My New Troy Media Eye on Ontario Column The funeral of Harper’s Conservatism ANNAN, ON, Apr 14, 2014/ Troy Media/ – The weather in Ontario this past weekend was Shakespearian. Rain, wind, flood, and snow, a scene made of desolation for Prospero, Lear or Lady Macbeth. A somber setting as family and officials prepare for the final act of Jim Flaherty’s life, his state funeral in Toronto on Wednesday. This will not be just the funeral of a great Canadian public servant and one of the democratic world’s best finance ministers. It is the funeral of Stephen Harper’s conservatism; controlling, and mean spirited with an ideology so unsuited to its time that Jim Flaherty flew in its face with $47 billion of Keynesian stimulus spending to ward off a depression. Flaherty practiced economics that blue Tories from Prime Minister Harper’s power base on the prairies and in Alberta find “socialistic”. He also practiced a collegiality that eschewed partisanship because he attacked political ideas that he disagreed with but not the people with whom he differed. He did not associate with attack ads and personality politics that define Harper’s mean-spirited desire to grind his opponents into fine dust. And his ministry was exempted from the controlling hand of the Prime Minister’s Office to the point that, from time to time, he disagreed, albeit quietly, with Harper on policy. Among other milestones, Flaherty’s unexpected death opens the 2015 election window. It does so because, in its contrast to Flaherty’s political modus operandi, it makes an issue of the leadership style of the Prime Minister. In spite of the Conservative’s unrelenting attacks on Justin Trudeau’s maturity, free-spiritedness, privileged upbringing and malapropism, the Liberal Party is consolidating its electoral lead according to all polls. If the federal election were held this spring, Trudeau would sweep Atlantic Canada and urban British Columbia, and make some gains in Quebec. The Liberals would win a majority government in Ontario, where it has a 10-point lead over the Conservatives, a spread that has been steadily growing in the past year. The only safe seats Harper has are in Alberta, where the fracturing of the federal and provincial conservative parties between Blue and Red Tories, as evidenced this weekend by MP Rob Andres’ loss of the nomination in his riding, is opening up some races in Calgary and Edmonton. The Liberal victory last week in the Quebec provincial election is an uncertain asset for Trudeau because of the rocky relationship between federal and provincial Grits. The setback for the social-democratic Parti Quebecois may help the NDP consolidate their base in la belle province. However, it is equally possible that independentistes will rally around the Bloc Quebecois in the next federal election to give the movement an elected political base while the provincial party sorts itself out. So the fate of the Harper Conservatives will be determined in Ontario, all things being equal a year from now. And with Flaherty’s passing, Conservatives have just lost their most credible and stabilizing Ontario voice in Parliament and the party. Tony Clement and John Baird, the ablest MPs in Harper’s Ontario caucus, are targetable MPs in an election and don’t have the traction to offer candidates in riding-rich golden triangle around Greater Toronto from Oshawa to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Joe Oliver, the new finance minister, is Joe Who 50 yards from Bay Street. There are no credible Conservatives in the Toronto mayoral campaign or in cities around Toronto. A win in the GTA by front-runner Olivia Chow or incumbent Rob Ford would either be a clear-cut victory for progressives or a poisoned well for Conservative federal candidates. Provincial Liberal leader Kathy Wynne is ducking the Dalton McGinty bullet and is poised to win back her minority government if there is an election this spring. The Conservatives and leader Tim Hudak are slipping to third-party status. One of the options that is holding back Jim Prentice from entering the Progressive Conservative leadership in Alberta is the possibility that a bigger prize is on the horizon. Frank Dabbs is a veteran business and political journalist, author of three biographies and a contributor, researcher or editor of half a dozen books. Frank worked in print, radio and television in Alberta for 40 years. Since 2006, he has been a print and television freelancer in Ontario. He lives in the rural village of Annan overlooking Georgian Bay. troymedia/2014/04/14/the-funeral-of-harpers-conservatism/
Posted on: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 15:16:22 +0000
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