Budget credibility

Posted by cwaddell under All, Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Election 2011 Faculty links

Christopher Waddell

While everyone remembers that the Chretien government balanced the federal budget and produced a surplus in the mid-1990s, there’s another aspect of what Paul Martin did as Finance minister that gets much less attention. He also returned credibility to the federal budget process.

Fixed budget dates in early February, a $3-billion annual contingency fund that could be used only for unexpected debt servicing costs or would go to debt reduction at year-end and even under-promising and over-delivering (until that tactic became too obvious) all played a part in restoring the credibility of the federal Finance department, the minister and the budget-making process.

It was needed following a Conservative government under Brian Mulroney that regularly promised the deficit would be eliminated two or three years into the future, yet annually delivered $30-billion shortfalls and could rarely say no to spending on unexpected and unbudgeted political demands.

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How to spend billions in the twinkling of an eye

Posted by ealboim under All, Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Election 2011 Faculty links

Elly Alboim

Staggering is the only word for the windfall Canada’s provinces received this morning. It totals in the billions of dollars. It also says volumes about the way politics are conducted in Canada.

Under a ten year deal signed by Paul Martin, Ottawa’s health transfers to the provinces have been growing by 6% annually –it’s called the 6% escalator for obvious reasons. The deal is due to end in 2014 and everyone had been anticipating a set of very difficult federal-provincial negotiations. Well apparently, thanks to the federal election campaign, those talks have ended before they started.

This morning, Michael Ignatieff issued a open letter on health policy and committed the Liberals to continuing the 6% escalator. He did that just five days after issuing his platform which did not have this commitment in it. In fact, it said among other things that “while provinces and territories are struggling with escalating costs, it’s far from clear that more money is the only solution.”

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The “news” of election campaigns

Posted by ealboim under All, Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Election 2011 Faculty links, Election 2011 Media commentary

Elly Alboim

In 1989, some of the best and the brightest of Canada’s political establishment – politicians, political operatives, pollsters, journalists and academics – gathered at Queen’s University to talk about the election that had just ended.

For two days, in front of television cameras, they discussed what had gone wrong in the experience they had just shared . This was after what has since become idealized as the best and most substantive election campaign in recent Canadian history – the free trade election. Further, it was the first election after the introduction of the GST – the largest change in Canadian tax policy in decades – and conducted in the middle of the disintegrating Meech Lake ratification process.

It is hard to imagine a more complex and important campaign policy agenda. And still, there was a collective feeling of a 56 day (yes, campaigns were eight weeks long then) failure to conduct and report on the campaign and its choices in a way that properly served the public interest.
At the heart of the discussion and the multiple sense of grievance, was a set of dilemmas and questions that persist, and once again was dominant in week two of the current election campaign.

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The looming debates

Posted by ealboim under Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Election 2011 Faculty links, Election 2011 Media commentary

Elly Alboim

Now that the debates are a week away, debate teams within the camps are getting ready for the final push on preparations. The leaders will probably end serious campaigning by Saturday and head into intensive rehearsal.

From a vantage point of having covered quite a few national and provincial leaders’ debates, having been on three debate preparation teams and having done real time public opinion research of debates along with friend and colleague David Herle, here are some observations over time.

The audiences

There are two very different audiences for televised debates during an election campaign.

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No news for the NDP

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2011, Election 2011 Faculty links, Election 2011 Media commentary, Media Commentary

Christopher Waddell

Week two and are we seeing the first glimpses of the NDP’s nightmare? The party complained in the last two elections that it and leader Jack Layton were being ignored in much of the campaign media coverage. Prior to this campaign there were rumours that some media organizations in a bid to cut costs would only travel with the NDP part of the time.

Last week CBC, CTV and Global nightly national newscasts all featured stories on the NDP campaign almost every night but this week has started out very differently.

Only CBC led with the election – Global led with Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 problems and CTV focused on the sentencing in adult court of the two young offender murderers of an 18 year old girl in BC.

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Red Book reality check: Libs campaigning from the left?

Posted by padams under Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Political Strategy

Paul Adams

One thing Stephen Harper and Jack Layton were able to agree on in the hours after Michael Ignatieff’s launch of the Liberal platform on Sunday was that it had stolen a page or two from the NDP. The platform — an admirably long and detailed document — was filled with commitments to education, health, day care and elder care. It was a liberal document, albeit encased in a pledge to bring down the deficit over time, in part by returning corporate taxes to their 2009 level.

The question for the voters about this platform — as for that of any other party — is how seriously to take it.

Jack Layton remarked that the Liberals are famous for using a Xerox machine to copy the NDP’s policies during an election, then using a shredder to dispose of them later.

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Launching Week Two

Posted by ealboim under All, Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Election 2011 Faculty links, Election 2011 Media commentary

Elly Alboim

The Liberal platform launch was unusual. It was part game show and part infomercial, putting Mr. Ignatieff at centre stage directing traffic, taking questions and delivering substance in bits and pieces. It was somewhat surprising because normally a platform launch is the occasion for something more sober and austere that emphasizes the agenda for government as its centerpiece.

But the current Liberal task is more complex than that.

Mr. Ignatieff’s constellation of leadership attributes has been weak and he must be seen to be an alternative prime minister before the Liberal party can be taken seriously as an alternative government. Today’s launch seemed to be driven by that underlying thesis. It was another – and much more important venue – to showcase his performance skills. As journalists have been reporting, he was very fluid, and comfortable. He handled questions apparently without specific preparation and did so off the cuff. More importantly, he structured his answers to questions very well using value propositions, anecdotes and accessible language. His summary attacking Mr. Harper’s governing style and its implications for “democracy” was a harbinger of the character debate that will underpin the Liberal narrative for the next four weeks.

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Storyline alert! NDP campaign in trouble…

Posted by padams under Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Election 2011 Media commentary, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Paul Adams

Jack Layton had a press availability in Sudbury this morning after his event-of-the-day, on recruiting and training more doctors to practice in smaller centres. The questions showed that there is a new storyline emerging among reporters on the NDP plane.

Reporters who had been on Layton’s previous campaigns pointed out that he has not been speaking to large crowds as he has done in the past, and that he is doing fewer events each day than the other leaders.

What they are probing for, of course, is whether Layton’s health — he is suffering from prostate cancer and a recently fractured hip — is inhibiting his capacity and performance on the campaign trail.

Now, it seems extremely unlikely that anyone outside the NDP campaign bubble will have noticed this, assuming the journos’ assessment of his campaign is correct.

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Every picture tells a story

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Election 2011 Faculty links, Election 2011 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

The best television shows viewers the story rather than telling it to them.

That’s why it is difficult to understand the Conservatives’ initial media strategy. Leaving aside the concerns of journalists about the number of questions they get to ask Mr Harper (the public really doesn’t care about reporters’ working conditions), the visual impression left from yesterday’s visit by Mr Harper to a container port reinforces all that his opponents are saying about him every day as they campaign.

Yesterday’s images shouted aloofness and isolation – standing all alone in an empty container port marshaling yard behind a podium with containers in the background appearing to be lecturing a polite crowd sitting a respectful distance away. The TV wide shots give it all away, magnifying that distance in what seems a visual metaphor for the campaign’s early days. It’s the pictures that matter much more than the words and those shots were featured prominently in last night’s television stories about the Conservative campaign.

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Iggy’s – so far – excellent adventure

Posted by padams under All, Election 2011, Election 2011 Campaign strategy, Election 2011 Media commentary, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Paul Adams

During the last week of the 2008 election campaign, a news photographer caught a humorous scene. Stéphane Dion, whose campaign was foundering, was sitting on a television news set. Behind him was a weather graphic: five days of unremitting dark clouds and pouring rain ahead.

Dion was a complete innocent in this embarrassing photo of course: a hapless victim of a clever photographer. Even Robert Stanfield actually had to fumble the football before his cringing-inducing moment was plastered on the front page of the Globe and Mail. What the photographers had done in both cases, though, was to find a symbolic pictorial representation of a broader media perception about the success of the candidates and their campaigns.

This morning I arrived a little late to see Michael Ignatieff make an announcement on his day care policy at a pre-school in Winnipeg South (the constituency I grew up in, as it happens). I had not seen Ignatieff at a political event in person for about a year, and what surprised me was his obvious comfort and self-confidence. He seemed like he was enjoying himself, which has not always been a given for Ignatieff in his time as leader.

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