Voters cast eye on expiry date of government
New poll suggests Tories seen as too long in the tooth
In a new online ad, the Liberals have started talking about the Harper Decade, urging voters to end it.
It’s clever because it plays into the fear of all governments that, after crossing the psychological Rubicon of 10 years, voters are simply going to get fed up of seeing them around.
At the start of May, the Conservatives were riding high on the back of a successful budget. But Stephen Harper’s smiling optimism — “people should be confident about the future” — has melted like a wedding cake left out in the rain.
A month later, the Tories are still level-pegging with the Liberals and NDP. But the auspices are not good. The word comes from divining omens from the observed flight of birds. In this case, the flock has changed direction en masse because of choppy headwinds.
Stephen Harper was in Toronto Thursday, talking security, in this case re-announced budget measures to beef up resources for CSIS and improve biometric testing at airports.
We are going to be hearing a lot more from the Conservatives about the threats to our civilization because there is less to boast about on their other supposed areas of strength.
The budget was sub-titled: “Strong leadership — a balanced budget, low tax plan for jobs, growth and security.”
On taxes, they have, for now, been outbid by the Liberals, whose newest ad claims the average middle-class family of four will receive bigger tax breaks under their plan. That may prove too complicated to sell to people, who at least know what they’re getting from the Tories. But at this point, the party of low taxes is not offering the lowest tax breaks to Canadian voters.
The recent jobs record has been patchy at best. The country lost 19,700 jobs in April, as the unemployment rate rose to 6.8 per cent. May’s numbers are due out Friday, and while a net addition of 10,000 jobs is the median expectation of economists polled by Bloomberg, the rate is likely to remain unchanged.
On economic growth, there is none. Or at least, there wasn’t in the first three months of the year, which saw the economy shrink for the first quarter since 2011.
Finance Minister Joe Oliver told a Senate committee this week that fears of another recession are premature because he expects the economy to rebound. But then, he would say that, wouldn’t he? His projection of 1.9-per-cent growth for 2015 is more rosy than the OECD and two Bay Street banks, which came out this week with projections ranging between 1.4 and 1.8 per cent.
There was scant comfort from trade statistics for April that suggested a $3-billion deficit. Most worryingly, exports declined for the seventh month in a row, with goods going to countries other than the U.S. slipping by 7.2 per cent. Exports to emerging markets were meant to be the spark for future growth, so where are the new jobs and investment going to come from now? None of the parties competing to run the country has explained how it plans to ensure Canada will grow and prosper in the new-normal world of US$60 oil. They have all been far too busy promising how to spend the surplus — a trend Tom Mulcair is likely to continue this weekend, with a pledge to give big cities a bigger slice of the gas tax.
Canadians are unlikely to have been parsing the latest GDP numbers, but a restlessness is starting to emerge in the polls.
This is not yet manifest in the horse-race number, though some shift from Conservatives to NDP is apparent among some older voters. But this week’s poll by Abacus Data asks whether Canadians are in the mood for change and the results have shifted significantly since the same question was asked in April.
Abacus says there has been a seven-point jump in those who think it would be good to have a change in government in Ottawa, to 76 per cent. When three in four voters think it’s time you should spend more time with your family, it’s like a pirate being handed a black spot.
It’s hardly a coincidence that the number of people who believe it’s definitely best to keep the Conservatives in office has fallen by the same number.
Clearly, there is significant volatility out there for support to shift so dramatically. But if subsequent polls confirm the desire for change in Ottawa is continuing to grow, the real battle will be between the NDP and Liberals over who can consolidate the change vote around their brand.
The Conservatives have 20 weeks to fight back with more tax cuts, which are set to emerge in the platform.
In the meantime, they must hope against hope that the economy picks up and that the public doesn’t tire of gloomy talk about the end of civilization.
Otherwise it really will be la fin de décennie Harper.
There is significant volatility out there for support to shift so dramatically