Stéphane’s ace in the hole

Canada’s Tai Chi Man has shown again that he has more going for him than may meet the eye.

A few weeks ago, when it began apparent that Stephane Dion would indeed introduce a brave new environmental plan, he declared: “good policy makes for good politics.”

Put together the best policy minds, have them address a clear challenge and then trust the electorate’s intelligence when presenting the policy for their consideration.

You gotta like the guy, even though such brave words had neo-cons — who believe you can’t really tell the people the truth; they’re not ready for it — and some journalists — who pride themselves on being worldly, hard-nosed realists — licking their chops, relishing Stéphane’s swan song. Well, perhaps.

Dion’s policy excluded gasoline from the carbon to be taxed in the plan; not exactly a politics-free decision, as a litre of gas is in most of the country approaching the cost of a pack of smokes. Moreover, he telegraphed his green policy well enough in advance to allow Conservatives to attack him as only they know how.

Whatever else it may be, climate change is no laughing, taunting matter, and it’s hard not to believe that part of the reason Stéphane gave early notice is he was counting on Stephen’s reaction.

Dion’s announcement allowed the Conservatives to release very quietly a military spending policy that will near $490 billion in the next 20 years, with the aim of continuing to take a much more aggressive posture in the world. Thinking they are playing the game the way the big boys do, conservative strategists figured that if they released this, their major spending policy, while the rest of us were fixated on Stéphane’s green initiative, we might not notice.

Alas, the left-leaning press, those rascally rabbits, picked up the story. Stéphane, being the bright political guy he is, decided not to hammer on this point, sure that those who are not already Conservatives would learn of it, leaving him focused on the policy on which he wants to fight the next election. Again, pretty good political sense if Canadians are turning as green as the polls indicate.

Formula is simple

The political formula is simple. There are roughly 30 per cent of Canadians who will vote for the Conservatives next time regardless of what the other parties say or do. Sixty-five per cent of the rest are seemingly open to a significant greening of the country and opposed in varying degrees to the remilitarization of Canada.

Dion figures he can produce a base of about 30 per cent who will vote Liberal regardless, true grits and progressive conservatives who despise the neo-conservative tilt of the government and badly want back into power. And five per cent of Canadians find themselves torn between these two clusters of voters.

This leaves, if my arithmetic is right, another roughly 35 per cent of Canadians who seem not particularly keen to vote for either of the two major parties, but who are ideologically much more disposed to left green liberalism and a more moderate military policy than they are to conservativism of the sort Harper proffers.

Dion has decided that the smart play is to seek to attract Canadians who find themselves in this 35 per cent. If it looks like he’s doing so successfully, extending his base only by a small measure, then some of the five per cent who are stuck between the Liberals and the Conservatives will fall in line, preferring to be on the winning side.

So good policy presented to the demos for our reasoned response? Sure. But don’t discount the political smarts behind it.

This is simple chess that Dion is playing with Harper, who seems to prefer checkers (king me, king me!). And though it’s more of a chess game than a game of poker for Dion, the latter too has metaphoric value.

Dion has an ace in the whole. So far, Harper’s only rejoinder to the green shift, other than to warn the rich in the oil patch that trouble is brewing, is to claim that Dion won’t do it; that he won’t stick to his climate change policy being revenue neutral; that he won’t ensure that most of us will be better off financially if we move to moderate our use of carbon.

Now Dion is no leader in some folks’ books, but one thing we’re all pretty sure of: he does what he says he’ll do.