Angry in the Great White North

In today's Toronto Star editorial, the advice to Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion is to bring down the government and fight an election:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government revealed itself yesterday as a party of the "me-first" right in a Halloween eve mini-budget packed with tax-cut treats favouring affluent Canadians.

But it ran out of goodies for those with the greatest needs – the poor, workers losing jobs in the battered manufacturing sector and everyone else who believes the federal government should be playing the leading role in making Canada richer, stronger and fairer.

Indeed, the mini-budget delivered yesterday by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is so lacking in the vision and programs needed to address the major social and economic challenges facing Canada that it should be defeated when it comes up for a vote today in Parliament.

And Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, who says his party opposes the budget but will vote for it, should immediately reverse his position and order his party members to reject it.

The Toronto Star is a very pro-Liberal paper, editorially speaking, so what gives?

An election right now, most people believe, could very well result in a Conservative majority government. Though that is not a given, it is far more widely accepted that the new minority situation would see the Liberals dramatically weakened. Certainly in Quebec, where the Liberals are polling neck-and-neck with the NDP while trailing far behind the Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberals could be nearly wiped out everywhere but for a few enclaves in Montreal. And even those are in doubt.

Less predictable are factors like how Stephane Dion would perform in a Leader's debate. But over and over again observers say that deputy leader Michael Ignatieff outshines Stephane Dion during Question Period. With Jack Layton just as likely to target Stephane Dion from the left in order to steal votes, and Stephen Harper attacking from the right, Stephane Dion's tortured English and pedantic delivery would in all likelihood result in a performance that would further hurt the Liberals.

We have Blair Wilson's terrible troubles. We have the fallout from Jamie Carroll's resignation. We have the Liberals without any cash. We have Jean Chretien's memoirs.

Worst of all for Stephane Dion, we have Stephen Harper as a known quantity. He's been Prime Minister for nearly two years. He is clearly a conservative, staking out conservative position on everything from the Middle East to the environment to the economy. Not far-right scary stuff, but clearly conservative (in my mind, anyway). A conservatism suited for governing as opposed to writing polemics.

Canadians have not fled in terror from this.

On the other hand, what do Canadians know about Stephane Dion's ability to lead? When criticized, he mewled about how it wasn't fair to blame him as the former environment minister for Kyoto's failure. Why? Because it's really hard to set priorities.

Not a leader...

So for all sort of reasons, the Liberals are abstaining from vote after vote. The Conservative government's legislative agenda is unacceptable and bad for Canadians says Stephane Dion, but worse yet is losing. I've pointed out that this actually makes some sense, but only if you are interested in preserving the Liberal Party.

And yet the Toronto Star says go for an election over Jim Flaherty's financial update. Why? Because it doesn't do enough for the poor by cutting the GST and lowering taxes across the board.

I don't know about you, but it would seem that the Toronto Star is saying the the Liberals should fight an election on the issue that the Conservatives are acting like Conservatives and not like Liberals. Yes, well, that's what we'd expect, right?

The Conservatives didn't break any promises with this budget. Indeed, they completed keeping a promise.

So if the Conservatives are not likely to loose any support (there might be some anger over income trusts, but the issue doesn't have much traction with most Canadians, and anyway, the Bloc and the NDP supported the measure, blunting opposition criticism). The Liberals are not likely to gain any and might very well lose much more (Quebec is still in freefall, and Stephane Dion is suggesting he would repeal a GST cut, which is not a vote-winning platform plank).

Afghanistan as an issue is essentially neutralized with the Manley panel. The environmental plan the Tories have presented appeals to regular Canadians who don't want much to do with economically disastrous options put forth by the other parties, and even Elizabeth May of the Green Party undercut the opposition by muting her criticism.

As far as I can tell, nothing points to the Liberals winning. Everything points to the Liberals losing at least a little, and quite possibly a lot. The only thing in doubt seems to be whether the Conservatives win a majority.

So maybe that's the key.

Maybe the Toronto Star figures that, right now, an election would result in a Conservative minority. Indeed, the Toronto Star isn't demanding an election because they think the Liberals will win. All the editorial board says is that the Liberals could win, hypothetically:

Also, there is no guarantee Harper would win the next election, despite his desire to hold a vote sooner rather than later. A new Harris/Decima poll suggests the Tories are at 33 per cent in overall support, barely four points ahead of the Liberals. Those results should tell Dion the vast majority of voters dislike Harper and his policies.

But we don't use proportional representation. With support for the Liberals concentrated in Atlantic Canada and in a few urban enclaves, the riding distribution is likely to favour the Conservatives. Opposition does not win a seat, support does. It might be true that 70% of Canadians are voting for other parties, but they aren't voting for the same party, and certainly not for Stephane Dion's Liberals. The numbers might show that the Conservative have not gained much, but clearly the Liberals have lost, much of it to the NDP. How can you win if you are just trying to recover votes from the third place guy instead of stealing votes from the leader? But aside from how the votes are spread around, the Liberals are at least 4 points behind, and quite possibly farther, and that deficit would have to be overcome in the course of a short election campaign.

Could Stephane Dion, with all the baggage he is carrying, make up the lost ground and then pull ahead? With both Stephen Harper and Jack Layton attacking, and Gilles Duceppe pulling out all the stops to hold onto BQ seats in Quebec targetting a weaker Liberal Party as an easier source of votes instead of a stronger Conservative Party while at the same time holding off the NDP stealing votes from both, does this seem likely?

The Toronto Star is advocating an election so that the Liberals under Stephane Dion could fight on the issue of the Conservatives doing exactly what they've always said they'd do.

The Toronto Star doesn't mention any of these other variables that I've listed.

To me, and I'm no expert, it looks like suicide.

Maybe that's exactly what it is. Maybe the Toronto Star is fed up with Stephane Dion. Maybe the Toronto Star has figured that an election know would still result in a Stephen Harper minority government, but that the Liberal loss would spell the end of Stephane Dion's spell as party leader.

Maybe the Toronto Star would like the Liberals to avoid an even worse loss in the future, the editorial board having decided that Stephane Dion is on a downward trend that is not going to change.

The Liberal Party does not take its cue from the Toronto Star's editorial board. But I bet Stephane Dion had wished that the Toronto Star editorial would have said something about "wise leadership" and "keeping your powder dry" and "choosing the time and place", instead of "Jump! Jump! Jump!"

As it is, the Toronto Star is saying Canada would be better off if Stephane Dion went against the collective wisdom of his caucus and initiated an election no one believes he can win.

With friends like these...