In advance of Sunday’s election call, the Conservatives have been traveling around Canada dishing out pork — as is, cash to support projects in ridings that are key to their push for a majority government. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is tracking the Conservative spending spree — a whopping $8.8 billion since June 2. They’ve put together a handy list (note: PDF). Here are some examples of the the vote-buying, keeping in mind all of these have been announced in the last 60 days. So much for doing things differently.

Québec got a whopping $4 billion in general infrastructure funds, $1 billion for work on the Champlain Bridge, and $187.5 million in highway funds, which should help the Conservatives profile in the province, which is the key to their winning a majority. And Bombardier, a key Québec employer, also got $350 million in subsidies.

CFB Trenton got $500 million to re-hab its facilities, and another $2.1 million for water infrastructure, which should help rookie MP Rick Norlock get re-elected in Northumberland-Quinte West, a riding the Conservatives won by 5% in 2006.

Beauport got $18.3 million for a new park. That should help the Conservatives hold Beauport-Limoilou, a riding they won by just 820 votes in 2006.

Lawrence Cannon got $6.1 million for a rec center in Chelsea in his home riding of Pontiac, which he will face tough competition. As the government’s Québec lieutenant, Cannon has been announcing the billions of dollars throughout Québec.

Northern Ontario got $13.6 million for various economic development and infrastructure initiatives. This should help Tony Clement — who announced the funds — hold his riding in Parry Sound-Muskoka, which we won by a scant 28 votes in 2006.

Rick Dykstra annouced $1.8 million for a housing project in his riding of St. Catharines, which should help him hold it — he won by just 246 votes in 2006.

Niagara Falls got a whopping $62 million in infrastructure funds, which certainly will help Rob Nicholson hold the riding, which he won by 5% in 2006.

Vancouver Island got $147 million in rural infrastructure funds, which should help the Conservatives re-take Vancouver Island North from the NDP’s Catherine Bell, who won the riding by just 616 votes in 2006. Another $2.2 million was given to improve several Vancouver Island harbours.

St. John’s got $2.5 million for a rec centre and another $1.1 million for Memorial Universal, which should help the Conservatives hold two key ridings of St. John’s East and St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, where both incumbents are retiring.

Toronto got $622 million for its subway extension, which may or may not help Conservative candidates in North York, home to ridings with the biggest chance (although still slim) of voting Conservative in Toronto.

Jewish groups around Toronto got nearly $400 million, as the Conservatives hope to make in-roads with the traditionally Liberal-voting Jewish population. Montreal Jewish organizations got nearly $150 million.

Manitoba got $718 million for infrastructure, which should help in critical ridings such as Winnipeg South, Saint Boniface, and Elmwood-Transcona, which the Conservatives hope to win. And Winnipeg itself got $5 million for a park, another $4.4 million for mental health research, and $43.4 million for Bristol Aerospace (for the Joint Strike Fighter program).

Peter Mackay’s riding of Central Nova got $8 million in tourism dollars and $1.9 million in economic development funds, which should help him fend off the challenge from Green Party leader Elizabeth May. Mackay also announced the $870 million agreement with the Province of Nova Scotia on retaining energy revenues.

The North received $18.3 million for aboriginal skills training, which may help the Conservatives in Nunavut, which they are targeting to win.

The Gaspésie got $5.5 million for road work, which should help the Conservatives win two targeting ridings of Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine and Haute Gaspésie-La Mitis-Matane-Matapédia. Another $7.3 million went to re-hab Rimouski’s port, another targeted riding for the Conservatives.

Baie-Comeau got a whopping $46 million for port improvements, which will help the Conservatives win targeted ridings in the Côte-Nord and Saquenay regions. Another $6 million was targeted for the region for entrepreneurial development.
The town of Grand Falls in the riding of Tobique-Mactaquac got $4.5 million for a civic centre, which should help rookie MP Mike Allen hold the riding, which he won by just 336 votes. Allen has been busy running around New Brunswick making multiple funding announcements.

Kamloops got $42.8 million to improve the Trans-Canada highway in a riding where the incumbent MP Betty Hinton is retiring and where the Conservatives face challenges from both the Liberals and NDP.

Tobacco farmers got $300 million, which should help the Conservatives hold several key ridings in the Southwestern Ontario.

And the list goes on and on… you get the idea — give money to targeted ridings or regions and hope it demonstrates what electing a Conservative means to your area.

In a law that received royal assent in April 2007, federal elections are now required to be on fixed election dates every four years, the first being 19 October 2009. Yet, despite the fact his own government introduced the law, ostensibly to prevent a government from rigging the election timing for its own benefit (as Harper said then: “Fixed election dates prevent governments from calling snap elections for short-term political advantage. They level the playing field for all parties and the rules are clear for everybody.”), Stephen Harper now wants to break it (and the evidence suggests that Harper is indeed forcing an election now to maximize his party’s chance of re-election). As Edmund Pries put it:

“while parliamentary law cannot restrict the royal prerogative, Parliament can restrict its own powers or those of the government. Bill C-16 was clearly designed to restrict the right of the sitting Prime Minister to choose the election date. The law does not, however, restrict the authority of Parliament’s majority; the bill makes clear that Parliament can still defeat a government and trigger an election.”

This has left many to wonder whether forcing an early election is even legal?

The new fixed election date law allows for early elections only if the government has lost the confidence of parliament. Traditionally, in a minority government situation, this occurs when the opposition parties pass a “no confidence” motion in the House of Commons, or when the a key government bill (such as a budget) is defeated in the House. But this has not happened — there has been no vote of “no confidence” in the House, nor any failed government bills. In fact, the government has been able to pass its agenda without difficulty (although to be sure the opposition parties have held the government to account). In other words, it is Stephen Harper, and Stephen Harper alone, who has declared that parliament has lost confidence in the government. The question is, can Harper unilaterally decide whether parliament has lost confidence in the government without a vote of “no confidence” in the House? Ergo, can Harper unilaterally call an election?

There’s something not quite right here. On 25 July, Stephen Harper called by-elections to fill House of Commons vacancies in Guelph, Westmount-Ville Marie and Saint-Lambert, to be held on 8 September. Then, 3 weeks later on 17 August, he called a fourth by-election in Don Valley West. Then, just 9 days later, on 26 August, Harper indicated he would dissolve parliament sometime between Sept 1-6, setting up a mid-October general election, which would require canceling the four by-elections.

The question is: Why would Harper call four by-elections, then immediately cancel then and call for a general election? What happened between 17 August, when he called the fourth by-election, and 26 August, when he indicated he would call a general election?

DemocraticSPACE believes the Conservatives actions here are irresponsible, disrespectful, and wasteful. Calling by-elections then canceling them makes the Conservatives look somewhat disorganized and incompetent on the one hand. But more importantly, it is also disrespectful for the thousands of volunteers from all parties who have been working on the by-election campaigns. It is also wasteful of both taxpayer and party funds. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have already been spent by the parties, and one estimate suggests canceling the by-elections will have cost taxpayers $3.5 million.

Calling four by-elections then canceling them before the votes are cast raises serious questions about the Conservatives’ motives. If Harper wanted a general election, why call the by-elections at all? By-elections have to be called within 6 months of the vacancy, but if Harper wanted a general election, why not just dissolve parliament in late July, setting up an 8 September general election? Did Harper know he was going to force a general election when he called the by-elections (thus forcing other parties to invest money and people into activities he knew would not come to fruition)? It seems hard to believe the Conservatives could be that under-handed, but given the turn of events, it does raises questions about whether Harper simply wanted to distract the other parties with by-elections before a snap election call, leaving the other parties less prepared. Or did Harper get internal polling that showed he was headed for disaster in the four by-elections, and thus is he merely trying to head off poor results?

The fact is, there was no public knowledge that Harper knew on 26 August that he didn’t know on 17 August. Nothing changed, so what prompted the desire to cancel the by-elections and call a general election? If the Conservatives don’t force an election now, the Liberals would have more time to explain their Green Tax Shift, the softening economy would surely get worse, and the potential election of a Democrat in the U.S. could all work against the Conservatives. The problem is, forcing an early election for government’s own electoral advantage was precisely the kind of politicking that the Conservatives wanted to prevent when they passed Bill C-16, giving Canada fixed election dates (every four years), the first being 19 October 2009. DemocraticSPACE applauded the Conservatives for setting fixed election dates, so it is no surprise that we frown upon them breaking their own principles now, for no good reason.

The fact is, parliament has not even been in session, so there was nothing on 26 August that Harper didn’t know on 17 August, when he called the fourth by-election. Harper claims that parliament is dysfunctional. The fact is, the opposition parties have collectively done their job — holding the government to account — but Conservatives have had no problem passing their agenda, so Harper can hardly claim he isn’t able to govern. With nothing having changed between 17 and 26 August, we are left to conclude that forcing an early election (thus canceling the by-elections) is purely a political move, designed to maximize the Conservatives’ election advantage, and to head-off some potentially disastrous results in the four by-elections. Whether Canadians punish them for these irresponsible, disrespectful and wasteful actions or not remains to be seen.

Is it just me or has the reporting on the Conservative climate change plan been just terrible? I continue to read that the Conservative plan will meet Kyoto targets by 2025. No, it will not. Kyoto targets are based not on reductions from greenhouse gas levels from today (i.e. 2007), but rather on reductions from greenhouse gas level from 1990. The Conservative plan calls for a 20% reduction from today by 2020. That actually represents a 5% increase from 1990 levels, not the 25% reduction from 1990 levels that Canada has committed to. The charitable explanation is that the Conservatives are trying to “spin” their plan as meeting Kyoto only a little late. But that’s patently false. They are in fact, lying; their plan does not meet even our 2020 targets (let alone our 2012 targets which are virtually unattainable).

It’s hard not to see this plan as anything but political cover. The defense is at once brilliant and underhanded, demonstrating that the Conservatives have never stopped campaigning and will not stop until they get their majority government. The Conservative defense? We can’t be blamed for Liberal inaction. In other words, its not our problem that the Liberals didn’t do anything. There’s no question that the Liberals didn’t get it done. But the Conservatives aren’t getting it done either. And they are using the Liberals inaction to cover for their own inaction. Yes, it’s bizarre. You can see that the purpose is not to reduce greenhouse gases, but rather to demonstrate that the Liberals couldn’t get it done (which is true). It’s merely fodder for the next election campaign — political football. Meanwhile, we aren’t reducing our greenhouse gases.

The fact is, the Conservatives are not committed to reducing greenhouse gases — indeed, the Conservatives own numbers show that Canada will be 5% above 1990 levels. They fail to understand the vast untapped jobs and economic benefits of developing and exporting green technologies. They fail to understand that Canadian companies that emit less will gain a competitive advantage over their American counterparts.

The thing is — somebody always pays for pollution. It doesn’t just go away. The Conservatives, however, have decided that polluters don’t need to pay; in the Conservative plan, consumers and taxpayers will pay. It’s all well and good to encourage consumers to buy more efficient, low-emissions vehicles and ask them to replace incandescent light bulbs and older energy-consuming appliances with more efficient alternatives. But if you look at the numbers, these are tiny fractions of our CO2 emissions. We’re not dealing with the giant 300-pound gorilla in room — which is this: one-third of our carbon dioxide is produced by just 10 coal-fired power plants, 7 of which are in Alberta and 2 in Ontario. In total, 40% of Canada’s greenhouse gases are generated from by the power industry. The sum total of every house and apartment in Canada is at best 4%. So even if every single house and apartment in the country improved its energy efficiency by 25%, that would only result in a mere 1% reduction in greenhouse gases.

Quite simply, the Conservatives are giving the richest industries — the oil and gas industry and the power business — a free pass at our expense. The Conservative plan has no hard carbon dioxide targets for industrial polluters. Instead, the more producers pollute, the more they are allowed pollute (on a per unit of production basis) — this is what they mean by “intensity-based targets”. That means that those 10 big coal-fired plants that produce one-third of Canada’s carbon dioxide will be allowed to pollute more, not less. Instead, we need to put a price on pollution and every producer given hard targets. If producers pollute less, they can sell their unused allowance to companies that pollute more than their fair share. What does this do? It gives green producers a competitive advantage and punishes those that pollute. That’s what a cap-and-trade system does. It’s a market-based system that is a highly effective. How do we know? We used it to combat acid rain back in the 1980s.

That’s the cold hard truth about the Conservative climate change plan. The question is whether Canadians will be fooled or not.

Canadians are often proud that their political processes are not dominated by the vast amounts of money spent to influence voters in the United States. But Canadians would also be naive to think that money doesn’t influence performance here in Canada. So while our campaign finance laws limit the total money spent, it still plays a big role.

I will offer one example. Take a look at what was arguably the most competitive province in 2006 — British Columbia. Here is a comparison of the average money spent per riding and the average votes received per riding.

The Greens easily had the best bang for the buck spent — with each vote costing just $1.30. This differs considerably from the other three major parties, which ranged from about $2.98 for the NDP to $3.88 for the Conservatives. The Liberals were in the middle at $3.34 per vote.

Put another way — the Conservatives spent 21 times what the Greens did and received 7 times more votes. The NDP spent over 12 times more and the Liberals spent over 13 times more and both received about 5 times more votes.

It really begs the question: how well would the Greens do if they were as well funded as the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP?

According to Angus Reid Strategies, the Conservative attack ads on Stephane Dion didn’t work.

Before viewing the ads, 40% of Canadians said Dion would make the best Prime Minister of Canada, while 36% selected Stephen Harper. After viewing the spots, the percentages remained almost identical, with Dion at 39% and Harper at 36%.

Anybody know how much money the Conservatives wasted on these ads?

With the Conservatives set to unveil American-style personal attack ads that portray Stephane Dion as a weak leader and a weak environment minister, I wonder how Canadians will respond? The old Liberals certainly dished out their fair share of attack ads, but it seems to me that they attacked the Reform/Alliance/Conservative ideology, portraying it as too right-wing for Canadians rather simply attack Stephen Harper as a person.

Having lived in the U.S. for a while, the single most repugnant aspect of American politics is the absolute lack of policy debate. In the U.S., genuine policy debates have been entirely replaced with personal attacks and mudslinging. Canadian politics has traditionally been different — it has been possible to debate different approaches to different issues, whether it be health, the environment, trade, child care, education, etc. Canadians should be wary of any party that resorts to personal attacks. Is it fair game and an effective strategy to attack your opponents’ policies? Yes. Is it fair game and effective to use personal attacks? Despite the claims by party insiders, personal attacks usually end up driving as many people away as they attract. The Liberal attack on Cheri DiNovo backfired (despite claims by koolaid-drinkers that internal polling went up after they launched their attacks). PC attacks on Dalton McGuinty in 2003 proved impotent. And Conservatives know how well attacking Jean Chretien’s facial disability worked. At very best, personal attacks are a net zero. Most importantly, they send a message that you afraid to debate your opponent on substance. If Canada follows the American lead down the path of personal attacks, our public policy debates will suffer. Of that, there is no doubt. I hope Canadians won’t allow this to happen.

Was Dion an effective environment minister? I don’t know. Why? Because he never had the chance to implement his climate change plan because Paul Martin was paralyzed by the perpetual threat of an election and his own personal inability to set priorities and act upon them. He wanted to be everyone’s friend, and by doing so, he was nobody’s friend. Lots of promises, but few results. What I do know is that people who know the environment file — like Green Party leader Elizabeth May — deeply respect Dion and the work he did hosting the Montreal climate change conference and putting together a plan with teeth; she told me so herself. Would I trust an opposition party leader who is an internationally respected environmental advocate over an opposition party leader who has a history of denying the existence of climate change? You bet.

Is Dion an effective leader? Again, I don’t know. He has just been elected Liberal leader, after all. If leadership is about setting priorities and achieving results — qualities that Stephan Harper has (even if his priorities may not be highest on my list) — then I think Dion displays strong leadership. Unlike Martin, there is no doubt as to what Dion’s priorities are: 1) Economic Prosperity, 2) Social Justice, and 3) the Environment — and, importantly, the interrelationship of these three priorities. Dion must prove, however, that he is results-driven, not merely plan-driven. But he is surrounded by people like Gerard Kennedy, who are will push for results every chance they get (as Kennedy often says, “we will be judged not by what we say, but what we do”). So there is reason to hope that the New Liberals will do what they say they will.

Time will tell whether the Conservative attacks on Dion will pay dividends for Harper. I can’t help but think that launching a personal attack on an opposition leader when we aren’t even in the midst of an election campaign shows that the Conservatives are worried. How do you think Canadians will react?

P.S. Here’s one of the ads:

Andrew Coyne has an interesting piece up this week about the state of conservatism in Canada. A few quotes:

“After a year of Conservative rule, it is now clear, conservatism isn’t just dying — it’s dead. And it’s the Conservatives who killed it.”

“The more the party has chased the middle, however, the faster it has seemed to recede; with each abandonment of its principles, the opposition and the media, those arbiters of the status quo, simply yawn and move the goalposts a little further down the field.”

“Quebec, missile defence, China, health care, regional development: it’s very hard to tell what the Conservative position is any more, or how it differs from the Liberals, or what it will be a week from now. And the result? 31% in the last poll. Sell your soul, you’d think you’d at least get paid.”

What do you think? Is Conservatism in Canada dead?

“Innocent Canadians are suffering an economic bloodbath today because they believed the Prime Minister,” interim Liberal leader Bill Graham told MPs. “He gave his word. Canadians acted on his word. He then broke his word.”

Another Conservative election promise broken. The cost? $20 billion, at minimum. The consequences? Here, here, here, here, here, here.