Over the Christmas break, I received a surprising piece of mail. It was a letter from the federal NDP, wondering which of the party leaders I believed was best suited to lead our nation. I thought this was odd, considering that the next federal election is scheduled for 2015, well over a year away.
Delving deeper, I discovered that Tom Mulcair, Leader of the Opposition, suggests that the prime minister will call for new elections as early as the January throne speech, and is thus preparing his party for an election in the spring of 2014. This is a vain effort to make his name known, though, because the Conservatives will most likely not call for an election.
Unlike his predecessor Jack Layton, Mulcair is relatively unknown to many Canadians. In political conversations I had over the holidays, for instance, he was most often referred to as “the other guy.” While Harper continues to make headlines simply by being in office, and while Justin Trudeau turns heads with admiration for China’s dictatorship and alleged comments to teens about why marijuana should be legalized, Tom Mulcair seems absent from the political news of the country.
Why would the Conservatives gamble their hard-fought victory away before they have to?
Unfortunately for him, this probably won’t change anytime soon. An election will most likely not be called by the Conservatives, simply because an early election poses too many disadvantages for them.
For starters, the Conservatives are not in a position to lose control of the government without an election, and unlike previous years, the Opposition parties do not have the votes in Parliament to force the issue. When Harper had a minority government, calling a new election was a strategic move designed to increase Conservative power within the House of Commons, eventually leading to the majority government he now enjoys.
Having now won that hard-fought victory, why gamble it all away before you have to? With public confidence in the Harper government still smarting in the wake of the senate scandal, a spring election would surely cost the party their majority, something they will certainly try to hang on to as long as possible.
Furthermore, an election in the spring would upset many of the long-term policies of the Harper government, the most important of which being the balancing of the federal budget. Currently, according to both the conservatives and Jim Flaherty, the Minister of Finance, Canada has the strongest economy of the G7 nations, and is on track to balance the budget and continue to lower its national debt, barring another economic crisis.
Elections are expensive undertakings, with the preliminary estimated cost of the last federal election coming in at $291 million dollars, according to the Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the 41st General Election of May 2, 2011. Having been elected on a platform of fiscal responsibility, it is hard to imagine the Conservative government using that kind of money to call an election that will not likely win them another majority.
Finally, waiting another year gives the Conservatives more ammunition when it comes to pointing out the flaws in their opponents. Every day that Justin Trudeau leads the Liberal party is another day in which he shows how little he is capable of doing so, and both NDP and Conservative supporters are likely looking forward to seeing how Trudeau sticks his foot in his mouth in 2014. Likewise, I am sure they will start looking at Mulcair to see if they ever should deem him a threat in the political arena.
So for all those Canadians out there, including Mulclair, hoping to get rid of Harper early, 2014 is not your year.
