The long gun registry lives, at least for now

With last night's nail-biter vote on a Liberal motion to end the Conservative bid to kill the gun registry passing 153 to 151, you can now be returned to your previously scheduled program of baseless election speculation. The registry will live to be a political prop for all for another day or three. But first, a look back at the vote and the way forward.

THE POLICY

It's important to say that the most important thing is that the registry remains in place as a valuable tool that police forces across the country insist they need to do their jobs and that everyone from doctors and nurses to victim's groups believe is an important (and symbolic) part of a wider gun control regime.

It doesn't end here. The anti-registry forces have promised to try and try again. The pro-registry forces can't rest here either. Both the Liberals and the NDP have similar proposals to reform the registry. The Liberals have said they'll implement there's when in government; the NDP promise a private member's bill as soon as possible. I believe there is much common ground here. I'd like to see the Liberals and NDP get together on registry reform legislation and push it through this Parliament.These reforms are needed, there's no need to wait, and it would put rural NDP and Liberal MPs in a much better position next election to be able to point to a reformed registry. I hope both parties can at least temporarily put aside the politics to work together on this one.

And I agree with Ian Capstick's point on Power and Politics last night: the gun control lobby shouldn't stop here. They should move the debate to new ground, such as exploring selective weapons bans. The same polling registry opponents like to point to in support of scrapping it also show that 44 per cent of Canadians would support a complete hand gun ban (the same number are opposed.) An earlier poll showed 45 per cent of Canadians felt owning firearms should be illegal altogether. I wouldn't go that far, but there definitely is appetite for stricter gun control.

THE POLITICS

The Conservatives like to say they were going to be a winner either way. Of course, they always say this. Prorogation was still a magnificent victory for the Prime Minister's genius. Anyway, time will tell. Bottom line: they wanted to kill the registry, and they failed. They took their best shot last night, using a private member's bill to make it seem a pseudo free vote, and nearly moved enough NDP votes to take it. But the registry lives.

And I ask you, are these the faces of happy people?

They lost the battle, but they'll tell you it was a Pyhrric victory for the opposition and the war will still be their's. It's nearly entirely spin, but it's pretty good spin.

Certainly, the registry is useful to the Conservative Party as a fundraising tool. I have no doubt they wasted no time getting an e-mail solicitation out to the faithful after the vote, and I'm sure when this quarter's financials are in, it will show the faithful opened their wallets. The registry is also a useful way of keeping their rural base energized and onside: as long as it lives, they need to vote Conservative to get it killed. If it's gone, maybe another ballot issue comes up that changes the equation. And if they really wanted it killed, they'd put it on a money bill and make it a confidence matter. It's more useful as a wedge.

The party has their eye on potential pick-ups from Liberal and NDP pro-registry voters in rural Canada. As I've said before I'm doubtful they'll find gains; I think the registry has already been factored into rural voting patterns. If it's a ballot issue for you, you're probably voting Conservative already. You're nearly definitely not voting Liberal. Time will tell, of course, but I'd be surprised.

More interesting for me, and continually ignored by the so-called liberal media, is the impact for the Conservatives in urban Canada and Quebec, where the registry is popular. Many urban and Quebec MPs are offside from their constituents on this issue. And it's also in these registry-supportive areas where the Conservatives need gains to earn a majority.

Will the registry be a ballot issue in urban Canada and Quebec? It remains to be seen. It could be. Certainly, it hasn't been in the past, nor has it generated the raw emotion it has in rural Canada. Two things on that, though.

One, the registry is the status quo, it's accepted as a fait accompli in urban Canada, so there's been no need to get too worked up over it. And two, the Conservatives haven't elevated the issue before. Sure, it was in the platform. But it wasn't in the brochures and stump speeches of urban Conservative MPs and candidates, and in government Harper didn't show any eagerness to kill the registry until now. With Candice Hoepner's bill, the issue is now national news, and you can count on the opposition reminding urban and Quebec voters in the next campaign that the Conservatives very nearly killed the registry, and have promised to not rest until they succeed.

This could well become a ballot issue for those educated urban women that helped flip a number of urban ridings to Harper in the last election, and if it does it could mean Conservative trouble.

For the Liberals, there is risk but also potential for growth. Deciding to "whip the vote" was a risky gambit for Michael Ignatieff, but one worth making and a little less risky then it seems on the surface. Remember, months back the Liberal caucus came together, urban and rural, and hashed-out a compromise that they could all agree on, that balanced the legitimate concerns of rural Canadians while keeping the registry alive. With that compromise agreed to the caucus was united and onside. So was it really necessary to call a formal whip?

Perhaps not, but I'd argue it was still a good call. For one thing, it made clear the Liberal Party was united on the issue and it shifted the public and media pressure to the NDP. It ended months of possible "how will x, how will y" vote stories immediately. Liberal MPs could go right to work explaining the compromise position. And for a leader who has been criticized for a lack of strength, I think the show of "whipping" the vote even though the compromise was reached was useful to portray Ignatieff as a strong, decisive leader. You can also make an argument for the consensus-leadership approach that Jack Layton took on the issue, but Ignatieff and Layton have different leadership perceptions and challenges to overcome. Ignatieff had to show a firmer hand to the public than Layton did.

What will it mean electorally? Well, there certainly is risk in rural Canada, both for sitting Liberal MPs and for growth potential. But as I argued above, I think that the pool of voters for whom the registry is a ballot issue are lost to us no matter what we do on the issue. There were a lot of tight-margin ridings both ways last time. Could this issue move some votes there? Potentially. Enough to swing seats LPC to CPC? I'm doubtful. Remember, the LPC ran a very weak campaign last time and turned in one of its worst showings in history. I'll make a bold prediction: at worst, we'll suck slightly less next time. So I don't see enough Liberal vote being in play here to be difference-making.

What about urban Canada? Again, I think that's more interesting. I went over many of the reasons above why this could be troubling for the Conservatives in urban Canada and Quebec. I'd suspect the Liberals will put this issue front and centre in those ridings in the next election. There is the potential for pick-ups in a number of ridings across the country for the Liberals here. If there are rural loses they'd, at worse, be balanced by urban gains, with a net positive being more likely. It would have been a bigger mover had the Conservatives succeeded in killing the registry, but it could still be a ballot issue.

For the NDP, they're getting positive reviews for Layton's handling of the issue. My bias is obvious here and my awareness of that fact can't negate it (although I shall try), but I have to disagree with those positive reviews. I think he fumbled his way through this, and was lucky to pull it off. But in the end, I think he probably did the best he could with a bad situation.

And Layton did have a very difficult challenge here. His party was much more divided on this issue than the Liberals were. When the Liberals unified around their compromise position, the NDP was left without cover. Layton didn't want it to be NDP votes that killed the registry, but he has a large rural caucus that doesn't support the registry and feel their constituents don't either. Somehow, he had to bridge those two sides.

The compromise was there, and he found it. I was genuinely surprised that it took him as long as it did though. What followed seemed a strange kabuki play as a parade of NDP MPs came forward to change their votes on the issue. In the end, their least-vulnerable MPs took one for the team, and those most at risk were given cover and allowed to vote with the government. And I give full credit to all those that made the difficult decision to support the registry, and wrestled with this issue mightily.

Will Layton and the NDP get a bump from being seen as allowing this to be a free-vote, despite the intense lobbying behind the scenes? Perhaps. I think it would be negligible, though. I think the question, though, is can the NDP have their cake and eat it too on this one? Can they support the registry in the cities and oppose it in rural Canada at the same time? I think that's a tough sell that would hurt them on both sides. If they can successfully move reforms to bridge that urban-rural divide, however, it over-rides that problem.

Electorally, I don't see this hurting the NDP in rural Canada, particularly if the registry is reformed. Their most at-risk MPs voted to scrap, and the others have sufficient margins to overcome any blow-back on this issue. In urban Canada (and Quebec), if the registry had died with NDP rural votes they'd have been in serious trouble. Recent polling makes that abundantly clear. With the registry saved, I think they're probably fine. You could make an "you can't trust the NDP to support the registry when the chips are down" argument, but I don't think it would resonate.

For the BQ, nearly the entire Conservative caucus in Quebec is offside with their constituents on this issue, where the registry is very popular. With the BQ as the second-choice in most of those seats. you can be sure Gilles Duceppe will be reminding them of this next election.

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Why the Liberals should support ending the per-vote subsidy

A report in La Presse confirms the Conservative government’s (oft-stated) intention to end the per-vote subsidy to political parties. This frightens many Liberal nervous nellies. I think this is an opportunity for the Liberal Party to make a bold move, however. The Liberals should support ending the subsidy, but with one significant addition: raise the limit on personal donations to $5000.

I would like to see the Liberals reframe this debate and seize the agenda by proposing its own political financing legislation: end the per vote subsidy but raise the limit on personal donations from $1100 back up to $5000. Union and corporate donations would remain forbidden.

On the per-vote subsidy, ending it wouldn’t be the calamity for the Liberals many think it would be. At least, it wouldn’t be as mad for us as it would be for others.

The party that would be most hurt by losing the subsidy would be the Bloc Quebecois. The BQ relies on the subsidy for nearly all of their budget, and since they only need to campaign in Quebec, it allows them to run a very strong campaign with barely any fundraising.

The next party that would be most hurt by ending the subsidy would be the NDP. They’ve dramatically escalated their election and between-election spending since the creation of the subsidy, spending at levels they never had before, thanks to the per vote subsidy. Ending it would require a major scaling-back of their budget, and the size of the campaign they could run.

Now, I won’t say the Liberals wouldn’t be hurt. Losing the subsidy would be a blow, without a doubt. Significant adjustments would have to be made (and getting a little leaner wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing). But the fact is we are less reliant on the subsidy than the other opposition parties, and we have been getting (very slowly) better at fundraising.

I am, though, proposing one major change to be coupled with ending the subsidy: raising the personal donation limit to $5000, where it was before the Conservatives and the NDP conspired a few years ago to lower it down to its current level (around $1100), primarily to try to handicap the Liberals.

I think we can make a strong case for restoring it for a number of reasons.

One, public financing was brought in when Jean Chretien’s government ended union and corporate donations, the argument being if you’re going to remove that fundraising capacity from the parties you should give them an alternative, and a small public fee to end the corporate and union influence in politics is a small price to pay. The same holds true here. If you’re going to remove the public subsidy, you should give parties the capacity to be able to replace that funding. That’s an argument of fairness I think will resonate with the public.

Two, why should the government be able to restrict my ability as a private citizen to support the political party of my choice. While I do support reasonable limits (and I think $5000 is reasonable) there are many people who believe money is speech, speech should be unlimited, and the government has no right to abridge the people’s right to speak. One of those people is Stephen Harper. As head of the National Citizens coalition, he argued stridently for the right of third-party pressure groups to spend anything they want, free of election spending limits. He even took it to the Supreme Court in Harper v. Canada. We should ask Harper, if money is speech, why does he believe in free speech for lobby groups but not for individuals?

Ending the subsidy coupled with raising the donation limit would be a win-win for the Liberals. We would regain our fundraising capacity and emerge stronger than before, and able to capitalize on the impact it would have on the other opposition parties, particularly the BQ in Quebec, where under Stephane Dion we actually gained seats in the last election.

Even more than that though, it would be a bold proposal that would reframe the party financing debate and force the Conservatives onto the defensive for a change. The opportunity is there, if we’re bold enough to seize it.

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Your deck is good for Quebec: BQ bounces ball to Harper

We're about to see something very telling about Stephen Harper's intentions in the days ahead. I wrote yesterday about how the Conservatives are playing games with your deck, setting up an early and unnecesary confidence vote on the Home Renovation Tax Credit as a way of either triggering an earlier defeat on their own terms, or forcing the Liberals into an embarrassing backdown.

The Conservatives were trying to fool Canadians into thinking the vote would put their already completed home renovations into jeopardy, something which just isn't true. Even the Globe editorial board, which has been quite harsh on the Liberals this week, called BS on the Conservative spin.

The Liberals responded to the Conservative game-playing by saying take a leap, we're voting against you on confidence motions just like we said we would, and we'll reintroduce the credit should we win the next election. Thus, the showdown was set.

All three parties need to vote No to topple the government though, and as Chantal Hebert reports today, the BQ indicates that it has decided your new deck is good for Quebec, and the party will support the ways and means motion:

Yesterday, the Bloc Québécois leader told Radio-Canada that if the government brings forward a supply motion to finance the home renovation program later this month, his party will support it.

Which means that, with BQ support, the motion (which parliamentary procedure wonks tell me is unnecessary to implement a tax decrease already approved in principle in the budget) will pass, the fake tax credit crisis will pass, and, unless Harper pulls another land mine out of his sack, the next trigger will be the Liberal opposition day late in the month.

However, here's the thing. If this wasn't about politics and Harper just wanted the tax credit rubber-stamped (and if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn) then he'll be pleased and that will be that.

But if this was about politics, trying to embarrass the Liberals, trying to avoid being supported by the BQ and NDP and trying to trigger an election on his own terms, Harper will be as livid at Gilles Duceppe for foiling his plans as the villians are in Scooby-Doo.

If Harper is determined to bring himself down on his own terms, he'll need to shake the BQ off. So, if we start to hear that the ways and means motion will also suddenly contain measures the BQ will never support -- I don't know, a declaration that the Maple Leafs are the best original six team or something -- then it will be painfully obvious what Harper's true intentions are.

For the few people for whom it's not already painfully obvious, that is.

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Scanning the headlines: Quebec, Bob and deficits

*I don’t claim to understand Quebec politics, but I find developments such as this concerning:

A Parti Québécois government would introduce a newer, tougher Bill 101 to replace the 31-year-old Charter of the French Language.

PQ leader Pauline Marois said yesterday the existing language law has "too many holes," and she wants to update it to ensure all consumer services are available in French.

The requirement that businesses operate in French would be extended to companies with one to 50 employees, with tax incentives to help businesses francisize.

Now, businesses in Quebec with less than 50 employees are exempted from the francization requirements of Bill 101.

So if I’m a one person business, an independent contractor, I’d have to do business in French?
Or if I have a small family business, say just me and my hypothetical wife and kids, we’d all need to know French? Bringing the law down to businesses that small seems extreme, and likely pandering to their base nationalist vote.

But it gets worse:

The new law would also seek to ensure the quality of French spoken in Quebec, said former language minister Louise Beaudoin, who is trying to make a political comeback as the PQ candidate in Montreal's Rosemont riding.

Beaudoin said newcomers to Quebec would be expected to learn French, and after three years in the province, the government would only communicate with them in French.

So you have a person that, for whatever reason, has tried and is unable to fully understand French for whatever reason. A PQ government would still just solely communicate with them in a language they can’t understand? That’s disturbing, and anti-democratic.

*The headline says it all, really: “Deficit in '09? Blame Tories, watchdog says”. And here’s the money quote from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, who, I hasten to add, was appointed under a Conservative government.

"The weak fiscal performance to date is largely attributable to previous policy decisions as opposed to weakened economic conditions," Page wrote in his report to MPs on the government's economic and fiscal position.

Page concluded Ottawa could run a deficit as high as $13.8 billion next year. Deficits could remain higher than $11 billion each year through to 2013, adding nearly $50 billion to Canada's debt over the next five years.

In a column in the National Post today, former Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodle has a good column on this:

Not long ago, as Canadians were about to vote in the federal election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was emphatic about his Conservative government not running a budgetary deficit.

Now, barely a month later, he wants us to believe that he's being driven toward unavoidable red ink by sudden international circumstances beyond his control.

*Bob Rae’s formal campaign launch yesterday is naturally getting lots of press this morning. The National Post’s editorial raises some interesting points, including questioning his “having managed through a deficit before is a qualification” spin on his Ontario premiership. I wanted to share this passage though the Post ran, quoting an interview Bob did in 2006. I found it interesting:

"I concluded after my time in office that it was very, very tough to convince a whole section of the party that the market was a great thing and it was something to be celebrated and it was not something to run away from, and that we had to recognize that the world had changed all around us and globalization was here to stay. I find that resistance to those ideas is still pretty strong in the NDP when you actually look at it. I mean the resistance to any tax cuts ... the way in which they look at business with a sort of skeptical eye all the time, the assumption that business is bad and government is good and private is bad and public is good. That still lies pretty deep in a lot of sections of the NDP, and I frankly just decided that I wasn't going to spend my life inside trying to fight that -- that I was really fundamentally going to be happier in another political party."

Indeed, Bob was right. The NDP still doesn’t get it today.

Don Martin also had an interesting take, I thought, on what he called Bob’s chutzpah. But as I like to say, go big or go home.

*Lastly, the Globe editorializes this morning on Bob’s launch, and the leadership race. I feel they completely miss the boat by talking just about Rae and Michael Ignatieff, and writing a passage such as this:

It is a good thing for the Liberals that the choice between these two candidates will help them articulate the choice they face between "uniting the left" and recovering control of
the centre.

And then finally at the end, almost as a throw-away, they mention Dominic LeBlanc:

Mr. Rae and Mr. Ignatieff, for all the contrasts between them, also have much in common, almost uncannily so, in age, family background and education. Fortunately, Dominic LeBlanc's candidacy provides valuable regional and generational variety.

I’m supporting Michael as I’ve already outlined, because I feel he is the right, best choice to lead our party today and challenge Harper.

But the media would be foolish to write-off Dominic. I can assure you that he is a very serious contender. He is attracting quality organizers and support across the country, many friends of mine whose judgment, and abilities, I respect.

Dominic will be a force in this campaign; the media would be advised not to, as they did in 2006, get tunnel-vision focusing on the Michael and Bob show.

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What's our price on the throne speech?

I agree with and support the decision of Stephane Dion to stay on as Liberal leader through the leadership race and convention in May. Having an experienced, steady hand at the helm while the campaign is on is a good thing, and I look forward to Watching Stephane, Gerard Kennedy, and the rest of the new Liberal shadow cabinet take on the Conservatives in the House beginning next week.

It seems, though, at least so far, that leadership is beginning to overshadow all else. The party, and Stephane, have been very low profile of late, and that, I feel, is an unfortunate mistake.

For example, we know what the BQ want from the upcoming throne speech:

The Bloc Québécois is prepared to vote against the Conservative government's throne speech next week if it doesn't address key issues such as helping workers and reversing government cuts in funding to arts groups and non-profit economic development groups.

However, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe said he was also prepared to negotiate with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government, pointing out that the Bloc had been successful in the past in obtaining changes to throne speeches in exchange for its support.

"Two visions are confronting each other," he said. "The Conservatives got the majority in Canada, but the Bloc Québécois got the majority in Quebec. Stephen Harper should therefore respect the democratic choice of Quebecers by showing openness, making compromises and respecting the values and interests of Quebec."

And we know what the NDP wants from the throne speech:

NDP leader Jack Layton emerged from a late-afternoon discussion Wednesday with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to say he will be looking for help for the hard-hit sectors of the Canadian economy in next week's Throne Speech.

"When it comes to showing some sign in the general language of the Speech from the Throne that the government is going to pay attention to some of these key strategic sectors, that's vital," Mr. Layton said after his first face-to-face discussion with Mr. Harper since last month's election.

"It's manufacturing, it's auto, it's forestry. And it's the people who have been thrown out of work."

But what about the Liberals? What do we want to be in the throne speech? What's the price for our potential support? Or will we vote now out of principal as the official opposition, and leave it to the NDP or BQ to prop them up (my preferred strategy)?

I had to go back nearly two weeks to find comments about “no more free rides” for the Conservatives and a call for sped-up infrastructure spending. Nothing specific, however on the throne speech.

We can't afford to allow leadership preoccupation to let us disappear from the national debate. We need to be active, visible and vocal in and out of the House advocating for the issues and the ideas that we campaigned on. Letting the NDP and BQ hog the opposition limelight would be a serious mistake.

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Election Post-Mortem, Part One: The Greens and the BQ

The Green Party


It's hard not to call this a successful campaign for the Green Party, at least on the surface. Granted, they didn't elect an MP, and they lost their kinda-sorta MP in Blair Wilson. But there were a lot of other victories for the Greens in this election.

They earned 6.8 per cent of the vote, up 2.3 per cent. They'll get a larger taxpayer subsidy. Elizabeth May participated in the televised leaders debates. They ran their first television ads. The Greens have arrived on the national political scene as a serious player, a fringe party no longer.

On the downside, they failed to elect an MP, despite their best-funded campaign ever, despite May's profile and performance in the debates, despite the Liberal non-aggression pact.

Moreover, I think the Greens have some soul-searching to do. The strategic voting yes, strategic voting no tap dance of May down the stretch was comical. And it seemed to speak to serious schisms within the party, with some candidates saying knock it off we want to win, and two candidates actually dropping-out to support Liberals.

The Greens need to ask themselves what want to be: are they a serious political party that stands for a range of policy options and wants to elect MPs to advance them, or do they want to merely fight the good fight, speak to those issues, and then allow or encourage their vote to melt away to more mainstream contenders?

Because I don't see how you can do both. And if the Greens are going to consolidate their gains and continue their growth, at some point they'll need to start acting like an actual political party that actually wants to elect people. For the Greens, strategic voting doesn't make sense. There's no riding where you can make the strategic argument to vote Green, and there never will be if they keep sending those mixed signals.

If your primary consideration is stopping Conservatives, join the party with the best chance of doing so. If you're concerned about vote-splitting on the left, then enter talks with the other parties about cooperation, or electoral reform. But if you're going to run candidates, you need to support all of them, not just some.

Leadership issues: I think Elizabeth May is offside with much of her party on these issues. Many of those that shared her views took the logical step of joining other parties and advancing the Green cause from within them. Many of those left stayed Green for a reason. If she's to stay as leader, they need to work these things out.

The Bloc Quebecois


This party has been written off more times than I can count. They were supposed to fade away after Dion and Chretien’s post-referendum initiatives and a Jean Charest provincial government contributed to a waning of support for sovereignty, but them sponsorship gave them a reprieve.

This election a surging Conservative Party was poised to decimate them, having spent two years and billions of dollars wooing Quebec nationalists, but two small missteps on culture and youth crime and a misread of the Quebecois gave the BQ new life. They also seemed to benefit more from the NDP's aggressive Quebec attack ads than the NDP did.

Much was made of a surging BQ in this election that would decimate the Conservatives in Quebec. That didn't materialize. The Quebec picture ended-up much the same as it was before the election, and actually down one seat from their 2006 result. However, the recovery of BQ support was enough to deny the Conservatives the majority the rest of the country voted them.

So once again a new lease on life for the BQ, but they still face questions about their continued reason for existence, and unless they can define themselves one wonders if Harper won't get it right in Quebec next time, and finally wipe them out. And praying for divine intervention once again doesn't seem like much of a strategy.

Since the BQ doesn't talk about sovereignty much anymore anyway, perhaps there is room for a Quebec-only nationalist party on the political scene. Reform was successful as a Western party, it was their desire to expand into Ontario (and challenge for government) that led to their struggles. How the BQ carry themselves in this parliament will be a test for them.

It seems to me though they're fighting over one (large) piece of the Quebec vote with the Conservatives and now the NDP, who both court that nationalist vote. The Conservatives can deliver things the BQ never will be able to. Unless they carve out a role of some sort, it's hard to see their future, particularly if the Liberals ever get their act together in Quebec.

Leadership issues: I can't see Gilles Duceppe being under pressure from within, but then I don't know that party. But it seems to me if he wants to keep the job, it's his. I just wonder how long he'll want it. What is there left for him to accomplish? At times, it just seems like he's going through the motions.

Tomorrow: Part Two: The NDP

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