing to advance social conservatism by way of new policies.

Reagan, like Thatcher, even wobbly Mulroney and now Harper were, are and always fiscal economic, business conservatives (similar to CD Howe). The only exception - a real outlier - was George W Bush who was genuinely a social conservative and simultaneously an economic liberal - recall the prescription drug entitlement of $750 Billion yearly forever and the gargantuan deficits he created (shades of the old CCF that Seymour Martin Lipsett analyzed in Agrarian Socialism).

But then Bush was not a conservative. He was a Connecticut 5th generation blue blood who went to Yale and Harvard - who moved to Texas and adopted a Texas accent and managed to con most progressives into believing he was a rural southerner, Texan, aw shucks hick. By contrast, Reagan, Thatcher, (wobbly) Mulroney and Harper are authentic conservatives who came not from wealth but from modest backgrounds and achieved their success the old fashioned way - they earned it. Hence, no hidden social agenda.

[Shangwen]

Ian, you are spot on. The Globe has a an article out asserting that Canadians want Harper on a "short lease"--but that is self-congratulatory and merely meant to delight the Atwood readership. Harper has already committed to binding himself and the party to the as near the centre as they can get. He will certainly take a page from Chretien's book, and govern from the right while throwing out financially trivial symbolic gestures to the left--perhaps even more so than Chretien/Martin in order to play against type.

As for the ravers on here, it is day 3 of the Tory Majority, and we have yet to see the Canada Health Act soaked in oil and set alight.

[Bob Smith]

Ian: You might add Mike Harris to that list. There's another Canadian conservative who, when required, would talk a good game for the social conservatives, but when push came to shove did sweet diddly for them and could have cared less about their causes.

In fact, the Harris/Mcguinty dynamic is an interesting example of the lack of substantive differences between the Liberals and the Tories on a lot of key issues. Think of two of the biggest policy changes that the Harris Tories implement that were loathed by lefties - personal income tax cuts and welfare cuts. Well, here we are, 8 years after the Tories were booted out of office, and provincial personal income tax rates are exactly where they were 8 years ago (well, except for the sharply regressive health care premium that the grits brought it) and welfare rates are the same (in nominal terms, though considerable lower in real terms). Similarly, the big knock against the Harris tories was that they allegedly cut health care spending. In fact, the only Ontario government ever to have reduced health care spending on a year-over-year basis was the Rae Government after the wheels fell off the budget in 1993 (not that I expect to hear the NDP crowing about that as an example of their fiscal prudence) - health care spending has increased at a more or less steady rate throughout the Harris/Mcguinty years.

[Determinant]

Speaking of the NDP, what do they do for economic research and what is their preferred think tank for that? If they don't have one, and I wouldn't be surprised if they don't, perhaps we could get Stephen Gordon to set up the Laval Institute for them to be their party economic think-tank. It can start as a filing cabinet in his office with a computer on top and go from there.

As they are now the Official Opposition they deserve the finer things in political life, furthermore they need some serious and well thought out policies. I'd love for Nick and Stephen to do a tag-team for the NDP on the theory and implementation of Functional Finance.

[Elizabeth Holland]

This is not a worthwhile Canadian initiative. Good bye.

[Bob Smith]

Well, they will have a ton of new money from their increased votes (as long as the subsidy lasts) and from being the official opposition. Nick, Stephen, get your proposal in now before they blow those funds on french lessons for their Quebec MPs.

[Determinant]

Actually Parliamentarians get free individualized second-language training. One can say it has a noble purpose of allowing MP's to engage more directly in the National Dialogue, or you can say it's a perk and a career move for wannbe cabinet ministers and front-bench critics, but there you go.

Normally Quebec MP's don't need French SLE training but there is always a first for everything.... Remember Les Peuples have spoken.

I'm serious here. Stephen wrote a nice series of articles last year on economic policy recommendations for the NDP. This year they are now the Official Opposition and they frankly NEED those articles and a whole lot more.

Besides, a free seminar (appropriately catered) on Government Finance for Dummies and Dippers with a sideline in how to pay for social programs while still sounding responsible is just the thing they need.

How about the Fines Institute as a name? Clarence Fines was the Provincial Treasurer under Tommy Douglas and has an enviable record of economic management (made SK debt free by 1953, 16 consecutive surpluses, plus paying for that enviable CCF/NDP legacy.)

[Tim]

Bob:
I guess as I pointed out on a different thread one reason I could see McGuinty not doing much to help the Federal Liberals is they haven't done much to help him on some signature policies such as the HST or national securities regulator where McGuinty at least as I see it is representing a traditional Trudeau/Chretien view of economic union. Instead the Federal Liberals seem to trying to please the Carole Taylor's and Christy Clark's who make a career out of playing footsie with their Socred friends out in BC to keep the big bad BC NDP out of power.

Personally I don't think Hudak has nearly the political talent that Harper has. Thus I can't see why Harper will want the inveitable mistakes Hudak will make to brush off on him. I also think some of the enthusiam for Hudak is coming from elements of the right that hope a Hudak victory will force Harper within his own party to adopt a more populist red meat stance something I don't think Harper really wants to do.