The Noose Tightens

After tuning out of the election campaign, for the most part, over the last couple of weeks, I'm now starting to get interested again. The plot has certainly thickened over the budding income trust scandal, and the subsequent tightening of the polls. As the calendar marches toward January 23, my initial prediction of a Conservative minority government is looking better and better.

I have mentioned before that I do not endorse the Conservative Party agenda, and will not be voting for them. I also believe that power corrupts, and any party that stays in power for an extended period of time will be plagued by scandal and corruption. But by Canadian standards, the Liberals of the last twelve years have just about taken the cake, to the point where their hubris has allowed them to perpetrate their monkey business in broad daylight - as if they thought the spiked income trust activity would go unnoticed. The Liberal government's overall legacy is a mixed bag, nowhere near as gloomy as Conservatives and their lackeys would tell you, but with much promise unfulfilled because of energies focused on self-serving ventures. Their boldest initiatives have only come under threat of defeat. I think the Canadian people are slowly wising up to this, and I think the rank-and-file Liberals are as well. The only way to straighten out the LPC is to give them a few years in the wilderness. And while I'm not prepared to call the Conservatives the lesser of two evils, I'd like to believe that the other evil can be exorcised.

The election will probably boil down to NDP support. If the NDP base and progressive voters who want to send the Liberals a message vote NDP, the Conservatives will win and the NDP will have a very strong presence in Ottawa. But if those who would vote NDP decide to vote Liberal just to keep the Conservatives out, all of us will end up losing. I don't fear the prospect of a Conservative minority. They can't govern too far to the Right and have any hope of getting opposition support, much less re-election. But if they can implement some of their "good government" plans, that would be a positive development. (Some Conservative politicians and bloggers would have you believe that the Liberals are the only party with corporate friends.) A Conservative majority would be a different story, because I really don't believe either the membership or leadership of that party is as moderate as their current platform. That eventuality, however unpalatable, is a risk that must be taken by progressives who want a cancer-free Liberal Party. Better a Conservative minority for the next few years than a Conservative majority for the next few decades.