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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several of his most powerful cabinet ministers met last week at historic Willson House, on a promontory overlooking Meech Lake in Quebec's Gatineau Park, and decided they must call a federal election before three by-elections set for Sept. 8, according to a senior Conservative insider.
“I know for certain P and P [cabinet's influential planning and priorities committee] was told last week,” the insider said.
“They had a political discussion and during that political discussion they concluded that, all things being equal, they would like to go before the eighth.
“Obviously at that point there were some outstanding issues, how to respond to the opposition leaders … but it was agreed that they would go before the eighth, if at all possible, and this fall for sure.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper sits in the cockpit of a CF-18 Canadian Armed Forces fighter jet on Thursday during his Canadian Western Arctic tour in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. (Todd Korol/Reuters)
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For the Prime Minister, this was the culmination of a high-stakes strategy he had set in motion at the end of July at the Conservative caucus meeting in Quebec, when he challenged Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion to “fish or cut bait.”
Rather than waiting for Mr. Dion, who had been musing all summer about defeating the government this fall, Mr. Harper decided to take matters into his own hands. He would take control of the election timing, pull the plug on his own government and let the chips fall where they may, another Conservative strategist said.
Never mind that he and his government had passed legislation to set a fixed election date for October, 2009.
The Tory insider said that Mr. Harper and his strategists looked at the landscape – the economy possibly getting worse and Mr. Dion possibly getting better over the next few months – and decided that they had to go to the polls this fall.
“All those factors outweighed the grief they were going to take for breaking their own legislation,” the insider said. “If you let the by-elections take place and you do super well in the by-elections, then it looks like you are an opportunist. If you don't do so well as people expect in the by-elections, you look like the momentum has gone.
“And if you're determined to go … it looks like this is what you do.”
Having made his decision, Mr. Harper never looked back, upping the ante for a fall election every chance he got: Parliament is dysfunctional, he said. The opposition was refusing to pass his legislation. Committees were acting like a “kangaroo court.”
And so in less than four weeks, Mr. Harper and his strategists moved dramatically and swiftly from insisting they wanted to govern until October, 2009 – the fixed-election date – to a probable general election this fall. How did this happen?
“It's trademark Harper in that he's making an unexpected decision and, once he makes it, he's going to pursue it full steam ahead and take the gamble,” said Tom Flanagan, a Harper mentor, former chief of staff and now a professor at the University of Calgary. “This is what he lives for, this sort of high-stakes politics. This is what galvanizes him, really gets him excited. This is when he's at his best.”
Several strategists, including Prof. Flanagan, say that Mr. Harper's decision was a result of wanting to control the election timing.
“You'd rather have control of events yourself rather than waiting for other people to act,” he said. “This allows Harper to control the timing rather than sit passively and wait for Dion to make up his mind.”
Another senior Conservative strategist said the Harper gamble was also based on the fact that there had been no movement on a key policy: “Harper cares about Senate reform and Senate reform is the one issue where this Parliament hasn't made any progress on the government's agenda.”
Prof. Flanagan said Mr. Harper is also fed up with the behaviour in the House of Commons.
“He always told me that he wanted to keep governing and he thought he gained by governing, demonstrating … being able to govern and I think he was sincere in that for a couple of years,” Prof. Flanagan said. “But Parliament has become such a circus that just being part of it isn't really helping him much any more. It's so degrading all the stuff that is happening. I don't think it bolsters him any longer. I think the situation has changed.”
The Tories, according to another key strategist, have been “100 per cent ready” to go to the polls since they released their budget last spring.
The PMO has been on election footing for months, expecting with every confidence vote, starting with last fall's Speech from the Throne, that their government would fall. Much to their surprise it never happened.
What did finally happen, however, was that just before the Tory caucus in Quebec, Mr. Dion began musing again, this time very seriously or at least the Tories felt, about taking down the government in the fall.
“That created the consensus, certainly within the PMO, where it suddenly dawned on us, ‘Okay, we're going to go in the fall,'” the key strategist said.
“When it was clear that we were not going to survive until October, 2009, if the opposition had their way, then it was just a matter of … who should control the timing? Should it be us or should it be them?”
In the last two weeks, calls have been going out from party headquarters to strategists who will be involved in the campaign; there has also been an increase in campaign strategy meetings.
In addition, Mr. Harper and his strategists are beginning to try to frame the ballot question, making it about leadership as new television ads are shifting the emphasis from “Dion is not a leader” to “Stéphane Dion is not worth the risk,” the key strategist said.
Bob Plamondon, a public policy specialist, political author and former Conservative candidate, knows Mr. Harper and the people around him.
“His focus is on winning, not just on governing,” Mr. Plamondon said.
“You know, he's ahead of us. He's plotting it out.”
