ACCORDING to the Liberal party script designed in those heady days last autumn when Paul Martin was on the verge of becoming Liberal leader and prime minister, the country now would be in the midst of its 38th general election campaign.
And Martin’s election machine would be steamrolling across the country, dominating the Canadian political landscape as it dominates the Liberal party.
There were dreams of a record electoral majority and the first genuine western Liberal breakthrough in Western Canada since the 1953 election.
Now, in the less optimistic light of spring, those dreams and that script are in doubt and maybe in tatters.
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Instead of a record majority, polls suggest the Martin Liberals will be lucky to match Jean Chrétien’s last result and could even lose the inherited majority. How galling that must be, since Martin’s people spent the last decade considering Chrétien a pedestrian politician unworthy of the top job, even though most Canadians seemed to like him.
Why have the wheels fallen off?
Liberal scandal has stuck to Martin, in part because he chose to exaggerate it in hopes of discrediting the Chrétien years and in part because Canadians don’t seem to believe Martin’s story that he was an innocent outsider in a nine-year government rather than a key insider.
Worse for Martin, his own personal ratings have fallen the more voters hear him talk about his grandiose but unfocused vision. After listening to a decade of Chrétien setting modest goals and then achieving them, voters seem uneasy about talk of grand and comprehensive changes not heard since the days of Brian Mulroney.
Worse still, the takeover of the Progressive Conservatives by the Canadian Alliance to form one Conservative party went more smoothly and quickly than the Liberals ever dreamed. The next election is shaping up to be the most competitive in at least 16 years.
All of which has led Martin to hesitate in calling the election he wanted to call in April for a mid-May vote. Now, the earliest it can be is June and some in the party are urging him to wait until autumn in hopes the polls improve.
Martin seems indecisive on the issue.
Still, there are several good reasons to argue prairie farm families will be weighing their political options sooner rather than later, June 14 or 21 rather than sometime in October or even 2005.
Parliament is back in session this week after a two-week break. Without an election call, the Liberals face seven weeks of parliamentary attacks before the summer recess set for June 23.
Parliament is a forum for opposition exposure. Beyond that, the Liberals have little ready for MPs to do. They expected to be campaigning rather than governing and little significant legislation can be cobbled together quickly.
Martin’s claim through the winter that he needs a mandate to govern is coming back to bite him.
Perhaps more importantly, there is little reason to expect that Liberal fortunes will rise through the summer. A delay to autumn could jeopardize Liberal dreams of government.
In politics, predictions are a mug’s game but once the crop is planted this spring, farmers might want to start considering where to place their X, just in case.
