A funny thing happened after Ottawa’s fifth or sixth budget surplus: the 1970s style of voter has returned. They may not be wearing polyester or dancing disco, but they’re back.
How else can we explain the prime minister being able to criss-cross the country doling out millions for social policy priorities and making a recovery in the polls? How else could a struggling Paul Martin purchase the support of the NDP for $4.5 billion in order to get his budget to pass the House of Commons — and still manage to put the leader of the Official Opposition on the spot?
A prime minister goes on TV to plead for more time in office. A scandal-plagued government faces near-certain extinction in the Commons with imminent defeat of that budget. And a leading light of the Opposition crosses the floor to save her seat in the 905 belt.
What the hell?
We can all be forgiven for asking that question in exasperation about what is going on in Ottawa.
The impetus for all the bizarre developments may not actually be coming from Parliament Hill, but from the voters themselves.
Those of us who make our livings off the avails of the parliamentary process, including this jaded correspondent, have been noticing some interesting trend lines in polling data for more than a year.
Tax cuts. Debt elimination. Smaller government. Lower government spending. Job creation. File all those priorities with your vinyl LPs, leisure suits and grainy photos of your AMC Pacer.
Today’s voters, at least a commanding percentage of them, want service from their government — right now — just as they did in 1975.
Watching Martin today is highly reminiscent of the way Bill Davis criss-crossed Ontario 30 years ago to salvage a minority government by dishing out money and emphasizing government as a service utility.
Ekos Research Associates Inc. took the top four voter priorities of 10 years ago — health care, unemployment, debt and taxation levels — and tracked their importance each year to the present.
Only health care rose as a voter priority in the 10 years. The others slid drastically.
As for preferences of what to do with Ottawa’s surpluses, in April 2001, 25% of voters wanted lower taxes. In February 2005, just 19% wanted lower taxes.
It has been almost 12 years since there has been a recession in Canada, so it shouldn’t be surprising that a politics of prosperity has developed. But the extent of the shift in voter attitudes is startling just the same.
People believe in government again.
Sure, an overwhelming number of people today think ethical standards have slid drastically in the federal government. But they also think the same thing about business.
Increasingly fewer of us bother to vote. We’re all cynical about politics, but we seem to expect a lot from government, just as we did in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Ekos’ data indicate that 52% of voters saw government as a positive force in their lives in January 2005, compared with 40% exactly two years earlier.
Something is happening in the electorate. Perhaps it is simple demographics. Just as the baby boomers had a sudden influence 30 years ago, the children of the boomers are having the same affect now.
Perhaps this is the inevitable result of sustained prosperity. (There have been so few economic periods like this, it is hard to tell.) Or it might be the continuing dominance of urban voters in Canada, now that half of the population lives in six cities.
Whatever the cause, the return of the ’70s voter explains why Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are trying to recast themselves as scandal-free Liberals Lite, or why Paul Martin, the man who persuaded Canadians to eagerly swallow their fiscal medicine, is trying to spend his way out of electoral disillusionment the way FDR tried to spend his way out of economic depression.
Politics is only a business of branding and one can’t successfully brand in a vacuum.
The Conservatives, with all but a handful of their 99 seats in rural ridings, should worry less about western alienation and more about being on the wrong end of an urban/ rural split.
The Liberals, historically far more adept at morphing themselves to suit emerging voter trends, should worry about being perpetually offside with rural voters. As Canadian cities grow, we are bound to see more sprawling hybrid areas like the 905 belt around Toronto that can side with urban or rural voters.
No party wants to be offside with the 905 belt. Just ask Lyn McLeod, the Ontario Liberal leader who wasn’t supposed to lose to Conservative Mike Harris in 1995.
Does this shift mean a return of the chronic federal deficit is inevitable? It is probably too early to tell.
However, with provinces once again showing deficits, the nation’s business lobby and anyone old enough to remember 21% mortgage ratess should start thinking about how such a thing can be avoided.
And God help whomever is running the country during the next recession. IE

@page_break@Gord McIntosh is an Ottawa-based consultant in government relations and communications strategy.