Nobody was very surprised when Prime Minister Stephen Harper paid a visit to Governor General David Johnston on Sunday morning to officially launch the federal election.
There’s been a deluge of federal funding announcements in recent weeks, many of them tied to a hastily announced program for infrastructure projects for Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017. Applicants such as municipalities and service clubs were given mere weeks to prepare and submit their applications.
Last Thursday, according to a tally by journalist David Akin, the federal government made more than a billion dollars worth of funding announcements on that one day alone. Some of these are worthy projects, including two in the Osoyoos area, but the timing of these announcements with taxpayers’ money appears to be aimed at gaining partisan advantage.
With Sunday’s election call, Canada now begins the longest campaign since 1872, when Sir John A. Macdonald was prime minister and political leaders had to travel the country by train and stage coach.
Local Conservative candidate Marshall Neufeld is probably right that the 11-week campaign gives Canadians more time to consider the issues and their options. That’s if people are paying attention over the summer, which is doubtful except in the case of political junkies.
But that can’t be the real reason for the early election call. Canadians have had more than nine years to weigh Stephen Harper’s performance and by now most people either like him or they don’t. They also have a good idea where the parties stand.
Harper said he called the early election because the other parties are already campaigning, he wants to put everyone on an even footing and he doesn’t think campaigning should take place with taxpayers’ dollars.
Say what?
In addition to all the recent funding announcements, the Conservative government in recent years has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money on government advertising. Some of it is to inform Canadians, but much of it has been highly partisan.
The election call does put an end to those ads, so in that sense the Prime Minister is correct, though it’s unlikely that’s what he was referring to.
It also imposes strict limits on third-party advertising. A coalition of trade unions and others, for example, was running ads pointing out that a number of Conservative MPs, Senators and party officials have either been convicted or are under investigation for criminal wrongdoing, including election fraud. Those ads are now severely limited.
The most likely reason for the long election, however, is that with the longer campaign, spending limits by the parties are increased.
In a normal campaign of 37 days, parties can spend $25 million. With the longer campaign, that limit increases to about $51 million. Of the three main parties, only the Conservatives have the funds to take advantage of the new limits.
They don’t have to spread their spending out evenly over the campaign. Instead, they can bombard the airwaves with attack ads in the final weeks.
Canadian taxpayers will cover 50 per cent of the spending by political parties – an obvious advantage to the bigger spenders.
No wonder former Elections Canada head Jean-Pierre Kingsley says Harper is “gaming the system.”
