“We might not support this budget because the deficit is too
high,” a number of MPs declared to me last week when I was in Ottawa
covering the budget. And, nope, these weren’t Conservatives, they
were Liberals.
Can you imagine that? Liberals concerned about too much
spending from the Conservatives?
At that point it was confirmed to me that last week’s budget
presented by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was much more than an
important economic document. It also officially changed the
political spectrum we’re used to dealing with. While much of the
content was dictated by the economic crisis we are in, it doesn’t
necessarily explain the huge change we see in the behaviour of our
political organizations.
Things have been changing for a long time and not just in
Canada.
Remember the fiscally responsible American president Ronald
Reagan left a debt much bigger than the one he had when he arrived.
It was up to the Democrat Bill Clinton, considered a big spender, to
balance things out.
We thought it was a blip. It wasn’t. Even the
ultra-conservative George Bush has pushed America into another debt
that I don’t have enough “zeros” to
describe.
Canada’s no different. It was Conservative Brian Mulroney who
left the government with a huge deficit and it was the Liberal
government of Jean Chrétien who cleaned it up. Again, it is now the
Conservative government of Stephen Harper who has created a huge
deficit that, most likely, will be left to a Liberal government in
the future to deal with.
Of course, there is a reason for this: It was Reagan and the
Bushes who had to deal with the recessions at the beginning of the
1980s, 1990s and now. Clinton was in the White House during good
economic times.
It was the same in Canada with Mulroney dealing with the
recession in the 1990s and Stephen Harper with these international
crises. Jean Chrétien was at 24 Sussex when the only problem his
minister of finance had was that he was getting more money than he
was expecting.
Of course, they took the responsibility of cutting money for
medicare and education. Still, they operated according to the
economic times.
This means that traditional ideologies are now obsolete and
the economic directions are set elsewhere, the international
level.
In this new environment, political organizations must refocus
their image otherwise they risk losing contact with their
electorate.
I don’t consider the Bloc Québécois a political organization
but a provincial lobby with official party status; so let me
elaborate on the status of the other three organizations: the
Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the
NDP.
The Conservatives and the NDP are facing the most difficult
tasks.
You could actually see last week NDP leader Jack Layton
scrambling to find something rational to say about a budget that had
the NDP written all over it.
Definitely, the depth of the economic crisis was requiring
it, but it made then NDP Ontario premier Bob Rae look fiscally
responsible.
It is important for Layton to find a new image for his party
(and fast) avoiding the temptation of dragging his knees to carry on
economic ideologies that even for the Conservatives are now
obsolete.
And there is a problem also for the Conservatives who have
been forced to change most of their views not only in economic
fields, but also in social sectors.
Gay marriage and abortion are a reality, capital punishment
is not: and they have learned how to leave with them, if not
accepting them altogether. And now the last bastion is officially
collapsed: fiscal restraint.
Again, I believe that Harper had no choice to do what he had
to do, but at this point Conservatives have to refocus their
communications strategy to present themselves to Canadians with the
new, real image. If they don’t do that, they risk losing the
traditional electorate without gaining a new
one.
Furthermore, Prime Minister Harper risks being seen as
someone who does what the Liberals want only to hold onto power.
And, in doing so, it gives the Liberal Party the opportunity to set
the stage for new economic directions without taking any
responsibility if things go wrong (Ignatieff already said that “this
is not my budget”), and taking credit for positive
results.
Conservatives must fight to regain control of the
agenda.
Then we have the Liberals. They are in the worst possible
organizational and financial situation, but the political
environment is the best for them. In this chaos they can be whatever
they want to be. Even in the past they had a big tent, allowing all
kinds of MPs and positions.
There are Liberal MPs who could easily fit in the NDP caucus
and others in the Conservatives.
And Ignatieff is playing his cards very carefully at this
time.
Who is going to win the next election? Considering that the
core of every political agenda, because of the international
implications, cannot be much different, it all depends on who is
faster in assembling the better communications department and
re-aiming their targets. The Conservatives have to create a new
credible platform, while the Liberals need to have a more credible
organization.
