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.”