Craig Oliver was back on CTV's Question Period today and the election speculation hobby horse was solidly on display. Coincidence, I think not. It is so much easier to speculate when the next election will be than to discuss the benefits and/or drawbacks of the Conservatives policy announcements on Capital Gains in fisheries industry or on strengthening Dispute Settlement provisions in NAFTA.
Mr. Oliver thinks that the Conservatives would be wise to trigger an election in the fall.
..."It seems to me that if I were Mr. Harper, I would be trying to get together with the NDP and the Bloc and defeat the government in November ... after the first report, which really condemns what the Liberal party was up to.
"So it surprises me that the deputy party leader of the Conservative party is saying 'No, no, we'll wait for the government's timing' and sit around like lambs waiting for the slaughter to be defeated in the following election."
This strategy is risky but with risk there can be reward. I think it rests on whether the Conservatives can get the NDP to play ball. First off a defeat in November would mean an election sometime in January. Some NDP members are already complaining about a possible March election - an election in January would be even less agreeable. Furthermore the Conservatives would have to convince the NDP that it is in their best interests to increase their seat total to ~40 seats in a Conservative led minority government. Sounds easy, right?
The problem is that if the NDP can be brought on board we will have a repeat of the whole "getting in bed with separatists" thing from the spring but this time with the added bonus of "forcing the PM to break a promise to give an election no one wants". Like I said, risky.
If you want the ultimate risk/reward scenario you could go for the Gomery Gamble. Form a coalition of the majority parties to bring the government in mid-to-late October and set an election date for the week of November 21st. The rest entirely on the fact that Justice Gomery's first report will be on time and will be damning of the Liberals. Getting an election date two weeks after this would be the ultimate "when you have your foot on the neck of Liberal, step down" move. Like I said, VERY risky.
Update. This changes things,
...Judge John Gomery is set to announce he will delay the release of his report into the federal sponsorship scandal by six weeks. The report was supposed to come out by the end of this year, but Radio-Canada said the Gomery Commission has received so many briefs that meeting that deadline will be impossible.
The release date is
now expected to be at the beginning of February.
30 days after means an election called at the beginning of March and an election date most likely at the end of April or beginning of May. That constitutes a five-month gap between the first Gomery Report (the one that could be harmful to the Liberals) and the election date. Plently of time for the effects to wear off. To use my risk talk above I would say it just became a lot more risky for the Conservatives to allow the election to occur "30 days after Gomery".
