Tag: 2011 Canadian Politics

So, now that there’s a majority there appears no need to couch any words. OK, not like Damian Goddard or anything but there seems no need to walk lightly:

• – no tax breaks for cross border shoppers. Mr. Flaherty seems to be saying that some taxes are good taxes. Please tell Steve. Unlike hostage policy, no harmonization.
• – Platform says “a re-elected Stephen Harper government will eliminate the deficit by 2014-15.” Now, my actual pal Chiz says: “We will do the strategic and operating review and we will book [those savings] once the review is done. That will get us to balance a year earlier, but is not part of the upcoming budget.” Given that income splitting waits in this, any delay is not inspiring.

Nothing like a gotcha and it’s early days yet but there is a sort of openness possible now, no need to spin with four years of clear sailing before them and us. Where will it take us? A chance to “show that our ideas are actually quite common among the Canadian electorate”? Maybe. But the idea that we don’t have to parse every sentence like a question on a high school English test on a topic studied on that sick day you had will come as a relief.

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Apparently I was channeling Paul Wells on Monday. Like him, I am now amazed:

Just about all the trends have changed. Nanos now has the Conservative top-line national vote down to essentially where it was in 2008; other national polls put that vote lower. In Ontario, Nanos has the NDP vote above its 2008 level on an upward trend. Other polls I’ve seen put Conservative vote in that province lower than Nanos does. The NDP vote is entering territory where it starts to endanger Conservatives in some place, where before it mostly helped them by splitting the anti-Conservative vote with the Liberals.

Who is to blame? Harper’s campaign advisors. As Ben frets, I noted that I have a lot of like for Harper but don’t get his presentation of himself. Backing asbestos exports? As I wrote in January, Canada’s role in this poison is disgusting, but as a campaign message it’s insane. The 2010 black quilted Canada jacket? Yawn. Put on a hockey jersey, you dope. The “just happen to be jamming in the living room” stuff. The kids will flock to that CCR stuff. Sure they will.

As a result, so far Harper is failing, Iggy is really failing and Gilles is failing big big time. But it call can change. And it can all turn on three-way splits. Who am I gonna vote for?

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An odd piece in the Globe this morning about the alleged Tory strategy to create a new nationalism:

If you wonder what that new nationalism is and where to find it, the Conservatives will point you to Canada’s belligerent domination of the Vancouver’s Winter Olympics; to the new generation of immigrants, most of them from Asia, who have never heard of Louis Riel or the Crow rate, and who will never be made to care; to the intense new pride in the accomplishments of the armed forces from Afghanistan to Haiti. And they’ll point to the North… Only the tiniest fraction of Canadians will ever visit the Canadian Arctic, let alone live there, but many will be attracted to the Conservative agenda of economic development, military reinforcement and aggressive assertions of sovereignty.

Oh dear. If that were true – and I don’t really think it is – Mr. Harper is Mr. Parizeau’s best pal, both believing that Canada is not a real nation. First, no one really cares about the Vancouver Olympics now. If there was any real opposition, Harper pulling on that souvenir zip up sweat shirt from the games would be a bit of a giggle. Be honest – “we” won (and blew tax dollars of) medals for sports no other nation else cares about and some few in ours do – golds in curling, short track speed skating, skeleton and, yes, hockey are of little interest in the global sports brag up. Wake me when we win downhill skiing or cross country consistently… not to mention soccer, baseball or rugby.

Second, building a history-ish heritage based on the needs of those “who have never heard of Louis Riel or the Crow rate, and who will never be made to care” is bizarre. If that is the case, why bother with French Canada repelling the American revolution, the creation of Ontario by the Loyalists, Joe Howe and responsible government or even Vimy Ridge? None of these things are really understood by most Canadians let alone new Canadians but to discard them in favour of politically expedient fantasy only reinforces that Canada is a stop on the way to a real nation worth investing in for the long haul. Not a nation of new comers. A nation of transients.

Third, the Arctic? Well, if there is any left to celebrate in a few years there might be a point. But, let’s be honest – to pull off this theme of the rustic frontier it might be better if the leadership of the party did not look like the Chess Club Reunion of 1978. Say what you like about Trudeau, he made the canoe cool to people who’d never encountered a black fly. Could you imagine the creams and inhalers most Tory Cabinet ministers would have to haul along with them for a weekend tenting trip into a Provincial Park let alone the actual Arctic?

Fortunately, the article is a silly stretch, making something out of a political campaign pamphlet. Tories have no more capacity to rearrange the available facts and factoids to create a new history than Canadians have a capacity to understand their actual history. 905 only needs to know where the Tims is and when the next Argos, Leafs or Jays loss is on TV. The path to glory runs the suburbs and there are no founding myths to be found there. In fact, if anything is to be taken from the article, maybe it’s that line about those “who will never be made to care.” Isn’t that true of all Canadians? The new motto might be “je me vais oublier.”

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