New technology and a higher sophistication of voters make it very difficult for pollsters to come up with credible results and the big spread between the results of recent polls conducted by two credible organizations confirm this concern.
Nonetheless, polls offer good indicators on the direction voters are headed in. Last week's results from both Ekos and Nanos were pointing towards an increase of Conservative support and a new Liberal retreat. Of course, considering the margin of error, we can conclude that there is nothing conclusive and things can easily change.
One thing, however, that comes out clearly from the polls is the rebuke of Canadian voters to the tactics adopted by the Liberal leadership. Unable to present a decent political plan on important issues, Michael Ignatieff's Liberals are trying to anchor debates in the House on peripheral and minor issues and disregarding important discussions on subjects that matter the most.
By now, Liberals, still respectful of their glorious organization, should have realized that their mudslinging elevated by their present leadership to the rank of a political program to win the next election, might make it difficult for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to win a majority, but it won't take them anywhere and definitely not to 24 Sussex Dr.
This behaviour, despite the numerous tries by Jack Layton's New Democratic Party to pull the debate back on important issues, it has created an environment on the Hill that is destroying traditions, friendships and professionalism that has always characterized the work of Canadian Parliamentarians of all political affiliations. The environment on the Hill in the last few years is so toxic that even the grass on the front lawn is dying.
Without going too far back in history, recall some of the more heated, skilful but always respectful debaters like former Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker, former Liberal prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Lester Pearson, and in more contemporary times, the sometimes abrasive but witty and intelligent orators like John Crosbie and Brian Mulroney. What we have now instead is trivial yelling during the daily Question Period or senseless and offensive accusations on sordid affairs. The difference between the debates of the past and those we are witnessing today is like the one between a nude woman in a Botticelli painting and one from a Playboy magazine.
There was a time when we were used to elegant and eloquent orators debating issues like peacekeeping in the world, the new Constitution in this country and economic initiatives like free trade on the North American continent and fiscal reforms. I remember Mulroney's eloquence in promoting free trade and the passion of then Liberal leader John Turner against it. Elections have been won or lost on issues like trade, the economy, or constitutional reform, not on the criminalization of an entire government or political organization because some unscrupulous individuals tried to make some money financing their political organizations with the sponsorship funds or, worse, trying to defeat a government that is doing a good job of saving our economy, because a former MP ridiculously, and unsuccessfully, tried the old art of capitalizing on some friendships on Parliament Hill to make some money.
Nowadays there are exchanges of insults similar to those typical of soccer hooligans. We now hear debates about useless innuendos against a former MP accused of using cocaine, alleged collusion with organized crime through controversial girlfriends, debates about what happened two years ago in Afghanistan without anybody telling us what Canada is going to do there in the next two years. What we see is mud stuck all over the Parliament Buildings, once the house of great politicians like John A. Macdonald or Wilfrid Laurier. Even the buildings themselves are literally falling apart, as the auditor general said recently in one of her audits on the Parliament Buildings renovations.
This, as the polls are showing very clearly, have provoked a dangerous phenomena. Canadian voters are increasingly disenfranchising from Canadian politics.
This is a very concerning development because it means that politicians can more easily manipulate a shrinking electorate right at the time when politicians should be more closely watched and scrutinized by all Canadians.
