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Analysis: Voters strike cautious balance
Jan. 24, 2006. 12:31 AM
JAMES TRAVERS
NATIONAL AFFAIRS COLUMNIST
OTTAWA - Change, yes, but not too much change.
In their collective wisdom, Canadian voters struck a cautious balance between determination to separate the Liberals from power and concerns about what the Conservatives would do with it. The result is a surprisingly weak Stephen Harper Conservative minority government with an uncertain future.
Putting an end to 13 years of what often felt like one-party rule, Canadians streamed to the polls on an unusually mild winter day first to toss out tired and tainted Liberals and then to impose onerous conditions on the Conservatives and their 46-year-old leader.
They gave the Liberals and the resurgent NDP the strength to defeat this minority, a fascinating dynamic that pushes the Bloc Quebecois toward the sidelines and should make Canadians breathe easier about any real or imagined neo-conservative threat to social values.
Far less than the majority Harper hoped for at the highest point of a textbook campaign, but more seats than the party anticipated in November when Paul Martin’s minority government fell, Conservatives now barely have what they asked for: an opportunity to prove that a narrow, regionally-rooted Reform movement that struggled to life in 1987 is finally ready to rule in the broad national interest.
Harper’s chance flows directly from a significant power shift. His campaign not only recaptured the Progressive Conservative vote that drifted to Martin in 2004, it solidified support among ex-urbanites living in the expanding rings around big cities and made a spectacular breakthrough in the Quebec popular vote to re-establish Conservatives as a viable federalist alternative.
To put Harper’s achievement in perspective, in short order he united the right, dragged his party toward the centre and brought Martin down. Now he must demonstrate that a remarkable success and learning curve will continue to rocket upward.
Can that be good for Canada? Absolutely. More than this capital’s entitlement culture is overdue for an overhaul. A country too long governed from the centre and too consumed by the single, if understandably singular, national unity issue will now be exposed to the very different perspective of the first prime minister since Joe Clark to be considered by the West as one of its own.
Reviving Brian Mulroney’s successful formula, the West and Quebec are both “in” and today there are domestic and international options that didn’t exist yesterday.
Within the tight restrictions of minority government, Conservatives will now be able to test the national appetitive for more individualistic solutions to social policy problems.
And after Martin’s reckless campaign tilting at a U.S. emissions record better than Canada’s, Harper is far more favourably positioned to restore common sense and statesmanship to Canada’s sustaining foreign relationship.
Those positives are the result of a negative. Harper and his party will form the next government mostly because Canadians grew weary of the last.
Ethical failures, a prime minister who couldn’t meet the expectations he created as well as a Liberal campaign that was as accident-prone as it was poorly conceived and executed all contributed to the ruling party’s fall from grace.
Now, a decade after it last seriously considered its purpose, Canada’s natural governing party is almost certainly on the threshold of another divisive search for a new leader able to reform, renew and revitalize a damaged political brand.
Harper’s challenge may be more satisfying. It certainly won’t be easier.
In just weeks, he must form a cabinet capable of managing power and reassuring Canadians that the country is in safe hands. Equally important, he must resist the us-against-them attitude toward the civil service that surfaced last week and more than 20 years ago got Mulroney’s government off to a stumbling start.
As well as damaging, a confrontation with the bureaucracy is unnecessary. Frustrated by Martin’s indecision, civil servants are eager to respond to new masters.
That point was driven home last night when Ottawa voted heavily against Liberals, handing regional seats to Harper and to the NDP’s Jack Layton.
Those small victories are among bigger rewards for strong Conservative and NDP campaigns that left the once feared Liberal Big Red Machine spinning on the winter ice.
While Harper and Layton learned from their 2004 mistakes, Martin’s clique mistook a narrow escape 18 months ago for a well-earned victory.
Instead of idling like Liberals through the pre-Christmas weeks, Conservatives seized the moment to redefine themselves as a not-so-scary centre-right alternative with policies easily grasped by families with kids, bills and mortgages.
All it took to shake those votes loose was the memory of scandal refreshed by an RCMP investigation into suspected leaks of Finance Minister Ralph Goodale’s income trust decision and the appalling holiday shooting of a Toronto high-school student that played to the Conservatives' law-and-order strengths.
Liberals, suffering from revealing wisecracks and lumbered with the offensive troops-in-the-streets television attack ads, couldn’t respond.
Worse still for the ruling party, the NDP campaign rebounded from labour boss Buzz Hargrove’s defection to hold critical votes that in the final hours of the 2004 election rushed to Martin to stop Harper.
Along with a startling face slap for Hargrove – one that raises questions about the labour movement’s continuing influence over the party – that recovery marks the first time the NDP has been able to win more seats after cooperating with a Liberal minority.
Layton emerges stronger and with a party anxious to argue that it is the strengthening voice of Canada’s defining social values.
How loudly it's heard will depend on how quickly the Liberals rebuild. In turn, that will depend on the party’s ability to attract a leader able to pick up the pieces of a party that under Martin’s leadership anticipated more years of near absolute power.
Instead, the 10 years of transitional change that Martin promised is over in two. Liberals must now face the consequences of too much power exercised with too little discipline.
Still, the Liberals are in better shape today than they had any reason to expect. Many of the party’s strongest cabinet ministers survived and its popular vote escaped the anticipated punishment.
Far from a rump, the party is strong enough to challenge the Conservatives in Parliament and, equally important, will have the funding needed to finance its overhaul.
Harper’s problem is different. On average, the lifespan of minority governments is less than two years and it’s far from clear if this one will have even that long to demonstrate that a change in federal politics is better than a rest.
Along with his own skills, Harper will have to rely on the compliance of opposition parties and the reluctance of Canadians to rush into another early, expensive election to keep Conservatives in power.
How long those conditions last is anyone's guess. But the country doesn’t have to guess, or worry, about the secret agenda the Liberals insisted the Conservatives would impose.
This government’s hold on power is simply too shaky to permit any wild deviations from the consensual course. That’s the balance Canadian voters struck by opting for change with very little risk.
After a marathon campaign, the voters had the final word and it was wise.
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source:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...72154&t=TS_Home
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