Harper's winning strategy encounters huge setbacks

[JohnyCanuck]

Can Stephen Harper pull it off again in 2015? That's the question many Canadians are already asking themselves. The Conservatives' winning strategy was to define the election as a choice between "the stable, familiar, competent economic management of the Conservatives and the instability and economic ruin that would follow from a Liberal-led coalition backed by socialists and separatists," as outlined by Woolstencroft and Ellis in The Canadian Federal Election of 2011. The Harperites have been smugly confident they can repeat 2011's majority against the even more vulnerable "socialists" of Thomas Mulcair.

Or were so until last week's huge setbacks to the credibility of this strategy. While pretending to enjoy the Calgary Stampede, the Conservatives were actually enduring two very significant reversals in key areas for them.

The first was the huge hole blown in their single most significant economic initiative -- unwavering support for Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific. The second was the blow to their vaunted managerial efficiency that was to be demonstrated by a modernized Canadian military machine, central to the warrior culture the government wants to make a cherished Canadian value.

In each case, the week's bad news happened to be the fourth in a series of bad stories that have begun to undermine these two major projects. Oil pipelines received the most coverage, all of it damning. Enbridge's very public humiliation at the hands of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, for a serious pipeline rupture in Michigan in 2010, reminded Canadians that no fewer than three large oil spills had taken place in Alberta itself just the previous month. That in turn evoked unwelcome memories of last year's massive spill near Peace River, Alta., which then led to reminders that besides the Michigan disaster, 2010 also saw an average of two pipeline failures every day in Alberta. No one, it seems, had remembered this distressing record -- until now.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/gerry-caplan/2012/07/harpers-winning-strategy-encounters-huge-setbacks

[CanSocDem]

1. Great article.

I hope all this sticks 'til the next election.

From your link:

Putting the safety of Canadians and their environment ahead of the self-interest of Big Oil hardly seems radical now. Secondly, questioning an economic strategy that sends Canada deep into the 21st century as primarily an exporter of unprocessed and semi-processed non-renewable resources and that worsens regional imbalances and disparities seems the very definition of responsible opposition.

Exactly!!!

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