An 11-week election campaign? Here are four reasons to love it
If it’s true that an election is no time to discuss serious issues, this one could be the exception
It is tempting to be cynical about the federal election now looming on Canadians’ doorsteps.
An extra-long campaign, kicked off in the summer, seems designed primarily to bankrupt Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s rivals and suppress voters’ interest and attention.
But what if we suspended that cynicism and looked instead at all the advantages in having an 11-week campaign — one that starts as early as this weekend and lasts all the way to the fixed election date of Oct. 19?
Here, in a spirit of uncharacteristic optimism about democracy in this country, is a list of all the ways to see the upside of Harper’s expected decision to plunge Canada into a campaign on the first weekend in August.
First, don’t assume that holidays and elections are mutually exclusive. We had a Christmas and New Year’s break in the middle of the 2005-06 election; Thanksgiving landed just before the vote in 2008 and the Easter and Passover holidays fell during the 2011 campaign.
If Harper does visit the Governor General on Sunday or Monday, we will effectively have a 2015 campaign with three statutory holidays in it — in much of the country, anyway. It will start on the civic holiday weekend (in Ontario and five other provinces), stretch over Labour Day in September and Thanksgiving in October. That’s in addition to religious events such as the Jewish High Holidays and Islam’s Eid al-Adha in September.
Pollsters have found that holidays seem to prod people into discussions about politics when family and friends get together — fates can turn, as they did for the Liberals in 2005 over Christmas, though that was partly because the RCMP decided to announce an investigation into activity in Paul Martin’s government.
(We know that won’t happen again in this election, though, because the RCMP said just this week that it had a policy of not announcing investigations unless criminal charges are being laid.)
Second, forget about that old saw that elections are no time to discuss serious issues. In fairness to former prime minister Kim Campbell, that wasn’t exactly what she said in the 1993 campaign — she was talking about how one couldn’t reform social programs in 47 days. Still, the short, five-week-minimum campaigns since 1993 have proven not really long enough to have serious discussions of issues.
With 11 weeks, though, Canadians might actually ask politicians to talk about climate change or pensions or what we’re going to do about health care as the population ages. Voters can ask for more than sound bites and empty rhetoric. We might even have a sustained conversation about government as more than a tax cut delivery systems and citizens as more than mere “taxpayers.”
Third, we might see better advertising. Years ago, when I asked why political ads were so bad — especially compared to some clever ones in the private sector — experts told me that five weeks wasn’t long enough to use devices such as humour or subtlety.
Maybe with 11 weeks, though, the political ad types can stretch their skills a bit, knowing that Canadians will get awfully tired of earnest or over-the-top ads, and may even punish the parties who speak to voters as though they’re stupid.
Speaking of advertising, the launch of an official campaign means that all parties and even third parties are subject to legal limits on how much they can spend, to ensure a level and fair playing field. Over more than two months, we may get used to this. We may want to ask that the same rules also apply when the election is over, so we don’t see parties flooding the airwaves in between campaigns with attack ads. Who knows? We may even say after an 11-week campaign that we’d like to see all political parties adhering to the same Advertising Standards Canada code that applies to the private sector — “truth, fairness, accuracy.”
The fourth advantage of a long campaign may not seem to some like a plus, but let’s remain in an upbeat mood. Thanks to this long campaign, Canadians are going to see more of their political leaders, especially the reclusive and media-averse prime minister. This coming Thursday, voters will be treated to the first of several debates among the leaders, the kickoff one hosted by Maclean’s magazine and its Rogers broadcast partners.
Beyond the debates, though, Harper is going to have to talk to media and Canadians far more than he currently does. If you’re an oldfashioned type who believes the prime minister should be open and accessible, this is a heartening development.
It may well be that some cynicism has gone into the planning of the election now looming in Canada’s immediate future. But even the Grinch couldn’t steal Christmas.
If it is to be an 11-week campaign, voters and politicians can use that extra time to make democracy better. sdelacourt@bell.net