Is Stephen Harper's battle with the arts community likely to help or hurt him with voters?
Greg Lyle (former chief of staff for premiers Gary Filmon and Gordon Campbell): This battle really makes no sense for Stephen Harper.
Forget about substance for a moment. Forget about Richard Florida and his arguments about the rise of the creative class and what that means for the wealth of nations. Let's just look at the politics.
This is one issue the Conservatives have misread. They think this is about subsidizing the hobbies of the rich. Stephane DIon may be falling for that, but Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe are not.
In 2005, Warren Kinsella advised Stephen Harper that if he wanted to run this country, he needed to look like he liked it.
Mr. Layton has begun to run with that idea. He accuses Mr. Harper of undercutting our ability as a nation to tell our story. He and other critics point out the irony of sending people to rediscover the Northwest Passage while denying funding to the people who tell the story of the Northwest Passage. What is the point of rediscovering the Franklin's ship if you don't know why that matters to the country?
In Quebec, where francophones are trying to maintain a distinct linguistic and cultural community surrounded by a sea of English, the stakes are arguably higher than in the rest of the country so the issue has had more play. But anyone who remembers the free trade debate knows English Canada can be just as passionate in defence of its own identity, fragile though it may be.
The shame for the Tories is that this fight is over nickels and dimes from a federal budget perspective. By the highest count, the alleged cutbacks have only totaled $50-million out of hundreds of millions if not billions in overall arts funding. The problem is the Conservatives did not apply their micro politics discipline to this policy area. Some cuts were much easier to defend than others. Plus the whole package could have been more defensible if it had been presented as a package.
The Globe and Mail battleground tracking shows the Tories have been rolled back from their initial advances in Quebec due in no small part to the culture issue. It's time for the Tories to cut their losses, come out with a policy that shuts down these attacks, and use the last three weeks to talk about other issues that work better for them.
Scott Reid (former communications director for Paul Martin): I need to start by saying that for the purposes of this discussion, I'm suspending my personal bias on an intergalactic scale. Because if unleashed, it would result in an incoherent and profane screech about the way this government denigrates our artists and their work in a manner that makes me...well, want to beat somebody up (ideally, one of those wimpy artistic types I could take with ease). That said...
When you unleash a wedge issue, you take a calculated risk that it will advantage rather than disadvantage your campaign. On the eve of the election call, with the Conservatives and Liberals tied in popular support, this looked to be a percentage play in English Canada. An astute - if cynical - means of animating the Reform Party-small c-Conservative base.
Those gains were long ago banked.
What we're witnessing now is a wedge strategy gone wrong. And it may actually have a noteworthy effect on the election's outcome for two reasons.
