The 'X Factor' Working for Harper

Wow! The gasp of wonderment went across the country. (I exaggerate of course, Canadians never get that excited about anything!) Isn't that Stephen Harper something else? Before the ink is dry on the Governor-General's writ, he's brought gay marriages up as an issue! Pretty dumb, eh? The Liberals will kill him of this one, alone.

In fact, it's about the first intelligent political thing Mr. Harper has ever done and he's obviously, finally, listening to some decent advice.

To begin with, many people (not I, though) want an end to gay marriages. The pro-life website (whose visitors, one would think, are against gay marriage) in Ontario gets about 5 million hits per month! Harper knows he must solidify their votes. The best part of this move is that it all but takes the issue off the table. He has not condemned gay marriage. He says that there will be a free vote on the matter. This means that every time a Tory candidate is asked about the issue he/she can simply reply: "Our party's decision on that has been made and there will be a free vote".

It doesn't mean Liberals and New Democrats won't try to make gay marriages an issue. It's just that most Canadians have other more important things on their mind. If Mr. Harper had not touched on this matter quickly, the Liberals, with the fine timing they possess, would have raised it during the campaign when it suited them and Tory candidates would fall all over their tongues trying to find an answer that says yes and no at the same time. Stephen Harper has given them that answer.

X Factoring in history

The Liberals have their own elephant in the room no one wants to talk about: the sponsorship scandal and the Gomery report.

Unlike the Tories with gay marriages, the sponsorship scandal does not lend itself to a one-line answer. It's something every Tory and NDP candidate can hammer home on the doorsteps in all constituencies across the country. Worse, for the Liberals, it may be an X-factor, meaning that the scandals may have gone much deeper into the voters' political genes than the Liberals - and the media for that matter - believe. It may run so deep that it hardly shows in the polls. This sort of political phenomenon is rare and I can only really think of three times in my lifetime that it's happened: in 1957 and 1958, 1984 and in 1993.

I combine '57 and '58 because they really amounted to one election. In the 1957 election, the real issue was that the Liberals had become, even for them, nauseatingly arrogant - an issue the Grits did not accept. Well, the Diefenbaker Conservatives won as a minority, whereupon the Liberals forced a follow-up election in 1958 on the basis that the Conservatives were not fit to govern. (They probably weren't but neither was anyone else.) Now, any voters in doubt as to the arrogance of the Grits had their doubts dispelled and the Tories won in a landslide.

The second time an in-the-gut issue factor prevailed was in 1984 when, once again, that factor was the arrogance of the Liberals under Trudeau, though the new leader who took the electoral pasting was a politically out-of-shape John Turner. The polls were close throughout the race but the result was a huge landslide for Brian Mulroney and his Tories. The "X" factor again.

"X" was well and truly there in 1993 where the accumulated hatred of the Mulroney Tories gave the Liberals the biggest landslide win in history and reduced the Tories to two seats. The other usual issues were there but voters simply wanted to throw the bastards out. That Mulroney had quit before the election made, I think, the public even more annoyed. It's worth noting that at the start of the campaigns, the polls showed the Conservatives in the lead!

By way of aside, I was part of a panel on a national program and each week we were each asked what the issues were in our neck of the woods. Every week, I said that the only issue in BC was accountability of their MPs. Just before the last program, the producer phoned and asked if I would please deal with the real issues such as education, health, unemployment and such. I replied that I had to call it as I saw it, so in the next and final installment, I replied that while all the traditional issues were on their minds, the public were going to toss the Tories out because they paid no attention to the people, Meech Lake and Charlottetown being examples. A host from Newfoundland broke in and mockingly said, "Surely you're not saying that you'll throw out that lovely lass we have as Prime Minister." To which I replied, with unaccustomed prescience, "Her and the whole lot of them." After the election, the producer phoned me and apologized.

Issues you say?

There are in this election, of course, the same old issues we deal with year after year: health, education and so on. There is also the growing issue of national unity in Ontario, where the Liberals will ask Ontarians to hold their noses and vote Liberal because with Quebec going strongly Bloc Quebecois, only the Liberals (they say modestly) can keep the country together. The real issue is, however, a question mark. The "X" factor. Is the Canadian public so fed up with ongoing Liberal sleaze that they will throw them out as they threw out governments in 1957/8, 1984 and 1993?

My sense of it is that while Stephen Harper is hardly a charismatic hero to Canadians, neither is Martin. (Always remember Mair's Axiom II which states that you don't have to be a 10 in politics, you can be a 3 if everyone else is a 2.) Harper, a 3 in a sea of 2s, has started well by dealing with gay marriages right at the start and is seen as on level terms with the Liberals. Paul Martin must wrestle with a problem he can't solve - the "X" factor. Namely, that irrespective of all other issues, it's the gut feeling of Canadians across the country that, for the time being anyway, they've seen enough of the Liberal Party of Canada.

That, at any rate, is the best hope Stephen Harper and his party has.

Rafe Mair writes a Monday column for The Tyee. His website is www.rafeonline.com.