As the campaign buses pulled into a sweet little spa in Quebec's eastern townships, campaign advisors to Prime Minister Stephen Harper were saying that they expect more attacks Friday from their political opponents about the inappropriate jokes made by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.
But they say they have no plans to change their campaign's focus or fight back with new attacks.
The Harper campaign is convinced that the leak that exposed Ritz made it into a reporter's hands from the Liberal war room.
An advisor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that, had the race been closer, the Ritz leak likely would have prompted a Conservative counter-attack.
But with most polls showing the Conservatives well out in front, the Harper campaign will ride out the Ritz storm and continue making what it calls small, affordable announcements targeted at specific voter groups.
“We will remain absolutely focused and drive this campaign right to the finish,” the advisor said.
Harper himself seems relatively unfazed by the disclosure of Ritz's comments. Faced with similarly difficult situations in his first national campaign in 2004, Harper would often appear moody or angry and relations between the travelling press and his advisors deteriorated.
But now, on his third national campaign, he and his advisors — many of whom are also on their third national campaign with him — are showing little outward signs of distress. Indeed, the relationship between the press travelling with Harper and his senior communications advisors has likely never been better since he became leader of his party in 2004, despite a series of apologies from the campaign that have taken attention away from the party's daily message.
Some reporters, myself included, are still frustrated about some aspects of that relationship.
We are not, for example, kept informed about all that Harper is doing while travelling with us. He generally has a morning photo opp that is kept a close secret even from the pool photographers who are the only journalists allowed to accompany him.
We are not getting to put questions to him with the same frequency that we did in the 2006 campaign. On that campaign, every reporter travelling with him got to ask at least one question a day. This time around, his staff is restricting us to 10 questions a day — eight from the press travelling with him and two for reporters from the region we are travelling in. Because there are more than eight national reporters, we must rotate and, as a result, we get just one question — no followup — every other day.
Some, like a commenter here, urge us to ask followups on certain issues. We would love to but, again, with just one question every two days, it can often be difficult.
Month: September 2008
Did Harper blame bureaucrats for Ritz leak?
The Liberals say Harper blamed bureaucrats for the Ritz crisis. You be the judge. Here's what Harper said in Trois Rivieres during a question-and-answer period with reporters after announcing tax cuts for seniors:
First, he responded to CBC's Paul Hunter, who asked if Harper was concerned that a bureaucrat apparently was trying to sabotage the campaign by leaking this information in the middle of an election:
“I gather Minister Ritz said this on a conference call which a number of people were on. It was a private conversation. But just the same, I think he recognizes that it was still inappropriate, private or otherwise. Look, I suspect everyone in this room, if they're honest with themselves, will admit in private conversations they probably said things pretty insensitive and inappropriate if they shone a light on it. On the question of how concerned am I about the leak – I would say this: If this was the real tenor of Minister Ritz's comments at the time I would have been concerned. It obviously wasn't or it wouldn't have been brought to our attention long before now.
It obviously was an inappropriate joke by a minister who was under a lot of stress. My concern is not about the leak per se because I think when you deal with a large number of people, even privately, I've always told our people, even privately in this business, I've told our people you should always be prepared for the fact that whatever you say could be repeated and you should be very careful about what you say and think very very carefully.
So Minister Ritz has apologized and I don't think we want to point fingers and blame people. I will say this: The real question during that whole period of time was making sure everybody was doing their job. Not just the company that took full responsibility for the listeriosis crisis but all government officials in all departments were working round the clock to make sure they were fixing the problem. Certainly, I would like to know that that, and that alone, was the priority of officials and I think it was the priority of the vast number of government officials. I'm obviously disappointed that some have some other priorities.
I think it's important that when we have a crisis, we all focus on working together, not trying to, down the road, score political points on each other. “
It obviously was an inappropriate joke by a minister who was under a lot of stress. My concern is not about the leak per se because I think when you deal with a large number of people, even privately, I've always told our people, even privately in this business, I've told our people you should always be prepared for the fact that whatever you say could be repeated and you should be very careful about what you say and think very very carefully.
So Minister Ritz has apologized and I don't think we want to point fingers and blame people. I will say this: The real question during that whole period of time was making sure everybody was doing their job. Not just the company that took full responsibility for the listeriosis crisis but all government officials in all departments were working round the clock to make sure they were fixing the problem. Certainly, I would like to know that that, and that alone, was the priority of officials and I think it was the priority of the vast number of government officials. I'm obviously disappointed that some have some other priorities.
I think it's important that when we have a crisis, we all focus on working together, not trying to, down the road, score political points on each other. “
Then a few minutes later, Sun Media's Greg Weston, asked a similar question, suggesting that what happened to Minister Ritz is the result of a Liberal-stacked bureaucracy? Harper replied, in part:
“I think public servants have generally worked very well with this government. I'm very pleased with the assistance I've received from the senior public service. It's not to say we haven't always agreed, it's not say we haven't in fact butted heads from to time. I don't think this government has suffered from leaks anymore frequently than any other government. There's always people in the bureaucracy who do leak for whatever reason but I think it you look back at the Martin government in particularly, I don't think you'll see any greater frequency in this government than in that government. So I don't think that's a fair accusation.
I think the Minister has to and has taken full responsibility. The most important thing when we're in this kind of crisis is that we act to get it resolved.”
I think the Minister has to and has taken full responsibility. The most important thing when we're in this kind of crisis is that we act to get it resolved.”
Harper appeals to Quebecers with odd pitch
Prime Minister Stephen Harper threw a bone to soft nationalists in the Saguenay Tuesday night, saying that, from now on, the federal government will be required to alternate between anglophone and francophone chairpersons of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
Great. Just one thing about that: Since Pierre Juneau was appointed to be the first CRTC chairman in 1968, every government has, in fact, alternated between francophone and anglophone chairs except for one: Stephen Harper.
When Harper appointed Konrad von Finckenstein in 2007 to succeed Charles Dalfen, he became the first prime minister to appoint a chair from English Canada to succeed a chair from English Canada. Von Finckenstein, it might be noted, was born in Germany and speaks four languages but, still, he's not a Quebecer, a Franco-Manitoba, a Franco-News Brunswicker or otherwise a member of what we would call traditional French Canada.
In any event, Harper was applauded by about 200 supporters for his decision to pass a regulation to prevent himself from doing what no other prime minister has done.
Also: Harper will now require that one of the two vice-chairs is from French Canada. Check that, already done and has for a while.
Also: Harper will require that 25 per cent of the 13 commissioners are from French Canada. Check that. Already done. (Four of 13 are from French Canada).
Now that's keepin' yer promises!
Which leader is "le plus sexy"?
Bad news for the Harper campaign as we woke up in Trois Rivieres, Que. this morning. No, it was nothing to do with Gerry Ritz.
A new poll out in this morning's edition of Le Journal de Montreal says Quebceers believe Jack Layton is sexier than Stephen Harper.When asked which of the federal leaders was “le plus sexy”, 15 per cent named the NDP leader.
Harper was second at 10 per cent.
Poor Stephane Dion can't get any respect. He placed dead last: Just 2 per cent thought he had the most mojo.
Elizabeth May was the choice of 3 per cent and Gilles Duceppe was the pick of 5 per cent.
The most frequent response in this poll was “Aucun” — “None of the above”. Two-thirds or 64 per cent picked that one.
As for “Intentions de vote”, it's a tight race.
The poll, by Leger Marketing, found 34 per cent said Conservatives, 32 per cent picked the Bloc, 20 per cent were voting Liberal, the NDP was at 9 per cent and the Greens were at 4 per cent.Leger polled 1,001 Quebecers between Sept. 12 and Sept. 16. It says the poll is accurate to within 3.4 per cent 19 times out of 20.
A tiny Tory travel hiccup & Harper's toughts on overconfidence
The Conservatives had to deal with a minor travel hiccup today. It was nothing like the problems the Liberals had Tuesday night but it does have to do with air travel.
The Conservatives were planning to fly this afternoon from Hamilton International Airport to Bagotville, Que. and from there, take a bus to an evening rally tonight in Chicoutimi.
But it is raining, we are told, in Bagotville, and, because of some airport construction that is underway the only runway we could land on is a little on the short side, given the slick conditions.
So instead, Capt. Jack Adams, the pilot of Sweater Vest Air, has decided to fly directly into Chicoutimi. The runway there, we are told, is a little bit narrower than Bagotville's strip but it's longer. So given the weather conditions, Capt. Adams would rather have long and narrow in Chicoutimi than shorter and wider in Bagotville to put down the aircraft we will all be travelling in. We will be taking a bus from Chicoutimi to our hotel tonight in Trois-Rivieres.
Prime Minister Harper, by the way, was asked about the Liberal troubles this morning and said this:
“I'm not going to relish any particular logistical troubles they may be having. Campaigns are very difficult massive undertakings. I've done a lot of these and I've been very fortunate to have a great team — notwithstanding a couple of war room errors – a great team, especially on the logistical side. We've never really had any significant problems, fingers crossed.
He was asked about those troubles in terms of whether it makes Conservative feel additional confidence about the election's campaign:
“I don't think Conservatives can ever be overconfident. We generally don't govern the country. We may be a little bit ahead in the polls now. Three weeks ago there were polls that actually had us trailing. So there is no reason to be confident and we've got to work hard, not just to win, but to get a strong mandate because there is real risk, if you look at the tasx-and-spend and agendas of the other parties that they may well combine against us. So we've got to get a very strong mandate if we want to keep this country on track.”
Go head and say it, Prime Minster: You want a majority
There was a subtle but significant shift in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's stump speech in Oakville, Ont. tonight, a sign, his advisors say, that the Conservative campaign is trying to prepare the Canadian electorate to choose a majority Conservative government.
His campaign staff are not, I should be clear, not using the word “majority”. And when the PM himself was asked today about the likelihood of a majority, he said:
“I'm not predicting a majority. I'm running to get re-elected, to get a strong mandate. I am concerned that I think in a time of economic uncertainty, the country needs a strong government that is able to govern.”
Fair enough. But this new phrase “I need a strong mandate” is creeping into a Harper's speeches and his responses to reporter's questions with increasing frequency.
Also, today, he made his clearest statement yet that it is not just the Liberals who would raise taxes and increase spending; it is all of them.
Speaking to a reporters in Mississauga, he said:
“All of the opposition parties, all four of them, have essentially the same philosophy. It's all about high-spending, about spending ourselves into oblivion, either through deficits or through raising one tax or another. It's all the wrong direction and my concern is that, going forward, we have a government that can govern and not a government that's going to be sabotaged by a bunch of parties that don't want our economy to be sucessful.”
Then, later today, in his stump speech, he went further:
“All of the other parties are running on the same basic agenda. The details may differ. But it’s all big-spending promises and its about raising some kind of tax to pay for them. They will all want to work for that agenda in the next Parliament.”
Now it's quite a different thing if opposition parties are holding up government initiatives. That's what happened from time to time in the last Parliament. But it's quite another thing if the opposition is ganging up to advance their own agenda.
And that's why he said:
“We need a mandate, a strong mandate to continue to lead this country.”
So follow the logic through: If the opposition parties will work on a common agenda to raise taxes and start spending, the only antidote to that is “a strong mandate”, i.e. a majority.
And that, perhaps, is one reason why Harper also included this line tonight his stump speech, the first time this has appeared in his campaign:
“Don’t be distracted by [the polls]. Don’t take anything for granted. We need every vote we can get. We need every seat we can get.”
Puffin poop and NPR: The U.S. takes notice!
Great, funny bit on one my favourite radio shows — a program you can get in Canada via podcast — called Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, produced in Chicago by National Public Radio in the U.S. (CBC radio's Chris Hall turned me on to this program and I'm eternally grateful.)
Wait, Wait, as us fans call it, is a weekly comedy news quiz show. Contestants and a trio of panelists – usually humourists, authors, comedians or bloggers — answer questions about the week's events from host Peter Sagal. On the Sept. 14 edition of the show, an event from Canada's election came up.
The panelists for this particular week were author Roy Blount Jr., comedian Paul Provenza, and syndicated columnist Amy Dickinson. If you can listen to the segment here. Scroll down to the “Opening Panel Round” link. If you can't do that, here's my transcript:
Sagal: Roy, the American presidential campaign is getting nasty but not, we are proud to say, as nasty as things are getting up in Canada. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was forced to apologize for a campaign ad that showed what happening to his rival?
Blount: Um, did it involve a moose? Because it does down here.
Sagal: It did not involve a moose, though it did involve an animal.
Blount: An animal? He's trampled by a herd of reindeer.
Sagal: No.
Blount: Could I have a hint? I don't keeup with Canadian politics.
Sagal: Apparently his rival was standing under a tree.
Blount: Oh — a bird! Somebody pooped on …
Sagal: You're exactly right, the ad shows .
Provenza: Not just a bird!
Sagal: Not just a bird, a puffin!
Blount: A puffin!
Provenza: A puffin pooping!
Sagal: A puffin pooping on the Liberal candidate for prime minister! Puffins, of course, are these Arctic birds, very beautiful, very cute. In an ad that was put on the Canadian Conservative Party's Web site, one of these birds flies over Stephane Dion — that's Stephane Dion, by the way, not Celine, so don't get excited ..
Provenza: The puffins are trained to go after any Dion just in case it's Celine.
Sagal: This ad caused quite the ruckus. In fact, some observers say that the ad is the most interesting thing ever to happen in Canada. And here's the difference between the U.S. and Canada: People said, oh, you've got a puffin pooping on your rival. And they took it down — and apologized!
Dickinson: No! Come on!
Sagal: That would never happen in America!
Provenza: In America, we'd put lipstick on that puffin!
Sagal: In America, we would load that puffin up with ex-lax and burritos and launch a second wave! If he can't take being pooped on by a puffin, how can he take being pooped on by Putin! That's where we would go.
Blount: When you are pooped on by a puffin in Canada, you get health care.
Harper in London: Not quite like 2006
The Harper rally in London, Ont. Monday night drew the biggest crowd yet for the Conservatives during this still-young campaign. By my count — and I do actually count — there were about 800 people in a downtown conference centre to hear Harper give what has become a pretty standard stump speech.
Still, even with 800 people present, the hall wasn't full and the event didn't have much energy. That's not Harper's fault necessarily. Barack Obama, he is not. But his stump speech is always competently delivered and his speeches are generally well crafted. What Harper needs from rally supporters his energy and tonight, in London, despite the crowd it wasn't there.
Now that, by itself, is not a big deal.
But it was a rally in the very same hall in early January of 2006 that first got the national press corps travelling with Harper beginning to sense that a change was about to happen.
In the last general election, the Conservatives had ran a disciplined campaign before Christmas, full of policy announcements, including the GST cut. But according to the polls, Harper's campaign wasn't winning much support and the Liberals, at Christmas, were still ahead.
Then, over Christmas, the income trust investigation broke and Harper returned to the road in the new year with new wind in his sails.
And so, on a Friday night in the first week of January, 2006, we ended up were we were tonight. The weather was much worse then. Dark, cold, windy winter weather then; a warm, pleasant summer evening tonight.
In 2006, about 1,200 supporters crammed into the very same hall that just 800 were in tonight. (And, again, I was there in '06 and I counted them then.)
Until that point, the biggest crowd we'd seen for a Harper rally was about 500 people.
But that night in London in 2006, it was the first hint to those of us watching the campaign that perhaps Harper did indeed have what it takes to topple Paul Martin. Shortly after that, we were starting to see huge crowds at Harper rallies, including 1,000-plus turnouts in downtown Montreal during the last week of the campaign.
But tonight, it wasn't the challenger that everyone had come to see. It was the prime minister. And perhaps there isn't the same urgency or desperation among Conservatives that there was in 2006. This time, Harper came to London well ahead in national polls; in 2006, he was behind.
Still, there is a new poll out today from Nanos Research that shows Conservative support ticked down slightly. And tonight we saw some evidence, in a sense, that Harper and the Conservatives still haven't ignited the kind of passionate political love that can propel a party to a majority victory.
Harper v. Layton
On Sunday afternoon, a senior Conservative campaign advisor briefing reporters about the week ahead. Among other things, the advisor said that the focus of the Conservative campaign would shift and would include more attacks on the BQ, the Green Party and the NDP.
The NDP, for its part, spent all of last week harping at Harper. Indeed, as NDP strategist Brad Lavigne told me, the decision to have Jack Layton campaign in Calgary Southwest – Harper's own riding — was a symbolic statement that Layton wants Harper's job. On Sunday, Layton was in Gatineau, Que. for a rally and he continued his focus attacking Harper.
From a strategic viewpoint, the NDP and the Conservatives are united in one sense: A weak Liberal vote helps each of their cause with one important caveat for the Tories: The Liberal vote can't be too weak. That's because, in some regions of the country, such as suburban BC, votes on the left and centre-left, tend to split among the NDP and Liberals and that can help a Conservative candidate who might win with 30 per cent of the vote, if the Libs get 25 per cent and the NDP gets 20 per cent. But if the Liberals weaken too much and those votes fall to the NDP, then there is a chance that an NDP candidate could get more than 30 per cent of the core Tory vote and steal a victory.
So at this stage in the campaign, the Conservatives believe they have had a good weak weakening the Liberal vote but now it's important for them to hammer Layton in order to keep the vote on the left fractured, so that it doesn't coalesce around one party or another.
This morning in Ottawa, at Harper's daily (and only) media availability, Harper was asked about the NDP's campaign which, in some respects, is looking a bit like the Conservative campaign. Here's some excerpts:
I think where there is some similarity I notice with the NDP campaign is that they are trying to target on the needs of real people as opposed to theoretical schemes. Where there is a difference is tha, obviously, we're a fiscally conservative government that knows we have to operate within a budget. We're making modest but affordable promises that we know we can deliver on. I'm not so sure the NDP is making sure any of this adds up and some of their promises are very very big.
The NDP approach has many of the same problems as the Liberal approach mainly that it's not costed. The Liberals are at least going to cost their promises by taxing everyone to death through a carbon tax. The NDP, it's far from clear where they would get all this money to spend billions of dollars at a time of economic uncertainty. That is a pretty clear difference that this party has with all of the opposition parties. We understand that we have to operate within a budget. We understand that our promises have to be doable, affordable and believeable. And I think all of the other parties are promising lots of things, some of which sound good, some of which don't – the NDP promises always sound good — but at the same time the economy has to be able to afford them.
Harper's revenue neutral plan
The Liberal war room put this bug in my ear —
This morning, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced an extension of the employment insurance program so that self-employed workers could opt in and qualify for parental leave benefits.
Harper explained that there would be no direct cost to taxpayers as the value of benefits paid would be roughly the same as the value of premiums paid.
So I guess that would be “revenue neutral”, then?