This may be difficult, but please try to forget – for just a moment – all that lurid Rob Ford news exploding out of Toronto city hall. Can you do that?
And try to forget about the ugly Senate expenses scandal with the unprecedented ouster of erstwhile celebrities Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau; stars no longer, they remain senators in name only.
Try to forget the Harper government’s attempt to persuade the Supreme Court of Canada that it actually has a viable prescription for Senate reform; it actually doesn’t. And try to forget Justin Trudeau’s ongoing demonstration that he is not yet ready for prime time; he sure isn’t.
Focus, instead, on Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who went out to Edmonton – the Commons was in recess and Alberta crowds are always friendly to Conservative ministers – to deliver his annual update on the economy last week. It was a happily upbeat message. All things considered, the economy is doing very nicely indeed. Jobless, under-employed and debt-laden Canadians might beg to differ, but the gnomes in Finance see the big picture.
Thanks to the wise stewardship of the Harper Tories, the Great Recession is just about over. After a teeny deficit next year (smaller than Flaherty had anticipated), the economy will burst back into the promised land of surpluses; there will even be tax cuts. This will happen in fiscal 2015-16, the fiscal year in which, due to providence or good management, the federal election will take place, in October 2015.
It has been my contention for some time that the fate of the Conservative government is inextricably tied to the economy. If the economy is healthy – if Canadians feel they are no worse off than they were before the recession (or before Harper took office) and if they can see the economy is growing again – the Tories will get re-elected in 2015. If not, they won’t.
Peripheral issues will drop away. Canadians don’t like senators who fiddle their expenses, but they don’t really care a hoot about the institution. They’d be content if it went away (or were reformed) but they don’t value it enough to be worth a protracted battle with the provinces to change it.
Disgusting Rob Ford is simply a distraction who gives politics and politicians a bad name. Toronto will recover from being the laughing stock of American talk shows. Ford himself will go away, by resignation, removal or electoral defeat; he will not be mayor a year from now, and Toronto the Good will be good again.
Stephen Harper himself will become a peripheral issue, if the economy performs as Flaherty forecasts. Who really cares whether the prime minister is closed, arrogant, secretive, controlling or contemptuous of Parliament, if the sun has broken through after seven years of dark economic clouds for many Canadian families?
A good job with an adequate paycheque and the prospect of advancement, plus lower taxes, decent health care and opportunities for the children – what more could the average Canadian voter ask for in 2015?
That’s a question that could very well be facing both Liberal leader Trudeau and NDP leader Thomas Mulcair as each battles to establish his party as the champion of the middle class.
Four federal byelections are being held on Nov. 25, but they won’t tell us much. Bourassa in Montreal and Toronto Centre are both Liberal seats and should stay that way, although the NDP is making serious noise in Toronto Centre. It looks as though the Manitoba seat of Brandon-Souris could slip from the Conservative to the Liberals, while Provencher, also in Manitoba, which was vacated by former cabinet minister Vic Toews, should stay Tory.
Meanwhile, Trudeau’s Liberals hold a lead nationally of about six points over the Conservatives in recent polls. That’s a lead that, as Liberals well know, could melt like ice cubes on a hot summer day if the Conservatives can take credit for a stronger, healthier, recovered economy in 2015.
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