Thursday, April 19, 2012 12:50 PM EDT
Chicken Little makes a comeback in Alberta’s election
TIM POWERS
Danielle Smith, the Leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Party, is probably feeling a bit like Stephen Harper did during the 2004 and 2005-06 federal elections as this year’s provincial vote draws to a close. Smith is on the way to potentially upsetting the established party’s apple cart and becoming the new premier of Alberta. And boy, oh boy the establishment doesn’t like that one bit. So it has rolled out the Chicken Little strategy, borrowed from the popular children’s story: The sky will fall and the world will end if the well-heeled and entrenched are kicked to the curb by the supposed rube-like upstarts.
The Chicken Little approach was popularized by the federal Liberals in the last decade. It worked to some effect when Jean Chrétien was leader and Stockwell Day was the head of the Canadian Alliance in the 2000 election, though realistically Day and the Alliance were not a legitimate threat then to unseat the Liberals at the time. The strategy kicked into high gear under Paul Martin, who caused just enough anxiety about Harper’s so-called hidden agenda and lack of leadership experience to win a minority in the 2004 election. One must remember, however, the popular of the fiction of the day was that Martin would win massive majority after massive majority and be prime minister for a decade. Someone might ask him how he enjoys retirement, because he was still supposed to be our leader now.
The Liberals and their friends – some in the union movement, a hodge-podge of different environmental groups, a few in the arts community as well as others – went guns-a-blazing after Harper throughout the 2005-06 campaign. You’ll recall the usual smears about the Tory Leader messing around with a woman’s right to choose, destroying gay marriage, cutting down all our trees and turning Canada into a parking lot. In that election, the public listened to the hysterical cries from the established party and took them with a huge grain a salt. Harper, of course won his first government, a minority, in 2006. Thereafter the trajectory has been fascinating for Chicken Little’s proponents: Every time they have claimed damnation is upon the nation, the public has said damn them. In the case of the Liberals, where fear and loathing of anything but an order dictated by them is popular, they went from a majority government in 2003 to third-party status in 2011. That shows just how effective the Chicken Little approach is these days.
There are some very smart people working for Progressive Conservative Leader Allison Redford. I have worked with many of them before and have great regard for them as professionals. However, I must admit to being astounded to see them adopting a failed Liberal approach in what appears to be a desperate bid to hold onto power. They may win this election, but in the course of doing so they may doom themselves in the future as the federal Liberals did when they embraced Chicken Little. Of all political organizations in the country, you’d think the Alberta PC Party would get how much conservatives of any stripe despise the use of Liberal tactics on members of their own family.
The Wildrose Party didn’t put the Alberta PC’s in this position of vulnerability. They did it on their own, in part because they lost their compass and became disconnected from members of their own community. The clear desperation they are showcasing in the final days of this campaign could see the sky fall hard on them. They’ll have no one to blame but themselves
Link to this post
Sunday, March 25, 2012 12:51 PM EDT
The comedy of complaining about Tory attacks
TIM POWERS
Congratulations to Thomas Mulcair on winning the NDP leadership. It takes guts to run for office and even more to go for the top job of a party. Whether you like the man or not, becoming the Leader of the Opposition is a significant achievement. He and his peers deserve some admiration for their commitment to public service at the highest levels.
Not to rain on my own parade of positivity, particularly given my own personal preference for persuasion to pugilism, but it really is quite a farce to see quite a few opponents of the Conservative Party outraged, yet again, because it issued talking points critical of Mulcair just as he was being named leader. Why there would be expectations of some false grace period is puzzling. There is not a great deal of grace in politics these days. We should lament that and work to change that but it is what it is for now. The operating environment is the operating environment.
Anyone who attended the NDP convention on the weekend unsurprisingly heard a non-stop slam of Stephen Harper, both his government and his approach. That sort of critique is the red meat served at partisan conventions, no matter the party. On Friday in their leadership showcases, candidate after candidate was trying to cast themselves as Harper's worst nightmare: Electing a leader to take the Prime Minister out of office was the proposition they all offered. There were no French kisses for Harper, just a flurry of fists. So be it. No crocodile tears from this corner.
Need anyone be reminded that only days ago Ed Broadbent offered a seething take on Mulcair and his abilities. Ed's not a dirty, rotten Tory so there were few complaints about his manners when he dropped his failed bomb.
The Tory talking points issued Saturday won't win a Pulitzer Prize. They contained the expected rhetorical rocks and time will tell whether they break any glass at Mulcair manor.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was more wit and wisdom in our politics from all sides? Damn right. That the talking-point menus from all parties didn't sound like a script from the shopping channel? Yup.
But the usual suspects in the anti-Harper world moaning about the meanness of chastising Mulcair too quickly is laughable.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012 10:15 AM EDT
Tory attack ads are fool’s gold for the masses
TIM POWERS
What should you do if you’re a Tory strategist and you want to shape the debate in a week when the House is not sitting, you aren’t going to factor in a by-election, the NDP is having its leadership convention and you want to distract from the robo-call mess? Why not drop a TV ad or two?
It seems sadly predictable that a political party rolling out ads in a non-election period has the same mesmerizing effect as first striking gold in Yukon. Everyone loses their mind and all perspective talking about nothing else. They become delirious with the novelty of it all. There is a rush to explore, dig and exploit. The Tories get rich off the find as their bright shiny object gets seen far and wide. Yet everyone else unearths the same old fool’s gold as there is no original vein here – and hasn't been in years.
Pre-writ attack ads have pretty much been the norm since Stephen Harper’s government came to office in 2006. Paul Martin’s Liberals tinkered around with them a bit before that and the NDP has used pre-writ ads fairly regularly in the last number of years. Love them or hate them, there is a sense from all political parties that they have value – otherwise they wouldn't spend the money to deploy them. They'll stop doling out cash for them when they don't work any more with the public or are can't be leveraged into a free multi-million-dollar return in earned media.
So let the fulminating continue about their corrosiveness, their poor production quality, their out-datedness and of course the unfairness of it all. Yup, keep going. Someone is striking it rich every time you do and the rest us, well we are just fools.
Saturday, March 17, 2012 12:20 PM EDT
Will Broadbent’s bomb turn out to be a bust?
TIM POWERS
Ed Broadbent has gone nuclear on Thomas Mulcair. It is a strange thing to see one of the NDP's most respected senior statesman look to blow up the campaign of the apparent front-runner. Who knew the holier than thou NDP were capable of such primal political behaviour?
It is well known I am no fan of Mr. Mulcair but I didn't know Mr. Broadbent shared such a visceral view of the surly NDP member from Outremont. It is certainly well known in Ottawa that Mulcair prefers to scorch the earth rather than engage in the co-operative farming process his many colleagues prefer.
I honestly have no idea what impact Mr. Broadbent's sermon on the tomfoolery of taking Thomas to the top will have on NDP members as they vote for a new leader. But I know such extreme preaching often blows up on the preacher blowing past the congregation he is trying to sway.
You need look no further than the Liberal Party’s demonization of Stephen Harper as evidence the cry of the wolf is an empty shriek. The more the Liberals tried to scare people about Harper the lower the expectations became for him with the public while his bellowing opponents looked desperate and inept. Now Ed Broadbent has much more credibility than the Liberal gang that ran those plays on Harper – but it is all a matter of degrees, particularly in leadership races.
It is quite possible that Broadbent has done Mulcair a huge favour by going after him. Some may view Broadbent's broadside as a desperation exercise launched for his candidate of choice, Brian Topp. As opposed to the message that the NDP's future and unity is threatened by Mulcair, it may come across as Team Topp not playing fair. Topp may pay among NDP members for Broadbent's blast. It could burst Topp's balloon, not Mulcair's.
Mr. Broadbent has also done the external opponents of the NDP a favor if Mulcair wins. Given the regard in which he is held by many across the country, I am sure he won't be surprised if Tories and Liberals alike borrow his bromides for critiquing Mulcair should he become leader of the Official Opposition. Never mind the tape of Michael Ignatieff chastising Stéphane Dion for his inability to make decisions and that infamous line from Dion: “It is not easy to make priorities.” This could be much better.
Will Mr. Broadbent's bomb have the kaboom effect he seeks or will it be a bust? We'll know next weekend.
Sunday, March 11, 2012 12:44 PM EDT
Bring on Election-Campaign Ethics 101
TIM POWERS
After spending part of the weekend at the Manning Centre conference, I couldn’t be in stronger agreement with Preston Manning if I were a robo-call dialing out his message that some formal sort of ethics training should be mandatory for political actors, activists and anyone who helps their parties or candidates contest elections.
This is certainly not meant to be a damning indictment of the thousands upon thousands of good, honest people who already have a solid moral compass and use it well in their electoral activities. Rather it is more a case of natural evolution (please hold the dinosaur jokes). While you can’t meaningfully legislate ethics – people either will behave ethically or not – it wouldn’t hurt the body politic to catch up with just about every other sphere of society that has some form of ethics education and awareness as a first step to participation in organizations.
I have been to umpteen political conventions for all sorts of parties and I can’t remember any of them having any variety of ethics primer on the agenda. There may have been some, but they certainly didn’t get the attention or attendance of the get-out-the-vote seminars or the communications classes. Part of the reason formal ethics training rarely takes place connects to the nature of political parties themselves. Lots of partisans already figure they have a great sense of right and wrong. Their commitment to picking a side signifies a deep desire to do good for their country via their party. Their party is the moral compass, not just a power delivery vehicle.
Whether you agree or disagree with Andrew Coyne’s critique of the Conservative Party this weekend, it is always important to do as he did: Sit back and reflect on the choices you made to determine where they fit in with your principles; are they justifiable in the journey for the greater good or are you starting to lose your way? While Coyne didn’t speak specifically about ethics, and his analysis was limited to the Tories, he did provide a model of conscience that all political organizations should work to constantly maintain. Getting caught up entirely in outcomes, which for the vast majority of political parties is about winning elections, is normal. But as we have seen in the corporate world, the non-governmental sector and even the sports world, if you solely focus on winning for the sake of winning things slide. People turn a blind eye on occasion when they shouldn’t; reputations come into disrepute ultimately, though not always, meaning achievements get tainted, limited or totally obliterated (right, Nortel shareholders).
If I have to do some ethics training and pass an ethics exam to coach, as I do for rugby in Ontario, I see no reason why we can’t have some sort of similar approach for political activists. Hopefully organizations like the Manning Centre, the Broadbent Institute and other “do tanks,” as Preston likes to call them, will keep pushing this dialogue and being running training modules. We need less sanctimonious lecturing about behavior and more tools to potentially help guide it.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 10:04 AM EST
Who is electoral demon dialer Pierre Poutine?
TIM POWERS
Pierre Poutine, you're no Dudley Do-Right. Reveal yourself!
Spare us this rare moment of bizarre Canadiana, spending far too much time trying to discover your identity all the while suffering the fallout from your demon dialing. When you existed in curd form we only needed to fear for our arteries; now our entire body politic is being poisoned.
While a multitude of Canadian comedians are no doubt singing the hallelujah chorus at your arrival on the national stage, I personally hope your impact is as lasting as a Kardashian marriage. You do, after all, live on Separatist Street so perhaps you will crumble.
But who are you, Pierre Poutine? And what were you up to last spring during our federal election? I never thought I’d pose that question in the cold light of day, even if by chance I’d spent a night partying with Charlie Sheen.
While I too welcome the humour you have injected into the robo-call controversy, I’d prefer you to be an obscure question in an updated version of Trivial Pursuit – not a chapter in a Canadian history book.
Do us all a favour: Come forward and tell your story. Who knows, you could get a role on next year’s Redemption Inc. That Canadian drama has your rehab story written all over it.
Monday, February 27, 2012 11:12 AM EST
What mandate is Mulcair seeking?
ROBERT SILVER
Watching the NDP leadership debate Sunday in Winnipeg, the most striking thing to me is how certain Thomas Mulcair appears to be that he has the leadership in the bag. Unlike the other candidates on stage with him, he wasn’t pleading for second-choice votes. He is acting like a front-runner who both knows where he currently stands and is confident he has a path to get more than 50 per cent.
He was doing something much bigger this weekend – and has been for a few weeks now, as far as I can tell as an outsider to this race – he’s trying to get a mandate to fundamentally change the NDP. Candidates who are unsure if they’re going to win normally take the approach “a win is a win.” Candidates who are confident of victory have far more luxury to define what their win means. Also, typically in a leadership race or primary battle, you run toward your party’s base (and then tack toward the centre in the general election). Mulcair is running away from his base – or said positively, is proposing to lead his base in a different direction. That speaks to someone who feels pretty good about his standing.
First a proviso: It is very easy to look very stupid writing about leadership races prior to a winner being announced. Leaderships are ultimately math contests. The air war is what the media and outsiders pay attention to because that’s all we have access to. But unless you have the membership tracking numbers, it is impossible to know how the race is really going. So of course it’s very possible that Mulcair is wrong and he won’t win. I’m only commenting on how Mulcair is acting and what it says about how he thinks the race is unfolding.
Assuming Mulcair is right and that he’s going to win, the mandate he’s seeking was on full display in Winnipeg. In an exchange with Niki Ashton, he made his intent clear: “I would not repeat things from 50 years ago, I would modernize our language, modernize our approach.”
Modern language, modern approach. I have no idea what that actually means, but I can guess. In part, it is easiest to define what he is proposing by contrasting it with his main opponents. Peggy Nash and Brian Topp have been carrying a message through this campaign that you can boil down to “the NDP doesn’t need to change, what we’ve been doing is working, we have passed the Liberals, our vote total keeps going up and if we keep doing the same thing, we will win.” They would stay true to NDP orthodoxy as opposed to moving to the centre; they embrace the NDP’s relationship with organized labour as opposed to downplaying it; they celebrate the party’s history at every opportunity, etc.
Mulcair rejects this approach categorically. He put it plainly on Sunday: “We did get 4.5 million votes but we are still far from being able to form a government. The only way we are going to be able to do that is to go beyond our traditional base, refresh our way of approaching these issues. We’re not going to defeat Stephen Harper with a slogan.” Putting aside the fact that “modernize our language, modernize our approach” is little more than a slogan, this strikes me as a pretty significant mandate for change if he is successful. He wants to make the NDP into a party of the centre, not the left. That would be a big change in Canadian politics with potentially far-reaching implications .
The lazy shorthand for what Mulcair is doing would make some reference to Tony Blair and his fight against Labour’s Clause IV and other New Labour steps he took to drag his party to the centre. What’s interesting about Mulcair’s gambit – again, assuming that he’s right and he has the leadership in the bag – is unlike with Blair, there doesn’t appear to be an existential debate ongoing within the NDP. The amazing thing about the change in direction Mulcair is seeking a mandate to implement is how easy it has been for him to (potentially) get a yes. Unlike the Clause IV battles, he’s just winning the leadership and oh ya, may change the party in pretty significant ways.
While I really have no idea how Mulcair would modernize his party or what he would change in order to reach centrist voters beyond the NDP’s traditional base, I do know that Mulcair is a talented guy and Liberals and Conservatives alike should not ignore what he’s proposing to do.
Saturday, February 25, 2012 9:27 AM EST
Tories want answers on voter suppression too
TIM POWERS
In the opposition’s hysteria around the robo-call controversy you'd think every MP, staffer, member of the party, supporter and Conservative voter has a cultural predisposition to win elections at any cost and through any means. You'd also assume that before Elections Canada has even concluded its investigation, never mind charged anyone, the Conservative Party itself is guilty of the most serious infractions possible and has perverted our democratic system beyond compare.
Never mind that the Prime Minister and the 2011 Conservative Party campaign director are on record saying the book must be thrown at the culprits of this mess. None of that matters when an opposition sniffs blood – and to be fair, when Conservatives were in opposition they were the same way. As my nemesis Pat Martin, the colorful NDP MP, said in relation to this latest political circus: The opposition is just there to accuse.
While accusations and stories run wild, I think it would be fool-hardy to assume that Conservatives don't want answers and the facts surrounding this robo-racket. There are tons and tons of Canadians who have toiled long and hard for the Conservative Party who are looking to Elections Canada to get to the bottom of this saga. They take great pride in the fact they built an organization that was able to persuade Canadians to go to, not guide them away from, voting booths to cast a ballot. They are looking for the truth and aren't happy to have aspersions of impropriety cast upon them.
Cheating and law breaking are not acceptable ways of winning elections. If they occurred, those guilty of such acts must be punished regardless of the party they support. The Tories first came to power by defeating a Liberal Party that had members who cheated for electoral advantage and in some cases broke the law. No Conservative I know sees imitation of that approach as flattering. It still repulses them. They want to win, but through honest means and hard work.
So leave no stone unturned here. Give us the facts and do what is necessary to resolve this unseemly matter.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:18 PM EST
Justin Trudeau jumps the shark
TIM POWERS
When Justin Trudeau appeared on CBC’s Power and Politics Tuesday night to defend himself against allegations of having a soft spot for Quebec sovereignty he jumped the shark. In fact he may have jumped a few sharks. For anyone who saw it, it was quite the unwound performance – and if you haven’t seen it, check it out.
Now even though my tendencies are more conservative in nature, I have always had some time for Justin. While he can be his own worst enemy, as witnessed with his emotional theatrics in the Commons foyer, it does take a good degree of courage to put your name on the ballot, fight for your place in a tough riding, live constantly with the bad that comes with bearing the Trudeau name and not be drunk on the constant diet of bullshit you are fed about your greatness. While we would have different views on many issues he deserves credit, as others do, for choosing public service.
Give Trudeau some marks for trying to explain his position. But in the course of doing that he did what Liberals constantly lambaste their Conservative opponents for doing: He went so far over the top in his condemnation of the government he might soon be joining Newt Gingrich on his moon base. His third-person, self-referential tirade was based on the usual failed Liberal talking points with a new conclusion – in Quebec separatism is a better option than supporting the current Prime Minister. You’d have thought Justin would have learned from his father that separatism is never an option any federalist should inflate or support.
If Justin ever wants to be a serious candidate for the Liberal leadership he is going to have to remember he is not teaching a drama class anymore. Equally, he has to abandon the failed Liberal approach of demonizing Stephen Harper, which seems only to benefit the NDP in Quebec, and avoid talking up separatism in any form. His time would be better spent developing rational arguments to unpack what he perceives as the offensive Conservative bromides.
Thursday, February 2, 2012 9:59 AM EST
Are even New Democrats bored by the leadership race?
Robert Silver
There has been much written already about the snoozer that is the NDP leadership race. Canadians are bored by the race, goes the refrain. No clash, no compelling narrative, nobody’s paying attention.
But what if it isn’t only the broad Canadian populace who have tuned out the NDP leadership race, but also partisan New Democrats who are unimpressed by what’s on offer?
Let me stop right here – I get it; I’m a Liberal so anything I write about the NDP leadership race is partisan spin. I get it. Let me try to make everything from this point on nothing but facts.
There is only one objective data set publicly available in the leadership race as of today: fundraising numbers.
Silver-Powers Contributors
Robert Silver
Robert Silver is a Toronto-based energy lawyer, entrepreneur and consultant. He currently advises energy companies looking to build clean electricity projects in Ontario. He has been involved in projects that have brought more 3,000 megawatts of clean and renewable energy to Ontario. Robert has also been involved in a number of innovative conservation and energy efficiency projects. He is a highly sought after speaker on energy, infrastructure and environment issues.
An active federal and provincial Liberal, Robert was Gerard Kennedy's National Policy Director during the 2006 Liberal Leadership Campaign. Prior to returning to the private sector, he worked for Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty as a special policy advisor. He received his law degree from the University of Western Ontario, where he won two North American and two Canadian National Debating Championships.
Tim Powers
Tim Powers is Vice-President of Summa Communications based in Ottawa.
Originally from St. John's, Tim began his career as an assistant and advisor to the Honourable John C. Crosbie, then Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. Thereafter, he acted as advisor to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. He also served as the Director of Policy and Research to the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Generally, he has been involved with federal election campaigns in one way or another since the great Free Trade debate of 1988. From handing out leaflets to knocking on doors to TV talking (thankfully his time as a bouncer helped with that) he has had the good fortune of doing a bit of everything.
Tim has a Master of Sciences degree (Media and Communications) from the London School of Economics and has studied Public Sector Management at Harvard University. Currently, he serves as a lecturer in the Faculty of Communications at the University of Ottawa.
