So a couple of weeks ago I was chatting with Judi McLeod, the boss lady, and telling her how I thought that this election would see Paul Martin go down in flames as a result of the Conservatives forming a minority government. and bang, just like that, the polls come out with evidence that I just might be right.
What caused me to arrive at this conclusion were a number of factors that taken alone wouldn't really make a lot of difference. But together, they will impact on the election in a most profound way. First of all, because of adscam, the Libs will see a large part of their traditional Quebec base eroding in favor of the Bloc. This isn't because Quebecers actually want to separate. They just want to teach Paul and the boys a civics lesson. Bundle that with Liberal Premier Jean Charest actually endorsing Stephen Harper and the Conservatives and you can pretty well see the Martin Libs being routed from Quebec.
Jack Layton, on the other hand, realizes that the Libs are enjoying a lot of support in Toronto and is betting that he can whittle away at that support by promising Torontonians a plethora of new socialist initiatives with which he hopes to purchase their votes. To some degree, ol' Jack is succeeding in this endeavor, as the NDP's poll numbers have risen from 16% to 18% in just a few weeks, while the Libs have dropped 5% in the polls. The inroads that the NDP is making in Toronto will weaken both parties and to some degree, split the vote.
add to that the unfortunate increase in gun crimes in Canadian cities, just as the Libs are touting the success of their gun registry, and it doesn't take too much imagination to visualize voters heading to the party that isn't tainted as being soft on criminals.
The Liberals avowed strategy is to make up for the seats they know they will lose in Quebec by replacing them with seats they think they can win in B.C. as strategies go, this one doesn't seem overly well thought out, to which anyone watching the Grey Cup Game on television will attest. The booing and hissing emanating from the stadium's stands as Paul Martin made his grand entrance are indicative of quite another outcome.
Besides, when you look at the kind of contests being run in B.C., it's the left against the left, as Libs and NDPers slug it out. Imagine Sven Robinson, convicted jewel thief, running in Vancouver Centre against Liberal Hedy Fry who sees racists and sexists everywhere, and those she doesn't actually see, she invents. Talk about a clash of the titans! My guess is that the Conservatives will take more seats in British Columbia than the Libs or the NDP, which will ultimately result in a Conservative minority.
The only wild card in this prognostication is exactly how the Conservatives will achieve a minority if they fail to win a majority. It would appear that the only way they could do it is to work with the Bloc and that will result in both the Libs as well as jumpin' Jack Layton squealing like stuck pigs. But then, the Liberals don't have much room to squawk, considering that the infamous separatist Jean Lapierre is Paul Martin's Quebec Lieutenant.
I also think that there will be a fair amount of collateral damage to individual Liberal MPs. among these, I am guessing, will be Belinda Stronach, who will forever after regret that fateful crossing, Edmonton Centre's anne McLellan, whose constituency has been steadily shrinking, and the deceitful and haughty Scott Brison, who jumped into bed with the Liberals after failing to win the Conservatives' leadership.
all the while making these predictions, I am aware that I have been wrong before. But my sense is that because the Liberals seem to manage to fall into a new scandal on an almost weekly basis while the Conservatives have become less and less "scary" to Canadian voters, my predictions are based on sound reasoning.
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