Conservative Hat Trick? How About a Touchdown?

Why the Ron Swansons of Canada might never be happier than they are in 2011.

The prime minister is flying high this summer, traipsing about the country with a veritable smile on his face as his political rivals deal with numerous self-inflicted blows (of questionable merit, but that's for a different column). John Ibbitson of The Globe and Mail imagines things only stand to get better for Stephen Harper this fall, as provincial elections in Newfoundland, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan mean “conservatives of one stripe or another could dominate provincial capitals west of the Ottawa River.” (Robert Ghiz's Liberals will likely return to power in Prince Edward Island, but that's a little inconsequential.) If this all works out for Harper, he “could be spared the confrontations with premiers that defined so much of Jean Chrétien’s, Brian Mulroney’s and Pierre Trudeau’s majority governments, giving him truly unprecedented freedom to implement his agenda of trade deals, military procurement and cuts to government spending.” Our hasty calculations lead us to the conclusion that come Christmas, Canada could have more conservative governments in power than at any other point in its history. Perhaps that will light a fire under the bottom of a certain Ontario premier.

And speaking of Ontario, the PM's declaration that he wants to see a conservative “hat trick” sweep Ontario (that would be Messrs. Ford, Hudak, and Harper) doesn't sit well with the Toronto Star's Tim Harper. “It’s not politically smart, nor particularly productive, to take on a sitting premier on the eve of an election campaign in the country’s largest province,” says Harper. “If [Dalton] McGuinty really can capitalize on a Ford backlash, Harper just gave him a helping hand.” We'll add that Harper (the politician) also broke one of the unspoken laws of federal-provincial relations by essentially endorsing Tim Hudak for the premiership, but hey, what Harper wants, Harper gets, so it seems. Plus, Harper (the columnist) finds it a tad distasteful that Harper and Ford seemed to be in such high spirits when talking about cutting budgets down to size, noting that “slicing and dicing shouldn’t be this much fun.” Trust us, for a certain breed of small-government conservatives, personified best by Ron Swanson in Parks & Recreation, nothing could be more fun than that.

Kelly McParland of the National Post has a great take on Rob Ford's budget cutting woes, offering sarcastic remarks over why nothing (“closing three little municipal zoos is beyond consideration, because little kids like to go to them and how else would they ever see a chicken?”) can be cut without annoying some part of the population. Given Ford's promise to not raise taxes or cut services, though, McParland figures he'll have to cave in and raise property taxes, as Toronto residents “pay significantly less in property tax than any of the bedroom communities around them.” Which, for the record, is exactly what happened in Ottawa under former mayor Larry O'Brien, who is now enjoying his retirement from political life after an uninspiring four years, supplanted by former provinicial Liberal cabinet minister Jim Watson. (Cheer up, George Smitherman!) The only remaining question, then, is when voters will clue in that bringing budgets into line will require either service cuts or tax raises or both, but never neither.