Has Stephen Harper Found His Tipping Point?

In this autumn of our usual discontent with politics and politicians, we do not seem to be noticing that the balance between Canada's major parties is at or very near a historic tipping point. Stephen Harper's Conservatives have seized the central ground of the political spectrum and are poised to become the country's natural governing party. The Liberal Party is floundering in uncertainty and disunity, unsure of what it stands for and badly led. We appear to be on the verge of the great historic shift in party fortunes that Conservatives have hoped for, but have regularly failed to achieve, for more than a century.

It's a truism that Prime Minister Harper has abandoned his Reform Party dogmatism and is trying to govern Canada from the centre. In one area after another – stimulus spending, foreign policy, support for the arts, economic development, co-operative federalism, as well as naked pork-barrelling and shameless self-promotion, the Conservatives are implementing policies that might have been drawn from the Jean Chrétien-Paul Martin songbook. Particularly on economic policy and their response to the recession, the Conservatives hold the political centre so thoroughly that Liberals have no idea whether to attack the government from the right (for spending too much) or from the left (for spending too little). The government's policies are broadly acceptable to Canadians, it continues to inch upward in the polls, and it would very likely eke out a majority in a general election today.

The Official Opposition seems to have lost its way. No one has the foggiest idea of what Canada's Liberals stand for, save for a return to Pearsonian diplomacy and Team Canada missions. Having so badly bungled such policy issues as the carbon tax in last year's election, the party is literally afraid to advocate new initiatives. Having committed an act of transcendent political lunacy in agreeing last winter to a coalition with the NDP, with separatist support, the Liberals have left themselves far more vulnerable to the “hidden agenda” card than Mr. Harper's Conservatives have ever been.