In the last week of May, Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with his top political advisers and the Conservative party campaign team. He “put all the troops on high election alert,” an adviser said last week, “and told them to get ready for the campaign.”
Nothing particular in the outside world had triggered this decision, no action by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff or the other opposition leaders, no big news story. And it was hardly the first time Harper had ordered his party put on campaign footing without being sure a campaign was actually coming. The Conservative leader would always rather be safe than sorry. What had spurred this latest escalation in the threat level, the Harper adviser says, was the Conservatives’ own calculation of the Liberals’ best interests.
Every now and then, Harper’s advisers—a loose-knit group that includes campaign chairman Doug Finley, chief of staff Guy Giorno, communications director Kory Teneycke and a few others—try to figure out what they would advise the Liberal leader if that were their job. This time they came up with four strong arguments that, they thought, should persuade Michael Ignatieff to force an election before Parliament’s summer break if he could.
“First, he’s only going to get a second chance”—that is, he would only be permitted by Liberals to stay on and lead them into a second election after losing the first—“if he takes the first chance pretty early. And we think he expects to need a second chance,” the adviser said.
“Second, the ads were starting to bite.” These were the “Just Visiting” ads the Conservatives were running on television and the Internet, which argue that Ignatieff has no interest in Canada unless he can run it. Here the Harper adviser’s argument sounds self-serving, because most polling organizations can find no evidence the ads have been a drag on voter support for the Liberals. “But the target isn’t the horse-race numbers,” the adviser countered. “The target is Ignatieff’s personal numbers. And they’re starting to erode.”
Third, “there was starting to be evidence that the economy hit bottom in March. And they would rather go against us in a bad economy than a good one.
“Fourth, he’s 61 f—ing years old. He doesn’t have a lot of time.”
So when Ignatieff went into the National Press Theatre on Monday, June 15, the Conservatives thought he was going to announce he had lost confidence in their government and would vote accordingly at the next opportunity. Instead they heard . . . well, they weren’t sure what to make of it.
“The Liberal party is not seeking an election,” Ignatieff said. “We want Parliament to work. We want to replace confrontation with co-operation. But we need the Prime Minister to provide the accountability that Canadians expect.”
Instead of an electoral confrontation, Harper found himself in a day of secretive negotiations with Ignatieff. Instead of a fight, the two men found themselves announcing a deal. They were striking a blue-ribbon panel to consider changes to the Employment Insurance system. It will report at the end of September. The Harper government will survive at least that long. The mood among Conservatives this week was just short of jubilant: after worrying for months that their hapless Liberal opponents might finally have them on the ropes, they have caught a break. Ignatieff made the first bold move of his charmed tenure as Liberal leader—and flinched.
