Week 1 in Review

As part of a continuing effort I hope to present a reoccurring strategic summary of how each party did generally against three criteria:
1) Were they effective in shaping the national ballot question?
2) Were they effective in responding in attacks?
3) Did they position themselves effectively in the policies and promises made thus far?

I’ve made the intentional decision to exclude the Bloc Quebequois from my assessment, because the Bloc doesn’t fit the normative paradigm of a Canadian political party.

The NDP

I would criticize the NDP’s ineffective attempt at framing the ballot question for voters, if I could discern a clear message from the NDP whatsoever. I suppose the biggest problem the NDP face is that they need to frame a drastically different message from one end of the country to another. In BC it’s more about the Tories. In Ontario – it’s all about taking down the Liberals. But I think it’s more than that. The NDP’s ballot question, I believe, needs to be the only one that counts – you need to elect NDP MPs to keep a minority government honest. When the electoral prospect of a majority government becomes more and more a reality, it leaves the NDP little room to manoeuvre in.

In terms of policy I am truly baffled at the NDP’s decisions. I would think their main strategy would be to press the Liberals from the margins. That means wherever the Liberals are, the NDP is a little bit more. Yet Mr Layton’s recent policy announcement of increases in the same corporate taxes that the Liberals want to raise while at the same time lowering some business taxes has put the NDP in unfamiliar ground – more centrist than the Liberals. I fail to see how this benefits the NDP significantly (except for possibly the highly competitive battleground of BC). Yet the NDP’s recent credit card interest rate cap announcement provides that sharp contrast one would more expect from the NDP, and positions them a lot more favourably with respect to the other national parties. Overall I would say the NDP has chosen a mixed policy positioning that risks it being ignored exactly in a campaign where it cannot afford to be ignored.

I really can’t comment on the NDP’s ability to respond to attacks, mainly because they have had scant attacks launched against them. Most of the attacks come in the veiled threat of a “Coalition”, which I think overall the party and the leader has been much more capable of defending, and counter-attacking than either the Liberals or the Bloc Quebequois.


The Liberals

The Liberals have not really shaped the national debate whatsoever this past week. The question they need out there is “are you better off now than you were five years ago.” That question has gotten buried somewhere in the talk of “Coalition” or of one-on-one debate shenanigans (Memo to National Party Leaders: no one cares who doesn’t want to debate who one-on-one). I don’t think Ignatieff has been particularly on message, though I suspect it must be very difficult him to do just that right now.

I do think that this past week has show cased some very important policy for the Liberals that places them very well strategically - but not perfectly. The new education bursaries and the new home care EI supplement are sticking to areas that are true “winnable” issues for the Liberals: education and social policy. The Tories aren’t going to be able to easily nullify these sharp policy differences and the NDP seems almost uninterested. That being said, I believe firmly that the Liberals should have never committed to ending the corporate tax rate reduction for this year. Taxes are not a winnable issue for the Liberals. Providing this sharp policy difference allows the Tories to charge Ignatieff with the “high tax” label.

I think that the Liberal response to NDP and Tory attacks has been surprisingly well this past week. From what I’ve seen there wasn’t a single headline the Tories could make with the Liberal response finding its way directly in the story. Whatever they’re doing on this front they need to keep doing.


The Tories

The Tories have been an abysmal failure this past week at responding to opposition attacks. It’s been almost a joke. News article, after article this past week (that I’ve read) has shown no political response from the right wing party. This leads me either to conclude that the Tories are either utterly disorganized or (believing they are ahead) they are more afraid to respond and screw up to actually respond. There is the possibility that the decision to limit reporters to 5 questions a day has given every excuse for the press to ignore Harper’s response team. Either way this past week I was stunned to see a national governing party so utterly unable to counter attacks.

The Tories did do one thing right this past week: They announced the Income Splitting promise. The measure will allow Canadian families with children to save thousands a year in taxes – a true bread and butter issue for the Tories. The economy and taxes are a natural “winnable” issue for the Conservatives. Poignant is the fact that the best opposition response so far has been to criticize the late implementation period. Very few on the left have actually come out to criticize the measure and national opposition leaders seem to have become very quickly silent on the issue.

The Tories started the week tarring and feathering Count Ignatieff with the “Coalition” label. That issue, it’s becoming obvious, is the central ballot question Harper wants to make. It has dominated the debate of the last week. If it were only for this reason, and this reason alone I think that I could say that the Tories were the most effective national political party this past week.

That was the week that was. The Tories didn't perform spectacularly - they just did less bad than others. To me it's them that therefore wins this week.

And The First Week Ends With A Whimper: Day 7

In all its glory, the first week of the 41^st 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 6^th 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 (6^th) 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)