Measuring What Matters

The scandals that cling to Stephen Harper’s Conservative government like so much cheap tinsel, from Pierre Poutine to Nigel Wright’s cheque and everything in between, have put us at considerable risk of a federal election campaign next year that looks a lot like the last one: the opposition parties will argue that the Conservatives’ behaviour makes them unfit to govern, while the Conservatives will insist they are the only ones who can be trusted to protect the country’s economy.

To which you might say, so what? After all, it makes sense that parties would try to frame a campaign around the themes they decide best reflect their own strengths and their opponents’ weaknesses. If that means five weeks of the party leaders talking past each other, so be it.

But what is good for the parties is not necessarily good for the country. Clashing ideas make for good campaigns, but clashing themes do not, because they fail to accomplish a central purpose of the...