Jail 'em first, try 'em later

First, today's shocking poll:

A recent poll by Decima Research suggested the Liberals had the support of 32 per cent of those who are likely to vote on Jan. 23, while the Conservatives had 30 per cent support...

In Ontario, where gun crime has become a major issue, the Liberals' lead has dwindled to four percentage points over the Conservatives at 40-36, according to results taken from 1,020 respondents between Dec. 29 and Dec. 30.

Of note in the same story: the Liberals' latest proposal to tackle gun crime - "reverse onus" bail conditions for those accused of gun crimes. In other words, it would be up to the accused to show why he should be released, rather than the Crown to show why he should be held. Hmm. I'm just trying to imagine what sort of evidence you'd have to produce to show why you should not be kept in jail. How do you prove you're not a threat to society? I'm sure this tests off the charts in the focus groups. But, um, doesn't it sort of, you know, violate the Charter?

[PM spokesman Scott] Reid acknowledged that the reverse onus provision will require justification under the Charter of Rights, but the Liberals believe the courts will recognize that "the importance of protecting citizens against gun violence is paramount."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that more or less the same fudge as Harper has taken on gay marriage: we're confident the courts will see it our way? And what if they didn't? Would the PM invoke the notwithstanding clause?

NDP slams Liberal attack on Layton's smile (CBC): I think this will go down as the silliest controversy of this election...

Double negative

This is fascinating: a negative ad accusing the other guys of going negative, before they've gone negative. I didn't think that was possible, at least in this space-time continuum. GODEL INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM: The hitherto-unseen Liberal attack ads are not only the subject of the Tory attack ad, evidence of the ruling party's decadence ("when scandals continue to engulf your government ... what message can you possibly take to the people of Canada?"), but also retroactively justify it: "We only went negative because they were going to." Predicted Liberal response: Did Stephen Harper's friend George Bush teach him about pre-emptive war? Where are the WMD?

Precedents choice

Everyone is quoting inappropriate precedents in the battle for Goodale's corpse. The Tories are passing around a list of federal and provincial ministers who resigned under criminal investigation -- but in every case, it was because they themselves were the subject of the investigation. The Liberals, for their part, have their own list: finance ministers (Michael Wilson, Marc Lalonde, et al) who did not resign after a budget leak. This is interesting, since a) it has not been definitively established that there was a leak, a point the Liberals had stressed until now, and b) at the time of the Wilson leak, the Liberals were quite sure that this did require the minister's resignation. But of course the real point is that the Wilson and Lalonde leaks were nothing like as serious as this one (if leak this was). Nobody made any money off them, and nobody lost money -- except, in Lalonde's case, the taxpayers: To forestall accusations that his deficit forecast of $32.4-billion (or whatever it was) had been leaked (after Lalonde, in a pre-budget photo-op, carelessly let the cameras get too near the document), the minister hastily tacked on $200 million in spending, boosting the deficit to $32.6-billion and allowing him to claim that the correct number had not, in fact, been leaked. If I were the Liberals, I'm not sure I'd be anxious to remind voters of that particular "precedent." ADDENDUM: There's a good history of budget secrecy and budget leaks here, including this nugget:

1983 – A Globe and Mail reporter finds documents thrown out by the Ontario Treasury Board. Treasurer Frank Miller offers to resign, but Premier William Davis says the situation is not serious enough to warrant it.

35-34

While it's best not to get too excited about a single poll, what's more significant in those SES Research numbers are the leadership ratings. At the start, and for the first week of the campaign, Harper's Leadership Index Score (adding together voter preferences with respect to trustworthiness, competence and vision for Canada) hovered somewhere around 50 per cent, while Martin's was in excess of 80%. By the three-week mark, they were roughly tied, and in the latest survey Harper has inched ahead, 65-62. From a thirty-point gap to parity, in just two weeks. And on the issue that was supposed to be the Liberals' ace in the hole: leadership. That's the story of the campaign. SEE ALSO: the "Best Prime Minister" numbers. Through the first week, Martin enjoyed a 10-point lead, roughly 30-20. Harper has now closed to within three points. Well, be fair: Martin helped. POSTSCRIPT: Political Staples thinks the latest UBC Election Stock Market numbers -- at time of writing (4:44 EST) it has the two main parties in a virtual tie -- dispels "the notion that this market is the most efficient vehicle since it has reacted to the SES poll. What I mean is that it is clearly following not leading." But the SES polls have consistently shown the largest leads for the Grits, as large as 10 points or more, while the other pollsters (Ipos, Decima, Strategic Counsel etc) typically had the gap at around 4 points. The ESM, meanwhile, has been anticipating the Liberal lead would shrink to two or three points for at least a week. The ESM incorporates all useful information in predicting the final outcome, of which the polls are only part. It's forward-looking, anticipating where public opinion will be, while polls are a snapshot of where it is. But of course it stands to reason that investors would take the latest poll into account, as a supplement to their initial attempts to price in the effects of Klander, income trusts, pro-Conservative press comments, and so on.

Why didn't the minister call in the RCMP? (cont'd)

Monte Solberg gets it (mostly) right:

I actually like Ralph Goodale. He is a nice and decent man, but he sure has blown this one. Too bad he didn't say way back when something like, "As Canada's Chief Financial Officer I cannot accept that there can be any question about the confidentiality of priviledged information in my office or department, especially knowing that any breach of that confidentiality could benefit inside investors at the expense of the general investing public. That is why I have asked the RCMP to investigate these allegations of a leak ahead of my announcement on income trusts..."

Monte goes on to have Ralph announce his resignation "until such time as the investigation is complete." But that's overkill: had Goodale called in the RCMP himself, I very much doubt anyone would be calling for his resignation. Instead, he tried to bluff his way through, giving the NDP its opportunity to make the request themselves. He might as well have taped a sign to his back: Investigate Me.

Was there a leak? (cont'd)

The evidence mounts... From CTV, as transcribed by MKBraaten:

Don Drummond, VP/Chief Economist: CTV said that Drummond told them he first heard about the announcement via email, 4 hours in advance of announcement. Also, stated that Liberal strategists in Ottawa were the source of email. (UPDATE: The National Post has Drummond saying CTV got this part wrong: the email came from a reporter.) CTV quoted Drummond as saying “Alot of people seemed to know there was an announcement coming and a few people seemed to know what it was.” Jim Leech, Teachers pension fund - CTV said that Leech received emails at about 2 pm stating that the announcement was guaranteed. CTV Quoted Leech “I got a bunch of emails around 2pm saying for sure Goodale was making an announcement after the close.” Sandy McIntyre, Sentry Select Capital: CTV reported he sent the following email: “There is a strong rumour out of Ottawa that Goodale is going to pronounce after the close today his trust solution…hope my sources are right!” Mcintyre said his sources were quoting ‘well connected Liberals’.

The same Sandy McIntyre shows up in this piece in the Toronto Star:

Sandy McIntyre was about to head for a noon meeting at the King Edward Hotel on Nov. 23 when a phone call alerted the Bay Street stock picker that Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, whose government was days away from calling an election, was poised to make a major announcement. When the senior portfolio manager at Sentry Select Capital returned to his office about an hour later at 12:30 p.m., McIntyre says, he fielded another call. This time, a trading floor contact "who was clearly excited" boasted his bank's investment adviser had been told by a government source that Goodale would reveal how the Liberals planned to handle dividend taxes. "It's pretty clear somebody leaked this thing and they should be held responsible," McIntyre says now. "We had a 5 to 7 per cent move in heavily traded securities in the last three to four hours before the close ... (which) indicates there was information available to the buyer that wasn't available to the seller. "You had large investors enjoying a substantial windfall in profits and once again the small investor got screwed," McIntyre says, adding he wrote a letter of complaint to the Ontario Securities Commission on Nov. 24 about the income trust imbroglio. The securities regulator's response advised him to file a formal complaint, McIntyre says. The S&P/TSX capped income trust index rose 1.5 per cent on Nov. 23 and the Yellow Pages Income Fund, among Canada's largest income trusts, rose 3.4 per cent — all before Goodale said at a 6 p.m. press conference in Ottawa that the government doesn't plan to tax income trusts, high-yield securities worth $170 billion. Underscoring the importance of the announcement, the S&P/TSX capped income trust index the following day soared 4.4 per cent, its biggest gain in at least eight years.

Not conclusive, but as they say, probative. On the other hand, the Globe doesn't see a pattern:

The RCMP faces a big challenge figuring out who may have benefited from advance information about Ottawa's plans for income trusts. Trading records provide few clues as to who could have been tipped off before Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's announcement last month, and there had been speculation for weeks about what the minister was planning to do... Several stocks with high dividends, such as BCE Inc. and Rothmans Inc., traded heavily in the hours before the announcement, some gaining as much as 5 per cent that day [Nov. 23]. Many trusts, such as Yellow Pages and Superior Plus, also traded actively. However, it is far from clear that the activity was anything more than informed guesswork. A look at the trading records shows that different brokerage firms led the trading of each stock, suggesting there was no concentrated pattern. For example, CIBC World Markets led the buying and selling in Yellow Pages that day while RBC Dominion was the most active in Superior.

SEE ALSO this CTV story: "RCMP may be on 'wild goose chase': Bay St. veteran"

It's not about Ralph

Should Ralph Goodale resign? As I'll argue below, that's beside the point. But for the record: No. Not on the basis of what we know now.

Three factors weigh in the balance: 1) was the minister involved, or just his department, 2) was there criminal wrongdoing, or merely an inadvertent leak, and 3) is there hard proof of either, or just a suspicion? Obviously answer (a) in each case is the more damning. But it's how they are combined that will decide the minister's fate.

If the minister were personally under criminal investigation, he would clearly have to resign, at least while the investigation was under way. There are ample precedents for this, the most recent of which is Greg Sorbara, the Ontario finance minister. There is no way a minister can carry out his duties with that sort of cloud hanging over him.

But no evidence has been produced that he was personally involved in the income trust affair, nor has he been named as a subject of the investigation.

The second scenario that would require the minister to resign is if it were conclusively shown that someone in his department had leaked news of the income trust decision. It would not matter whether the leak was criminal, or even deliberate: Even an inadvertent leak would be enough.

Ministers should not be required to resign every time their staff screw up, but this was no minor indiscretion. Assuming there was a leak, it was worth tens of millions of dollars to those in the know -- and cost those not in the know the same amount. The convention of ministerial responsibility applies for a reason: When ministers have to pay with their jobs for their department's worst blunders, they have more incentive to see to it that such cockups do not occur.

But the operative words are "conclusively shown" -- preferably by some competent authority like, say, the RCMP. It is not enough to suspect that a leak occurred, and right now a suspicion is all we have. A strong suspicion, to be sure, but not enough to hang a man on.

SO THE issue is not Ralph's personal integrity. I suspect the Liberals would like it if that was the issue: since no one doubts Ralph is clean, they would then be in a position to dismiss the whole affair as a lot of fuss over nothing. The issue is: Was there a leak? If there was, he's gone, criminal investigation or no. If there wasn't, there's nothing to investigate.

Actually, that's not the issue, or not the most important one. The real issue is: Why did we have to wait for an opposition party to petition the RCMP to launch an investigation? Why didn't the minister, or the government, request an investigation themselves?

That, not "why won't the minister resign," is the question the opposition should be asking now. The government can muster an answer to the first: a good man, an honest man, no evidence of personal involvement, etc. But to the second? Er, um, ah...

It is a bit of a mystery. You would think that a government with this government's track record would want to go out of its way to dispel even the slightest suspicion of misconduct, the second it arose. Yet what did they do? Incredibly, they stonewalled. The minister informed us that he had talked to his deputy minister, and was assured nothing was amiss. That's not good enough -- not in a full-service democracy. At best, it was a terrible error in judgment -- politically, as much as anything else. As I argued on The National last night, the public are entitled to draw the appropriate conclusions as to this government's zeal for looking into allegations of wrongdoing in its midst.

One has to ask: What were they thinking? Did they suppose this would not blow up at some point? I can only imagine they were counting on the RCMP to sit on this for the duration of the campaign. Only the RCMP ... disappointed them.

Why the force, so reluctant to investigate the ruling party in past scandals, suddenly turned on its political masters this time is perhaps the most intriguing question raised by this whole affair.

Chretienites pick Harper to win?

PoliticsWatch is all ears:

A group of senior Liberals gathered in an Ottawa pub Monday evening for former prime minister Jean Chretien's office Christmas party. Chretien, his former chief of staff Jean Pelletier, Eddie Goldenberg, Sheila Copps and Senator Jim Munson were among the senior Grits in attendance. What was the big topic of discussion at the party? A Canadian Press story reported that it was "hand-wringing over the current state of the Liberals, who are struggling to hang onto a minority in the Jan. 23 election." But sources tell PoliticsWatch that talk also included several veteran Liberals at the party predicting Stephen Harper will be prime minister on January 24. One senior Liberal and campaign veteran predicted Harper would become PM with a minority based on his reading of the polls and past campaign experience. And a couple of other Grits even thought Harper had a chance to win with as many as three seats in Quebec, including Lawrence Cannon in Pontiac and Josee Verner in Louis-Hebert.

Bertuzzi in, Crosby out

And right on both counts. Too bad for Brendan Shanahan, though. The guy's a leader and a gamer, knows how to win -- plus he's having a great year.

This sounds ominous.

Liberals getting set for run to replace Martin:

Forget waiting for the people to decide. Ambitious Liberals are readying for a fast run at the leadership if Paul Martin fails to win a majority that looks out of reach.
With this campaign still in doubt, no one wants to embarrass the Prime Minister or, worse still, enrage advisers who firmly control the party and may ultimately determine Martin's successor. But many Liberals are certain the party is heading for another minority and say new leadership must be found before the next election.
Topping everyone's list of heirs-apparent is Canada's ambassador to the U.S., Frank McKenna. As a civil servant and Martin appointment, McKenna is being properly careful. Even so, the former New Brunswick premier is working his Rolodex, making frequent Canadian speeches and is widely expected to get Martin's blessing should the Prime Minister step down.
Others either organizing or keeping options open include immigration and Ontario political minister Joe Volpe, former deputy prime minister John Manley and Michael Ignatieff, the Harvard professor whose transparent leadership plans riled Martin loyalists enough to turn the fight for the Etobicoke-Lakeshore nomination into an ugly brawl. Hovering in the wings are also former Jean Chrétien ministers Martin Cauchon and Brian Tobin, as well as Maurizio Bevilacqua, one of the brightest of next-generation Liberals left out of a weak Martin cabinet.
Breaking ranks now would be suicidal for any wannabe. But in background interviews, Liberals on both sides of the divide between Martin and Chrétien said the first post-election priority must be renewal. Without that, they predict a repeat of the 1984 election when Brian Mulroney swept away tired Liberals to hold power for nine years.
"If Martin leads this party into the next election you will have a Conservative majority," says a lifetime Liberal at the centre of one of the fledgling leadership efforts. "Anyone who thinks otherwise is crazy."

"Angry"

Sigh. Another day, another bit of canned outrage from Paul Martin:

An angry Paul Martin said Stephen Harper went “beyond the boundaries of reasonable discourse” when he suggested the Liberal Leader would like the Parti Quebecois to be elected in Quebec.
On Tuesday, the Tory Leader attacked the Liberals on national unity, saying Martin wants the separatist Parti Quebecois to gain power so Liberals can “stand up for federalism” and fight to save the country.
Although Martin yesterday called the remark “ridiculous,” he said today that he didn’t fully understand its context until he watched Harper on television last night.
Martin came armed with a prepared statement when he spoke to reporters in Dartmouth, N.S. this morning, saying he has stood beside provincal Liberals in a fight against separatists since he’s been in Quebec and that he has fought for national unity all his life.
“Yet yesterday, Mr. Harper, either out of anger or out of calculation, accused me of hoping for a separatist win. Well let me say to you that is not within the boundaries of reasonable discourse. As different as our views might be, I would never for a moment suggest that Stephen Harper would prefer for partisan political reasons to see a separatist victory,” said Martin.

Oh please. This, from the guy who launched his campaign by insinuating that Stephen Harper did not love Canada. This from the guy whose minions regularly fill reporters’ heads with similar slurs or worse. And yet the media persist in pretending that these stagey simulacrums of emotion (“an angry Paul Martin”) are somehow related to emotions as they are felt by real people.

UPDATE: More unreasonable discourse! Harper says Liberals hate farmers!

Accusing the Liberals of indifference to rural Canada, Tory Leader Stephen Harper said Wednesday that a Conservative government would introduce a new disaster relief program for farmers and create a more flexible income stabilization program.

Indifferent to rural Canada? Why, I've never been so outraged in all my life.

EMOTIONDATE: In the Globe, it's "an emotional" Paul Martin. Probably sounds better than "angry," especially to that key female demographic.

It's funny, isn't it, that it took him a full day to get so emotional? And that he needed a prepared statement to express it? I wonder why? Oh, Anne Dawson explains:

The Liberals believe Harper has made a mistake in his campaign strategy as significant as when Harper accused the PM of supporting child pornography in the 2004 election campaign...

You mean there's a strategy involved? One they feel the need to brief reporters on? It's not just about the PM's hurt feelings?

Oh, and that bit of conventional wisdom about the election being on hold until January 2? You know, the 10-day truce that was supposed to happen mid-campaign? As if. Harper, for one, says he'll be back on the campaign trail December 27. Unless I miss my guess, that means Martin will be out shaking hands Christmas Day.

Mixed signals

The UBC Election Stock Market shows a tightening race, with barely two points separating the two leading parties. Tradesports, meanwhile, shows a swing in sentiment back to the Liberals, with punters again putting the Liberals above 70 cents (on a $1 payoff).

Perhaps this story explains the confusion:

Canada's political loyalties are churning beneath the seemingly stagnant surface of public opinion, says an online poll that indicates one in five voters has switched allegiances since the federal election campaign began.

The more things change, the more they stay the same -- 19 times out of 20, plus or minus 4.5%. MOREOVER: Ipos reports 37 per cent are undecided.

Pander? Moi?

Wednesday's column is critical of Harper for pandering to Quebec nationalists -- in a long list of other groups -- notably in the matter of allowing Quebec to usurp the federal government's role in foreign affairs -- a responsibility that, along with enforcing a common market, is more or less the federal government's job description. (Not that Martin, who is now attacking Harper for giving away the store, is any better: the CBC has video of him promising exactly the same thing in the last election.)


On the other hand, this is very exciting:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will offer to hold a one-on-one debate against Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe - on a Quebec television network and in French, The Canadian Press has learned.

The move comes after Prime Minister Paul Martin rejected Duceppe's challenge to hold a similar debate on the TQS network... After delivering a finger-jabbing lecture to Duceppe in last week's English campaign debate, Martin said he would be prepared to take on the separatist leader on "any street corner" in the province.

But he has rejected Duceppe's offer of an additional one-on-one debate, saying the four national party leaders already have two more encounters in January.

Critics have complained that the tightly scripted format in the national debates renders back-forth exchanges impossible.

Duceppe is a leading critic of the format. So he quickly accepted when TQS - the second-largest private network in Quebec - offered Tuesday to hold a Martin-Duceppe debate.

The prime minister immediately refused the offer.

So by stepping in where the PM feared to tread, Harper shows up Martin, first. Can Duceppe refuse, second, having been so eager to debate Martin? I suppose so, but it'll look lame. LAMEDATE: Duceppe declines.

More important, the precedent has been set for more debates, and different formats, outside the strict confines of the four "offical" debates. If Duceppe can debate Martin, or Harper can debate Duceppe, why not Martin v Harper? Or Layton v Martin? Maybe the Green party leader can get in one of these.

Everyone said they wanted to see the leaders mix it up a little more. This may be the only way: a series of one-on-ones. Let's get r-r-ready to r-r-rumble!

You don't mess with CP

The Liberal dirty tricks dept. gets caught, bigtime...

Anonymous tip on old speech leads back to Liberals:

... It began the day before the first televised leaders' debates in Vancouver, with the Liberals scrambling to change the channel following the already infamous "beer and popcorn" gaffe by communications director Scott Reid...

Alex Munter, a former Ottawa city councillor and well-known gay rights activist, helped set the ball in play.

Munter contacted a Canadian Press reporter travelling with the Conservative campaign offering up an old Harper speech that an acquaintance of his, as Munter put it, stumbled upon while browsing the Net.

The speech, delivered by Harper when he was a private citizen working for the National Citizens' Coalition, praised American conservative values, disparaged Canada as a "welfare state" and said the jobless aren't worried because they have generous benefits...

Munter asked to remain anonymous as the source of the tip. Contacted by CP's election desk, he also vigorously denied acting with any partisan direction.

After some deliberation, CP ran a story outlining the main speech points, citing the source of the tip simply as a political opponent of Harper. The story was immediately leapt upon by the Liberal war room as evidence the Conservative leader is outside mainstream Canadian opinion.

By the following day, the Liberals were sending out backgrounders under the following Editor's Note:

"A CP story yesterday highlighted a speech given by the Honourable Stephen Harper to the Council on National Policy."

That was about the same time that The Canadian Press learned that Munter was in Vancouver with the Liberal team, working with Martin on debate preparations.

Oh, but it gets worse. In the sense that it gets better:

Munter, contacted again Thursday, was repeatedly asked whether the Liberal party had any connection to his suggesting CP look for the story.

Each time, Munter evaded the question.

"I am not a card-carrying member of any political party," he said.

"The Liberal party was not a factor in my letting CP know about this story.

"I wasn't calling on behalf of the Liberal party, I was calling on my own and it was up to CP whether it ran the story or not."

Munter eventually offered that the speech was found by a friend "who is something of a whiz on the Internet."

He was asked if his friend had any connection with the Liberal war room. He said he didn't know, but finally conceded: "He is a Liberal."

On Sunday, Munter, who is a close friend of Brian Guest, one of Prime Minister Paul Martin's closest advisers, hedged when asked directly if Guest was the source of the tip.

"Nobody put me up to anything," said Munter. "I act on the basis of my convictions and nobody has ever manipulated me to do anything."

Read the whole thing. From the tone of the piece, CP is mightily steamed.

So let's see. They got caught plagiarizing one ad in Quebec, they passed off Liberal operatives as average Canadians in another, and now they're found to have been laundering their gotchas through a "non-partisan" activist. All in just the first three weeks. And that's the stuff we know about.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Of course, if CP hadn't been so willing to run with an anonymous source, the great disease of modern journalism -- it's not like he was a whistleblower afraid for his job -- they might have avoided being taken so spectacularly.

AFTERTHOUGHTER: Actually, CP's got some explaining to do as well. The news service says the original story described the anonymous Munter as "a political opponent," which would at least have given the reader some clue as to his motives. Only that's not the case. The story in fact describes the source as "an opponent of his social policies." You know, just a public-spirited policy wonk...

Notes after the English debate

A WORD, first, on the format. On balance, it's a clear improvement. Having viewers ask the questions is a breath of fresh air, although perhaps we should include some journalists in the mix: these things work best when there's a balance of populism and elitism, where the politicians have to answer both the questions that are on voters' minds and the questions that ought to be. (The latter role was ably filled by moderator Trina McQueen: it was a pleasure watching the leaders trying to grapple with the broad questions of philosophy she threw at them -- "should the tax system be used to influence all sorts of behaviour, or it is just there to raise revenues" was the question of the night, even if all the leaders gave the wrong answer.)

And while it would be nice to have more one-on-one exchanges between the leaders, there can be no going back to the free-for-alls of the past. As noted in a previous post, when you have four leaders the mathematics are against you: To get every possible comination of two leaders, you'd have to have six different sessions on each topic. Mind you, who says these things have to be divided by topic? Maybe we should just divide each debate into six one-on-ones, 20 minutes each, and let them propose the topics they'd like to discuss with each other. So, for example, Martin v Harper might feature discussions of the Charter of Rights (Martin) and daycare (Harper), while Harper v Layton might talk about ethics in government (Harper - they could take turns lambasting the Liberals) and Kyoto (Layton - just so people didn't think they were too cozy). Might be worth trying in one debate, at any rate. (Of course, if they ever let the Greens in, as they should, then the number of combinations jumps to 10. My half-serious suggestion of a "knockout" round looks better and better.)

THE MEDIA'S interests in this could be divined from this post-debate headine: "Second debate sparks a better brawl." But what, really, is the purpose of these debates? We're not trying to find the best high-school debator in the country, or the loudest heckler. We're hiring a Prime Minister. The debates should properly be thought of as job interviews: we're interested in where each man would take the country, but we're also interested in who they are. Everybody always complains about the "lack of specifics" after these things, but a job interview doesn't get too far into specifics either. Mostly, the questions are designed to see if the applicant can think on his feet, for what this might reveal of his temperament and ability. I might add that all four were quite impressive in this regard, even if it isn't fashionable to say it.

OVERALL, I'D have said it was a bad night for Martin -- Layton and Duceppe beat him up all night long -- until that last exchange ("you're not going to take my country away from me") with Duceppe, which predictably showed up in all the post-debate clips. Yet not as many, or with as much emphasis, as I expected. Were it almost any other leader, it would have been a home run. Even allowing for the stage-acting that is required of all politicians, there are some people you can imagine saying that and meaning it. If it's too much to imagine it boiling out of them spontaneously -- that only happens in Capra movies -- you can at least imagine them using it to telegraph something fundamental about themselves.

With Martin, it's just the stance of the day. As several commentators have noted, he didn't make anything like the same declaration in the French debate the previous night -- though neither did any of the other leaders, to be fair. More to the point, it doesn't resonate with anything he's ever said or done in public life. This is the guy who hid for a week when the Clarity Act was introduced, who dumped Stephane Dion from cabinet, who appointed Jean Lapierre as his Quebec lieutenant, and -- lest we forget -- who allowed his supporters in the 1990 Liberal leadership race to chant "vendu" at Jean Chretien for the crime of criticizing the Meech Lake Accord.

But now he's Captain Canada? Donnez-moi un break .

AS FOR the others, I thought both Harper and Layton had good nights, for opposite reasons. Harper was calm, presentable, a bit professorial, which has the virtue of being close to who he is. The media really have to choose: either he's "angry" or he "lacks passion," but not both. In fact, I don't think much of the public every really bought the "angry" meme: that was a bit of Liberal spin dreamt up over a weekend and injected into the media bloodstream via the Globe and Mail. Rather, I think much of the public don't quite know what to make of him. Most of them have barely seen him speak for more than a few seconds at a time, so this was really his first (or second, counting last year's debate) chance to observe him up close.

In this regard, the format served him well -- particularly letting voters ask the questions. This changed the whole dynamic of the debate, in ways I'm not sure everyone understood. So long as it's the same old gang of political junkies -- politicians and media -- I think the public tends to score the participants much as the media does: by how well they play the game, who scores "points" off whom, etc.

But once the public is let into the arena, there's much less tolerance for that sort of stuff. Then the issue becomes: who answered my questions the best? Who was concerned with my issues? Who levelled with me? Make no mistake: those questioners weren't just representing themselves. They were our ambassadors to the political class. And we didn't want to see them trifled with. So, for example, Martin's little sortie about Harper's leadership contributors, which might have played well in past debates, seemed out of place here.

(The nearest comparison I can make is with the Charlottetown referendum. The Yes side had all the money, and commissioned some slick, well-produced ads. Remember the baseball player? And in a normal election campaign -- which the public sees as more or less a professional wrestling match, with about as much reality -- they might have worked. But in a referendum, the issue is not Yes vs No, it's voters vs the question: at least, it was in that campaign. Voters weren't so much divided, as united in the common challenge they all faced, like golfers against the course, trying their damnedest to figure out what was best for the country. The last thing they needed was some slick, manipulative ad messing with their emotions. That's all very well in an election. But this was important.

Once it clicks in that "Jesus, I actually have to decide this," voters get serious in a hurry. So the Yes ads' very slickness worked against them. The single most effective ad in the whole campaign was a still-photo of "Brian's Garage," with some tinny voice over top asking whether we'd buy a used car from this man. In terms of production values, it was somewhere south of the cable access station. But by the end of the campaign, the Yes side were beseeching their high-priced talent to come up with ads that were as tinny and amateurish.)

Anyway, I thought Harper did a very good job of answering viewers' questions, in a way that was respectful without being pandering. (Exception: asked what they thought Canada's greatest strength was, both Martin and Harper unhesitatingly said "our people," as if we were somehow more blessed in that department than every other country on earth.) I was particularly taken with his answers to the viewers who wanted tighter rules on politicians crossing the floor and -- in what seems to be top of many people's minds -- breaking their promises. He didn't give answers they, or I, would agree with, but his reasons were thoughtful and persuasive.

In sum, I think he did himself some good, as I expect the polls will show. (UPDATE: Or maybe not. On the other hand, Global TV has Ipsos numbers that tell a very different story. So does Leger. UPPERDATE: On the other other hand, Decima sides with the Strategic Counsel: Clear win for Martin. So that's two pollsters on either side. Go figure.)

As for Layton, he was a terrier, and a salesman, and oddly it all worked. As a salesman, he was franker than most, inasmuch as he acknowledged he was a salesman: he asked viewers directly for their votes, more than once. Voters like that sort of humility. And while his ferocious ankle-biting on Martin might have put off some viewers -- it did get a little repetitive -- the exception are those voters he most needs to reach: NDP voters who had strayed into the Liberal camp in the first weeks of the campaign. It may be that Layton's attempts to portray himself as a moderate backfired: it was too soon, before he'd nailed down his base. So he needed to show some fire in the belly on traditional NDP issues: hence the endless references to "tax cuts for Mr. Martin's corporate friends." And he needed to poke holes in Martin's left-leaning pose: hence the baseball-bat over Kyoto ("It's hypocrisy!").

(Actually, Layton got several good digs in on Martin. "He's been breaking promises for so long he doesn't even recognize it any more." "Rewarding the Liberals for what they've done [in the sponsorship scandal] will send the message that Quebec is not respected." Harper could just sit back and let Layton work him over.)

And Duceppe? He was there. But should he have been? Do I really need to hear what he would do "as Prime Minister" about Western alienation? Or anything else? Still, I enjoyed his invocation of "the British Parliamentary system," almost as much as his declaration that the issue of gay marriage could not be revisited, since we'd already voted on it once. And he keeps asking a question I for one would like to see somebody answer: Who got the dirty money?

TALKING OF unanswered questions: I do wish somebody would ask the leaders about productivity, and our declining relative standard of living. If I were Harper, I'd be talking a lot about Ireland, both in the negative -- we're now poorer than the Irish -- and the positive: If they can turn things around, so can we.

Thoughts on the (first) French debate

1. The news of the night was Harper's firm declaration that he would "never" invoke the notwithstanding clause in the matter of gay marriage. This effectively puts the issue to rest. A free vote on restoring the "traditional" (ie discriminatory) definition of marriage was never going to pass anyway: the numbers just aren't there. And if it did, it would run straight into a Supreme Court challenge, which would almost certainly overturn the law - which judgment Harper has now said he would accept. (On top of which, Harper has promised to grandfather existing gay marriages.)
Opponents of gay marriage are therefore left with one last, slim hope: that they could somehow persuade a majority of MPs in a minority Parliament to reverse what the previous minority Parliament had done, and that the Court would then defer to the legislature, upholding the same definition of marriage in statutory form that lower courts had thrown out at common law. Not going to happen.
So Harper has left these voters high and dry -- but where are they going to go? None of the other parties would even give them the satisfaction of a free vote. On the other hand, he reassures social moderates, and takes away an issue from the Liberals. All in all, a good night's work.
2. The howler of the night was Martin's assertion that a GST cut favours the rich. Even the CBC saw through that one. Readers will know that I have been critical of the GST cut, on efficiency grounds. But there isn't even a debate about which kind of tax is more regressive, consumption or income. The poor consume almost all of their income. The rich consume only a fraction of theirs. So a flat 7% tax on consumption like the GST confiscates a larger share of a poor person's income than rich person's. Which means a cut in the same tax must return a larger share of income to a poor person than a rich person.
The surest way to prove this is to run the experiment in reverse. If Harper were proposing to raise the GST by two percentage points, do you suppose the Grits would claim that this would cost the rich more?
(Does my support for consumption taxes therefore mean an indifference to distributional fairness? Not a bit of it: the extra costs of the tax can be rebated back to the poor, as indeed they were when the GST was introduced. In fact, the GST credit pays out more to those on low incomes than the GST takes away, meaning the poor are actually better off than they were before it was introduced: among the old Manufacturers' Sales Tax's many deficiencies, it had no such rebate.)
3. Overall, the folly of holding these debates on segregated linguistic lines, all-English and all-French, was once again on display. The French debate is invariably almost entirely about Quebec -- with less than a quarter of the population, the province gets half the debates. Worse, it allows the leaders to pander to Quebec in relative safety, since hardly anyone in the rest of Canada is watching.
There is no reason these debates could not be held in both official languages, perhaps switching up each half hour. That way we could have four debates with the whole country tuned in, rather than two debates for each solitude.
4. The media are already grousing about how "boring" the debate was, meaning the absence of fireworks. But the purpose of these things is not to keep the media entertained. It's to inform the voters. On that score, I do think the format was overly constraining: it ought to be possible to prevent the leaders from talking over each other, as in past debates, without also eliminating any chance to engage each other in, you know, debate -- 'though with four participants, the opportunities for one-on-one set-tos are admittedly limited. It was just possible when you had three combatants, but with four the mathematics are against you.
Someone ought to say it, and it might as well be me: we need a debate between the two frontrunners, the only two leaders who have any chance of becoming Prime Minister. Perhaps Harper should take it upon himself at some point to challenge Martin to a one-on-one.
5. Even within the current format, the leaders could have taken more opportunity to challenge each other's points. That they chose not to is in the main explained by point 3 above: why use up your best zingers when only a fraction of the population is watching -- and, in the case of the Tories and NDP, they are a fraction whose votes you have no hope of winning?
Still, it's remarkable that Martin did so little damage to Duceppe. For the most part, his performance was entirely forgettable. When it was not, it was because it was shrill, as in his claims that the Bloc was bent on destabilizing Parliament. I thought Harper had the more effective critique: that the only way to punish the Liberals for their misdeeds was to replace them in government, and that only the Tories could do this.
6. The use of regular folks as questioners was on the whole effective. They were alarmingly articulate, almost media-trained, and ably voiced the concerns of at least a segment of the population. But why were all the questions framed from the left? There were all sorts of questions whose premise was that the government should do x or y, usually to do with Quebec. There were none that asked why the government did not stop doing something. No one asked about productivity, or defence, or foreign policy.
Worse, none of the candidates did anything to challenge the implicitly statist premises of the questions. Harper simply side-stepped them, as he has throughout this campaign, preferring to stress all the tax goodies he had to distribute. (The Grits do it on the spending side, the Tories via tax credits, but it amounts to the same thing.) He's running a good campaign, everybody says, and I suppose that's true: it's just that it's a good NDP or Liberal campaign.
Two large gaps have thus been left in the political spectrum. One, there is no longer anyone defending a robust or even coherent vision of federalism: the Martin Liberals have embraced "asymmetry," while Harper has lately embraced Quebec's ambitions to carve out its own foreign policy, to go with his earlier pandering on the so-called "fiscal imbalance." And two, no one is proposing any serious reductions in the size and role of government.
7. As to the question that the media always asks after these things -- who "won" -- I make it a split decision. Duceppe "won" so far as no one made him break a sweat - a combination of an overly restrictive format and overly cautious debaters. And Layton "won" so far as he came across with the most sincerity and conviction. (It was almost comical the number of issues to which Jack asserted he had a personal connection -- the blind great-grandfather, the homeless person who died a block away from his house, the native reservation he visited, the gay marrieds he had met.) What a pity so few prospective NDP voters were watching.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got ourselves a horse race

The real story in that CTV/Strategic Counsel poll is not the fact that the Liberal lead over the Tories has shrunk to two points (33-31). As arresting as that number is, it will be followed by another poll tomorrow showing the gap has widened to 15 points, if experience is any guide.
But what's common to all the polls are the huge numbers saying they want a change in government. The Strategic Counsel found 58% answering the "time for a change" question in the affirmative, a number which must make the Grits' blood run cold. If ever the voters start to make the connection between changing the government and voting for the opposition, they'll be in real trouble.
In Quebec, where "change" sentiment runs strongest at 64%, they already have: the Bloc is holding onto a 30 point lead. And the poll finds the Tories ahead of the Liberals (38-36) in the rest of Canada for the first time.
Another straw in the wind: bettors on the Tradesports market have pushed up prices on the "Conservatives win the most seats" contract to more than 30 points, from 25 points a few days ago. The Liberals are still the odds-on favourites to win a plurality, but the gap has narrowed.
You might also check out the PinnacleSports site, which in addition to the national campaign -- they've got the Grits going off a 15.5 seat spread -- also handicaps several prominent constituency races -- though I confess I have difficulty understanding their system of stating the odds.
Finally, the University of British Columbia's Election Stock Market is up and running, with markets for number of seats, popular vote, and, oddly, the chances of either major party winning a majority (current favourite: "all other outcomes," at 83 cents on a $1 contract). Given how tight this race appears to be, it might have been better to go with plurality.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Having said not to attach too much weight to the horserace poll, I can't help noting that the trend is much the same when you average all the polls together: the Tories have climbed two or three points in the past week, from 27-28 points to 30 or more. The timing is especially interesting. The Tories went nowhere in the first week, notwithstanding the vaunted GST cut, which all the armchair political strategists thought was genius. They only started to move in the polls after December 7 -- the day they unveiled their daycare plan.
Indeed, a number of polls have showed the GST proposal had no impact, or may even have been negative -- apparently, more voters favour cutting income taxes, and by a wide margin.
It's not the GST that's moving votes. It's daycare.