NAFTA Leak Damages Conservatives
US Democratic nomination race sheds light on Canadian Parliament
Obama and Clinton's politicking on NAFTA has damaged Stephen Harper's Conservatives but has also shown the Liberal party's electoral weakness.
The latest scandal in Canadian federal politics all started in Ohio – an American state riddled by the kind of job losses (to the manufacturing sector) that the American public and politicians alike usually see as a result of free trade with other countries. It just so happened that two of those politicians, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, were campaigning in hopes of winning the important March 4th Ohio primary in order to bolster their Democratic nomination bids. Pandering to the constituency in question, both Clinton and Obama made promises to try and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in hopes of strengthening environmental and labour protections.
Unknown at the time, however, was that one of Obama’s team, economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, had met with the Canadian consulate in Chicago on February 8th, and according to a leaked memo, made assurances that the Illinois Senator had no intentions of living up to his rhetoric. Obama has since repudiated these claims, stating that the memo completely misrepresented his position.
On Friday came an official denial from the Prime Minister’s Office that the Clinton campaign had made a similar promise. Of course, in the eyes of the opposition Liberals and NDP, when there’s smoke there’s fire. The main problem with the denial is that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff Ian Brodie allegedly told reporters multiple times that both candidates had made it clear that their talking was just that.
Coming on the heels of allegations that the Conservative party effectively bribed the late MP Chuck Cadman for his vote in a 2005 confidence motion, one would think the minority government to be in trouble. But the Liberals, who have the power to bring down the government, have not acted. Despite the damaging publicity, they have showed no forward progress in the polls, further solidifying the growing unrest within the opposition party that leader Stephane Dion is unfit to face off with Stephen Harper. It was reported that deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff refused Dion’s request for him to announce that the Liberals would not oppose the most recent federal budget – an insight into the growing factionalism within the party.
So long as the Liberals cannot form a united front to challenge the Conservatives, they will not be able to capitalize on the type of PR slips that have been rare for a government as tight lipped and controlled as Mr. Harper’s. Harper has been notorious for controlling the statements issued and the language used by his MPs and staff members, something not taken well by the press core. Harper has even moved reporters out of the famed hallway of the House of Commons, where PMs would traditionally meet the scrum at the bottom of the stairs, into the more scripted atmosphere of the parliamentary press room. All this means that two ‘scandals’ of this type – failures in public relations – won’t come around that often.
Liberal supporters were already regretting putting Dion in a position of leadership before these latest developments. The longer Harper shows that he can control the House of Commons in this minority situation the less his Tories’ tenure looks like a purgatory period for the sponsorship-scandal bitten Liberals, and the more it looks like an endorsement of his government’s leadership.
