With the House of Commons voting yes to an NDP motion calling for an election in early 2006, the parties are readying themselves for an election call that should come early next week.

The parade to the post features the Liberals angling to champion Canada in Quebec, Gomery Report or no Gomery Report.

Unlikely as it may be that sponsorship rage could transmogrify into Liberal Quebec votes, the Conservatives will go them one better with a national campaign premised on Stephen Harper coming on like John Diefenbaker when the Chief swept the country in 1958.

Realistically the Bloc can expect to hold on to its 49 per cent of the Quebec popular vote, and defeat Pierre Pettigrew, and even Jean Lapierre in oh-so-Liberal Outremont to boot.

The NDP ambitions are to hold the balance of power in the next Parliament, and write some new legislation in return for supporting the government.

Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have much credibility in the country except with their own partisans. There are more Liberal partisans than Conservative partisans, so the Liberals look to go off ahead.

Paul Martin is a vigorous campaigner. Stephen Harper has yet to prove he can muster up the strength to tour the country, continuously, smiling, as things go wrong, and the media play “gotcha” which is the way political campaigns work.

Voter turnout has been going down in Federal elections, heading towards the 60 per cent mark. As fewer people vote, finding your own voters — getting out the partisan vote — is the key to winning.

At this point nobody expects a majority government. A Liberal minority looks likely. The Conservatives are slipping in B.C., and not breaking through in Ontario. But they have collected the most money, and can outspend the Liberals and the NDP. For the Liberals to win the most seats they have to maintain their standing in Atlantic Canada, keep their stranglehold on Ontario and their 21 seats in Quebec, and hope to break through in B.C.

In Ontario they will run against Harper. In Quebec they are trying to polarize the electorate for and against sovereignty. Again. Desperate to hold on to support in Anglophone ridings, they are campaigning against the new PQ leader André Boisclair as well as the Bloc and hoping that people will not link them to unpopular Quebec Liberal policies and to its failing leader, Jean Charest.

For the NDP to hold the balance of power, it would help to take advantage of Conservative vulnerability in Western Canada. New seats in B.C. look within reach. But the Liberals have been campaigning heavily in the Vancouver area and, like the NDP, want to turf out the former Reform Party types now cast as Tories.

For the NDP the best road is the high road. Here is the kind of Canada we can have, and here is how your vote for us will help make it happen. Canada has inequalities, public services will reduce them, nothing else does. Tax cuts make them worse.

In a reversal, the Liberals are running from the right with a tax cut package designed to forestall the Tories. The NDP message, building on the NDP budget written for the Martin Liberals, should be: give us influence over the government. When it was time for the leader of the opposition to defeat the government, he turned to the NDP. Jack Layton took on his role and organized the three opposition parties to call for an election.

In order to win voter support Layton and the NDP need to campaign like a party of government: Here is what we want to do and why. After all, though it cannot set the date, the NDP did take the lead on the election call, and it is only fitting that it now lay out before the Canadian people what the agenda should be for the next Parliament.

Duncan Cameron

Duncan Cameron

Born in Victoria B.C. in 1944, Duncan now lives in Vancouver. Following graduation from the University of Alberta he joined the Department of Finance (Ottawa) in 1966 and was financial advisor to the...