Wild About Writing

A lot has happened in this first week of federal election campaigning. Here’s how I rate “the week that was” — on a scale of 1 to 10 — for each of the party leaders:

Elizabeth May – 10 – Things will never get this good again!

Stephen Harper - 5 – The Thoroughbred turns into a Nag

Stephane Dion - 4 – Saved by the Poopin’ Puffin

Jack Layton – 4 – Principle, you say?

Gilles Duceppe - 2 – What are we doing here? 

Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives romped out of the gate on Sunday with a smoothly-oiled, well-prepared machine. Their war room in east end Ottawa had been on standby for a year and a half. Pre-election ads put a new spin on a “soft, fuzzy sweater” PM. Some polls claimed the Tories were edging into majority territory.

The first day out, Harper dodged the bullet on why he’d ignored his own law for a fixed election date. Then it all started to unravel.

The Tory web site notaleader.ca started it with the tasteless flight of the poopin’ puffin, dropping you-know-what on a nerdy-looking Stephane Dion. Harper had to apologize, and most of the site’s more egregious content has since been taken down.

Two days later, the PM was interrupting a policy speech to make another apology, announcing that he’d fired Tory communications director Ryan Sparrow for an ugly email slagging Jim Davis, father of a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. The father’s second thoughts about Harper’s war policy were politically inspired, Sparrow had suggested, noting he was an Iggy (Michael Ignatieff) supporter.

The mean-spirited nature of the Tory campaign is not being well received. Stephane Dion has laid the blame in Harper’s lap, saying “Mr. Harper created the pattern in this party. He told them they need to be negative, to be real low-blow.” 

Then there was Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams’ attack on the federal Tories. “A majority government for Stephen Harper would be one of the most negative political events in Canadian history,” he said in a TV talk.

But more than the Tory gaffes, it was the blow-up over the attempt to bar Elizabeth May of the Greens from the leaders’ debate that did the most damage to Tory and NDP images this week.

Laycock’s bid to lay out new policies fell off the rails when he took the brunt of criticism for the decision. His own facebook site lit up with hundreds of Dippers demanding that May be allowed in. The controversy dominated his public appearances. Then came the big backdown, with Layton saying he’d have no objection as long as Harper was in the debate. That left Harper no choice but to agree — although he’s been grumbling ever since that letting in the Green leader is unfair.

Stephane Dion has had a plodding week, although he’s managed not to stumble. He came off looking good with his readiness to let May debate the leaders, but he should have been stronger. When Harper threatened not to show up if May was let in, Dion should have turned the tables and said he’d not show up unless she WAS in. A great chance to be decisive squandered.

So what were the policy announcements of the week?

For the Conservatives: Harper’s reaffirmation that Canada will be out of Kandahar by 2011 (something Paliament is already committed to), his promise to cut two cents a litre off the tax on diesel fuel, and raising the bar for foreign takeover reviews to $1 billion (meaning thousands more Canadian companies could be taken over without a government look-see).

For the NDP: $8 billion for new jobs in industry; an ombudsman to track gas price hikes, a vow to put tougher environmental rules on oil sands development.

For the Liberals: $50 million to bolster food inspection, restore funding for the Court Challenges program, strengthen the Competition Bureau to deal with gas price increases. Realistically, Dion added that the price of gas has gone up because “humanity is asking for more and more oil.”

Dion’s best moment may have been when he reacted to Harper’s charge that the Liberal Green  Shift would set off a recession and damage national unity.

“While he was busy talking about building firewalls in the West, I was fighting to keep my country together,” Dion said in New Brunswick, where he was speaking to the Board of Trade. “I do not need any lessons from Stephen Harper on fighting for the national unity of my country.”

PUZZLING POLLS

If the polls are to be believed, the electorate is highly volatile at this stage, with the numbers jumping all over the place. In one of the wildest surveys, NDP support was said to have doubled in B.C. in a single week. Is this possible?

This afternoon, the CBC released a new poll by Harris/Decima saying the Conservative lead has grown, to 41 per cent, with the Liberals falling back to 26 per cent, the NDP at 14, Greens at 9, and the Bloc at 8 per cent.

Those numbers contrast with the latest figures from Nik Nanos, who has the best record in Canada in calling elections. His latest tracking has the Conservatives up only five points, 37% to 32% for the Liberals.

Finally, a word about the Bloc this week. As anyone could have predicted, the Harper move to recognize the Quebecois as a nation within Canada isn’t good enough. Now we need to put it in the constitution, Duceppe told a rally this morning. Whoda thunk?

On this 7th anniversary of 9/11, it is hard to get through the day with recalling the shock and trauma we all experienced when those planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The brave passengers and crew of the United Airlines flight who rebelled against their captors, leading to the crash in Shanksburg, Pennsylvania, hold a special place in our memory.

I was on the Queen Elizabeth Highway on that bright late summer morning, driving from Toronto to a client event in Burlington, when CBC Radio began broadcasting bulletins from New York. My first thought was of a screwed-up navigation system.

It wasn ‘t very long before a second plane hit the Towers, and it was evident that America was suffering the worst attack on its territory since Pearl Harbor. 

After our Burlington event, I returned to the office where client executives had been going through a closed-doors media rehearsal. I’d called ahead to insist they be advised (some were from the States) and by noon, our staff was on the way home, joining thousands of other commuters clogging the Toronto transit system at midday.

In the weeks that followed, I think just about everybody experienced some degree of psychological trauma, admittedly nothing compared to those who lost friends or loved ones.

Why and how did it all happen?

That’s the question the world has been asking ever since. In his excellent book, The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright posts some pretty devastating conclusions. Al-Qaeda found its roots among the Islamic militants (Taliban) who fought the Russian occupiers of Afghanistan. Despite being financed in large part by the United States, America soon became their main target.

Osama bin Laden set a trail of terror, blowing up U.S. embassies in Africa and the destroyer Cole, before plotting the World Trade attack. According to Wright, a writer for the New Yorker, 9/11 would never have happened if U.S. security agencies had worked together.

Since then, as all the world knows, the misguided and pointless invasion of Iraq has drained American military might and wealth, while bin Laden and the Taliban run free in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So where do we stand after seven years?

Thousands of new recruits have joined the ranks of the terrorists, but their ability to wreak vengeance on the West has been blunted.

We don’t hear much talk any longer about a “clash of civilizations.”

We have one big hope: that the new American administration, whether it is headed by John McCain or Barack Obama, will break from the legacy of the Bushites. It’s time to reassert America’s lost moral influence in the world.

BULLETIN – Harper says he won’t stand in the way of Elizabeth May in the Leaders’ Debate. The following was written before this announcement:

Let me go out on a limb here and now, and say that Elizabeth May will be in the Leaders’ debates!

The opposition to her participation is crumbling. Jack Layton, caving in to the deluge of criticism that’s come his way from his own people, now says he has no objection to May’s participation as long as Prime Minster Harper is at the podium.

The controversy took the edge off Layton’s big announcement this morning that he’d pour $8 billion into supporting job creation for industry, especially to build hybrid cars.

When the broadcast consortium came out with its decision two days ago to exclude May, they put the blame equally on all party leaders. Their story was that Gilles Duceppe, Layton, Harper and Stephane Dion all had said they wouldn’t take part if she was allowed in.

This feeble story line began to crack almost immediately. First Duceppe, and then more forcefully Dion, said they had no objection to May’s presence. Dion, to be sure, added that unless Harper was there, he wouldn’t be.

This morning, Dion told a rally of women Liberal candidates in Streetsville, Ontario, that he’s going to call the broadcasters and insist on a better explanation than they’ve come up with so far.

Another voice, former CBC TV news chief Tony Burman, also has lobbed a heavy shell at the broadcast consortium.

“Prime Minister Harper’s refusal to allow the Green Party leader to participate in the Federal Election Debates is cynical and self-serving,” Burnman wrote in a Globe and Mail Update, “but at least it exposes the sham that Canada’s election debate process has become.”

This is an issue that should transcend partisan politics. The Green party has established itself as a viable, if small party, and Canadians are entitled to see how its leader would perform in a debate with the other party heads.

Why is it that Stephen Harper has been putting up the strongest objection to her particiation? Is it because he fears the Tories have more to lose than the others? Aside from an initial comment, he’s refused even to discuss the matter in media scrums.

It’s now up to him, and his choices are limited. He’s got to either climb down and let Ms. May into the debate, or revert to his pre-election robot-dictator image of a control freak who has to have his own way. That’s the image the Tories have made a big effort to overcome. My guess is he’ll decide that it’s going to be too costly to keep Ms. May out.

As long as the controversy goes on, Harper’s key messages will get lost in the noise. Without this dust-up, his pledge today to get Canadian troops out of Afghanistan in 2011 would have been the headline of the day.

There are signs, only four days into the campaign, that Harper and his Conservatives could be in serious trouble.

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams put the knife in today when he attacked Harper again, saying that a majority government led by Harper would be one of the most negative events in Canadian political history. “Anybody but Harper” seems to be gaining ground in a big way.

Already, the Globe and Mail reports that Conservative support is slipping in key ridings where recently the Tories had been showing growing support.

They’re making them all over. The most grievous has to be Barack Obama’s reference to lipstick on a pig. That’s an old boy crudity that I thought gentlemen had long since abandoned.

In Canada, the Conservative puffin dropping poop on Stephane Dion’s shoulders lowered the Tory campaign to the banyard level. Their excuse that it was done by some lowly geek in the internet factory doesn’t seem credible. More likely some highly-placed geek thought it an effective touch. Sort of reminds you of the “kitten-eating” Dalton McGuinity remark that backfired so badly on the Ontario Conservatives in the 2003 provincial election.

But the major strategic blunder that dominated the campaign yesterday — and is likely to stick around for some time to come — was the refusal of Stephen Harper and Jack Layton to debate Elizabeth May.

I watched, almost breathless, as the CBC fired question after question at Layton this morning about how his undemocratic stance is hurting his party. Citing the many protesting NDP voices who have checked into Layton’s Facebook page, Heather Hiscox pressed him on how he’s going to deal with the damage his stand is doing among his own supporters. Typical politician, he refused to answer. Blathered on about how he’s running for the PM’s job — this has to be the biggest joke of the entire election campaign.

Meanwhile, nearly a hundred thousand people have signed the petition asking for Elizabeth May to be allowed into the leaders’ debates. And I hear the money is pouring into the Greens at their web site. The latest poll says 66 per cent of Canadians want Elizabeth May int he debates. “It’s the best thing that’s happened to us,” she says. But she’s going ahead with a court bid to try to force the broadcast consortium to let her in.

The only leader that’s kept on course this week is Stephane Dion. This may account for the growth in Liberal support reported by the polls in key ridings this week.

Dion told a rally of Liberal women candidates in Streetsville, Ontario this morning that he’s going to call the broadcasters and demand a fuller explanation of why they are keeping Ms. May out. As to the other leaders, he said “they don’t have the courage to explain their position.”

In the U.S. election, the attacks are getting nastier and at the moment, Obama is taking most of the heat. He’ll get a chance to rethink and regroup tomorrow when he and McCain take part in a solemn joint appearance at Ground Zero to commemorate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

One of the reasons people are turned off politics in Canada is that the major parties duck the real issues — and go into a conniption when a newcomer shows up with new ideas.

The refusal to allow Elizabeth May and her Green Party into the leaders’ election debates is an outrage. It is an insult to the collective intelligence of Canadians. And it is an act that speaks with contempt for the 600,000-plus Canadians who voted Green in the last election.

In fairness, I need to record that Liberal Stephane Dion has said he would welcome the opportunity to debate Ms. May. (There’s kind of an accommodation between the Liberals and the Greens. Dion has ruled that no Liberal will run in the Nova Scota riding where Ms. May will take on Tory defence minister Peter McKay.)

But according to a statement from the broadcast consortium organizing the debates,  “Three parties opposed their inclusion and it became clear that if the Green Party were included, there would be no Leaders’ Debates.”

Prime Minister Harper has said that allowing May into the debates would be like having a second Liberal candidate before the TV cameras. So it’s pretty clear who’s behind the oposition to her inclusion. 

Keeping out the Greens is especially unfair in view of the fact the party had one MP in the last Parliament — a former Liberal who joined Greens after being turfed from Liberal ranks.

Considering that Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe is allowed into the national English language debate when his party doesn’t have a single seat outside Quebec, it all makes both the broadcasters and the established parties look a little ridiculous.

On the other hand, maybe including Ms. May in the debates would be a little destabilizing. A whole lot of people might go out and vote Green.

The Green party leader says she is launching a legal action to force the broadcasters to let her into the debate.

Get ready for it — a long campaign of misrepresentation, slander, unsubstantiated charges, dishonest attack ads.

The run for the White House? No, the Canadian federal election campaign, with the call Sunday for voting on October 14th.

First, let’s get the business of an “unnecessary election” out of the way.  

Everyone knows that Prime Minister Harper’s minority government brought in legislation setting fixed dates for future elections — except when the government loses a non-confidence vote. We weren’t supposed to be doing this until October, 2009.

So now we have the Prime Minister decrying a “dysfunctional Parliament” where he can’t get anything done. At the same time, he says he’ll run on his record and he boasts of all the great legislation he’s gotten passed and all the fine things the government has accomplished.

Contradictory, for sure. But I’ve never met anyone who resented being given the opportunity to vote on who should govern them. So although the “unnecessary election” cry will be heard for a few days, it will soon pass as voters begin to listen up to what’s happening on the campaign trail.

When I wrote Turning Points: the Campaigns that Changed Canada (White Knight, 2004) I focused on 14 pivotal campaigns that I thought had made a real difference to the history of the country.

By that measure, I think the upcoming vote ranks with the best (and worst) of them.

For the past two elections, Canadians have been trying to decide whether to entrust Stephen Harper’s newly-branded Conservative party with the reins of power. In both those votes, the fear of what a Harper majority would do to the country kept both he and the Liberals in minority territory.

Now, there seems to be some suggestion, if the polls are to be believed, that we’ve become a little complacant in the face of Harper’s success in keeping his right wing under control. He’s had to run a  one-man show with himself as a robotic dictator, but it’s kept the right wing nuts in his party (mostly holdovers from Reform days) under control.

But the polls were out of whack in the last two elections, and they could be just as off-base as this one starts.

Ironically, the last thing the Tories want to see is polls that suggest a Harper majority. Before calling the election, Harper went out of his way to predict a minority outcome. Get too many people thinking Harper’s a cinch for a free hand in the House of Commons, and away goes his hoped-for majority!

So instead, the Conservatives launch the campaign with a 6 a.m. news conference — timed so as to control the “news agenda” for the day. They begin with unsubstantiated attacks on Stephane Dion, claiming the Liberal leader wants to boost the GST, claw back a $1,200 child tax credit, and bring in a carbon tax.

Look for things to get nastier.

I love John Allemang’s modernist verses that run every Saturday in Toronto’s Globe and Mail. His entry today is priceless:

PALIN COUNTRY

Please call us rednecks, ’cause we’re proud

To be so rude and rough and loud,

And act in ways elitists think

Proves that we’ve had too much to drink

In some dead-end Alaskan dive

When, dude, it just shows we’re alive.

We love our church, our kids, our beer

Can tell you right down to the year

That God put Man upon the Earth,

Know life starts well ahead of birth,

Don’t give a darn about the arts,

And stay away from foreign parts

Until the moment that we’re sent

As John McCain’s vice-president.

 People Magazine

The great thing, when your neck is red?

Nobody cares what’s in your head -

The voters seem to like ‘em dumb,

So why not pick a hockey mom

Who hunts and prays and procreates

To govern these United States?

If you can drive a snowmobile,

The people, bless them, think you’re real,

And in the end, who needs a brain?

Just tell your kids they must abstain,

Pretend that when your rule’s ignored

It’s some great gift sent by the Lord,

And prove you’ll go to any length

To make each redneck fault a strength.

jallemang@globeandmail.com