What a difference a month makes. When the fall parliamentary session began, an election seemed imminent. Now the Liberals still claim to oppose the Harper government, though the Grits’ downslide in public opinion has likely ended their desire to rev up the campaign buses.
Several national opinion polls now put Stephen Harper’s conservatives’ popularity above 40 per cent, roughly the requisite popular vote to secure a majority in Canada’s first past the post election system. The Conservatives seem to be rebounding in Quebec and Ontario (two regions where they faltered following the last election) and Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals are becoming increasingly unpopular across the country. This is a far cry from the scenario the Liberals desired and expected.
For the most part, Canadians seem to think the government is doing a good job handling the economic crisis. Oddly enough though, the party’s response to the recession has been contradictory to its ideological stance. The economic strategies are many Keynesian footsteps away from the usual conservative dogma of small government, financial deregulation, and mass privatization. What’s more, the Conservatives have compiled the largest deficit in Canadian history, just one year after posting record surpluses and denying that a recession was on the way. Yet Conservative supporters have not abandoned ship, and in fact, their numbers are growing. This has happened for a number of reasons.
Firstly, their chief rival, the Liberal Party, is weakening. Damaged by internal strife in Quebec and fragmented over Ignatieff’s leadership, the once indestructible red machine is looking awfully rusty. More crucially, the Liberals have failed to present themselves as a real alternative to the Conservatives. While they declared their intention to oppose the government at the end of August, they presented no alternative platform—no plan or manifesto as to how they would perform better. Their stance amounted to opposition without substance: only vacuous aphorisms about “nation building” and “green energy.”
Thus, the Conservatives have been left to craft their own narrative inside of the vacuum. By using the vast resources of the federal government, they have made the Conservative propaganda machine devastatingly effective. Tory MPs have been photographed across the country giving huge sums of money to communities for local projects. Many of these photo-ops feature cheques emblazoned with the Conservative logo or uplifting epithets like “protecting Canada’s future” or “Strong Leadership. A Better Canada.” One particularly notable shot shows Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt wearing a blue hockey jersey branded with the Conservative “C” and the name of the Prime Minister. The implicit suggestion in each of these photos (there are 181 so far) is that the money is a gift from the Conservative Party, even though it’s really government funds.
As the Liberals become increasingly distracted by internal problems and unfocused in their baseless opposition, Stephen Harper has been hard at work convincing Canadians that he is—despite his reputation for partisanship and intransigence—a decent, fun-loving, family man running a stable, accountable government that serves the public interest. Many have seen his recent arts gala performance of the Beatles classic “With a Little Help from my Friends.” This pedestrian approach to politics is somewhat uncommon in Canada, but has a long and illustrious history south of the border, where folksy demagogues like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan convinced the masses that the best leaders are the ones you’d want to sit down with for a drink. (These same masses also seriously contemplated making an inarticulate hockey mom a candidate for the presidency in 2012.)
It’s always possible these photo-ops will hurt the Conservatives, but it seems unlikely they will inflict serious damage until another party presents a more attractive narrative for voters to internalize. For now, the Liberals’ “grand designs” appeal to few, and the front of stability and competent fiscal management presented by Harper will continue to dominate the national imagination.
