It looked as though the Liberal Party was doing really well. A new leader, Michael Ignatieff, who is both a great orator and easy to understand in either of Canada's official languages (when I can understand spoken French, something good is going on). Warren Kinsella back to run the war room and maybe give the Liberals a decent communications department. A political position that would force the Conservatives to give in on a few points, or lose the entire government.
Things seemed good.
I guess they weren't.
This past Monday, I received a flyer in the mail. On the front, the caption 'The Conservatives misled Canadians on the economy' and a picture of Stephen Harper looking like he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Definitely a good start - not quite as catchy as "Stephane Dion is not a leader", but almost as easy to explain.
Open up the leaflet, and there's some pretty damning contradictory evidence. Jim Flaherty saying "we will not run a deficit". Independent (i.e. non-partisan) budget officer Kevin Page revealing that the Conservatives will, in fact, run a deficit - somewhere in the neighbourhood of $50 billion over four years. A reminder that when the Conservatives took power, they had a $13-billion surplus left over from the Liberals - plenty of evidence to support the claim that the Liberals are good managers of the economy, the Conservatives are not. All that's really missing is a reminder of how far in debt the country was after Mulroney.
Finally, the coup de grace - Harper's memorable assertion that the downturn represented a "good buying opportunity", and a note that had anyone followed Harper's advice and bought a TSX index fund, their investment would have fallen another 21%!
All in all, a very good pamphlet, more effective than any of the million I've seen from the Conservatives over the past couple of years - if for no other reason than its reliance on facts over scare tactics.
But wait! There's more! Silly me, always forgetting that paper can be two-sided.
A three-question partisan survey, asking questions about Conservatives and the economy, and offering you the chance to join the Liberal e-mail list. To respond, simply tear off that fold, as the other side has been helpfully filled out with the mailing address of...
...
...
"Hon. Stephane Dion
Leader of the Opposition"
...
...oh, Liberals. And you were doing so well, too.
--Ryan
No comments:
Post a Comment