Fall election winds are blowing

Conditions might never be better for the Conservatives to force an election, according to the experts.

Here are a couple of sure signs it’s fall in Canada. The leaves are turning, hockey season is about to start, and in Ottawa there are rumblings of an election. An inflammatory speech by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty earlier this week was widely interpreted as a battle cry for a snap vote his fall.

There’s every reason to believe that in the coming weeks the NDP will do its best to avoid an election, and the Conservatives will start nudging the country towards one, says Chantal Hébert in the Toronto Star. Jack Layton's refusal to whip his MPs into supporting the registry despite his stated desire to save it was seen as a failure of leadership among some voters, and NDP support among urbanites, women, and Quebeckers has slipped substantially. “Layton has cause to bend over backwards to avoid fighting an election while the registry episode is still fresh in voters’ minds,” says Hébert. Meanwhile, “a potentially deteriorating economy resulting from a sluggish American recovery” means that time is running out on the Conservative’s ability to run on its economic record. Coupled with the fact that “the Liberal brand is under attack” in Québec because of Jean Charest’s judicial scandal, and in B.C. because of the HST, Hébert says there may never be a better time to for Harper to force an election.

In Maclean’s, Paul Wells says that Harper is not hiding his election strategy, which is basically to raise the specter of a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition at every opportunity. “Harper has insisted consistently that the coalition crisis of 2008 will be repeated. Actually, he seems to relish the thought,” writes Wells, because the Liberals are divided on how to react. “First someone laughs at the spectacle of Harper raising this silly business of a coalition. Then someone else says, ‘Besides, what’s wrong with a coalition?’” Wells says Harper intends to capitalize on this confusion by avoiding complex policy platforms and instead “offering stability against the deluge.”

Get out your stubby pencils, and start practicing your “X’s.”