Modeling Journey

Come September, the Liberals will consider whether to vote against the Conservative government in a motion of no-confidence, which, if supported by the other two opposition parties, will bring down the Harper government and lead to an election.

The Liberal leader is wrestling with the decision whether to prop up the Tory government yet again, or vote it out of office.

One key issue will be the decisions to be made on the types of Employment Insurance which Canadians are to be offered. The bilateral commission of Liberals and Tories is examining the issue, with the Tories winning the PR battle so far. Ignatieff will decide if the reluctance of the Harper government to amend the current EI system will be enough to warrant bringing the government down.

But there are problems:

"His most noted stand, Mr. Ignatieff's call for national, lower qualifications for employment insurance, has some of his MPs fearing it will backfire. “Eight per cent of my constituents are unemployed, but 92 per cent are working,” said one MP. “And they don't think that warmly of employment insurance.”"

We can expect that many other Liberal MPs will share the concerns of this unnamed MP, about causing another expensive election over differences on who should qualify when for EI.

And if enough Liberal MPs share that concern, the chances of Michael Ignatieff tabling a non-confidence motion in the Harper government will slip away, faster than mist before a hot sun.

As well, the Tories will flood the airwaves with claims that the country does not need an election now; that all the parties should make Parliament work so that ordinary Canadians will benefit from the stimulus plan instituted by the Tories and backed by the Liberals, and that an election will delay certain key parts of the stimulus (such as the tax credits for homeowners from renovating their homes before the rapidly approaching deadline).

The Tories will frame the issue of a new election as a bad thing, untimely and costly, and solving nothing, and that any party (especially the Liberal Party) which tries to trigger an election will therefore be doing a bad thing and will deserve a slap on the wrist from Canadians.

Let's think of another issue which has featured in the media in the past week or so, and then let's give the Liberal Party an idea for framing the issue of confidence in this government, and how to fight the next election if the three opposition parties bring the Tory government down.

And let's keep in mind an elephant named Mismanagement, while we do so.

When Ignatieff stepped away from the Liberal Party's written coalition agreement with the NDP, he said he was doing so but would be hawk-like:

"We will be watching like hawks to make sure that the investments Canadians need actually reach them,” Ignatieff said.

Now, just what is Gerard Kennedy doing right now to carry out that task of acting like a hawk?

"Because no one else is doing it, Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy and his staff of four are attempting to track the $12 billion in new infrastructure funding in the government's January budget. Their research is not complete, but Kennedy estimates that between 15 per cent and 25 per cent of the money has actually flowed. The rest has been promised, approved, allocated or announced – but municipalities don't have it."

Why on earth is Kennedy's small team doing this monitoring job?

Well, firstly because there is reasonable doubt about what the Harper government is actually doing:

"The federal finance department says 80 per cent of the stimulus is "already implemented." But that means the money has been committed, not delivered."

And the government is hiding the facts from Canadians:

"Infrastructure Canada, which disperses the funds, has not released any figures on how much has gone out and where it is being spent."

Compare that to Obama's website with details of the stimulus spending the American government is doing to help its citizens!

Kennedy has other concerns about the Harper government's promise to spend stimulus funds to soften the recession we face (the worst recession for 50 years, remember):

"The government is going to underspend its target, there's no doubt about that," the Liberal infrastructure critic says. He also has concerns about what is being built. "We could be paying for a lot of shoddy stuff and sprawl. They (the Conservatives) know they'll never be held to account."

And now we come to the crux of the matter. This is what Kennedy fears is happening – ordinary Canadians are being stiffed by their government:

"Job losses in construction would be much less severe if Conservatives were handling infrastructure spending properly, Kennedy charged. Construction sector employment decreased by 18,000 in July, bringing total construction job losses since October to 120,000. Over 80,000 construction jobs have been lost since the budget promised help.

“Sadly, the Conservatives are making the recession much worse than it needs to be,” said Mr. Kennedy. "Mr. Harper has the gall to tell unemployed workers and their families that new jobs are ’underway’, knowing full well they aren't."

Parliament authorized $11 billion in new infrastructure spending to create 100,000 jobs but the Conservatives have failed to produce anything but negative numbers. The Conservatives rejected the direction of Parliament and the consensus of municipalities and the construction industry alike and instead chose a delay ridden, partisan approach."

Those are powerful words, and deserve to be read very carefully, because in them lies the key to the Liberals framing the discussion with the Tories in a few weeks time, setting the issues for the election, and winning the election.

Do the Liberals need to frame the discussion in September of the non-confidence motion carefully?

You better believe it. George Lakoff has waxed eloquent about framing, as I've mentioned often in past posts.

If Michael Ignatieff tries to justify bringing down the Tory government over the EI issue, he will lose the framing contest with Harper, probably have to back away from actually bringing the government down, and if he does bring it down, he will lose the election, and badly.

But there is hope, courtesy of Lakoff and his book, Don't Think of an Elephant.

Only this time the Liberals need to present to Canadians an elephant which neither they nor Harper's Tories can avoid thinking of, at the time of the vote of confidence and each and every day of the resulting election campaign, if the government falls.

And the elephant that Michael Ignatieff needs to bring into the room is the elephant named Mismanagement.

Frame the issue of EI and the infrastructure and other stimulus spending as examples of the mismanagement of the country's affairs by the Tory government. Attack them from this angle, rather than arguing about the specifics of each and every fact, and make sure that all comments, all speeches, all publications, all advertising of the LPC focus on this issue.

Introduce the elephant named Mismanagement to the country, and talk about the many actions of the Tory government over the past 24 months which clearly show that the government has not been managing the country's affairs in a prudent manner.

And then provide an answer to this question:

"But they also fear Mr. Ignatieff hasn't given tentative voters any sense of his identity, and how it differs from Mr. Harper's. One Liberal strategist noted that Jean Chrétien's winning 1993 campaign included policy details, but what mattered was the core message that he stood for jobs and growth. “It was, ‘Buy me, and this is what you get. Jobs and growth,' ” the strategist said. “If you buy Liberal now, what do you get?”"

The answer to the question Buy the current Liberal Party and its leader, and what do you get? is simply this:

"Buy me and I will manage the country properly, in the interests of ordinary Canadians, during the recession we are in."

The Tories will be in a tough position: How can they argue that they are not mismanaging the economy, given the slow spending rate of the stimulus funds, the screw up on the isotopes, the reluctance to bring about meaningful EI changes, and countless other issues?

Either they are badly mismanaging the affairs of the nation, or they are incompetent.

And either reason is enough for Canadians to turn to a replacement government.