So I decided to give in a make a comment. I would suggest you prepare yourself because this post is going to be a long one even by my standards.
To listen to the media you would think that this "scandal" is the end of the Liberal government. What rubbish. Although the media would love to believe otherwise it will probably not register with most voters. It will certainly register with those already opposed to the Liberals. Those who support the Liberals will not let it change their minds and swing voters will probably not care either for the simple reason that the cause of the "scandal" really does not make sense to them. Really, if you are going to push a scandal then push one that does not involve such esoteric concepts as Deferred Prosecution Agreements and whether a certain company should receive one. No one cares. Ordinary people have ordinary problems to deal with. Hearing about how and when DPA's should be used and whether they should have been used in this case is not something ordinary people are going to become too worked up about.
Some would say that it is not just about DPA's that it is about judicial independance. Fine, but that still will not impact most people at a visceral level and that is the level you must find in order for a "scandal" to have any lasting impact. Some would say that the governments of Paul Martin and Stephen Harper were brought down by scandal. They would be right but those scandals involved money, something everybody can relate to and understand.
I would point out that Stephen Harper in particular had to deal with many scandals, while governing as a minority government, including being found in contempt of Parliament and that did not prevent him from winning a majority government in 2011. Only after it was revealed that one of his staff gave $90,000 to a Senator did a scandal do lasting damage. Money talks and so far no one has made any allegations that the current "scandal" involves money.
Some would also argue that this "scandal" has lead to the resignations of two government ministers. So what, alot of scandals lead to the resignation of ministers. It is not an uncommon occurence when controversy begins to swirl around a government. But wait, the resignations implicate the Prime Minister himself. Again, that is not uncommon. Most of the time when a Minister resigns it is after the PM has been defending him/her for some time, making whatever wrong the Minister did a problem for the PM. The fact that these two ministers stated they do not have confidence in Mr. Trudeau is a different twist but it does not take away from the basic reality.
Some would further argue that the polls are stating the exact opposite of what I am saying. The problem with that argument is two fold. First if polls were predictive a Clinton would be sitting in the White House. Second, the media does not use polls to inform people of what is really happening in country. They use them to advance or reinforce a narrative. The current narrative is the Liberals are in big trouble so they are going to use the polls the "prove" that.
In actual fact the Liberals are not in big trouble. For certain they have had a tough month but the Liberals are still the prohibitive favourate to win the election in October and the most probably outcome is a Liberal majority government. There are three reason for this.
Reason One, historical voting patterns: Since 1919, one hundred years ago, there have only been two occasions when a first term majority government was not reelected in the subsequent election. They would be the Conservative governments of RB Bennet and John Diefenbaker. In all other cases a first term majority government has been reelected, most of the time to another majority government.
Further in that same time period the Liberals have tended to govern for extended periods of time. Once they governed for almost 25 straight years and the last time we had a Liberal government they governed for 13 years.
Some would guffaw at this assertion but this pattern has endured for 4 generations and a profound change in the demographics of the country. It has shown no signs, in any of the most recent Federal elections, of changing. It would appear Canadians tend to give new governments the benefit of the doubt during their second election, most of the time. The Harper Conservatives benefitted from it so the Liberals probably will as well.
Finally, there is a 50 year voting pattern in Ontario where the voters of that province vote opposite to the government sitting in Queens Park. If there is a Liberal government in Queens Park, Ontario voters tend to vote Conservative at the Federal level. If the provincial government is Conservative they tend to elect Federal Liberals.
Just on that alone the Liberals would be in good shape but there is couple of other reasons.
Reason Two, the Liberals are opposed by four parties, five in Quebec. Having a fractured opposition is always a big advantage to the imcumbant party and the opposition is very fractured at the moment.
Further their two main opponents have their own very serious problems. As I have indicated in this space before the conservatives in the country suffer from a profound weakness even when they are only represented by one party. If you add another conservative party to the mix that weakness is increased. I, of course, speak of Mr. Bernier. Some have argued that Mr. Bernier is not a threat to the Conservatives because he has no hope of winning the election. The problem with that argument is Mr. Bernier does not want win the election he wants electoral credibility. He wants to be the right wing version of the Green Party. If he can win his own seat, maybe win a couple more and garner around 5% of the vote he will gain that credibility. He is not going to get that from the Liberals or the NDP. His policies and political instincts will drive them away. His only hope is to target Conservative voters. Most of the time the Conservative Party does not have to worry about its right flank. Mr. Harper won the 2008 and 2011 elections by starting the campaigns throwing red meat at his base to keep them happy and then pivoting to appealing to centrist voters. Mr. Scheer may not have that luxury. If he follows the same strategy the pivot will be noticed and exploited by Mr. Bernier. That is the reason why Mr. Scheer has been consorting with alt-right types. They make up a small part of his base but if the Conservative have any chance of winning an election they have to keep their base intact. If is splits, even a little bit, they lose and perhaps lose big.
The NDP are not in any better shape. They went all in during the 2015 election spending to the limit without having the funds to do so. As a result they accrued a very large debt, which has not yet been paid off. Their fundraising has lagged significantly behind the other two parties so they will have even less cash on hand going into the next election than they did in 2015. Mr. Singh will have a choice. Spend to the limit with the faint hope that they can win the election and risk bankrupting the Party. Or he can conduct a much more subdued save the furniture campaign, saving his money up for 2023, when the desire for change may be high enough for the NDP go get more bang for its buck.
Since the creation of the CCF another historical voting pattern has been the Conservatives only win an election when the NDP does well. The NDP will probably not do very well this time which means the Conservatives will probably not do very well either. And that is before taking into account any impact Mr. Bernier might have on the Conservative vote.
Reason three, despite all of the fireworks of the past month the Liberals have not looked uncomfortable. Indeed, they have not looked uncomfortable since the beginning of the 2015 election. Some would say I am wrong, based on what the media is telling us but look deeper. Have the Liberals tried to change the channel on this "scandal"? Have they done anything differently that what they have done in the past?
I will give you an example of what I mean. When the Senate Expense Scandal broke the Harper government did the usual things that governments do when a scandal breaks. We have been seeing it the past few weeks with the Liberals. As the scandal continued to unfold the Liberals started gaining in the public polls. I dismissed them at that time but then the Conservatives began to act differently. Before long they did the following in no particular order
- Prorogued Parliament
- brought down not one but two "election" budgets in a row.
- launched yet another series of attack ads against Mr. Trudeau, focusing on his hair for some reason.
- launched the Canada Action Plan advertizing campaign, which was extremely partisan, using $750 million in government money between 2013 and the 2015 election.
- Stephen Harper went around the country announcing spending on a whole host of projects. I read one analysis where, in a two year span, he made the same spending announcement 6 times, although the promised money never made it into a government budget and the spending never actually took place.
Political parties have units within them that have the job of continually taking the pulse of the electorate. They use polling, but for gaining actual information, as well as other data sources to accurately assess their level of support down to the riding level. From 2013 to the 2015 election I would bet a fair amount of money that the Conservatives were seeing that the Liberals were advancing into areas that were then held by Conservatives. That was why took all of the above steps. Mr. Harper used every tool in the government tool box to try to reverse that trend. They never did which is why Mr. Harper never pivoted to appealing to centrists during the 2015 election.
We are not seeing the same thing from the Liberal during this "scandal", probably because their internal data is not showing a significant erosion of their support. Except for the expected short term crisis management efforts it has been business as usual for them. Heck, Mr. Butts is going to speak. I would have expected that after the testimony of Ms. Wilson-Raybould they would have taken steps to move on. After all, once her testimony was done there was not much else for the media to talk about and after a two week Parliamentary break the "scandal" would be in the rear view mirror. Mr. Butts might have resigned his government job but I would bet that he has been in regular contact with the Prime Minister. If the Liberals were really feeling threatened by the "scandal" Mr. Butts would not be testifying tomorrow.
The media should be ignored when it comes to whether a government is in trouble. They will only look at what is in front of them and they will not look at the big picture. They will focus on a knot in a tree, shaped like the Virgin Mary, while ignoring Scarlett Johannson making out with Sasquach two trees over and completely ignoring the sun shining down on the forest as a whole.
I am certain that many people in the PMO have had a rather stressful February but there is minimal danger of the Liberals being defeated in October at this time. That could change in the next eight months but I would not count on it if you happen to dislike the current government.
