Had enough of polls lately?

At the risk of driving readers around one more bend, I thought I’d start today with a bit more of the federal poll dance.

I’ve been waiting for the SES folks to do their national party poll, as I don’t really trust the other firms and, as the results are now available, I thought I might try readers’ patience with just a bit more poll-talk.

SES has found the Tories at 36 per cent, the Liberals at 33, the NDP at 16, Bloc 10 and Greens 6 in early April. The Conservatives are sitting second to the Bloc in Quebec and the Liberals and Tories are close in Ontario.

SES also found that Stephen Harper was thought to make the best Prime Minister by 42 per cent, well ahead of Stéphane Dion, who is running just a tad above Jack Layton at 16.

These results would explain why Dion was running radio ads in Quebec in the past week and they confirm what appears to be the ceiling for the Tories, just shy of a majority government. They help to explain why the Liberals will be running a team and policy campaign next time, and why they will be moving to appeal to New Democrat and Green voters. And they explain why the Tories are appearing less eager than they were a few weeks ago to force a vote.

This is a tough decision for the Tories to make, given that they’re now paying for a very fancy Ottawa campaign headquarters; that the Opposition will be asking soon who’s paying for it; that the Tories have already spent a lot of the money they can risk spending in Quebec; that the recent rise in the Canadian dollar may undermine some economic activity in Canada over the summer months; that the wait would provide the Liberals the opportunity to rebuild their campaign financing system; and that support for the war effort in Afghanistan may decline as more of our troops are killed or maimed.

The Charter turns 25

It’s interesting to see that more profile has been given in recent days to Vimy turning 90 than our Charter turning 25. Some of the attention to the former is explained by the attachment that the Prime Minister has to renewing, and I fear re-romanticizing, war conduct, but it also has to do with the claim that Vimy is where Canada became a nation. This Tory reading of history is not without its advocates, while Liberal history reads the Constitutional Act and Charter of 1982 as our founding moment.

It’s argued that the true birth of the real Canada was the bill that created Medicare in Saskatchewan under a CCF government. Or that the unjust mistreatment of Canada’s First Nations, the expulsion of the Acadians, the suppression of the Winnipeg General Strike, or the internment of Japanese and other Canadians during wartime are the more telling, formative moments in the story of Canada. The study of history, it appears, is much more political than historians let on.

Some 3,600 troops dead for the victory at Vimy Ridge in a war that some argue was particularly senseless is a flawed reference for the birth of our nation. So too are The Constitutional Act and Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Charter was meant to project minorities of identity and opinion from the tyranny of the majority. It’s no small irony these days that it’s the Liberals, NDP and the Bloc (who together represent the majority of Canadians) who wish to protect the rights and freedoms of the Charter from a minority in the Conservative Party, who appear bent on limiting them. And these documents don’t go very far at all in addressing the rights of Canada’s poor to a decent standing of living.

For my part, I think looking for a turning point in Canada’s history doesn’t do justice to our complexity, subtly, diversity, and unrealized potential. Nor is it particularly good history, though it can provide a source of revealing discussion.

Ah, sweet spring

If the Feds do indeed decide not to call an election, if our troops are able to avoid the worst in Afghanistan, if we can keep Stephen’s smugness off the front pages of the papers and his muscle out on the rugby fields where they seem happiest, we may yet see some smiles as spring releases our better selves.