Transcript Season 5 Episode 2

THE WEST BLOCK: Election Edition

Episode 2, Season 5

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Host: Tom Clark

Guest Interviews: Elizabeth May

Political Operatives Panel: Rick Anderson, Lindsay Doyle, Robin Sears

Expert Economists Panel: Scott Clark, Ian Lee

Unpacking the Politics Panel: Susan Delacourt, Evan Solomon, Mark Kennedy

Singer-Songwriter: Alan Doyle

Location: Ottawa

This week, on The West Block: Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who will the Greens support if there is a minority government and her future as the leader of the party.

Then, deficit spending or balanced budget, what’s the best approach for the country: a debate with two top economic minds.

Plus, another voice you wouldn’t expect in the middle of a campaign: the big voice from Newfoundland, Alan Doyle sits down with us for a chat about the biggest issue that he’s watching in this campaign.

Tom Clark: Welcome to another Decision Canada edition of The West Block, from Ottawa. I’m Tom Clark. Well, if there’s one thing that has everyone’s agreement in this election so far, it’s that the three major parties are deadlocked in support, at least at the national level. The latest Global News Ipsos poll has the NDP at 32 per cent, the Liberals at 31, and the Conservatives at 29. That’s what’s called a tie and that hasn’t changed since the campaign began.

So what can or should the leaders do to break away from the rest of the pack? Well to take a look at that, I’m joined by three experienced political operatives who are now, or in the past have had a lot to do with their party strategy. First of all: Rick Anderson with the Conservative party, Lindsay Doyle with the Liberals and Robin Sears of the NDP. Welcome to you all. Okay, so let me put the question to you and let me be mischievous. Robin, what does Stephen Harper have to do to break away from the pack and win this?

Robin Sears: I think the thing that he should have done from day one, put something new in the shop window. I’m we’re watching the 2011 campaign on slow-mo for the second time at twice the length and it’s not very effective.

Rick Anderson: It has a good ending though.

Robin Sears: I don’t think it’s going as well this time, Rick.

Tom Clark: Lindsay, what does Tom Mulcair have to do to beat you?

Lindsay Doyle: I think that what Tom needs to do is really play up his regional strengths. We were talking about that before. The NDP are playing well in Quebec obviously, in BC. I think certainly playing to those regional narratives, I think that this week what came out was a bit too much of a defensive document when it came to the pricing of the platform so far, and I actually think it would have been more beneficial had they waited a little bit longer because I understand there’s still some more announcements to come. So it opened him up to too much criticism, which I think was disappointing for the NDP when it came to the economy debate on Thursday.

Lindsay Doyle: I’m sure the base was very pleased but again, I think that he was far too open to criticism which was unfortunate because he was the only one to do it as a party.

Tom Clark: Well let me round this out and ask, Rick, what advice or what should Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair do to beat the ever living daylights out of you?

Rick Anderson: So, this is what people on campaign buses talk about all day long: what do we do to break out of the 30-30-30 election campaign? You know, everybody’s got the same challenge and everybody’s acting out strategies in support of it. I think Mr. Trudeau is doing what he’s chosen to do already on that score which is to cast himself the more progressive of the alternatives, basically by advocating deficit spending. Mr. Mulcair has done it by making himself – trying to make himself – the less risky of the change candidates, and Mr. Harper is doing it by saying we don’t need as much change as these people are saying, that’s the risk. We’ve got a pretty good economy, let’s make it better but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. So everybody’s working on contrasts with each other but for Mr. Trudeau it’s — he’s decided he’s going to outflank the NDP on the left, which I think is a hard task for him to pull off and not necessarily a productive one, but that’s what he’s doing.

Tom Clark: I challenge though — and I want to throw this to Robin, not only would I agree that Mr. Trudeau’s trying to outflank Tom Mulcair on the left but I would argue that Mr. Mulcair is almost trying to outflank Stephen Harper on the right. A lot of people are saying that he’s left from being the party of the left to being the party of the centre, and now he’s even tacked further to the right, and a lot of people are saying this is Harper-like. When you get into that Robin, if you accept the premise of that, what is the blowback that you get within your own party?

Robin Sears: I don’t entirely accept the premise; you won’t be surprised to hear. I think — let me just start off with a characterization of what the three should be doing differently from a different perspective. They’re each trying to minimize negative rather than enhance positive, and a minimizing-negative approach to projection of yourself is always a bit of a disappointment for the viewer because you’re not getting any passion or excitement. So Mr. Harper’s playing very low ball. Mr. Mulcair is playing very solemn and serious and Justin, to my surprise, is not dealing with the gravitas problem that he has. I mean on the debate the other night, he sounded a bit like a high-school debater who had had too much Red Bull.

Lindsay Doyle: Um, I don’t know about that.

Robin Sears: I think that in terms of the policy positioning of the three, obviously what centre-left parties have to do always is defend their economic legitimacy, their management capability. What Conservative parties have to do is prove they have a heart because they’re regarded as being somewhat heartless.

Rick Anderson: What?

Robin Sears: And so, it would be obvious for a New Democrat to try and emphasize their management chops as responsible governors. What is less obvious to me, is that the Liberal party, which has for 40 years said we’re fiscally prudent and socially, just are now saying: well actually that fiscal prudence stuff, we don’t need to do that anymore.

Lindsay Doyle: So, I disagree with the premise of your statement. I think that fiscal prudence is one thing, but it’s another to be populist in nature when it comes to presenting an economic plan. You know you do have the Conservatives and the NDP’s speaking out of the same side of their mouth when it comes to balanced budgets. I think everyone can agree that a balanced budget is a very good thing, but truthfully, is $2 or $3 billion of a projected surplus, one, two, three, four years down the road, what is that really going to buy you when you do have a very aggressive spending plan? So I think that what the Liberals have done — and they’ve had to do because again, having all three parties come out and be in favour of a balanced budget with a surplus when we really don’t know if that’s going to be the case next year — I think they took the right approach by saying we’re going to be interventionists, we’re going to be aggressive in our spending.

Tom Clark: And Tom Mulcair was using the assumptions in the Joe Oliver budget which contained high oil prices and assumptions that have been proven to be wrong and they based the whole thing on that. Rick, one of the other things that happened last week was the Globe and Mail debate and in many respects you were the author of this new type of debating format in the country.

Robin Sears: It was your fault, Rick? I didn’t know that.

Rick Anderson: I’ve been waiting for this to happen.

Tom Clark: Did it do any good to any of the leaders?

Rick Anderson: You know, I think it was a very good debate on the economic substance. There was quite a lot of crosstalk that went on during the course of it which I’m sure was disconcerting to the audience. I was there and I got to watch it from the back room and went into the room and watched it in the live setting and it was actually a lot better in a live setting than it came across on television where everybody’s talking at the same time. But I thought that when you scraped by that, which is hard to do, they were all saying serious and substantive things and this election campaign is different from past ones that we’re familiar with in Canada where traditionally party leaders try to crowd closer together and minimize the differences between themselves, often focusing on personality. Here they’re running on substantive differences in policy and on Thursday night we had a pretty good demonstration of that.

Tom Clark: But does it move the needle at all? I mean we’ve had these two private debates so far. A lot of them looked like, you know, as I said, they should be holding up newspapers with the date because it looked like a hostage video. They had very little carriage in terms of people watching them and so on. Have we arrived at the point because both of your parties were complicit in these debates I might add—you bought into them.

Lindsay Doyle: Absolutely.

Robin Sears: I do think this campaign will have served one very valuable purpose. The consortium is dead and a new consortium will rise from the ashes next time because what we did this time ain’t working so good. There were lots of reasons the consortium didn’t succeed. It wasn’t all Rick’s fault, although mostly.

But next time, I think we’ve gotta have a better system more like the US presidential debates where there’s a serious full-time group of political and television people producing a serious kind of debate. I mean, you don’t want to have—excuse me, a Globe and Mail logo seven times over all leaders’ heads for two hours in a serious professional debate.

Rick Anderson: The Conservative party of course has supported that as well, the idea that some new group take over the planning of the debates in the future. It shouldn’t be just television networks and it shouldn’t be just television either. I mean there’s nothing wrong if it lands in the Globe and Mail.

Tom Clark: Well I don’t want to litigate the idea that on the consortium debate you had over 12 or 14 million Canadians watching and I think you probably had about 4,000 on the last one.

Rick Anderson: Listen, I think the bigger audience for these things is this discussion which is going on for two or three or four days—

Robin Sears: But that’s a problem because it means that Canadians didn’t see the original. They’re seeing what you thought and all of us thought.

Tom Clark: I’ve gotta give last word to Lindsay here.

Lindsay Doyle: But we have to be honest that, you know, when it comes to any type of debate format and I don’t want to continue to harp on that, there are more debates to come. What Thursday did, I think for all leaders, is that for those who watched and for those who are following the analysis in the days to come, they’re going to have their interest peaked because again, there were three very different ideals that were put out by all three parties.

Robin Sears: But those are two huge if’s Lindsay.

Lindsay Doyle: No, but again—

Lindsay Doyle: And that’s fine but you agreed—

Robin Sears: It’s not fine.

Lindsay Doyle: Everyone agreed to take part in that debate so here we are.

Tom Clark: Okay, well here we are actually at the end of the panel as well. I’m sorry, but we’re going to do this again. Lindsay Doyle, Robin Sears and Rick Anderson, thank you all very much for being here. I appreciate the discussion.

Well still to come, a look at the election through the eyes of singer-songwriter Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea and what he’s looking for in the stump speeches of all three party leaders. And Elizabeth May in what needs to change in our democracy no matter who’s in charge after October 19^th and her plan to help sway the balance of power. That’s next.

(Break)

Tom Clark: Welcome back. Since 2006, she has been the face, the voice and the only elected member of the Green Party of Canada. Now that hasn’t phased Elizabeth May. She has made her voice heard even when attempts have been made to silence it. After being excluded by the Globe and Mail’s leader’s debate last Thursday, May teamed up with Twitter for real-time responses and reaction. It played out in front of hundreds of supporters in Victoria. In a back room, Elizabeth May and then in the main hall, two screens: one showing the debate without May, the other showing it with Elizabeth May. On social media, she crushed her opponents. We caught up with her Thursday night just after her virtual debate. Elizabeth May, good to have you here.

Elizabeth May: Thank you for being here.

Tom Clark: Tonight was another example of the fact that it’s tough for you to get respect in the electoral process. Once again, you’ve been shut out of the national debate, how frustrated are you?

Elizabeth May: What’s frustrating is that there’s a lack of coverage or awareness of the fact that these little sideshow debates that are being organized privately may end up replacing the debates that reached in the last election, 10 million people in the English language. That really worries me so I’m more disturbed than frustrated.

Tom Clark: On October 19^th, can you tell me what victory for you looks like?

Elizabeth May: Well, it certainly will involve knowing that we helped increase voter turnout. I’m really concerned about the health of our democracy and the fact that 40 per cent of Canadians didn’t vote in—

Tom Clark: Not Green party turnout?

Elizabeth May: I’m talking about voter turnout overall. A lot of the messaging, a lot of what I’m trying to do, a lot of why I go to university campuses is to encourage that people vote regardless of how they’re going to vote. So I will be very encouraged if in the face of the unfair Elections Act, as I call it, Stephen Harper’s Fair Elections Act which makes it harder for Canadians to vote. If in the face of that, we’re able to encourage more people to vote, I will see that as successful and of course, it will be a success when we have more elected Greens so that I go back to Parliament with a larger caucus and in a minority Parliament that will give us the ability to negotiate.

Tom Clark: What is that point, on the evening of October 19^th where you turn to your aids and say we did it?

Elizabeth May: You know, I don’t want to stay evasive. Part of my hesitation is that I’m slightly superstitious and the number I have in my head is a great number. The other part of my hesitation is that we won’t know how influential the Greens are going to be in a minority Parliament ‘til we see the seat counts for everybody else.

Tom Clark: If holding the balance of power is deemed political victory for you on October 19^th, let’s take a look at that. You’ve had a lot of time to look at Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau. You have to choose, your vote or the votes of two or three Greens is going to make the difference as to who’s the government. Where do you go?

Elizabeth May: We negotiate. I mean this is what the Australian Greens did. They literally sat down with Tony Abbott. Now they had to know when they sat down with Tony—

Tom Clark: Let me stop you right there.

Elizabeth May: Okay.

Tom Clark: You say negotiate as if you’re going to negotiate with Stephen Harper, really?

Tom Clark: Well you know more or less their views, between the Liberals and the New Democrats on tankers and pipelines.

Elizabeth May: They’re not opposed to them so we need to have the clout to say we’ll work with you, we’ll have your back, you won’t lose a confidence vote but we really need to repeal bill C-51. We really need to get rid of First-Past-the-Post. We need a real climate plan. And by the way, this is going to be a tough one for any of the other parties. We need to take apart the power of the Prime Minister’s Office and restore the principle of supremacy of Parliament. We need to restore civility, respect and cooperation in Parliament but we really need to dismantle the PMO brick by brick.

Tom Clark: Why do you think it is that climate change hasn’t figured much in this campaign so far?

Elizabeth May: Stephen Harper’s been remarkably effective in shutting down this issue as a political issue. First by gagging the scientists which was done back in 2007, by then saying that Members of Parliament were not allowed to come on the government delegation to negotiations unless they were Conservatives. I thought that won’t work because we’ll go anyway, but I’ve been on the only opposition Member of Parliament to go anyway. So, there’s been less media coverage of negotiations, dramatically less media coverage since they gagged the scientists and that’s you know empirically studied that the coverage of climate change in Canada has dropped a lot.

Tom Clark: You’ve been the leader of the Green Party of Canada since 2006.

Elizabeth May: Yeah.

Tom Clark: In a few months, that means you will have served for 10 years as the leader of this party. When’s a good time to go? When should a political leader step aside and let somebody else take over?

Elizabeth May: Well that’s a really good question and I do think about it but I want to get through this election. I want to get back into Parliament with a much bigger caucus and I see the incredible group of people around me, and think it would be great to let somebody else take the reins. You know, I’m 61. I don’t see myself leaving Parliament for a really long time. I love being a parliamentarian but I’m not addicted to being political party leader. I’m much more committed to remaining the Member of Parliament for Saanich Gulf Islands for a long, long time than I am of staying leader of the Green party for a long, long time.

Tom Clark: Elizabeth May awfully good talking to you. Thanks very much.

Elizabeth May: Thank you.

Tom Clark: Coming up next two economic experts on two very different sides of the essential economic debate in this election campaign: deficits or balanced budgets and why you should care, that’s coming up next.
(Break)

Tom Clark: Welcome back. Well it has been the issue of this past week in the election campaign and from what we’ve seen and our own polling and just talking to people on the street; it has become the defining issue of this campaign. Of course, we’re talking about economics and specifically deficit versus balanced budgets. Joining me now to discuss this: Ian Lee from the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University and Scott Clark Former Deputy Minister of Finance here in Ottawa, thank you both very much for being here. I’m going to start this way, I’m going to ask you both if you could just, in about 30 seconds, lay out the essence of your thoughts on deficits versus balanced budgets and Scott, let me start with you.

Scott Clark: Okay, let me say from an economist point of view. The issue of deficits is less important than the issue of debt. And you can’t measure the overall wellbeing of an economy by simply looking whether you have deficits or surpluses. There are a lot of other factors that determine the economic wellbeing of a country. For the question then is, as a government, what is the anchor you should be using in terms of setting your public policy? As an economist, I would say the anchor is not eliminating the deficit or having a surplus or not having a deficit. The anchor that good public finance is based on is having a low and relatively stable debt to GDP ratio. That’s what economists look at. That’s the markets look at and if you can achieve that, then it gives you the fiscal flexibility to act if you need to act. So in the current circumstances right now, Canada’s had a sustainable budget situation since 1998. By that I mean, since then the debt to GDP ratio was cut in half. It’s been kept pretty low. Even after the 2008 recession, it’s about a little over 30 per cent and going down. That’s one of the best records in the world and that situation gives you the ability, any government now to say, if the economy is underperforming, you have the fiscal capacity to act and that’s what exists today.

Tom Clark: Okay, I think you already went into deficit on time there Scott—

Scott Clark: Better than a surplus.

Tom Clark: Let’s go over to Ian Lee.

Ian Lee: Deficits are an extraordinarily powerful tool of macro-economic policy. The analogy I like to use, for those of you who suffer from any of the inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis — I do, there’s a drug called steroids, Prednisone. Unbelievably powerful but you only use it very sparingly in very critical times when you have a very bad situation where the arthritis is in full-fledged attack. And by analogy, deficits, which lead of course to the indebtedness of the government, are a very potent tool. John Maynard Keynes taught us that 70, 80, 90 years ago, but they should only be used in the most exceptional circumstances such as the great depression, such as that savage recession of 1980-81, 82 when interest rates went to 20 per cent and of course, the most recent great recession of 2008-09, perhaps 2010. Right now, we’re growing slowly. We’re growing anemically for sure. I don’t dispute that, but to advocate deficit financing just because we’re unhappy with the rate of growth is to use a deficit tool in an indiscriminate and profligate manner and it’s like using Prednisone or steroids instead of using Aspirin when you have a minor pain flare-up.

Scott Clark: Okay, I think we should talk economics and not pharmaceuticals. I think that’s what we’re here to talk about today. I’m not suggesting that deficits shouldn’t be run during periods of economic slowdown or a recession like 2008 or some of the other ones that I’ve lived through.

Ian Lee: Okay.

Scott Clark: But there is a situation where a government, if it wishes to make investments in the future of a country, okay, in terms of infrastructure whether it’s social infrastructure, education infrastructure, a more efficient transportation system, then you should make those investments if you have the financial capacity to make them. Okay? Because those investments pay off in higher productivity growth and higher economic growth. Today, the federal government can borrow on a 30 year bond at 2.3 per cent. An efficient investment will yield you probably 6-8 per cent. In other words, it’s paying for itself.

Tom Clark: Let’s throw that statement in.

Ian Lee: Here’s my problem with this argument, that there’s a utilitarian argument you’re making.

Scott Clark: I’m making an economic argument.

Ian Lee: I know but it’s convenient, the rates are cheap, that’s a utilitarian argument.

Scott Clark: No, it’s an investment argument so let’s stick with the economics here.

Ian Lee: Well we invest in infrastructure when we need it whether the rates are high or low. You’re investing in infrastructure—

Scott Clark: No, we don’t. We haven’t been investing officially for years.

Ian Lee: No, we’re back up to 4 per cent infrastructure as a percentage of GDP right now.

Scott Clark: That’s not enough.

Ian Lee: That’s the long-term average in this country. But I want to go to the larger issue, and this is why my problem with deficits is partly economic, it’s partly political. I want to look at the data. The father of the current Liberal leader went into deficit in 1969 and it took a third of a century as it got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger because politicians lack the courage to stop deficits from growing. And it took the remarkable team of somebody called Paul Martin and you sitting opposite of me to invoke the largest downsizing in Canadian history that led to pink slips and running shoes for 70,000 public servants and I applauded you at the time because the deficit had got out of control and yet it had started very casually. There was a little bit of unhappiness about the growth rate at the time in the economy and then it took off over a third of a century. Politicians — it’s not you, the economists, it’s the politicians that do not have the backbone and the discipline to say no when they should be saying no.

Scott Clark: Well, I’ve worked for every finance minister since 1978 to 2001 and I can assure you that every one of them had political backbone, okay. And let’s get the record straight here, under Mr. Pierre Trudeau, budget deficit went up but it didn’t go up in any which way. Over his period as a share of GDP, it fell. Where the deficit got out of control was during the Conservative era under Brian Mulroney and that situation happened the following way: During the 1980’s, we recall, we had high double-digit rates of inflation and high unemployment rates and the debt started to rise in the share of GDP and in fact, it doubled between 1984 and 1993, that was the problem. During that period, the Conservative government actually was running surpluses on its operating budget. They did cut spending. They did raise taxes. Not enough mind you but when you’re dealing with double-digit interest rates and double-digit inflation rates, you cannot increase the operating surplus fast enough to pay for the rising interest rates. So it was a global situation that led to a 1993-95 problem. We dealt with that problem in 1995 and it wasn’t to eliminate the deficit for the sake of having a zero deficit or a budget balance—

Ian Lee: But you did.

Scott Clark: Yes. You know how we did it? By cutting spending, right?

Ian Lee: For sure.

Scott Clark: Getting interest rates down because the yield curve dropped like a bandit so it restored confidence and the global economy took off like a bandit.

Ian Lee: But you did cut spending very significantly.

Scott Clark: We did. We needed to cut spending to restore confidence in international markets.

Tom Clark: Ten seconds.

Ian Lee: Okay, I don’t dispute anything that Scott has just said. He’s proving the point that I’m making. You can get into deficits very easily—

Ian Lee: It’s very easy for politicians to get into deficits and it’s very much more difficult to get out of deficits and it required what many believed was a draconian effort on your part and the government of Prime Minister Chrétien and Paul Martin—

Tom Clark: I gotta jump in very, very reluctantly because we are out of time. But if anything, underlines the necessity of having experts take a look at the economy rather than politicians, I think we’ve just seen it right here. Scott Clark Former Deputy Minister of Finance.

Scott Clark: Thanks, Tom.

Well, when we come back we are going to unpack the politics of this past week and take a look at what the leaders have to do to break out. That’s right after this.

(Break)

Tom Clark: Welcome back. Boutique tax credits: why do politicians offer them and are they really worth it? Well we know the Conservatives think they are. They’ve added a long list to our tax code and are promising even more. Take a look.

So what kind of family do you have to be to take full advantage of this wide array of tax credits? Well, you definitely want to have kids to take advantage of the Child Care Benefit. And if your child is adopted well that’s even better. You get the Adoption Expense Tax Credit and make sure that your kids are playing hockey and the piano so you can get the Child Fitness Tax Credit and the Kids Arts Tax Credit. Now, mom should join the volunteer fire department and dad can be a search and rescue volunteer to get those credits. And they might want to learn a trade to get the Tradespeople Tool Expense deduction. Of course, heading off to school will pay off with tuition and textbook tax credits. Oh, and invite grandma and grandpa to live with you. If they’re infirmed, you get the Caring for an Aging Relative Tax Credit. And of course they cash in with Age and Pension Income Credits. You definitely want to buy a house so you get the First Time Homebuyer’s Tax Credit. Oh and once you move in, build a deck so you get the Home Renovation Tax Credit. Oh and by the way, ditch your car, that way you get the Public Transit Tax Credit.

Now the Home Renovation Tax Credit is a promise from this campaign. Harper has also announced one for service club fees and Justin Trudeau added one of his own, a Teacher’s Supply Tax Credit. As for Tom Mulcair, he says they might be a good idea but he’s still not sure because he says nobody has measured their benefit.

Well joining me now to unpack the politics of this and a lot more. Joining me Mark Kennedy the Parliamentary Bureau Chief for the Ottawa Citizen; Susan Delacourt author and journalist for the Toronto Star; and joining us for the first time, somebody you might know, Evan Solomon of Sirius Radio Everything is Politics. Evan good to have you here and as one person once said, “It’s better working with you than against you”.

Evan Solomon: Well it’s great to be here Tom. Love it.

Tom Clark: Let’s start with tax credits and let me give the first word to you. This is something that has become part of the political landscape now in a way that it never was before, using the tax code to target certain voters. Good idea, bad idea?

Evan Solomon: It’s a good idea if majorities are elusive. We’ve got a bottleneck three-way tied race. We’ve never seen anything like it so you’ve gotta start doing what can only be described as precision bombing. This is what it is. You know for Stephen Harper, he’s got his 30-per-cent base and he’s gotta make sure they don’t sit on their hands but then he’s gotta get seven, eight, nine, 10 per cent to win the minority majority and how do you do that? You cobble it together by breaking down the population and zeroing in with little credits. There’s soccer moms and we’ll take families and renovation and you put little boutique tax credits—and this goes back to his old advisor Tom Flannigan and you hope you can — like a piece of Lego, pack it up and hit your 39 per cent and you win. So this is all about a path to victory where the little bonbons, little gifts — and by the way, when you say we don’t know if they actually work, you talk to economists like Don Drummond, when you add all this stuff up, does it really do anything? Nobody knows the true cost.

Tom Clark: The only people that really like it are the tax preparer’s because they’ve got a lot more business but let me use my Susan Delacourt tax credit talking point. Because Susan in your book, Shopping for Votes, this was essentially exactly your thesis that politics has become now a consumer game and a consumer game as Evan was saying, you go after the individual rather than the group.

Susan Delacourt: Yeah, it’s not good economics. I think all economists would — as Evan said, would tell you nobody knows how this works. We do know that it works in politics. My favourite example of this, which is in the book, is that Conservatives learned around 2004 or so when they were out of power, that snowmobile owners tended to vote Conservative. So, they go up and they buy up all the magazine subscription lists, target those people with messages and give them little bits and pieces and I think the most recent Economic Action Plan had an initiative for snowmobile owners.

Mark Kennedy: You know, there was a time in this country, not that long ago, when parties fought to the big fight on themes knowing that Canadians were much more likely to identify with a party, vote that way in one election and then in subsequent elections because their parents always voted that way. It’s not that way anymore and increasingly, what we’re seeing is, parties and leaders try to go at the heart of someone’s greed. I mean what’s this all about? It’s all about getting the money into your pocketbook and in some cases, in some of those tax credits it’s not a lot of money. In other cases, if you have a large family, you’re talking thousands of dollars. So it comes down to, in those cases, if I’m not necessarily happy with the leader or what they stand for or what they want to do with the country am I going to give up thousands of dollars in my own bank account because of my own views on policy? No, I’m going to go for that trinket that’s being offered.

Tom Clark: Arguably, in the old days, it was easier; you just bought everybody some rum and told them who to vote for and a much more efficient way of doing it. I want to move on to something else now because this campaign has been marked by one other thing and I’ve covered a lot of campaigns. The level of personal animosity in this campaign is—as Donald Trump would say, “huge”. We’re heading into a minority situation. I just want to kick around the idea of how much personal animosity is going to stand in the way of cobbling together some sort of government, if the numbers remain the way they are. How do those two things interact? Susan?

Susan Delacourt: Well first of all, I think Harper may reap what he sowed here. I think in the demonization of his opponents, is very good for electoral politics but if there is the need to negotiate afterward, I do not see how he gets from having the most number of seats to passing a confidence vote in the House of Commons. I think this whole idea of the ABC vote that is out there right now, wherever it lands with Mulcair or Trudeau, they will feel that they cannot legitimately support Harper because their vote is so personally invested in seeing the end of him. So I do not see a path for Harper to get the most seats and govern. It can’t happen.

Tom Clark: Okay, so does it mean then, that there’s no such thing as a Conservative minority government coming out of this?

Evan Solomon: I don’t see that. I think there are two things that may be at play. There’s animosity and there’s arithmetic. On the animosity side, he has no natural allies, right? The Liberals and the NDP and the Greens are not natural allies for Stephen Harper. That said, in the past, this guy has governed as a minority leader for longer than any other prime minister. He’s done it before for four and a half years as a minority. The arithmetic side is where pragmatism comes in. Keep in mind, this long campaign, right? The longest since the 20’s, means that at the end of it, and you talk to the Liberals and the NDP they’ll tell you, the Conservatives will get back because of what they get back from the government. They’ll get $35 million dollars back, enough money to fund a 35-day campaign. The other guys will be in debt. So Stephen Harper is going to come and say, I know you don’t like me. I know there’s a lot of animosity but are you going to pull a confidence vote when you have to borrow for another campaign and I’ve got $35 million bucks in the bank. I’m ready to go for round two.

Mark Kennedy: He’ll be well poised—so much of what we’re talking about, what we don’t know just yet is the numbers. If Mr. Harper comes very close to a majority, if it’s a strong minority, he’s well positioned politically to stay alive. And make no doubt, he would make a very forceful argument to the public that if he had a largest share of the popular vote, if he had the most number of seats that it would be undemocratic for him to be tossed out of office. Who knows how it will go but on the other side of the ledger, there is no doubt that on the progressive side of the ledger in this country, Canadians want to see the back of Stephen Harper. So, if he wins a weak minority, I would have to think there will be a lot of pressure being put on—not just on Tom Mulcair but the other person, Justin Trudeau, who really, then he would be the person under the gun, under the pressure. He is the person who has made the most forceful argument on it seems why he wouldn’t work with the others.

Evan Solomon: But they will. I mean I think we all know the pragmatism. They’re not going to replay the Ignatieff mistake. If they have the votes, if it’s a weak minority, I think despite the fact that Trudeau and Mulcair—I don’t think they’re exchanging Christmas cards, but I think that pragmatism would rule and they would some come to some kind of arrangement. If they could, that’ll be fascinating.

Mark Kennedy: But to Tom’s point, there’s no doubt, these people don’t get along on a personal level. They don’t like each other do they?

Susan Delacourt: The Liberals and New Democrats—the Liberals see the Conservatives as their opponents too, not just the New Democrats. We shouldn’t forget though too, Evan’s point, that there are two women running campaigns right now: Katie Telford for the Liberals, Anne McGrath for the NDP who were sitting at that table in 2008 together negotiating the coalition agreement and the only reason they didn’t get that coalition through, Ignatieff aside, was that they had already passed a confidence vote. They had already passed Harper’s throne speech post 2008. I don’t think the opposition parties are going to make that mistake again.

Mark Kennedy: I think if they move, they have to move fast. Listen, if Stephen Harper comes in with a weak minority, he will probably play for time, probably until January-February before we get a throne speech but at that point, if the Liberals and the New Democrats had any intension of somehow forming a government, they have to bring him down right then and there. They can’t wait until the budget.

Tom Clark: And we didn’t even get around to old stock or even chicken stock which is a real shame but I want to thank you. Susan Delacourt, Mark Kennedy and Evan Solomon good to have you all here. Thanks very much.

Evan Solomon: Great to be here.

Susan Delacourt: Thanks.

Tom Clark: Well, coming up next, Alan Doyle talks about politics on the rock and in Canada. What’s he looking for in this election? We talk to him next.

(Break)

Tom Clark: Welcome back. As part of our election coverage, each week we have been talking to some prominent Canadians to find out what issues they care about in this election campaign. This week, we head to Erin’s Pub in St. John’s Newfoundland to link up with a musician, actor and author Alan Doyle.

If you hear this anywhere in the world, you know it’s from Canada. The distinctive sound of Newfoundland music has been adopted across the country as an expression of us. And the man who helped to do that is Alan Doyle, one of the founders of the iconic band Great Big Sea. The stories in the songs are the stories of who we all are in this country. It’s an expression of values, hardship and humour. Alan Doyle has been important to our national story and he’s got a few things to say about how we continue to write that story. Alan Doyle, great to have you here.

Alan Doyle: It’s nice to be here, especially here in this historical music venue in St. John’s.

Tom Clark: This really is, isn’t it? This is the heart of—

Alan Doyle: This is the music pub. Your answer’s always been the music pub.

Tom Clark: You know the one thing I wanted to ask you about pertains to this because you’ve had this amazing journey from Petty Harbour, pretty hard living, pretty rough living in Petty Harbour and you’ve climbed the heights. So in that period, what has life taught you about what you know about this country, in particular, what you know about Newfoundland and what we all should be thinking about and talking about in an election campaign?

Alan Doyle: Well,you know because of course I come from a musical background and a background in the arts in general, my journey across Canada has always been kind of seen through that lens and I think as a visitor to different parts of the country, I came to realise you know that one of the things that’s unique and makes Canada a great country is that it celebrates its regions I think more than any other country I’ve ever been to. I always tell the story one time about being in a taxi in the mid-90’s in Toronto and whatever radio station was on played four songs in like a pack, you know. And it was Céline Dion, Our Lady of Peace, Susan Aglukark and Great Big Sea. Then a buddy of this came on the radio and talked about the—and I thought about it, like finally another country on earth where those four artists who have nothing in common at all, played on a stage and it’s called Canadian music.

Tom Clark: When you go across this country though, do you get the sense that we are investing as we should or are as concerned as we should about maintaining that thing you’re talking about?

Alan Doyle: The thing that I’m trying to hear from each of the leaders in each of the parties is what their stance is on supporting the arts and in particular, you know, again from my background, the live performing arts and in particular, music. I think it’s one of the things that’s very undervalued and underestimated in our country because I think everyone understands the intrinsic value of it as a quality of life and everyone likes to hear music and everyone knows and appreciates it but I don’t think that argument is tough to make to government, but sometimes it’s really tough to make the argument to government that healthy music industry, for example, healthy arts singing, but a healthy music industry in particular, is a huge economic engine for a place. You know there are two numbers I would love to know that I don’t think are really possible to know. I would love to know how many people got on a plane, a train, a car, a ferry and came to Newfoundland and Labrador in part or in whole because of the music scene. I would also like to know what is the total value of the charitable money raised by the music industry in Canada is this year alone. Imagine for example this, imagine two cities that you probably know—well, imagine St. John’s Newfoundland and just to pick a foreign one, pick New Orleans, Louisiana. Imagine those two towns without music.

It’s just—I mean, would you go? You know what I mean?

Tom Clark: In your formative years in Great Big Sea, you were helped a lot, as you said, by regulations that said Canadian content had to be played on Canadian radio.

Alan Doyle: Yeah.

Tom Clark: Is that part of a solution to arrive at what you were talking about? Should we not be afraid of more government regulation on Canadian music?

Alan Doyle: We’re going through a huge transition in where our money comes from and you know, we used to get paid for records and now they’re practically free. And you know the challenges of touring—expenses have gone up but the competition’s higher. I think as a society and as a government, I mean you need to ask yourself, is it okay if that goes away? Is it okay if St. John’s has no music in it? Because you know, that’s not impossibility, right? It’s not an impossibility because if everyone’s driven to leave the music business to go work for whatever industry, then we won’t have one. When there’s a disaster happens and you need to turn to one of five bands to headline the live aid concert there won’t be one.

Tom Clark: So, if we’re talking about investments, what would you like to see from any of the political parties in this regard? Is it a matter of infusing money into the music scene and if so, how do you do that and how much does it take to create that healthy environment?

Alan Doyle: I think the best thing I can say about when a politician is trying to decide which pile to put it in. I’m just to make sure that we’re one of the piles he’s even considering because I’m not sure ‘til now that he or she has even considered the economic engine of the music industry.

Tom Clark: Well as if to make your point, I think the country would be a lot poorer culturally and in every other way if it hadn’t been for the contribution that you have made, to telling the national story in this country. It’s been extraordinary and I thank you very much for putting this issue on the table during the campaign. Alan Doyle good to have you.

Alan Doyle: Grateful to be here, man. Thank you.

Tom Clark: Thank you.

Alan Doyle: Appreciate it.

Tom Clark: Well, still to come, some final thoughts on the campaign, what I believe is the key to breaking away from the pack, but why I don’t think we’ll see it any time soon.

(Break)

Tom Clark: Welcome back. Just a closing thought, earlier in the show we had an interview with Green Party leader Elizabeth May. Now whatever you may think about her party or her policies, she is quite extraordinary. Almost alone, she has forced her way onto the national stage and as much as she wants to credit that to her supporters, it really is all because of her. What is it about Elizabeth May? Well, perhaps it’s because she has that one quality that most politicians lack, authenticity. What you see is what you get. She wouldn’t know a talking point if it came up and shook her hand. She speaks like a real human being. And in that, she’s quite unique because her opponents most often talk like robots on an endless voice loop. Their words, their phrases, even their gestures scripted by advisors who believe that voters can be best persuaded by evasion and misdirection. Elizabeth May, may not win a lot of seats in this campaign but she has earned the respect of Canadians by doing what no one else would, engage voters with respect. Authenticity: it’s actually not that complicated and it’s also very powerful and if any other leader wanted to give it a try, he might find himself pulling away from the rest of the pack.

That is this Election edition of The West Block. We’ll see you back here next weekend. Have a great week ahead.