Martin, Harper trying to look like Joe Clark
Unease over a fifth consecutive Liberal mandate versus fear of a Conservative government: That is the negative option set to be at the root of the coming election campaign. Whoever solves it — Stephen Harper or Paul Martin — to his advantage will likely emerge as the country’s next prime minister.
Except that it is a zero- sum game, based on distorted perceptions of the two main parties. Take the Liberals. It is hard to think of a government that has done more to distinguish itself from a previous administration of the same stripe than Martin’s.
His inner circle spent the Chrétien decade on the sidelines. By driving the former prime minister out of office, the Martinites actually succeeded where a series of opposition leaders had failed in three consecutive elections.
Almost upon arrival, Martin let an inquiry loose on his predecessor’s administration. He fired some of the key figures of Jean Chrétien’s government from their patronage postings. Just this month, he endorsed findings on the sponsorship scandal that will leave a permanent stain on the Liberal record. More than half of the current cabinet comprises MPs who did not serve under Chrétien. Some were not even in politics. Others have their roots in other political families.
Scott Brison and Belinda Stronach once sought the leadership of past and present incarnations of the Conservative party.
Until he ran for the Liberals in the last election, Ken Dryden’s name used to routinely show up on lists of potential candidates for the federal Tory leadership.
Jean Lapierre was a founding member of the Bloc Québécois. Ujjal Dosanjh served as the New Democrat premier of British Columbia. There are those who would have former Ontario premier Bob Rae also join the Liberal team and maybe run as Martin’s successor.
It could be argued that Martin has injected more new blood into his Liberal government than Harper has allowed Red Tory blood into his merged Conservative party. But take, then, the government spin that Canada needs a Liberal buffer against harsh Conservative policies.
That is like the pot calling the kettle black. It is hard to think of another federal election campaign that featured the two main parties singing from the same hymn book on so many defining issues. The tax cuts the Liberals put forward this week amount to a blunt attempt to pull the rug from under the Conservative platform in time for a winter campaign.
Just last weekend, the Quebec wing of the federal Liberal party supported a motion calling for a greater role for the private sector in health care. If the Ontario wing of the federal Conservative party had adopted a similar text, Liberal spin doctors would have had a field day portraying the Tories as arch- enemies of medicare.
Last summer, Harper was actually a step ahead of Martin when he promised to revisit NAFTA and its much- maligned dispute settlement mechanism. The year before, he withheld support for the White House’s intercontinental missile defence system until he could read the fine print of the arrangement between Canada and the U. S.
Since the last election, Harper and Martin have basically travelled in tandem away from the Bush administration.
Today, Martin is flanked by ministers who in another life would have wanted to lead a Conservative charge against him and Harper is promoting policies that would not look out of place in this year’s bluer version of the Liberal Red Book.
Martin will be spending the next campaign trying to make a final, clean break from Chrétien; Harper will attempt to distance himself once and for all from his Reform/ Alliance roots.
If anything, in the coming election each will be striving to portray himself as the natural heir of . . . the defunct Progressive Conservative party. Chantal Hébert’s national affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. chebert@thestar.ca.