Cat and mouse in Ottawa

Tuesday’s budget has been slated by virtually everyone who is still paying close attention to Ottawa as the vehicle by which the Conservative Government of Steve (CGS) will “call” the next federal election.

That would be the election, for the record, he promised he would never call, given his legislated commitment to fixed four-year terms. His means of achieving this feat is to taunt Stéphane, the 98-pound weakling — a taunting cheered by the New Democrats and Bloc — until Stéphane just can’t take it anymore. So this week we have two episodes in our daily political soap to watch: what will the budget bring? And will Stéphane take the bait or not?

Part of what makes the latter question interesting is the wide disparity in recent polls. The SES folks a couple of weeks ago were giving the Liberals and New Democrats encouragement, finding the Liberals leading Conservatives with New Democrat support rising to close to 20 per cent.

But that was before M. Dion surrendered to Mr. Ignatieff’s and Mr. Manley’s American- styled commitment to extending our role in Afghanistan. Since then, Environics has the Tories and Liberals in close proximity, with the New Democrats and Bloc in sharp decline; and the Strategic Counsel has the Tories in majority territory.

This may be one of those cases where the polls won’t do the work, where political leaders have to act from a sense of the mood of the nation or from strong strategic foresight. As Dion is a bit too cerebral to go by the sort of gut feeling that served Jean Chrétien so well over the years, he will need to have a better strategy available than going to the polls now if he is to refrain. What might such strategic reasoning be?

How does Dion look to us?

Dion knows that allowing this budget to pass will make him look weak. But this ground has already been conceded. What matters is how Dion looks to us when an election campaign is called.

So he can discount the embarrassment of backing away from defeating the government in the next three weeks, let the taunting echo in his sleepless nights and wait until we further tire of CGS’s arrogance and bravado.

Dion’s leadership and the future direction of his party are most challenged not by Steven Harper, but by Michael Ignatieff. If Dion goes to the polls in the next couple of months and loses, the leadership of the party might well fall to Iggy (I’m pretty sure that’s what Iggy is dreaming these days.)

Having allowed his nemesis to determine the party’s Afghanistan policy, however, may weaken Iggy in time, especially when it becomes clearer to Canadians that extending the mission in Afghanistan was a mistake.

Canadians aren’t too eager

Moreover, Canadians don’t seem too eager to go to the polls this April. What they seem most to want is for the ego-tripping and power-tripping of our political class to stop, at least for a while. Governments are usually beaten by their own mistakes and while the majority of us aren’t happy with the Conservatives, we believe the opposition is keeping them from showing us their worst side. Giving them more time may well cause them to reveal more about where they would go if they were a majority.

Finally, the one chip that Dion holds, given to him by CGS, is the power to decide when the next election will be held. When you have only one chip to play you play it with care, and when you’re most certain it will advance your cause.

It’s not impossible to believe that events over the next eight months will see the Conservatives in a worse electoral condition than they appear to be in now, whichever poll is right. So why not wait?

Indeed, it seems likely that Budget 2008 will be a non-event, as a political show or as a set of economic measures. It makes good sense for Stéphane to wait. And the CGS has already spent our surplus.

So the only issue that seems likely to be at stake is the amount of any future budgets we put toward the national debt. Exciting campaign question? Not so much.

For a second week running, the real winners may be the NDP. If their popular support is declining, Dion, if he decides to wait, will have helped them avoid an election that isn’t in their strategic interests. If their support is growing, then time remains their friend.