Will Canada blame Martin?

Apr 27th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Canada’s prime minister, Paul Martin, has apologised to voters on television over a corruption scandal in his party and agreed to bring forward the date of the next general election. But his appeals to let the full facts come to light first may not be heeded. The opposition, sensing their moment has come, may force an election as early as next month

THE last time a Canadian prime minister addressed the nation on prime-time television, in 1995, the country was in a crisis: Quebec was perilously close to voting to secede. On Thursday April 21st, it happened again: Paul Martin, the current prime minister, took to the airwaves to address the scandal that has enveloped his Liberal Party. Mr Martin made a sober but strongly worded case against rushing to judgment. But, as the leader of one opposition party noted: in 1995, Jean Chrétien was trying to save Canada; this time, Mr Martin is trying to save the Liberals.

The Liberal Party is often described as Canada’s natural party of government, having been in power for the past 12 years, and for 55 of the past 70. But it is now enmeshed in what its gleeful opponents are calling the biggest scandal in modern Canadian history. After the 1995 referendum in Quebec, the Liberal government of the day decided to spend around C$250m ($200m) in the French-speaking province to promote federalism and Canadian unity. A noble goal, but it seems that quite a bit of that money found its way into public-relations and advertising firms that had close ties to the Liberals. Mr Martin was finance minister at the time.

The government has appointed a judge, John Gomery, to investigate what Mr Martin himself has called an “unjustifiable mess”. The testimony given so far has been explosive—so much so that Judge Gomery imposed a publication ban on some of it. But when a blogger across the border in America began publishing leaks about the testimony, the judge lifted the ban.
Jean Brault, on whom much of the controversy centres, and who may face criminal charges himself, has told the inquiry that his firm, Groupaction, had received C$23.4m for services including hiring Liberal Party workers, and that he had donated some C$1.2m to the Liberals. A graphic-design firm run by a friend of Mr Chrétien’s may also have received contracts worth C$6.7m.

No wrongdoing has been associated with Mr Martin himself, and he claims to have had no knowledge of what was going on. However, since he was the finance minister at the time, many think he should have known. He apologised frankly in his televised speech: “I am sorry that we weren’t more vigilant, that I wasn’t more vigilant.” But Mr Martin urged voters not to rush to condemn him or his party, noting that the evidence given to the Gomery inquiry has been contested. Most importantly, he said he would be willing to face the voters’ judgment in an early election, which he plans to call within 30 days of the release of Judge Gomery’s report.

But that report is not due until December. The opposition parties sense a stalling tactic, thinking that any anger among Canada’s 32m people will have died down by then. They smell blood, and so are pushing for elections sooner, perhaps in May or June. Stephen Harper, the leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, hinted at this in his response: “How can we continue—politically, ethically, or morally—to prop up a government that is under criminal investigation and accusation of criminal conspiracy?” And Gilles Duceppe, leader of the separatist Bloc Québécois, expressed his indignation that the “Liberals tried to buy the soul of Quebeckers”. The Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois together are just shy of a majority in parliament, where the Liberals hold power with a minority.

Jack Layton, the leader of the fourth party in parliament, the leftist New Democratic Party (NDP), has also expressed his disappointment with the government. But rather than push to topple it, Mr Layton has played the Liberals' woes to his advantage on policy. He promised to support the government in any no-confidence vote until the budget is passed; in return, Mr Martin promised to delay proposing some C$4.6 billion in corporate tax cuts. There will also be dollops of new spending for some of the NDP's favourite causes, such as housing, the environment and foreign aid.

Polls show that if an election were held now, the Liberals would be trampled. The Conservatives have pulled clearly ahead, on 35%, with Liberal support down to 30%, according to a poll published on April 23rd. The Bloc Québécois and the NDP would do better as well. But Mr Martin has one aspect of public opinion in his favour: voters agree with him that the full Gomery report should come out before an election is called.

So the Conservatives have a delicate calculation to make. They can press their advantage now, but at the risk of looking manic for power. Or they can hope that a steady stream of revelations, concluding in the full Gomery report, will keep the Liberals down as late as the end of the year. In any case, Mr Harper had been improving the Conservatives’ fortunes before the current scandal broke. Born of a marriage between the populist, western-based Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party, the new Conservatives have been sharpening their attacks on the government for months. Mr Harper is youngish, intelligent and articulate. If elections were held now, he would lead a minority government. If the Liberals fall further, that could mean a Conservative majority.

Meanwhile, the scandal is sure to help the Bloc Québécois in its home province (where the Conservatives hardly figure). Liberal support has collapsed in the province, to 31 percentage points behind the Bloc. And some have been talking about renewed secessionism as a result of the affair. A recent poll had 54% of Quebeckers favouring “sovereignty”, the highest level since 1998, though a 56% majority of these would want Quebec to remain nominally a part of Canada.

In his televised speech, Mr Martin bemoaned the fact that electoral calculations are distracting members of parliament from the business of improving Canadians’ lives. But the opposition leaders said the same thing, reminding voters that the scandal is of the Liberals’ own making, if not exactly Mr Martin’s. Canada’s natural party of government might soon find itself in the unaccustomed position of holding a Conservative government to account from the opposition benches.

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