Harper’s Conservatives need to get timing of the speech just right

Tabling plans for cuts now would hurt Tory support

Only Richard Nixon could go to China. And only Paul Martin could slay the deficit in the 1990s and emerge a political superstar, albeit temporarily.

Therein lies the tricky political calculation faced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the rest of the Conservative cabinet, as they lay the table for their 2012 budget, expected to be announced in late March or early April. The delay — federal budgets are typically presented in late February or early March — has been attributed to the sheer complexity of determining how deep the cuts will be, and where they will fall.

Here’s another theory: Having been mule- kicked by a public backlash over Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ disastrous handling of Bill C- 30, the so- called online snooping bill, and now embroiled in a burgeoning scandal over fraudulent phone calls made during the last federal election, the government needs daylight between this and any future controversy — including blowback over budget measures expected to be more miserly than anything we’ve seen since the Conservatives took power in 2006.

Only Nixon, an avowed red- baiter and sworn enemy of Communists everywhere, could get away politically with shaking hands with Chairman Mao, which he did on a visit to China in 1972. And only Martin, a Liberal social reformer who waxed effusive about all the wonderful things government could achieve, could gut federal departments and slash transfer payments to the provinces, as the former finance minister did in his deficit-slaying budget of 1995.

Had he seemed to relish the task, Martin never would have got away with it, let alone been praised for it.

Extend the logic to Harper: Only a government that wields its tough love, “more in sadness than in anger,” can be absolved politically for the hardships it imposes — whether through thousands of lost civil- service jobs, a later retirement age or a curtailed CBC. Yet that’s what cuts of between five and 10 per cent — more in some departments — will entail. It would be one thing for Liberals, who never met a big government program they didn’t love, to make such cuts. It’s another entirely for Conservatives to do so.

Like many horribly damaging political mistakes, the Toews backlash hit the government unawares, like a truck broadsiding a car.

The initial mistake — Toews’ now-immortal slam against his critics ( they can either stand with us or with the child pornographers) was compounded by a half- hearted apology, then by a quixotic and self- pitying letter to constituents, then by his bizarre admission that he hadn’t closely read his own legislation. For Toews personally, this has been a train wreck.

But the damage to the government is even more significant. For the Toews saga fits into the one narrative that has been most damaging to Stephen Harper since before he became prime minister — that he is a bully with autocratic leanings, who presides over a cabinet of bullies, who shove their way to victory when persuasion doesn’t work.

There could not be a worse poster child for the Harper government, as it prepares to deliver a harsh, belttightening budget, than Toews. Yet he is now the minister top of mind. The robocalls story — fraudulent campaign phone calls, traced to a firm that worked for the Conservative party across Canada, including in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s own riding — further reinforces the narrative that the Conservatives will do anything to win. That story will provide opposition fodder for weeks to come.

It’s no secret that Harper and his strategists have deliberately employed controversial tactics, on controversial issues — the long- gun registry being the best example — because acrimony keeps the donations flowing. What’s interesting, politically, is that this has always been a high- wire act, with moderate Conservatives, particularly in vote- rich Ontario, hanging in the balance.

Blast too hard with the flamethrower and moderate Ontario Conservatives, folks who remember both Bill Davis and Finance Minister Paul Martin with fondness, get turned off. Look for polls to show a sharp drop in Tory support in Ontario, beginning with the Toews fuss and deepening as the robocalls story makes itself felt.

The upshot? Expect the government to delay handing down its tough- love budget as long as it possibly can. In the interim, expect a tone of contrition and moderation from government ministers across the board, as they grapple with their worst twoweek period in recent memory. It may even be time for Foreign Minister John Baird to make another speech in defence of the rights of gays and lesbians overseas.

If the Tories can’t somehow manage to change the channel — and if they go into Budget 2012 perceived as vengeful partisan warriors, hacking and slashing with abandon — they will suffer their first serious damage since last May’s majority win.