The "Referendum Election"

Paul Martin told Quebecers that this election would be a "referendum election". In a sense, he is right. This election is and always has been a referendum, but not on Quebec's sovereignty. This election is a referendum on the incumbent Liberal Party.

Witness the strategies of the other two federal parties. Their primary goal has been to present themselves to voters as credible alternatives to the ruling party. For the most part, there has been no grand intellectual debate about policy. Stephen Harper spent the entire campaign positioning his party in the political center with a steady flow of populist policies. He has introduced a hodge-podge of targeted tax breaks and credits for everyone from developers of afforable housing units to parents who send their kids to participate in sports. He even said (to my chagrin) that he will maintain the budget of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, an agency which provides government subsidies for business. The NDP, for its part, has tried to appear more responsible. Its recruitment of former Bay Street economist, Paul Summerville, was intended to demonstrate that the NDP's brand of socialism is now fiscally conservative. In addition, Jack Layton tried to assure voters of the NDP's ability to maintain order by adopting a new tough-on-crime stance.

In essence, there is very little difference between many of the policies of the three federalist parties. All promise to protect the public single-payer healthcare system, with minor differences between the parties over the role of the private sector in the delivery of public services. All agree on the need for tougher sentencing and the importance of dealing with at-risk youth. All want to reduce or eliminate the landing fee for immigrants. Perhaps the only significant policy difference in this campaign concerns childcare, with the Liberals and NDP pledging to create an national institutional daycare program, and the Conservatives offering direct support to parents as well as tax-incentives for employers who create childcare spaces. But other than that, policy disagreements are often just a case of who has the highest bid for the support of a given demographic. The overall effect has been that the Liberals, who have traditionally staked out the political center, are being flanked from both sides.

In 2004, the election was the same as this one in the sense that it was also a referendum on the Liberal Party of Canada. But the circumstances were different. At that time, the newly-formed Conservative Party had yet to hold a policy convention and had yet to define itself in any meaningful way. Leaving their policy positions mostly open to interpretation, the Conservatives were out to prove to the electorate that the Liberals did not deserve another mandate. Halfway through, it appeared that the electorate agreed, but a concerted effort by Liberals and a series of Conservative gaffes managed to convince the public that the Conservative alternative had a scary "hidden agenda" and would be bad for the country. As a result, the Liberals were able to rebound in the polls. The Conservative support dropped and NDP supporters turned to the Liberals in an attempt to stop Stephen Harper and the "hidden agenda". At the last minute, the Liberals eked out a minority government.

In contrast, in this election, the Conservatives have inoculated themselves against the "hidden agenda" attack by actively defining their policy positions. The Liberal game plan in this election has been exactly the same as in 2004. But now, Canadians have become falimiar and increasingly comfortable with the alternative. Since a non-Liberal government no longer implies an apocalypse, this election has become a referendum - in the true sense of the word - on the incumbent. We are now seeing what may otherwise have happened in 2004: the Liberals are in a free-fall. On this referendum question, the 'Oui' side is in trouble.