In all its glory, the first week of the 41st General Election concluded with what has been possibly the dullest day thus far. Aside from Stephen Harper’s policy announcement that the Conservatives plan on eliminating the $2 per vote party-subsidy – an unsurprising proposal since the media has been hampering the Conservatives on it for a while now – there was really no story to tell.
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff spent most of today in southern Ontario working to garner as much support possible in the key background electoral districts of Kitchener-Centre and Kitchener-Waterloo. The Conservatives must fight tooth and nail to keep these ridings – only winning them in 2008 by the slimmest of margins – especially since their incumbents, Stephen Woodworth and Peter Braid respectively, are not stellar candidates. From what I have heard, the Liberals intend on releasing their party’s platform in the coming days, so Ignatieff stayed clear from proposing any grand ideas – all he promised was another one billion dollar program for family care. Besides, the Liberals already promised their billion dollar national day care boondoggle (the 6th time I believe since 1993) yesterday, and they would hardly want to take away from the remarkable and mind-blowing astonishment voters get from hearing about it for the first (6th) time.
Instead, Ignatieff filled the void of policy talk by relishing the fact that Stephen Harper went back on his word on a possible one-on-one debate between the two, writing an open letter and then twittering about it. Also, according to my sources from the region, he went on the radio airwaves to answer a few questions from the regionally popular commentator Jeff Allan (507 News: All New Radio). It was thought he did well and answered clearly.
Somewhere in the political wilderness (actually Sudbury, Ontario), Jack Layton promised something about health care – judging from the podium he spoke from he wants “More Doctors & Nurses”) – but considering the fact I actually had to exert effort to find out what the NDP were up to today by spending a wasteful minute googling Jack’s name, they may as well have not existed. With that said, it was important for Layton to visit northern Ontario, because his party captured five seats in the region in the last election. Their lack of enthusiasm for scrapping the gun-registry may yet to haunt them, but I suspect they are more worried about the Liberals taking their seats than the Conservatives.
As mentioned earlier, Stephen Harper made a typical policy announcement from Moncton. According to Harper, the per-vote subsidy – as enormous welfare cheques to a political party’s war chest – is the means to why we are constantly having elections in Canada. In part, I agree with the Conservatives on this one, but I suspect this policy announcement will have the effect of energizing their base, rather than attracting new voters to vote for them. There is a slight change to the proposal, compared to their attempt to rid of it in 2008. They plan on phasing out the subsidy in 3 years, rather than suddenly eliminating it.
And that is pretty much it for the national leaders. Nothing special. Nothing bizarre. Nothing captivating. Nevertheless, it looks like Quebec Premier Jean Charest is determined to be a thorn in Stephen Harper's side. He came out today condemning the Conservative plan that would provide financial support for Labrador’s Lower Churchill hydro project to build power lines from Labrador through Nova Scotia and potentially into the United States. Charest is afraid that this would make the Lower Churchill hydro project into a possible competitor with Hydro-Quebec (from my understanding the Atlantic provinces would be able to sell their energy directly to the U.S. rather than through Quebec as the current arrangement has them doing), and is telling Quebeckers Stephen Harper is betraying them by giving a subsidy for Atlantic Canada. The implications of this could be bad for the few Conservatives they have in Quebec. It will hurt their chances from taking a few seats from the Bloc as well.
For the most part, election coverage for today has been a bit dull and will have little effect. Perhaps Charest’s bashing of Stephen Harper will play in Quebec, but nationally nothing will change. I will argue, however, this works in Ingatieff’s favour, since Harper really needs to step up his “A” game if he wants a majority. In fact, a new Nanos Leadership Index released today has shown that, as of 31 March, Ingatieff’s leadership rank has gone up 4 points since two weeks ago – from 40 to 44. Although Harper's leadership score remains far ahead at 98 points, Ingatieff’s small gains make me assess the Liberals as the winners for 1 April.
Day 7 Winner: Liberal Party of Canada (slightly)
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