The Green Shaft

I was deadset against the Green Shift gambit from the outset.

It was precisely the type of core policy you don’t advance while you’re in opposition. It takes the power of government to tackle something of that magnitude.

You have to be able to present a cohesive, coherent policy that you can explain in detail and at length to a skeptical voting public. That takes money and resources, plenty of both. The Liberal opposition had neither the time nor the money to take that on.

Mr. Dion allowed the plan to be uncovered weeks before it was unveiled. That allowed Mr. Harper to exploit his party’s powerful financial advantage to frame the policy in the public’s mind and then kick it to the curb. By the time the Dion Liberals got around to presenting this policy the damage was done, the Green Shift was fatally gored.

It’s not as though Mr. Dion didn’t know better. In today’s Toronto Star, Linda Dobeil writes that the party’s own pollster warned Dion that the Green Shift was a vote loser seven weeks before it was unveiled:

“Despite the confidential warning to senior campaign officials April 29 from pollster Michael Marzolini, the Dion team pressed ahead and, with great fanfare, announced the plan on June 19.
Johanne Senécal, Dion’s chief-of-staff, emailed campaign co-chairs – Senator David Smith, Mark Marissen and Nancy Girard – that more focus group testing was required in order to sell it properly.

“Tell (Marzolini) that SD (Dion) is putting his political career at risk here and that we would be insane to let him go forward without testing the messages,” she wrote in a May 8 email.

http://www.thestar.com/FederalElection/article/519051

The article makes clear that Dion gambled, and lost, not only his own political career but the electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party by ignoring these warnings.

What in God’s name was he thinking?

 

Harper & Dion Served Up Mallick-Style

Heather Mallick, writing in The Guardian, filed this post-mortem on our election and, if nothing else, it should lift your spirits:

There are three wings to Canadian political life. Harper, the Conservative PM, is a rightwing extremist, although he doesn’t suck up like Cameron. He is an anti-choice, pro-prison, poverty-ignoring, food-safety-privatising, arts-ridiculing, Afghanistan war-loving, cowboy hat-wearing guy.

The Liberals, the nation’s natural rulers, are in the middle of the road like an expiring woodchuck. They are sensible people without passion; they own just the one house; they’re New Labour without the ratlike cunning, without the Cherie, shall we say. The New Democratic party is old Labour.

Harper began passing laws making Canada more like the States. His most complimentary adjective was “CEO-like”. He wants life sentences for 14-year-old murderers, of whom we have maybe three in a nation of 33 million citizens. He wants to build more prisons, ban safe-injection sites for heroin addicts, privatise universal healthcare, make the foetus not just a person, but someone who can dress for success – you know the drill.

…So we voted. As in the movie Groundhog Day, where the post-election morning was the same as the last one, with the result being another minority government born of a quiet desperation that won’t be soothed until the Liberals get a new leader, not a sweet smart guy like Stéphane Dion, but someone with claws like Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian you Brits took to your bosom some years ago.

Thanks for sending him back. It’s getting hot here, our trees are sawdust and our ice is melting. Canada needs a smart decisive cynic. Anything to haul that crushed woodchuck off the road.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/16/canada-georgebush

 

The Dion, ….er Harper Economic Plan

The Globe & Mail says it all. Harper has pretty much lifted Stephane Dion’s plans for getting Canada through the hard times that we face:

Most of these measures are in fact actions one would expect a prime minister to take and the list looks similar to the five-point action plan proposed by Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion during the campaign.

They include:

• Taking “whatever appropriate steps are necessary to ensure that Canada’s financial system is not put at a competitive disadvantage.”

• Discussing the crisis at Friday’s Canada European Union Summit and talking about strengthening the economic partnership with this bloc.

• Summoning Parliament to meet this fall and tabling an economic update before the end of November.

• Participating in the Group of 20 finance ministers’ meeting November 8-9 and calling for a further meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers to “build on progress made at their meeting.

• Keeping government spending “focused and under control” by continuing a four-year review of government departmental spending.

• Convening a meeting with the premiers and territorial leaders on the economy to discuss a joint approach to the global financial crisis.

 

I’ve Never Seen So Many Holding Their Breath

It’s the same story on both Liblogs and Progressive Bloggers – virtual silence. According to CBC, Lord Vader is still confined safely on the DeathStar, closer certainly but still no majority cigar. Maybe this time he’ll face a responsible, co-operative opposition that is willing to act as though it had a pair. That, after all, is the only remedy for the playground bully.

Stephane Dion failed to meet the one challenge that faced him – doing at least as well as his predecessor, Paul Martin. In fact, the Dion Libs took a drubbing as though that should come as a surprise to anyone.

As far as I can tell just now, the only real losers tonight were the Libs under Stephane Dion. Is it any wonder?

If Stephen Harper is going to be run out of Dodge, it’s going to take a Liberal leadership change and the sooner the better. I bit my tongue during the campaign but that’s over now. There is a type of individual suited to leading the Liberal party. Mr. Dion is not of that standard. If he has any integrity he’ll step down. If he doesn’t, we need to show him the door.

 

A Gaffe Big Enough To Drive a Truck Through

Canadian prime minister Stephen “McSame” Harper says fear not, the Canadian economy is “strong.”

“Today, we see more volatility in the financial markets due to the crisis in the United States. Remember, Canada is not the United States. The fundamentals of the Canadian economy are sound.”

Harper is right, in part. We’re not the United States, not that he can claim a lot of credit for that. Harper’s outspoken support for deep integration with the United States is on record and it speaks for itself.

Here’s one fundamental of the Canadian economy that’s anything but sound – our unhealthy reliance on trade with the United States. In trade, we’ve been putting almost all of our eggs in one basket, the one with all the stars and stripes painted on it.

It’s the United States of America that creates our terrific balance of trade surpluses. It’s the United States that generates our balance of payment surpluses.

The rest of the world, those countries that Harper has so often shown a cold shoulder? You don’t find Canada enjoying a lot of balance of trade surpluses with them. In fact we’re running a serious balance of trade deficit beyond the U.S.

So Harp needs a sharp one up alongside his goofy head. Our hull may not be leaking but when you’re the rowboat tied fast to the Titanic, you’ve got a problem, one that you need to acknowledge and address and resolve.

The guy at the wheel of the Tory clown car doesn’t want to talk about this. Harper is afraid that simply talking about what’s in store for us could upset his plans when he’s so close to an election win. Shouldn’t we be afraid of a guy who acts like this?

So, Mister Dion, it’s time to act like the leader of the Liberal Party. The Globe reports that a group of Toronto Libs are urging Dion to appoint a panel of prominent Liberals to, “…to study the situation and suggest ways Canadians can keep their life savings and deal with the Wall Street crisis.”
They’re touting names like Paul Martin, Frank McKenna, John Manley and Don Johnston – men whose financial talents are unheard of in the Tory ranks.

“We believe this task force idea would help Dion recover at the 11th hour, because at the very least, it would remind Canadians of the stellar Chrétien/Martin record on the economy,” one of the Toronto Liberals said. “Desperate times call for desperate measures, perhaps. This is not a desperate measure but a smart one.”

Harper has taken his stand. The economy is sound, nothing to see here, move on. It’s a position that defies reality and would leave Canadians at severe risk to an American meltdown. Harper hasn’t given Mr. Dion many opportunities as good as this and Mr. Dion can’t afford to pass on this one.

 

Rescuing Stephane Dion

It didn’t have to be this way. If Keith Davey was still around, it wouldn’t be.

Stephane Dion’s Green Shift has been a disaster in its introduction and in its marketing.

We all know that the Green Shift stumbled at birth. Mr. Dion lost control of its introduction. It was uncloaked before it could be unveiled. It was released when it was most vulnerable to empty, alarmist attack and before it could be explained, defended and sold to the public.

Steve Harper was able to tie the Green Shift around Mr. Dion’s neck and keep it there. After that, there was no separating the two which ensured that it would be Dion, not Harper, on the defensive in the critical opening weeks of the election campaign.

Everything we complained about Harper, every excess, every anti-democratic and authoritarian abuse, the scandals, every broken promise – it all got swept away. Harper hasn’t had to defend his record at all, not even remotely. It’s as though none of that stuff ever happened.

Harper’s shield, his cloak of invisibility? Mr. Dion’s Green Shift.

At no time since Mr. Dion assumed the party leadership have the Liberals been strong enough to launch an initiative of the scope of the Green Shift. It’s much too big for a party to attempt from a position of relative weakness.

The Tories have held a huge financial advantage over the LPC throughout Mr. Dion’s leadership and there was no sign he was ever making any inroads on that. That alone ought to have set the alarm bells ringing. The Liberals didn’t have the luxury of launching a major and controversial initiative. They couldn’t afford it.

The one thing the Liberals didn’t have to buy was the litany of Harper’s excesses. That was free. People had watched it all unfold – Cadman, Mulroney, Afghanistan, In and Out, accountability, environmental stonewalling, gagging the military, and secrecy, secrecy, secrecy.

So, why isn’t Harper being forced to hop and dance around his own record right now? Why is he able to recast himself as an average guy in a sweater vest? It’s because he grabbed the opportunity, back when the Green Shift unveiling was so terribly botched, to put Dion on the defensive and to keep him there.

The Liberals didn’t have enough money to launch a Green Shift platform. They didn’t have enough money or enough time. It’s not a policy suited to an opposition party in any case. It takes a massive information campaign, meetings and discussions with the public and every key player, a building of consensus. That’s a job only a government can tackle.

Dion needed sage advice and it seems he didn’t get it. He needed to take the initiative and go on the offensive. He needed to frame the issues.

A – The first step ought to have been to assure the public that a newly elected Liberal government would absolutely not introduce Green Shift legislation unless certain key conditions had been met. In other words, Mr. Dion ought to have removed the Green Shift as an election issue altogether.

B – Mr. Dion should have promised broad consultations with the Canadian public and the most heavily affected sectors – transportation, energy, agriculture and so on. Mr. Dion ought to have made clear that his party would then seek to hone that input into the strongest possible consensus behind an effective carbon reduction programme. In opposition, the Liberals have neither the funding nor the time for an undertaking of that magnitude. Restating the obvious isn’t a sign of weakness.

C – And then – the third condition – would have been to promise a plebiscite. Let the government come up with a policy, explain it properly to the public and then seek public approval. Promise the Canadian people that they would decide the Canadian response to global warming. After all, if you introduce policies they don’t support, they’ll do the deciding anyway in the next election.

The logic of this approach ought to have been obvious to any Quebecker. This issue shares a lot of the complexities of a sovereignty referendum. It’s something that has to be sold to the voting public. They have to decide it’s fate, they have to support it or send their government back to the drawing board.

Getting Dion and the cash-strapped LPC off Harper’s hook ought to have been as easy as A-B-C. Then it might have been possible to make this election a verdict on Harper’s greasy record of the past two years.

I’m not sure there’s still time for Mr. Dion to drag himself out of the Green Shift hole that Harper has dug for him. But, damn, he’s got to try!

 

Okay Lardo, It’s a Command Performance Now

Our Furious Leader, little Stevie Harper, may have to think twice about spurning Stephane Dion’s challenge for an “adult debate” on the Liberal Green Shift proposal.

A Toronto Star/Angus Reid poll found 70% of respondents absolutely keen on the debate idea.

The Big Greasy Splotch is going to have to tread carefully through this one. If he doesn’t debate, he won’t look good to most Canadians. If he does debate, he runs even greater risks. He might just give Dion the opportunity to show he’s not a wimp. Worse yet, he might give Dion a forum to showcase the real merits and limited downside effects of the tax shift proposal.

Poor old Lardo. He’s great at sniping from the weeds but now he’s being called out – by the Canadian people.

 

An "Adult Debate" on Climate Change?

Stephane Dion seems insistent on bringing Stephen Harper into the floodlights over climate change.

Dion has struck back, challenging our Furious Leader, Mr. “We’re Screwed” Harper, to an adult debate on the Liberals’ “Green Shift” plan to reduce carbon emissions.

“I call on the Prime Minister to debate with me any time on TV on this issue in a respectful, meaningful and adult way.”

No word yet on whether the Great Greasy Spot will take Dion’s challenge.

 

I’ve Seen This Movie Before

Responding to a critique by Castor Rouge of my critique of Stephane Dion this morning, I had a flashback to 1974. I was one of many menial scribes conscripted to cover the federal election campaign that year.

It was the challenger, Tory Robert Stanfield, versus Pierre Trudeau with David Lewis batting for the NDP.

Canada was in a mess with runaway inflation. Bob Stanfield campaigned on a promise/threat of wage and price controls to stabilize the economy. Make no mistake, Stanfield was promoting a very unpopular idea. He scared the living hell out of a lot of people, particularly organized labour.

Pierre Trudeau pounced. He got up on stage and lambasted Stanfield, warning voters that, if the Tories formed the next government, they would wake up one day and “Zap, you’re frozen!” It was a shrewd bit of politicking and it worked. It stampeded the labour vote out of the NDP corral and into the Liberal camp. Trudeau won, Stanfield lost. David Lewis even lost his own seat.

Just a few months later, newly re-elected prime minister Pierre Trudeau introduced – why wage and price controls of course.

Bob Stanfield was a wonderful guy, honest and direct. However he looked like an undertaker and utterly lacked charisma. He went into that election advocating an unpopular policy, unpopular but necessary, that his rival was able to use to beat him senseless.

I think Stephane Dion is something of a latter-day Stanfield. He has no discernible charisma and he wants to champion an unpopular policy, one that can easily be used by his opponents to scare voters.

 

Like Pissing Into the Wind

One in ten. It doesn’t make much difference what you’re trying to achieve, if you’re scoring 10% it almost always means you have a problem.

The carbon tax has a problem.

It’s not so much a problem with the merits of the idea itself or the political hurdles it poses. Its main problem is the guy who says he’ll stake all to make it happen – Stephane Dion.

The latest Toronto Star/Angus Reid poll shows that Dion isn’t the guy to sell a carbon tax to the Canadian public.

“Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion’s approval rating has sunk to its lowest level yet, with nine of 10 Canadians saying they disapprove or are not sure of his performance as the head of the party, according to the latest Toronto Star/Angus Reid opinion poll.

Not since former Liberal leader John Turner bottomed out with a 14 per cent approval rating shortly after losing the 1988 election have things been so bad for the head of Canada’s most successful political party. Just 10 per cent of those surveyed stand behind Dion’s leadership, the poll shows, compared to 32 per cent for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

What’s worse is that the number of people who said they were unsure about Dion’s performance has dropped from 46 per cent at the end of last summer to 30 per cent this month, meaning that Canadians are making up their minds about a leader who has had difficulties rallying his party behind him as well as communicating his party’s positions to potential voters.

“What’s really disheartening is it’s almost as if everyone’s made up their minds already,” said the polling firm’s Mario Canseco. “Those who actually have something to say about Dion are saying negative things.”

The online poll of 1,004 Canadians is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.”

I know this news is going to upset loyal Dion supporters and there are plenty of you among Liberal bloggers. You support Dion, you stand by him faithfully and that’s all very nice. What you aren’t going to do is get him elected.

The Liberal Party brand is propping up Dion, not the other way around. Canadians’ dislike and distrust of Stephen Harper is propping up Dion.

The election may be won or lost on Dion’s leadership. Yet he’s intent on transforming it into a referendum on carbon taxes. With this pleasant, well-intentioned, intelligent but hapless character at the wheel, Dion may be dooming initiatives such as carbon taxes in a vain attempt to save his own political neck.

We’ll have another leader of the party but a loss on a de facto carbon tax referendum may just set back that initiative for years to come, if not permanently. Once the Canadian voters believe they have spoken, it’s going to be enormously difficult for another leader to get them to change their minds.

Dion’s legacy may be that of a failed leader who gambled on really bad odds and wound up dragging down the environmental initiative with him.

The carbon tax initiative is too important to be put to a referendum by a leader who can’t even sell himself.

The good news. Canadians are still waiting for the LPC to come up with a leader they can support. The party can retake the government – only not until it does some essential housekeeping.

Until then it’s just pissing into the wind.