Book Review: The Canadian Federal Election of 2006

Before the next election: Important reading on the last one

The Canadian Federal Election of 2006

Edited by Jon H. Pammett & Christopher Doran

Published by Dundurn Press, Toronto

When I cracked the spine of The Canadian Federal Election of 2006 I expected the kind of turgid phrasing and obtuse theorizing that is all to common in contemporary Canadian political science. Regardless of the quality of its content, by its very nature, this subject attracts a limited audience at the best of times. In this case, given the unimaginative presentation and title, I had reason to expect the worst.

Yet once past the blandness of the book's design and into the meat of its articles, I found a very readable collection of topical essays about the previous federal election - including one must-read standout, which I'll get to in a minute. As a whole, the book is a concise and rewarding package, providing the back-story and context to the actors and parties who played key roles in the recent 2006 federal election. The work could serve as a useful accompaniment to the recently published Right Side Up by Paul Wells, and provides particular value for government relations practitioners - most of us, after all, are confined in our electoral experiences to a single political party, whereas this book, with its ecumenical approach to all political parties, gives valuable insight from all other camps.

True, the book does seem to belie its academic roots in the poor quality and seemingly secondhand information used to assess the successful Conservative campaign. Simply put, the Conservatives, tight-lipped even with their friends at the best of times, saw no need to share anything with the writers of this book, and both sides suffer for it. But despite that weak point, this book tells how each party performed in the election, and identifies overall trends in crucial aspects such as candidate nominations and electioneering practices. An excellent example of this is the piece by Stephen Clarkson, How the Big Red Machine Became the Little Red Machine, an article strongly critical of the narrow-minded and vindictive mindset of the people around Paul Martin, and the consequences of their decade-long civil war with the Chretienites, which combined to cripple the Liberal campaign.

Another standout is the article by Alan Whitehorn, offering an insider's account of the NDP election campaign and how it dealt as directly as it could with the need to stem the flow of soft NDP voters casting strategic votes for the Liberals in an effort to stop a surging Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party - an effort that was largely successful, as the NDP picked up a number of seats from the sagging Liberals.

The gem in this collection of essays, however, is clearly the one by Michael Marzolini of Pollara, despite its weak title, Public Opinion and the 2006 Election. Marzolini has done an incredible service to the Canadian political community by publishing this frank, succinct article on how Canada's pollsters performed in the 2006 election, although a more descriptive title might have been Leading Canadian pollster shows how his fellow pollsters were mostly right in 2006 Election, but notes glaring errors, particularly by Allan Gregg and the Globe and Mail. Okay, perhaps that's a little long...

But the topic is timely, especially for PAAC members with a taste for polling and for pollsters. After being embarrassed by the glaring difference between the last pre-election polls and the actual ballot results in the 2004 federal election, Canadian news media and their hired guns, the pollsters, entered the 2006 campaign determined to do more and better polling in order to avoid being stung again. Consequently, 2006 saw more preparation for published polling from more firms than ever before. The daily tracking polls by SES/CPAC produced 26 published reports during the campaign, in addition to nightly broadcasts on the Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC). The Strategic Council/ Globe and Mail published 22 reports.

Marzolini's narrative shines as he uncovers other glaring errors committed during the campaign, the most interesting and consequential of which originate with the Strategic Council's work for the Globe and Mail. Marzolini also covers the other polling companies and their efforts during the campaign, but the Strategic Council/Globe miscues are the most interesting and important, not because they did a bad job overall, but due to their high prominence and wide readership.

The first noted error in the campaign comes from what Marzolini characterizes as a case of media outlets manufacturing news. The Globe and Mail, its editors apparently bored after days and days of no movement in public opinion, published a December 5 front page article under the headline "Liberals Surging in Ontario," reporting a 2 percent gain, which was well within the poll's 4.1 percent margin of error. This "surge" quickly dissipated since it was, in fact, a mere statistical blip.

Worse, though, was a second front page headline on December 12: "Liberals Snatching NDP Votes in Ontario," which reported NDP support dropping in Ontario from 17 percent to 9 percent. In fact, nothing of the sort had occurred. One of the Globe and Mail writers had simply mixed up figures on "voter intent" and "campaign momentum." After a full two days of damage to the NDP campaign, The Globe owed up to its error when it ran a terse correction but no apology.

On January 17, six days before the vote, the Globe's published polls showed Harper's Conservatives in majority territory, with an 18 point lead. This poll was far off from where other pollsters were tracking - SES had the Conservatives with only a 5 percent lead, and Ekos showed them with just an 8 percent lead. Marzolini says this was not just a rogue poll, but instead was due to bad methodology, including poor questionnaire preparation. "The first question placed in front of the vote-preference question skewed the results," Marzolini says. "The first question in the Strategic Counsel survey reads, 'Do you support a change in government?' If a respondent answers, "Yes," indicating they believe the Liberals should be defeated, it then becomes difficult to follow this with "I'm voting Liberal" when asked for a vote choice," Marzolini points out. Even though the January 17 poll was prominent, especially due to the Globe and Mail's reputation and readership, no apology or retraction was ever issued for this poll. The article also reviews the substantial differences between the relatively inexpensive media polls and the much more in-depth internal polling done for the respective parties.

Marzolini's article is so important that I strongly recommend it as essential reading for every active GR practitioner. It is easily one of the most substantial yet accessible critiques I've encountered on the subject of recent Canadian political polls and election polling practices. Hats off to Michael Marzolini and The Dundurn Group for publishing such great work.

The entire book: Recommended. The Marzolini article: Strongly recommended, in fact, a must-read.

Book Review: Eddie Goldenberg's The Way it Works Inside Ottawa

A classic exposé on the successful exercise of political power

by Eddie Goldenberg - published by McClelland & Stewart

This is a readable, practical memoir that gives the reader a useful view of the goings-on inside the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). It is true that there have been many books about past Prime Ministers and how they came to their decisions. Yet this book stands apart. First of all, it is well written. Goldenberg's prose has a light touch. He writes directly and succinctly, with a clear purpose.

Even better, Goldenberg's first-hand and previously unpublished information is unrivaled in quality, except by what the former prime minister himself knows. Eddie Goldenberg in many ways served as Jean Chrétien's right brain for all of his years in power; from his leadership run, to his time in Opposition, to heading up Chrétien's PMO. All through those years, the Chrétien-Goldenberg tandem worked smoothly in consolidating Chrétien's hold on the number one spot in Canadian politics. Everybody knew that when Goldenberg spoke, it was with the full voice and authority of the Prime Minister.

This is possibly the clearest, most unvarnished account we will have of political level decision-making in the Chrétien years - since the only more authoritative account would have to come from Chrétien himself, and he simply has too much legacy at stake to deliver an account with details like these.

Until this point, except for perhaps targeted and discreet leaks to the press, Goldenberg has been entirely quiet. This book amounts to a virtual deluge of new information and accounts about key events which remain highly pertinent today.

But this is no disinterested account. Goldenberg misses few opportunities to discredit and lessen the legacy of Paul Martin Jr., albeit in a straightforward and dispassionate way. For example, Goldenberg reports that Martin's verbal support for the Meech Lake Accord was pure artifice; that he actually did not support it, but verbally endorsed it because that was the good political position to take.

Nor does Goldenberg pull punches on the Chrétien legacy. There is an entire section about the regrets and consequences of the Federal Liberals' promise to scrap the GST upon assuming power. This promise, which brought about the eventual resignation of Cabinet Minister Sheila Copps, , brought no end of headaches and problems to the Liberals as they assumed power.

What sets the book apart, though, is not that it covers the history and events of the era. Many journalists have already done that. Goldenberg also explains the political pressures on the PMO at the time the decisions were made, and exposes how the competing interests played out at the time in the eventual decision. The reader gains access to the content and nature of the decisions from Goldenberg's perspective. In particular, the chapter on how Chrétien chose his cabinet in 1993, and why various players made it in or did not, is a classic exposé in the successful exercise of political power at the Federal level of Canadian politics.

This is of the most readable, useful and entertaining Canadian political books in a long time.

Strongly recommended.

Book Review: Conservative Victory Sparks Flurry of new books

Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper's New Conservatism,

by Paul Wells

The Long Road Back: The Conservative Journey, 1993-2006,
by Hugh Segal

Full Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics,
by Bob Plamondon

No doubt the biggest Canadian political story of 2006 was the stunning electoral success of Canada's new Conservative Party in the recent federal election. The rise of the often-maligned Stephen Harper and the party he has led from its contentious beginnings to electoral victory is a captivating story. Undoubtedly, Canada's book publishers thought so and consequently we have seen a number of high quality books dealing with the election and its fallout. In particular, three major books merit attention.

The best of the lot is Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper's New Conservatism, by Maclean's Magazine columnist Paul Wells. In it, he ably demonstrates why he merits his status as one of the leading scribes in Canadian political writing. His stories are accessible and his prose is light, though at times the collegial tone feels a bit forced. Overall he has written a book that is a very easy read both for the dilettante and the professional. Yet, his book packs real weight. Right Side Up is full of information you will find nowhere else about Paul Martin's fall and Stephen Harper's ascension.

Wells begins his book immediately after the narrow win of the Liberals in the 2004 federal election against the new Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper. Though the Liberals maintained power, they lost seats - yet Martin treated the election as a victory and did virtually nothing to change or improve his team or their message for the next election. That was because from his perspective, Martin and his team had been building for this moment since his 1990 leadership loss to Jean Chrétien. Why should anything change? It was this inertia that set Martin and the Liberals up for their mediocre 2006 election results and Martin's subsequent resignation from politics.

Those who remember the Federal election of 2004 will remember that the election was in fact a very near thing for the Liberals in spite of their eventual victory. Three weeks before the election, Harper's new Conservative Party was ahead in the polls but seemingly ran out of script. This loss of momentum allowed the Liberals to run a very effective scare campaign that gave them a surge in the last weeks of the campaign, largely by convincing soft NDP voters to vote Liberal because the thought of a Stephen Harper victory was worse than the thought of continued Liberal government.

Wells contrasts Martin's blithe smugness following his victory with the story of Stephen Harper. Harper could have easily accepted the modest gains of 2004 as a success. After all, Harper had increased his party's seats, unified the country's Conservatives, and led in the polls up until the final weeks.

Instead, Harper treated the campaign like a terrible loss. He organized a series of ruthless strategy sessions in which everything about the campaign, including his own performance, was fair game for criticism. There, with the help of his inner circle of political übernerds like Tom Flannigan and Patrick Muttart, Harper and team deconstructed their election effort. From this analysis they prepared the working plan that would become the blueprint for victory in the 2006 election.

The results from these two approaches were that the Conservative 2006 campaign has become celebrated for its effectiveness and consistency, while the Martin campaign has been exposed for its disorganization and lack of imagination.

Elsewhere in the book Wells adds some interesting what-if scenarios - which only go to show how fragile and luck-driven political success can be. He documents the point in the campaign where all the Conservative television ads - including many nasty and negative ads that were never aired but where nonetheless prepared - were sent by accident to the Sun newspapers. Through good fortune, the Sun reporters were not able to properly open their DVD, saving the Conservatives from a terrible gaffe that may have been fatal to their election hopes. Through good fate, and little else, the Conservatives were able to retrieve their ads, and continue on to electoral success.

Those of you enjoyed the Maclean's post mortem on the last election will be interested to know that this book grew out of the writing that Wells contributed to that piece. Right Side Up is a great piece of political writing and in-depth reportage that is seldom seen. I think it's the best Canadian political book of 2006, and I can't recommend it enough.

Next to Wells' fine writing, Segal's and Plamondon's books are neither as accessible nor as interesting. Nonetheless, they are recommended reading, but I would read Well's book first and then choose the other books depending on your subject matter and political persuasion.

Segal's The Long Road Back is more for those readers who still yearn for the now defunct Progressive Conservative Party, and is more of a personal memoir. Plamondon's Full Circle is a much stronger historical work, and will be of more interest to those interested in the Alliance/Reform movements.

Segal's book is very much a book about the Conservative world, as opposed to any particular event, and Hugh Segal delivers real value from his privileged perspective on the Canadian political scene. As one of the leading Conservative intellectuals in Canada, Segal's political life was once intertwined with Ontario's Big Blue Machine, where he served then Premier Bill Davis. He is a lead spokesman for the "Red Tory" point of view. To this day Segal remains an active player in Ottawa, where he currently sits in the Senate as a Conservative member.

As knowledgeable as Hugh Segal is, his writing at times feels like a luncheon speech at the Empire Club. Hugh Segal the writer is not unlike Hugh Segal the talking head. He is erudite, nuanced and entertaining but somehow distant and inaccessible.

The Long Road Back is organized as a straightforward chronological narrative that begins with the terrible defeat of the Federal Progressive Conservative Party in 1993. It leads the reader through the years in the wilderness after that stunning defeat up through the leadership of Jean Charest, the return of Joe Clark, the brief reign of Peter MacKay and finally to the merger and beyond. Of most interest here is reading about how an ideological centrist like Hugh Segal feels under the leadership of the more right-wing Stephen Harper.

Plamondon's book covers much the same territory in terms of subject and chronology, but it does so from the perspective of a former member of the Reform/Alliance. Plamondon, while an active Conservative, focuses on the historical events of this period much more than his own political memories. This book is based on the recollections stemming from more than 50 interviews with key players at the time.

Yet, you get the sense he is too close by far to his sources. While Wells has some real scoops, and Segal is just interesting all by himself, Plamondon's moments are much fewer and farther between. Consequently, the book can get boring. It reads in some places like simple description, with little or no interpretation and spice.

That is not to say there are not some surprising turns. Plamondon's is strong in his criticism of Preston Manning and his selfish decision to tear apart the Canadian Conservative movement by founding the Reform Party in the late '80s.

Ultimately, Manning is portrayed in a very unfavorable light. He is the lead player in the tragedy of the Canadian Conservative movement's great divide. Manning's great organizational and leadership skills ultimately result in a perverse but very predictable outcome: Two inadequate Conservative parties, and Liberal Party of Canada domination of the Canadian Government from 1993 through to 2006. Plamondon lays the responsibility for this clearly on Manning's doorstep.

The "Full Circle" that Plamondon talks about is the division of the Conservative movement between the Reform and Progressive Conservatives in the late '80s, and the eventual reconciliation between these two camps just prior to the 2004 election leading to electoral victory in 2006. This is a very academic work, but if you can get through the slow parts, there is a lot here that will prove illuminating as the Conservatives prepare for the anticipated election in 2007.