He rose from the operating table like the biblical Lazarus – Jack Layton, the cancer survivor, fresh from hip surgery, visibly in pain. He needed a cane to walk. With the whole country watching in disbelief, he pulled the plug and triggered an election. The NDP’s polling numbers were low, in the 12 percent range. Everyone predicted another status quo election, with even the danger of a Conservative majority.
But the cane should go into a political hall of fame. Layton took a terrible setback and turned it to his advantage. He showed real courage and tenacity. The cane has become the symbol of the campaign and the Orange Wave that rolled across Quebec. Canadians like that kind of grit in their hockey players. Turns out they also really like it in their politicians.
So Jack Layton, a Quebec anglophone from the West Island, son of a Mulroney cabinet minister, became “le bon Jack,” the guy most Canadians wanted to drink a beer with. For a bit, the polls showed the rest of Canada was tempted to actually put him in the PM’s chair, but at the last minute, Tory scare propaganda kept them away. But not Quebecers. They unleashed an orange tsunami. The NDP surfed into Stornoway.
Frank Graves of EKOS’ predictions were bang on for the NDP. Over 100 seats, he said, and we all scoffed. No one, not even Layton himself, saw this coming. And no one saw the Conservative majority.
DIRTY TRICKS
Conservative scare tactics worked. Defying Parliament, sabotaging committee investigations, hanging public servants out to dry, proroguing, basically cheating and misrepresenting, all worked. Especially in Ontario, where the Liberals lost their stronghold in Toronto, for the first time since Confederation.
The Conservatives’ latest voter suppression tactic is what is called “robo-calling” – fake phone calls directing voters to the wrong polling stations. These calls are standard operating procedure for Republican right-wingers in the U.S. Now they are apparently part of the Tory playbook.
The calls went out to ridings where the races were close, and where the difference between winning and losing is a couple of hundred votes. People were told to go to the wrong place to vote in B.C., Manitoba, Ontario and the Atlantic region. The phone messages told voters that their polling place had been changed because of high turnout. Elections Canada never calls people like that, but most people trust such a call when it comes.
This robo-calling story takes us back to Guelph, where Conservatives threw students out of a Conservative rally and tried to stop a special campus poll. Guelph is a Liberal riding in the heart of Southern Ontario, and the Conservatives wanted it badly. Frank Valeriote, the incumbent Liberal, said there had been a campaign of dirty tricks going on in his riding for weeks, starting with late-night calls, purportedly from his campaign asking for support. Let’s just say getting a call from a politician at 3 in the morning might just annoy you enough to vote against him if you didn’t think it through.
THE FALL OF MICHAEL IGNATIEFF
The Conservative attack and smear strategy worked – Ignatieff lost the election before it started. He was portrayed as a pretentious twit, a Harvard pipe puffer, a guy who lived outside Canada for over 30 years. The smear was even more effective because the Liberals chose not to respond.
In the three months before the election was called, the Conservatives out-advertised the Liberals 15 to 1 according to a document leaked to The Globe and Mail by a Liberal source. The Conservatives also ran ads in the primest of prime time – you probably saw them during the Grammys, the Super Bowl, the Oscars and Hockey Night in Canada. Some were direct attacks on Ignatieff. Others portrayed Harper as the Marlboro man, stepping up to save Canada.
Never mind that Ignatieff ran an open and candid campaign, drew big crowds and was completely honest and funny about his foibles. His goodbye speech was inspiring. He called out to young people, maybe a young woman, to take his place, learn from his mistakes, and stand up for what they believe. It was one of the best speeches I have ever seen. Exit Ignatieff.
QUEBEC AND THE NDP
The only consolation is the NDP victory. Maybe in four years they will run for the top job. The NDP won a huge victory Monday night, and will send a big contingent to Ottawa.
But many of the people who won are inexperienced and will have to learn fast. They are teachers, lawyers, social workers, public servants, one is a doctor, some are students and self-employed workers. Regular people. I bet some of them even go to Tim Hortons, a place Stephen Harper seems to love.
They will have to get up to speed really fast to even slightly slow the Conservative agenda. I have high hopes for Romeo Saganash, who negotiated Hydro contracts for the Cree, lawyer Françoise Boivin, former union leader Nycole Turmel and all the others, but they have a rough ride ahead of them.
Monday night, Quebec administered the coup de grâce to the Bloc and voted NDP en masse. After 20 years the Bloc seems to be finished, though anyone who predicts that the national question has gone away is always wrong. In 50 years, the NDP has never had more than one MP in Quebec. Monday night, Quebec sent nearly 60 to Ottawa. Even Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe lost to the NDP’s Hélène Laverdière, a virtual unknown.
It is an amazing and mind-boggling result.
10 comments
Is Jack going to have any power to start making Parliament and the Conservatives accountable for their actions? Will he find out where the stimulus money went? Insure the charges against Harper and his gang see the light of day? Change the electoral system so all elections are decided in Ontario and the rest of Canada doesn’t count? Inform the country that a fleet of planes with no engines is a debt out great-grandchildren will be stuck with {the US has those planes, conducted 3 wars and never used them – and theirs have two engines!}? How about letting legitimate journalist keep the Nation informed about what the Government is doing. There are over 30 million Canadian citizens and only 306 of them and the vast majority of us are fed up and we know where our torches and pitch forks are.
thanks for the column, Anne. I have never felt so split — delighted about the NDP breakthrough and devastated by the amount of damage Harper can do in four years to the Canada we love.
I’m not sure if Harper will listen to anything the opposition says now (since he mostly didn’t before anyhow), so I think a large part of the NDP’s role will be to EXPLAIN TO THE PUBLIC WHAT HARPER IS DOING. They will have to explain the meaning of innocuous-sounding legislation that guts the rights of women or minorities, or artists, or public support for anything of public interest. The biggest problem is the media, which certainly did not explain to the electors the gravity of contempt for parliament. Especially in English Canada, the overwhelming weight of American media means that we end up thinking we are structured like the US. And Harper certainly hopes to transform us into something as American as possible. So how do we get out alternative messages to a vast public that isn’t on facebook and isn’t really on the net very much?
By the way, I have lots of quebec friends asking: Do we stay in a Harper Canada, or do we leave? If anybody can push Quebec out of Canada, it is Harper. cheers!
I suggest actually providing legitimate evidence of this Tory phone scam before announcing it was part of their playbook. Looks like you are using the exact same tactics as everyone else in politics and yes, they ALL use these methods!
[...] than are their older colleagues who have not had that type of exposure. Anne Lagacé Dowson: Canada Election 2011: Orange Nation 3 May Canadians cheated again by voting system says Fair Vote Canada Canada’s national [...]
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We need proportional representation so everyone has a voice. And maybe the Liberals and NDP could form an alliance so we can get some change from what we are stuck with for four years now.
The Grits and NDP will never and should never amalgamate. People who believe they should are basing it on the extreme right takeover of the conservative party-if it worked for them it can work for grits and ndp. Not so. Harper’s National Citizen’s Coalition was primarily the extreme right. Those are his roots and his true beliefs. He steamrolled and took Progressive out of the conservative party, alienating Lougheed and Joe Clark among other esteemed progressive tories who actually have a social consience. The Grits and NDP have different roots, different policies and different backers. Unlike the tories, these are people in both parties with integrity who will not be pushed and bought into standing under one flag for kickbacks. Grits will re-organise with Justin at the helm and his strategy of engaging the grassroots through transparent vs top heavy leadership. They will govern again because of their intrinsic links to both the power elite and the populace-the full political spectrum. The NDP, although I am fond of them and glad they represent my new riding, does not have this latitude. NDP roots are proudly working class with the rise of yuppie urbanism a relatively new development. They are not governing material–yet. Let’s see how they do in Opposition. They have challenges, the biggest being keeping the media wolves from devouring their neophyte MPs just because they are young and inexperienced. Can’t have it both ways. Can’t say you want to engage youth and then say,’ we only meant to vote, not represent us.’ It is a dark day for democracy when tories rule with less then 25% of the voting population’s endorsement. I am glad we are moving to orange and green Vancouver Island. I really can not stomach it any more.
Harper says the NDP vote in Québec is a victory for Federalism (for which he wants to take credit). He is wrong. The NDP vote has nothing to do with Federalism or Separatism. The NDP landslide here shows how much Québec is indeed a distinct society from the Rest Of Canada. If and when the Parti Québécois returns to government, they should offer refugee status to all progressive-minded Canadians who want to live in a province where liberal social values remain current!
I imagine Harper is rubbing his hands with delight right now as he watches the NDP bring it’s newbies into line. No doubt Harper will try to spend the next 4 years honing his “Captain America” image and making the NDP look like rubes. I hope “Jack the Giant Killer” has some super spin powers of his own.
Proof of the “phone scam” or it didn’t happen. Name one victim. No wonder Canada rejected the left with your out right lies.
Jack needs to play the card that youth is good, that knowledge is not relative to age (look at how the tories behave during question period-worse than toddlers!) and that Quebec and BC is embracing the orange wave. If NDP wants to flourish again in Quebec, they will have a fight for turf with the then re-organised Liberals, come that day. Liberals have a very steep curve if they don’t want to split votes again. PQ, will not have the organising base by next election, of that I am sure. By end of year four of a right wing government usurping electoral process and Parliamentary law, escalating deficit, favouritism to corporations over families, attacking everything from reproductive rights to harassing small businesses through false taxes, Canadians will have had enough. If media and other parties have done their job of keeping the people informed and getting organised, we will only have to suffer for four more years.