Background: After spending $300 million for an election to congeal his minority into a majority government, Stephen Harper made little progress and ended up with another minority government. This appeared to be well and good, despite the fact that a coalition of the left-wing parties plus the Bloc Quebecois could easily defeat the Conservative government in a confidence motion if it decided to do so. However, because Harper failed to deliver an economic stimulus package in his fall budget, the coalition is attempting to take over as government.

That’s the official reason, anyway. Stanley Hartt argues that the whole thing is a pretext to prevent the Conservatives from cutting per-vote campaign funding. Lysiane Gagnon, predictably, thinks this is fantastic.

Governor-General Michaelle Jean is faced with an essentially subjective decision about whether to accept the coalition’s overtures to replace the minority government.

Bloggers are amused.

This is an interesting bit of political theatre in that the left coalition is one of rejection rather than agreement. Dion disagrees with the Bloc’s reason for existence. Layton smelled blood in the water and was poised to take over for Dion at the slightest misstep. I have no doubt that the parties can cooperate, but their agenda will be difficult to characterize as anything but white bread.

This all assumes that Michaelle Jean feels it’s appropriate to allow Dion to step in as Prime Minister, of course, though it would be difficult for her to disallow it. The political costs to defeating a motion of confidence and calling another election would be ridiculously high; if Jean values continuity and stability over effective government, then it would be against the left’s interest to defeat a motion of confidence lest they go through another election just to have a similar result but provide a procedural opportunity to request to form a government.

I don’t think it would. In each of three polls ending 2 October posted on NoDice.ca, the three-party left could take a majority of the popular vote with a fair margin of error in their favour. (The numbers are: 52% left coalition, 37 Conservatives, 9 Bloc; 57, 35, 10; and 54, 36, 9.) Of course, the caveat of distortion from taking the popular vote rather than the riding-by-riding vote applies. The seat projections at NoDice are nearly a month out of date.

So here’s a simple approach: I mapped (in OpenOffice.org Calc) the popular vote for each party, the number of seats, number of seats divided by percentage of the popular vote, and percentage of the popular vote per seat won. (I threw out the Conservatives’ 1993 number, since 2 seats and 16 percent of the popular vote skewed the numbers badly.) I then averaged the Seats/Percentage numbers over the last 5 elections to find the coefficient of the popular vote.

The coefficients are:

BQ:4.18

Conservative (plus Canadian Alliance): 2.76

Liberal:3.92

NDP: 1.52

Based on incumbency advantage, I’m going to arbitrarily adjust the Conservative coefficient upward 50 basis points to 3.26. I’m also going to arbitrarily issue the Greens 5 seats, because their lack of representation makes it impossible to find a coefficient. Thus distributed, I multipled the coefficients by averaged current support based on the 3 polls and rounded. The seats (accounting for 292 seats) are:

BQ: 40

C: 117

L: 97

NDP: 28

Green: 5

Under these numbers, a Liberal/NDP/Green coalition would have 130 seats – not a majority, even of the smaller number of distributed seats, but still more than the Conservatives.

This is NOT A PREDICTION, though. The numbers are utterly lacking in rigour. It was merely meant as a very rough demonstration that the Bloc would not be necessary for a coalition government by the left.

Harper’s first tactic: fail to discuss the details of his own green plan, but devote his time to criticizing the Grits’ Green Shift, as Jeffrey Simpson details. The carbon tax, Harper says, would not only be fiscally unsound but would harm the Canadian citizens. Thus far, according to Simpson, he has not discussed his own plan to reduce emissions.

Tactic two: if you say it enough, Quebec will believe you. Harper appears to be counting on Quebec for support, especially considering the Liberals’ recent failures there. His hat hangs on the idea that he has restored fiscal balance in the federal government’s interactions with Quebec, and that he supports Quebec autonomy. The Quebec Minister of Finance publicly disagrees with him on the first point; on the second, he appears to be committing a fallacy of equivocation. Harper’s idea of Quebec autonomy is likely very different from what Quebecois mean when they use the word.

Tactic three: it’s those Ivory Tower Liberals! Harper is doing his part to appeal to any anti-intellectual sentiment he can find in Canada. The juxtaposition is valid, of course – Harper’s opponent, Dion, is a Ph.D. who left the Academy to enter politics. Harper’s cuts to arts programs also make sense from a purely fiscal standpoint, since his policy appears to be to cut whatever federal programs he can manage to. Harper’s attempt to shift his image appears dishonest to some, including the author of the linked editorial. The problem, of course, is that he can carry off wearing a cardigan marginally better than Stephane Dion can. Obligatory discussion of arts as non-elite.

Finally, tactic four: govern with a baseball bat. Harper’s style of minority government may well shift if he gets another minority, despite the Bloc’s fears that he’ll get a majority. What Harper is doing here, though, is not developing a “Conservative dynasty,” as Lysiane Gagnon argues in the second linked editorial. Gagnon’s choice of phrasing is important:

Mr. Harper wants to establish a Conservative “dynasty.” He wants to transform the Conservatives into Canada’s “natural governing party,” a status once held by the Liberals. This is another reason why Mr. Harper would have no choice but to stick close to the centre of the ideological spectrum.

She suggests that Harper wants to transform the party. I think that phrasing is incorrect – Harper’s take-it-or-leave-it governance belies a desire to transform the government.

As I discussed here, there’s a perception that the Liberal Party is suffering because Stephane Dion lacks charisma and the public perceives him as weak. Margaret Wente agrees – “At the start of this campaign, Mr. Dion decided to forget about his team and go head-to-head with Harper,” Wente says. “To hell with the Liberal brand!” Wente’s article isn’t terribly insightful – she points to Dion’s professorial manner and his poor public speaking skills, as well as the fragmented left and the charisma that the fragmentors (Elizabeth May and Jack Layton) bring to the table. She further blames him for staying on-message about the Green Shift when the voters are worrying about Wall Street, but that isn’t exactly a poor decision. Shifting gears in reaction to something that’s likely to be fairly transient in the news would simply label Dion as a panderer.

Jeffrey Simpson also criticizes the Dion campaign, discussing the Green Shift and the Liberal campaign’s attendant “‘funds’ [and] ‘studies’”. He points to the continuing cuts as something that the Canadian people just won’t stand for:

“If the Liberals ever got a chance to implement this platform – a highly unlikely prospect – they couldn’t do it all, even if they wanted to, unless the economy started roaring again or they dropped their insistence on a balanced budget with a $3-billion contingency fund.”

That is, the Green Shift is, as Simpson says, “a political loser” despite being the right thing to do. The externality of climate change must be imposed, Simpson says, upon everybody because otherwise the market will fail. This whole campaign keeps reminding me more and more of Jimmy Carter forcing the country to swallow the bitter pill of anti-inflationary policy.

The problem is that Dion isn’t in power yet.

Jeffrey Simpson: The Liberals’ old hands assert that running on the Liberal Party “brand”, rather than on Stephane Dion’s reputation and leadership ability, is the way to win seats in Quebec. The Grits lost a recent by-election in Westmount, Quebec, to the New Democratic Party, which Simpson takes as evidence that the brand is failing to sell in even its former strongholds. (Once again, the issue that arises is one of a divided left.)

Lawrence Martin: Martin approaches the Dion-versus-Brand discussion from a different standpoint, opening with a story about an MP approaching Dion and saying he wouldn’t run for party leadership until after the upcoming election. The implication is that Dion’s party is splintered, but that he should be running based on the strength of his party rather than his own leadership prowess. I can’t say I disagree – Dion’s strength has never been personal charisma, and the strength of the Liberal Party in any incarnation is not supposed to be the ability of one person to lead.

Listeriosis, the tormentor: The Conservative Party loses yet more steam apologizing for foolish gaffes, this time when the Agricultural Minister couldn’t resist making a cold cuts pun in reference to a food-safety crisis in Canada. The editorial makes note of two prior gaffes by the Tories: the pooping-puffin ad, and the insinuation by a communications official that the father of a Canadian troop killed in Afghanistan was causing a ruckus because he was a leftist.

Rick Salutin: The Tories are running on Stephen Harper’s small-government aspirations. Salutin is one of many who blames deregulation for the current US mortgage meltdown and for the listerosis oubtreak referenced in the Globe and Mail editorial, above. Salutin predicts that Harper will fail to get a majority, though seems mostly partisan in that reasoning.

Jeffrey Simpson, again: Stephen Harper’s campaign bears a strong resemblance to former Australain PM John Howard’s in government methodology (many tiny tax cuts to favoured constituent groups being courted) and to Karl Rove’s in image (attacking the opposition relentlessly without regard for honesty):

The Liberal proposal will raise taxes on carbon-producing products (but not gasoline) and lower taxes on incomes and companies. Mr. Harper says, however, that there will only be a “carbon tax,” a distortion of the Liberal position. Nobody, Mr. Harper insists, should believe any politician who says the new revenues from a tax on carbon would be used to reduce other taxes. Never happens or has happened, he says, even though B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell is doing a similar tax shift. Is Mr. Campbell a liar, too?

The overarching themes of the week are, for Stephane Dion, a party in trouble (he lacks the confidence of his party colleagues and the strength to sell the party) and for Stephen Harper, a party’s strength being sapped by negativity.

A Strategic Counsel poll tracks 45 “key” ridings – 20 are in Ontario, 15 in Quebec and 10 in B.C.; 17 ridings won by Liberals, 16 by Conservatives, 8 by the Bloc and 4 by the NDP. Surveys are conducted daily and use 3-day running tallies. The Globe and Mail sums up the poll:

The Conservatives have still gained ground since the last election in 45 ridings where the races were close, but their opponents have rebounded a little since the campaign for the Oct. 14 election officially opened on the weekend.

However, the poll may overestimate NDP and Green support, since 60% see large differences between the major parties and may therefore change their support to the Tories or (more likely) the Grits on Election Day.

NoDice.ca has two sets of polling numbers from this week, averaging the percentage support for each party to 8.5% BQ, 37.5% Conservative, 8.5% Green, 25% Liberal and 10% NDP. Monday’s seat projection, which of course doesn’t reflect any of this week’s advancements, predicts that the seats will break down at 143 Conservative, 94 Liberal, 29 NDP, 41 BQ, and 2 “other”.

Meanwhile, Robert Silver somewhat facetiously runs recent polling numbers through a projector and gets a somewhat different result: 125 Conservative, 122 Liberal , 45 Bloc Quebecois, 16 NDP. Will it be that close? We’ll have to wait and see.

This article focuses on the newfound prominence and effects of women in this Canadian federal election. New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton and Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have withdrawn their opposition to Green Party leader Elizabeth May joining in the televised party leaders’ debates; noted Green Party supporter Stephane Dion had long supported May’s presence at the debate, despite what author Jeffrey Simpson points out as the Greens’ likely result, siphoning votes and possibly seats from the Liberals. Dion, the leader of the Liberal Party, had vowed that 1/3 of the Grits’ candidates would be women, and he managed to run 106 women (about 3 more than the minimum he had promised). Prime Minister Harper, meanwhile, has adopted the mantle of “family-friendly candidate,” for no apparent reason; he sees this as a way of tapping into the vast number of female voters.

Thus far, however, Harper’s main campaign pledge has been to cut the federal excise taxes on diesel and aviation fuel. (Cite: This roundup article by several authors.) Even as Harper positioned himself as the family-friendly candidate, Dion has pledged to double the Conservatives’ $1200-per-year child care allowance and restore the Court Challenges Program, a funding program for lawsuits advancing language and equality rights. Dion, who claims anti-intellectualism on the Tories’ part, has summed his message up as “cut income taxes, shift to pollution”. Dipper Jack Layton joined the green bandwagon, attacking Big Oil.

Layton has also decried ad hominem politics in this election, suggesting that respect has left politics. The Globe and Mail, in a Friday editorial, agreed. The Conservative Party has blamed individuals for the two missteps thus far (Puffingate and the attack of a man whose son was lost fighting in Afghanistan), but the Globe and Mail argues that those gaffes were indicative of the party’s attitude generally. In order to win their majority, the editorial says, the Tories will need to raise the tone of the campaign.

And raise the tone they will – Harper, as discussed here, is attempting to make himself appear warmer. The linked editorial characterizes this focus as charming, especially in opposition to the concurrent United States Presidential election.:

In the U.S., voters have to worry about how to extricate themselves from the quagmire of Iraq, and who can bail them out of the worst credit crisis in 70 years, and how their nation can repair its shattered moral leadership in the world. Up here, we can debate for days over whether Ms. May ought to be allowed to play with the big guys. The stakes could not be smaller. How wonderful.

The New York Times crystallizes the election similarly:

Mr. Harper is not charismatic and often appears irritated, particularly when he is challenged. But his personal approval ratings in pre-election polls are significantly higher than those of Stéphane Dion, the Liberal leader. Mr. Harper was named potentially “the best prime minister” by 50 percent, compared with 20 percent for Mr. Dion.

Mr. Dion, a former academic, is entering his first election as party leader. He speaks English awkwardly, and even in French, his first language, Mr. Dion at a podium can sound as if he were still lecturing dryly on public administration and political science at the Université de Montréal.

The other players in the Canadian election, of course, might consider the stakes quite large indeed. Particularly, the Bloc Quebecois is making an attempt to position itself as a much larger factor in the next government, and with that focus, they invite attacks from both sides of the fence. Former Parti Quebecois minister Jacques Brassard has accused the Bloc of being a clone of the NDP and pushing the sovereigntist portion of their party platform onto the back burner. Meanwhile, sociology professor Pierre Drouilly poo-poos the idea that the Bloc is a dying party – “The Bloc remains strong in and around Montreal. And if the Liberal support collapses, they may even win seats there,” he says, going on to predict that the BQ will win most of the 75 parliamentary seats in Quebec.

Are you interested in running your own numbers? Check out this projector. As for me? Predictions sound like analysis to me. I’ll just wait and see.

The issue on everyone’s mind is the TV consortium’s decision not to allow Elizabeth May to participate in the leaders’ debates for the October 14th federal election. May, who Norman Spector describes as “media-savvy and articulate” here, is the leader of the Green party of Canada. Former Prime Minister Joe Clark (the Progressive Conservative who gave Trudeau a lunch break from June 1979 to March 1980) argues in an editorial that May should be allowed to debate, on two grounds: the first is that May being included in the debate would make Canada appear inclusive. Aside from begging the question of why inclusiveness is necessarily good, Clark also fails to answer why the practices need changing in the first place – that is, he assumes his conclusion.

Clark’s second ground is that “[i]n nine provinces and three territories, the Greens have much more support than the Bloc Québécois, which is not only invited to the debates but has the power to veto other participants.” He attempts to reframe the debate, finally, as “Why keep the Greens out?” rather than “Why let the Greens debate?” (I won’t attempt to answer that question – that would be analysis.)

A noted activist on the Greens’ behalf is Stéphane Dion. Dion is apparently also contemplating a run for political office.

Norman Spector, cited above, discussed the nature of Stephen Harper’s minority government as the main point of today’s editorial. He argues that the one-party Liberal rule was bad for Canada, and therefore that the Conservative union was a net positive for the Canadian government. This position implicitly plays into the May Debate, of course – allowing May to debate would be a move toward legitimising the Greens in the eyes of Canadian voters.

It’s important, I think, to understand that Spector is with one breath praising the union of the right half of the Canadian political spectrum, and with the next, damning a Darwinistic swallowing-up of the Green agenda by the Liberals. (That works under an intuitive model similar to the United States’ system, where prominent single issues are generally absorbed by one of the major parties – witness, for example, the polarisation of environmentalism as a small-L liberal issue and the attendant political trend of the right denying anthropogenic global warming.)

The second portion of his article argues that the minority government by the Conservatives is positive politically because a majority government would raise the expectations of the hard right that he implement their policies, “including some that go well beyond the mainstream of Canadian public opinion.” Thus, a minority government allows for something of a middle way.

Finally, Jeffrey Simpson spends his daily column on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s attempts to look like a warm family man. (Does this remind anyone else of Al Gore in 2000?) He also praises Harper’s small, incremental, and constant reminders of the Conservatives’ party line of smaller government – the child tax credit increase, the lowering of the GST, and so on. He notes that the point appears to be to contrast the Conservatives’ tax-cut philosophy with the Grits’ Green Shift.

That the Conservatives are mangling the intent and details of the Liberal plan, ignoring its significant personal income tax reductions, was quite predictable.

They are winning the public-relations battle hands-down.

Gentlemen, we have an election.

With that in mind, let’s leave the analysis of the upcoming Canadian federal election to the experts. I’ll take a look at the news and editorials behind the cut.

It’s apparently all but certain that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will call an election this weekend. (Quick primer on the Westminster System as used in Canada.) This is widely considered to be fishy, since he introduced a law mandating fixed-date elections and setting the next one to be in October of 2009. Nonetheless, the Governor General is unlikely to refuse. Harper is leading a Conservative minority government, which is possible under the Westminster system largely because of the number of parties in Canada. (Ah! Parties in Canada! Greens! Red Tories! Honest-to-goodness socialists! A bunch of guys in Quebec who want to secede, and who manage to win seats in the national Parliament! It’s just all so quaint.) The strategic value of an election now is clear – if Harper believes he can get a majority government, then of course he’ll be all the stronger leading into the fixed-date election in 2009. Wednesday’s Globe and Mail editorial posits that Harper “senses an opportunity to grow.” Indeed, polling data from Simon Fraser University and a CBC poll indicates that the aside from NDP support rising, the Conservatives are up and everyone else is down.

But we’re getting into analysis, and that’s better left to the pros.

Stephane Dion is widely purported to be the auteur of this election:

The campaign will be a battle of low-watt personalities, leaders who have criss-crossed the country for a couple of years stirring up apathy. It will come down to one geeky guy.

We all know what Stephen Harper will do. With his Olympian self-assurance, he’ll run a cold-eyed campaign. It will be targeted and efficient. Few smiles. Even fewer stumbles.

We all know what Jack Layton will do. His brain is as tightly wound as his Schwarzenegger physique. Like the Prime Minister, this is his third campaign. He knows where to drive the orange bus.

These folk – and Gilles Duceppe, as well – are known quantities. That leaves Mr. Bean. The election will pivot, decidedly so, on his performance. If Stéphane Dion appreciably exceeds his remarkably low expectations, he can win. If, as most expect, he trips over his own tongue and toes, it will be John Turner revisited. Conservative majority.

That is to say, the election is Dion’s to win, assuming he doesn’t screw it up like he always does. Indeed, Roy MacGregor warns that Dion has been “underestimated by those who chose to dismiss” him.

Lawrence Martin, on the other hand, suggests that Dion will be hurt by the Greens, the Canadian version of the US’s Ralph Nader vehicle. Dion, indeed, has been trying to siphon support from the Green Party. This is Political Science 101 – when the Conservatives devoured the Canadian Alliance, they consolidated support. The Liberals are essentially running against themselves with the Greens and the NDP fighting for the same seats.

It’s going to be an interesting one for sure. Who’s going to win? Who knows? I don’t do political analysis anymore.