Spendthrift Liberals get free kick at 'sorry' Conservatives

By Don Martin
Canwest News Service

Hon. Gerry Ritz, Canada's Minister of Agriculture, looks at his apology as he walks toward media members gathered in front of the Confederation Building on Wednesday. (Mike Carroccetto/The Ottawa Citizen)

OTTAWA - It was Prime Minister Stephen Harper's clearest and cleanest shot yet at discrediting his main opponent, but his party's "sorry" campaign threw him off script. Again.

On the day when the Liberals practically begged Harper to attack them for putting on the ritz in a wild spending spree platform topped by a massive $70-billion price tag boost on Thursday, a different Ritz stole Harper's thunder and pushed the gaffe-plagued Conservatives back on the defensive.

Okay, bad pun, but of course we're talking about Gerry Ritz, the mild-mannered agriculture minister with a warped sense of humour who forgot conference calls can be taped and sick jokes preserved until leaked for maximum political damage.

To describe a lethal listeriosis outbreak at a Maple Leaf meat processing plant as a "death by a thousand cuts - cold cuts" is the sound of Ritz talking himself out of the next cabinet lineup.

He's a decent guy and isn't afraid of a little dirt under his fingernails - which is a good thing for an agriculture minister, not a bad thing like the "dirt under their fingernails that transmit diseases" which fellow Saskatchewan MP Tom Lukiwski linked to "homosexual faggots" in a video.

Sorry, I digress. With so many Tory foot-in-mouth outbreaks, it's hard to keep track, but the mini-epidemic of misspeaks certainly explains Harper's sock-stuffing gag on his party.

Unfortunately for Harper, his agriculture minister's twisted comment dominated the campaign coverage on the same day as Liberals went completely over the top with a $70 billion pledge for road, water treatment and environmental initiatives.

Instead of an easy whack at Liberal spending, the Liberals got a free kick at the Conservatives.

Just imagine how Harper, who had described the $9 billion worth of promises before the 10-year infrastructure announcement as "mind-boggling," would've reacted to Liberal leader Stephane Dion's grandest giveaway of the campaign. Think of a grapefruit exploding.

But the race is still young and there are still three weeks' worth of partisan openings for derision and ridicule. Besides, the mood is souring against vote-buying tactics in trying times.

When Harper grandly announced a priority to prohibit bubble gum-flavoured cigarillos this week, I howled at the thought of that as any sort of justification for a $300-million election to seek a fresh mandate. As one of my anonymous election operatives wrote from her vantage point in Vancouver: "Cigarillo packaging restrictions? I shaved my legs for this?"

But it might've been a better fit with the times than any billion-dollar handout. The queasy stock market roller-coaster and institutional failures on Wall Street are transforming the mood of this electorate in a big way that can only be bad news for those who promise new taxes and big spending.

Voters no longer want a government to brighten their lives with new cradle-to-grave government program protection. They'll settle for a solid seatbelt that'll hold their lifestyles at status quo if that economic light at the end of the tunnel is actually an oncoming train.

So while Harper moves on multiple fronts with modest, affordable pockets of cash to help women entrepreneurs, first-time homebuyers and truck drivers, Dion seems out of sync by promising the classic grab-bag of Liberal handouts for daycare, immigration, tuition, health care and big city relief. The only targeted group with cause to complain so far would be the pine beetle, the victim of their $250-million extermination pledge.

To be fair, the Liberals are almost finished their rollout. They have some modest agriculture, justice and cultural program announcements coming out in the next few days. And they vow to wrap it all up with a full accounting inside a balanced budget when the full platform is released next week.

But the trick now becomes selling their Green Shift environmental policy as an economic blueprint, shifting attention away from it being an onerous tax on employers to selling it a relief package for consumers and homeowners battening down the hatches against an American financial storm surge.

The Liberals, being the only party which can be taken seriously as a government-in-waiting, should promise restraint, not ritz, as we enter unnervingly difficult times.