1. They doth protest too much. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are trying to quash rumours that they’re gunning for a fall election despite the fact some of their own are fuelling them. In a memo to supporters circulated Sunday night, Tory strategists advised: “We will not call a fall election.”
Maybe not but there has been a lot of election rhetoric all of a sudden – especially from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who is usually one of the calmest and most measured ministers on the Hill.
Mr. Flaherty’s overheated speech last Tuesday to the Canadian Club in Ottawa, during which he warned darkly that “nothing would be safe” under an Ignatieff-Bloc-NDP coalition, is what has provoked most of the speculation.
“No part of our economy would be spared,” Mr. Flaherty said. “No taxpayer would avoid the hit.”
National Post columnist Don Martin was one of the journalists who weighed in, critiquing the Finance Minister’s curiously angry and partisan speech. He chastised Mr. Flaherty for taking orders from PMO officials by inserting their lines into his speech, saying it was beneath Mr. Flaherty to “rant against his political opponents.”
And then Mr. Martin added this line: “With election-hungry Harper chief of staff Guy Giorno proudly watching from the audience, Flaherty unleashed a smear written in the poison-tipped penmanship of the best PMO speechwriters.”
Harper strategists didn’t like that and have fired back. “Don Martin Wrong on Election” is the headline of the memo circulated Sunday.
“Journalist Don Martin has falsely reported that the Government, in the person of the Prime Minister’ chief of staff, is hungry for an election,” the Tories say. “This false claim has no basis in fact. Canadians do not need or want an unnecessary election that would threaten our economic recovery. Our priority remains the economy and we will not call a Fall election.”
Yet the memo concludes the Tories must be ready for an election “because the Ignatieff coalition has not ruled out forcing an opportunistic Fall vote.”
Really? Mr. Ignatieff has repeatedly said that Canadians don’t want an election. He maintains that’s what he heard during his summer bus tour of Canada.
On CTV’s Question Period, meanwhile, Mr. Flaherty did not back down from his PMO-inspired remarks. He referred to his speech last week as “a spirited discourse” meant to put this opponents on notice that the Tories are ready for a campaign.
“I would say, and, you know, I’m an old hockey player. You got to get your elbows up once in awhile. And I think they have their heads up now,” he said in the Sunday broadcast.
And that’s certainly how NDP finance critic Thomas Mulcair took Mr. Flaherty’s statements: “Jim Flaherty, who I have occasion to work with for the past three years, is a rather stable character. He didn’t just walk up to the microphone before the Canadian club and go postal,” Mr. Mulcair said.
“He was reading notes. The Guy Giorno agenda was right in front of him and he had been asked to deliver it as a test drive for their lines in the next election.”
2. Turning off the taps. The Finance Minister is releasing the Conservative government’s sixth status report on its $47-billion, two-year Economic Action Plan in Montreal on Monday morning. It will likely come with a warning, as Jim Flaherty repeated again on Sunday that the government will not extend the stimulus spending – it ends March 31 – despite pressure from the opposition parties to continue it.
“Well the difference between us and the three other parties who, as you know formed a coalition before, or certainly tried to, and now we have to worry about them doing that again because what has been done before can be done again, and we all know that,” he said.
“They’re all saying spend more money, and then they say they’re worried about the economy, they worry about deficits, so they’re talking out of both sides of their mouth quite frankly.”
