Skip to content

Harper holds key

Most Canadians don’t seem to want an election. Neither, according to their rhetoric, do the leaders of Canada’s political parties.

Most Canadians don’t seem to want an election. Neither, according to their rhetoric, do the leaders of Canada’s political parties. Polls, although erratic, suggest an election would change little in Ottawa.

Yet here we are, less than a month before a pivotal vote that could, if the Conservative government’s budget is defeated, plunge the nation into a spring election campaign that no one says they want.

Amidst all the uncertainty, Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to be in the catbird seat — as long as he convinces enough Canadians his budget is reasonable and affordable.

If the opposition then defeats the budget, Harper will no doubt blame them for the cost and trouble of an election — which will likely give the prime minister yet another minority government and, just maybe, a majority. If at least one opposition party backs the budget, the prime minister stays in power.

That, observers have noted, puts Harper in a win-win position.

For Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, forcing an election might be seen as his last chance — if he can pull off a strong campaign and make significant gains in terms of seats — to turn around the public’s seeming ambivalence about him and his party.

NDP Leader Jack Layton, however, is stuck in more of a quandary.

Analysts say a spring election could easily cost the NDP seats, and a gruelling campaign might be a challenge for Layton, who is recovering from prostate cancer treatment.

But if Layton’s well-publicized recent meeting with Harper about what should be in the federal budget — including improving the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors — doesn’t yield sufficient concrete results when the document is tabled in March, the NDP leader will be hard-pressed to explain support for the government’s budget to his political base.

With the federal deficit now expected to come in lower than predicted this fiscal year, perhaps as low as $36 billion, Harper has room to manoeuvre.

What he chooses to do with that flexibility will determine whether Canadians go to the polls, probably in May.

An editorial from the Halifax Chronicle Herald.