Iggy goes to war.
Senior Liberal strategists are now referring to the Ignatieff OLO (Opposition Leader's Office) as “Parliament High” because of the legions of inexperienced young people who populate it.
They even have a uniform. Says one veteran Liberal: “Why is it everybody in the Leader's office, guys or girls, wears blue jeans, pointy shoes and tight button-up shirts with loud colours? … It's pack mentality.” And this would be amusing, except that the kids at Parliament High let down Michael Ignatieff during part of his tour in Nova Scotia this week.
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“It's no one's fault. It's not the 24-year-olds' fault who have never been told how do their job. Someone who is managing them has to make sure they understand what they're doing,” says the veteran Liberal.
What bothered him was that Ignatieff handlers mixed up their times, taking him from a big community garden party so he could attend a much smaller meeting.
In other words the Big Red Machine, that once featured the likes of Keith Davey and Jerry Grafstein, seems to be resorting to inexperienced events coordinators. Games of Chicken - threatening a vote of non-confidence - are the static of political life in a minority parliament. The trick is to bluff the other fellow into supporting this or that bill or motion. It only works if the bluff is credible. Right now the Grits have about zero credibility when it comes to fighting a campaign. Iggy has done a yeoman's job of repairing party finances, but not quite up to weathering a national campaign no one wants. The decision about when the next election will be held is in the hands of two men, Stephen Harper and Giles Duceppe. Neither seems keen on returning to the hustings. The latter is mulling retirement. The former is waiting for the economy to recover to call another snap election. Harper the economist, if not quite the free market lion he was once portrayed as, knows that Barack Obama is working very hard to secure a Conservative majority government.
What the FTA and NAFTA did was to help fundamentally restructure the Canadian economy over the last two decades. While economic nationalists warned of increased dependency on the American juggernaut, the exact opposite has happened. NAFTA in particular allowed Canada to follow the laws of comparative advantage, shifting our economy away from manufacturing toward services. Nations have historically traded with countries nearest to them due to obvious transaction costs. When the wealth of nations is increasingly intellectual (which includes figuring out how to extract natural resources), those transactional costs become nearly irrelevant. A service economy is one less dependent on trading with nearby partners, instead it can reach out to the world. Buoyed by Canada's traditional strength in natural resources - fur, fish, timber, wheat and now oil - we have become to a surprising extent decoupled from the American economy. Even in bulk products like oil and minerals, our clients are increasingly global. There is a massive glut of cheap shipping - refer to the Baltic Dry Index - to take our natural bounty where ever customers beckon.
We weathered the 2001 American recession easily, and we are weathering this one rather well. Harper knows this. He knows Barack Obama is shackling and regulating the American economy into near term stagnation. In the past this would have proven disastrous for Canada, today it will be an advantage. For decades Britain and the City of London have proven a relative free market haven to international businesses seeking to invest in Europe. There is no reason Canada cannot, and will not, play that same role in North America. In a year or so Canada may very well be leading other OECD countries in economic growth, all while the American giant is stuck in a slow motion recovery. The Prime Minister's moderately statist approach will seem to many voters as a work of pragmatic genius. Not too much intervention, not too little. Just right. Harper the Helmsman. More image than reality. Such is the game of politics.
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