Stalemate until there’s a stumble

As it drags its way toward week three, Campaign 2015 remains a desultory affair, waiting for a spark. Nigel Wright, saddening the opposition parties and news editors everywhere, has not provided that spark. Nor will the former PMO chief of staff ’s testimony, which continued Thursday, wash away the lingering stench of the Senate spending scandal. Most likely, Wright’s testimony will not move the dial, one way or another.

This can proffer no great relief for Conservative supporters, however, because they badly need a breakout issue. And that is why we can expect to soon hear a great deal more about the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and perhaps to an even greater degree, the looming prospect of an NDP-Liberal coalition.

In his cross-examination of Wright Thursday, Mike Duffy’s lawyer, Donald Bayne, probed further into the machinations that surrounded the disgraced senator’s attempts to emerge with both reputation and bank account intact in the matter of his housing-expense claims. The degree of venality and backside covering is depressing, discomfiting, demoralizing.

But none of that is particularly new. The singular question has long been “What did Harper know?” Did he know of the initial plan to have Duffy’s tab repaid out of party funds? Did he know Wright had signed the eventual $90,000 cheque? In both cases the answer in sworn testimony was “no.”

So, there is no “smoking gun.” The general cloud over the PMO remains; it may be one reason why the Conservatives have been stuck at roughly 30 per cent support among decided voters. But that floor remains firm.

The wrinkle is that a third of votes don’t spell victory, even if the Tories wind up winning more seats than their rivals. A Blue Team minority of, say, 155 (of the 170 seats needed for a majority) could conceivably limp into 2016, as I have written; or it might be defeated immediately by the votes of New Democrats and Liberals. One way or another, it would have no staying power.

So, which party has the best shot at a majority, given the current dynamic? The quick answer is none. Tom Mulcair had momentum coming into the campaign, but that was before his English debate performance last week, which, though not as bad as his detractors would have us believe, was not the win he needed. He got tagged with two marquee NDP postures guaranteed to cost him heavily in vote-rich Ontario: ripping up the federal Clarity Act, and opposing pipelines. Mulcair was asked again Wednesday to make clear whether he is for or against the plan for an Energy East pipeline linking Alberta with the St. Lawrence. His response was incomprehensible.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, for his part, had been enjoying a bit of a post-debate glow, due to his strong showing last week. Then Wednesday, he was heard to utter a line about growing the economy “from the heart outwards.” Though the reference was to the heart of the middle class, Liberals said later, social media, NDP and Conservative hooting was loud and long. Trudeau recovered Thursday with an assured town hall in Saskatoon. If wordplay such as this is the worst the Tory war room can throw at him, he’s not doing so badly.

Be that as it may, the Grit leader continues to be held back in Ontario, the numerical fulcrum of this election, by Premier Kathleen Wynne. Her insistence on lashing herself to the railway tracks to stop the dreaded Harper juggernaut may itself be enough to deny the federal Liberals a comeback; the provincial government’s costly, clunky pension scheme presents an ideal foil for the Harper campaign. On pipelines, where Trudeau Thursday again tried to distinguish himself from Mulcair with a more constructive-sounding approach, Wynne has likewise thrown spanners in the works.

Taken together, it spells continuing stalemate; hence, the waiting for a spark — or a major stumble. Because the Grits and NDP together are likely to take, based on current projections, 200 or more seats, their combined inclinations will set the future course of the country, unless the Tories pull out a majority, David Cameron-like, in defiance of the polls. Harper has had his best moments when decrying ISIL and its depravity; he speaks about this with conviction, and polls have shown most Canadians agree with him.

So, it stands to reason that every erg of Conservative energy from here on will be expended to sell the message that both opposition parties are laggards when it comes to ISIL; that neither can be trusted to unreservedly champion Alberta’s battered oilpatch, which is integral to the health of Canada’s economy; and that either or both Liberals and NDP would tax and spend with abandon, as the Wynne government has done and proposes to continue doing.

That is n’ t winning the popularity contest, exactly. But nor will it be unpersuasive, especially with people who’ve voted Conservative in the past.