Economy ignited mean-spirited campaign

By Norma Greenaway
Canwest News Service

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and wife Laureen wave as they board the Conservative campaign plane in Charlottetown, P.E.I. Oct. 13. The message on their placard was one of the more benign in what turned out to be a sometimes mean-spirited campaign. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

OTTAWA - Stephen Harper flirted with a majority. Jack Layton flirted with official Opposition status. Gilles Duceppe flirted with irrelevance. Elizabeth May flirted with resonance. And, before it was over, Stephane Dion - brutally dismissed by some early in the campaign as a dead man walking - was flirting with power.

Those were among the story lines during what will be remembered as a mean-spirited five-week federal election campaign that lacked a galvanizing issue until a U.S.-bred market and credit crisis went global.

The meltdown swamped the election landscape in Canada, tightening a race the Conservatives initially thought would end in with a stronger minority mandate, and possibly even a majority, compliments of a Liberal leader they considered weak and a fading Bloc Quebecois.

After a final, spirited sprint, the leaders will settle in Tuesday to await the voters' verdict on an election that was "mostly about nothing," as political scientist Patrick Smith put it, until Harper and his rivals got "whacked" by the Wall Street meltdown in the midst of Week 4.

The phoney war that marked the first three weeks - during which the Conservatives held a solid lead in the polls and dipped briefly into majority territory - was over.

Suddenly, the economy was front and centre and Harper, who had sold himself as a strong and steady hand on the tiller, wasn't invincible anymore. His opponents, among them a feisty and quick-witted May, piled on with new-found aggression during two televised debates on Oct. 2 and 3 and in the days that followed.

A probable ballot-box question finally took shape: Who do you trust to lead the country through uncertain economic times?

It's not the economy in terms of: "It's the economy stupid," said Smith. "It's the economy, and who might best be able to see us through this."

The financial meltdown meant a campaign that had generated little more than a few good sweater jokes and mini-flaps over a pooping puffin, nude-swimming and acid-dropping candidates became a pitched battle over which leader and party was best equipped to steer the country through uncharted territory.

Until then, even the more serious blunders, most notably Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz's unseemly and insensitive joking about victims of the listeriosis outbreak, appeared to have little or no impact on the Conservatives' popularity.

By week four, a backlash had built in Quebec against the prime minister's cuts to a handful of arts and culture programs, and his renewed push to toughen treatment of young offenders.

Conservative support in the province plummeted, and the once-sinking Bloc was back in business.

Harper's hopes of tripling the 11 seats the Tories hold in Quebec and scoring a majority in the 308-seat House of Commons all but evaporated.

Political historian Norman Hillmer of Ottawa said the wave of economic anxiety that swept Canada after the U.S. meltdown challenged Harper's strategy of running on a platform of "more of the same" and forced the prime minister's team to retool the message.

He also threw $25 billion into the pot as late as Friday, money designed to make it easier for Canadian individuals and business to borrow money.

Despite the late-campaign fireworks over the economy and the more than $350 million spent by the government and the political parties to run the election, most analysts predict Canada will end up with a minority Conservative Parliament that looks a lot like the one that was dissolved for the election.

At that time, the Conservatives held 127 of the 308 seats, the Liberals held 95, the Bloc held 48, the New Democrats held 30 and Independents held four. Four seats were vacant.

Duncan McDowell, a history professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, said that as long as the Bloc is alive and kicking, it's almost impossible to imagine a majority federal government being formed.

"You subtract 45 to 50 seats out of 308 and it takes a Nobel laureate in mathematics to try to find a majority in that," McDowall said in an interview. "That is the new norm."

Still, there is enough uncertainty over how the votes will shake down Tuesday that people are hedging their bets.

Indeed, by the time Canadians were tucking into their Thanksgiving dinner, the prospect of a Liberal minority could not be ruled out.

The latest Ipsos Reid poll, conducted last week for Canwest News Service and Global National, said the Conservatives had 34 per cent, the Liberals 29 per cent, the NDP 18 per cent, the Bloc nine per cent and the Green party eight per cent.

Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Reid, said the numbers are so volatile the campaign could well be headed to a photo finish.

"The economy has taken over as an issue," said Smith, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.

"It intersects with leadership. And the questions the Liberals raised in the 2006 election, 'Can you trust Stephen Harper?' still resonates."

On the stump, the leaders sharpened their message for the last lap of the race.

Dion, who leaned on Liberal heavyweights such as Jean Chretien and Paul Martin to buck up his economic credentials, stepped up his attacks on Harper as a do-nothing, "laissez-faire, I don't care" leader who puts too much faith in free markets.

He disparaged Layton's strategy of portraying himself as the prime-minister-in-waiting, and rejected as outdated his plan to finance new social spending by cancelling $50 billion worth of business tax breaks promised by the Conservatives.

Harper struggled to overcome what critics dubbed an "empathy deficit" and a suggestion the stock market collapse offered some bargain shopping.

Heading into the holiday weekend, he scrambled to persuade voters he had a heart while repeatedly assuring them the Canadian financial institutions were on sound footing and the economy was well positioned to survive the storm.

Harper also intensified his assaults on Dion and Layton as tax-happy, spendthrifts who would plunge the country into recession with their "fantasyland" election promises. In particular, he targeted the Liberals' Green Shift carbon tax as something that would devastate the economy.

Shifting poll numbers as the campaign drew to a climax added genuine suspense to the outcome, but so did a feeling that many Canadians did not really make up their minds until the weekend.

"I really, honestly believe that having the long weekend - the Thanksgiving family oriented holiday across the country before the vote - may be the most decisive part of the campaign," said David Mitchell, a political historian who is a vice-principal at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.