Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Enjoy your summer

What if they held an election and nobody voted? This should concern Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff, NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc boss Gilles Duceppe if they topple the Conservative government this Friday.

Yes, this minority Conservative government is far from perfect and hasn’t had the best fortnight in office, but head to the polls now? Get real. Gentlemen, don’t quench your thirst by drinking the Kool-Aid on this one.

So I will go out on a limb and predict no summer election. A variety of factors leave me confident in this prediction, all of them revolving around the word “no.” No candidates. No money. No policies. No reason. And no way.

The Tories, Liberals and the NDP will all have to field 308 candidates, give or take a few. Candidate recruitment and selection usually takes months to work through and can be done in three weeks if absolutely necessary. But to do it in a week or two, it’s just not on. And if they dare try, look for each party to lose five to 10 candidates each, due to rushed vetting and screening.

There are too many old videos now copied to YouTube, too many past columns and letters to the editor and other skeletons which would normally be caught in the vetting process; a rushed or accidental election will unearth these in spades.

As for money to mount and run a campaign, only the Conservatives are flush with a sizable war chest.

And while the Liberals can easily get a line of credit from the bank — given their fundraising improvements since Ignatieff’s bloodless coup as leader — the NDP are not ready to wage a national battle. The Bloc may get by while the Green Party — remember them — has fallen off the edge of the Earth.

Then we have the issue of policy which is Ignatieff’s weak spot. He doesn’t like the Conservative’s management of the economy or stimulus dollars, although he voted for their Economic Action Plan. He bemoans the admitted challenges with Canada’s patchwork employment insurance regime, yet wants to fix it by basically making work an “option” before collecting EI. And he is angry (aren’t we all?) the country could be in deficit for five years or more with no plan to get back in the black but his prescriptions all add up to even more federal spending than is planned now.

Which brings us to the reason for an election. And this is probably the most cynical move of all. International organizations like the OECD have indicated that some economies have hit the bottom, including Canada. This means an economic recovery, albeit slow and tepid, is underway. Even the American economy — to which our own prospects are so deeply tied — is showing signs of life with pending home sales up in April and the key barometer of consumer confidence jumping in May.

In politics every loss is an orphan and every victory has a thousand fathers. Improved economic prospects, while good for the country, would spell disaster for Ignatieff’s ambition to change the drapes and listen to opera over a croissant breakfast each day at 24 Sussex Drive.

And finally we get to “no way.”

There is no way Canadians will be happy with a fourth election in five years.

If the writ is dropped, they will continue with their summer plans and punish those who dared to interrupt our always too brief summer with a pointless election. This also means no volunteers — the lifeblood of local campaigns — so enjoy your cottage and summer.