Harper, Mulcair force Liberals to define policies
Canadians may want a change
This is the worst of times to be a Liberal. Right? Of course right. NDP leader Tom Mulcair is aggressively carving out a commodious niche left of centre. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, finally, is establishing his bona fides as an economic conservative. There’s no room betwixt or between for the old Grits, exhausted as they are by three consecutive election losses. Let them sip single malt by the hearth and, as John Masefield wrote, “remember the beauty of fire, from the beauty of embers.” Not necessarily. We may agree on this: We now have, for the first time many of us can remember, principles-based politics.
Here’s Mulcair, environmentalist firebrand, with an entire industry anxious to persuade him that it is not, in fact, the modern face of evil.
And here’s Harper, doggedly driving the relationship between Ottawa and the economy through a full-wash cycle. The stage is set for an epic battle between left and right, surely, with resource development as the fulcrum.
It’s a compelling scenario, but one that ignores a couple of rather important wild cards. What if, for example, when asked to choose between two parties bent on economic transformation, one to the left and one to the right, Canadians decide they like things more or less as they are? And what if, when called upon to choose between an intelligent, aggressive, cynical, strategically gifted leader of the right (Harper), and an intelligent, aggressive, cynical, strategically gifted leader of the left (Mulcair), Canadians say “neither”?
Among the most curious aspects of Stephen Harper’s time in government is how the cautious policy direction diverges from the nasty tone.
Even now, as they seek to drive “transformational” change, the Conservatives are taking baby steps. When their policy hand touches the hot stove of public opinion — as it did when Public Security Minister Vic Toews bungled the online snooping bill — they back away. But in their demeanour toward the opposition, the government remains reflexively on a war footing.
Even after bill C-30, and robocalls, and the F-35 audit, for example, Conservatives consistently decline to answer fair questions in the House of Commons, instead spinning talking-point drivel. It’s a demonstration of contempt — for the opposition, the institution of Parliament, and ultimately for Canadians — that has become routine. It’s not something they seem inclined or able to change.
So: What political opportunities emerge in late 2014 if, by then, Canadians rather like the economic direction the Conservatives have set – EI reform, immigration reform, refugee system reform, a budget that now looks likely to be in balance by 2015, are some examples – but are also thoroughly sick of seeing the same faces, bearing the same smug grins, on the evening news?
In 2015 it will be nine years of power for Harper. Other than Pierre Trudeau, who governed from 1968 until 1984, interrupted by nine months of Joe Clark in 1979, Canadian prime ministers tend to serve about a decade — then out. It was this way for Brian Mulroney, and also Jean Chretien.
This pattern positions the Liberals, it seems to me, to offer themselves as the small-c conservative alternative to the Conservatives — just as the Conservatives in their first five years offered themselves as the small-l alternative to the Liberals.
Weak economic growth may deepen that dynamic.
This is particularly true if Mulcair continues to beard the oilpatch. Short of admitting nothing can be done about “Dutch disease,” such as it is (the proposition that high resource profits are driving up the value of the loonie and hurting traditional manufacturing experts), Mulcair must impose a tax, or what amounts to one.
Likewise greenhouse-gas emissions. A third of Canadian emissions are consumerdriven.
If Mulcair means what he says, therefore, he must eventually propose a carbon tax. By 2015, and especially if the global economy is still struggling, Canadians may want nothing to do with higher taxes. In fact, as a group, we don’t seem particularly keen on higher taxes at any time. Chretien won his third majority, in 2000, with a $100-billion, fiveyear tax cut.
In two weeks, perhaps less, interim Liberal leader Bob Rae is expected to launch his bid for the permanent Liberal leadership. His chief rival may be MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau. Whoever wins, they’ll have two-an-a-half years to build a new policy kit, drawing on some of the most experienced and calculating political minds in Canada, all bent on exploiting the ideological gap between Conservatives and New Democrats.
Should we assume all these clever people will fall flat on their faces and allow the most effective political vehicle in Canadian history to gently wash away down the river? Perhaps they will. But perhaps, they won’t. Perhaps reports of the Liberal Party’s death are, as Mark Twain said upon reading his own obituary in 1897,