With an unusually high number of overlapping provincial and territorial elections overlapping this year, the Fall of 2011 makes for a busy electoral season. With few fireworks in Ottawa as we settle into the normalcy of majority rule in Ottawa, the nation’s press gallery, pundits and tweeps are attuned to far flung corners of the country’s political map as never before.
Throughout tonight’s election coverage from Prince Edward Island, a great deal was made – by media, by commentators and by candidates alike, about the impropriety of an unprecedented level of participation by the federal Conservative government in the campaign.
For those unfamiliar, at the outset of the campaign, the federal government dropped a bomb on the governing provincial Liberals, by initiating an investigation into PEI’s immigrant investor program. Predictably, many have questioned the timing of the investigation. Scandalous as the whole affair may turn out to be, the timing of the investigation has become nearly as much a scandal itself.
Meanwhile, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals are also crying foul over the direct participation of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (among others) in the election currently underway in Ontario.
Opponents in both provinces claim this level of interference by the Harper Conservatives – in which sitting cabinet ministers are actively campaigning against incumbent provincial government is unprecedented. I’m not certain that t is. And even if so, people in both of these provinces, and elsewhere had probably better get used to it.
In Newfoundland, Premier Kathy Dunderdale – despite recent efforts to cozy up with Stephen Harper during the federal election – doesn’t seem to want him around for her own campaign, and as making a clear effort to avoid being associated with him.
Dunderdale’s opponents aren’t afraid to cozy up with federal their federal cousins, as opposition parties are wont to do. Halifax MP Megan Leslie was on the stump with NDP candidates in St. John’s this week. Liberal MP Gerry Byrne hit the hustings in aid of aspiring candidates in Placentia and the Bay of Islands this week.
In Manitoba, certain federal Liberals made a splash of a different kind, endorsing a number of provincial New Democrats in tight races. in Winnipeg.
Not all of this is unusual. Partisan politics in Canada has always relied on mutual cooperation between provincial and federal birds of the same feather where such political parties exist.
But even if you do find any of it unprecedented, unseemly or inappropriate, get used to it.
Just as it took media some time to clue into the fixed-election legislative alignment that brought us seven provincial and territorial elections in one season, just wait until they figure out what happens in 2015 when these same jurisdictions hold their elections in conjunction with a simultaneous federal campaign in October of the same year.
How the various political parties at federal and provincial levels align their interests, policies, candidates and electoral machines four years from now is going to be a crucial element for anyone’s electoral success (at either level) in 2015.
