When prime minister Jean ChrŽtien strode out of Government House Oct. 22 to announce Canada’s 37th election, he was walking onto familiar terrain.
The Liberal leader, with 33 years in the House of Commons and 11 elections under his belt, is one of the most experienced federal politicians in Canadian history.
In contrast, less than a mile away taking his normal Sunday off for church and family, Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day prepared to run the race for the prime minister’s office with three months of federal experience behind him. House of Commons time served is just over a month.
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The experience contrast between the main election contenders has never been deeper.
Both parties, for opposite reasons, argue the contrast will work to their advantage. Is it the wisdom of experience against untried inexperience or is it tired old leadership against youthful enthusiasm and new ideas?
Meanwhile, in the Maritimes that Sunday, two other political leaders were chafing at suggestions that they would be nothing more than bit players in the election drama.
New Democratic Party leader Alexa McDonough, a one-term veteran of Parliament and NDP leader for five years, insisted the party will gain seats.
Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark had to fend off predictions that this could be the last election for the party that brokered Confederation 133 years ago.
Clark, a 21-year House of Commons veteran and former prime minister who returned in 1998 from a five-year political retirement to lead the fifth place Tories, insisted he was running for government.
The fifth party leader, Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc QuŽbecois, is running in his third Quebec campaign on a platform of breaking up Canada.
In the leaders of the four major parties vying for seats in English Canada, voters have some clear choices:
- ChrŽtien, 66, was elected when John Diefenbaker was leading his last campaign as Tory prime minister. For all but four years since 1963, the Quebec lawyer has represented a seat in the St. Maurice area of central Quebec.
He served in a variety of cabinet posts under three Liberal prime ministers before taking the top job for himself in 1993.
If the Liberals win a majority on Nov. 27, he will become just the fourth Canadian prime minister to win three consecutive majority mandates and the first since William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1945.
ChrŽtien is counting on a record of fiscal conservatism and promises of new spending and debt reduction to secure victory.
- Day, 50, spent 14 years in the Alberta Legislature as a Conservative before switching to the Canadian Alliance last summer.
His job record is varied, from administrator of a Christian school and assistant pastor in an evangelical church to truck driver and oil sector worker. He says his last job as Alberta treasurer gives him credentials to preach tax cuts and deficit reduction.
Day’s functional French also gives him more impact in Quebec than unilingual Reform leader Preston Manning could muster.
- McDonough, 56, a Nova Scotia social worker, grew up as the daughter of a wealthy mill owner who supported the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. She served 15 years in provincial politics as leader of the Novia Scotia NDP before being elected national leader in 1995.
In her first federal campaign in 1997, she led the NDP from nine to 21 seats and scored a major breakthrough in Atlantic Canada. This time, she says her support for health care spending and more government “investment” in programs will appeal to voters tired of program cuts and deteriorating health care.
- Clark, who was Canada’s youngest prime minister in 1979-80, faces the task of returning at least 12 MPs to Parliament to maintain official party status for the Progressive Conservatives.
The party has been rocked recently by low polls and MP defections. He also must win a seat in Calgary, which has been unkind to the PCs since 1993.
At 61, he insists his experience and “balanced” approach to tax cuts and government will allow the Tories to gain favor among voters not enthralled with the Liberals or the Canadian Alliance.
Last week, he accused ChrŽtien of being a caretaker prime minister who “ambled through” the past seven years of power.
