Update: Current major political issuesAs it stands right now, and as I see it, there are currently three major issues being discussed in the media: the length of the campaign, the new election law, and the economy.
Campaign LengthThis will be the longest federal campaign in Canada since 1872. It will be the most expensive campaign for taxpayers ever (due to the increased length of the campaign requiring more spending by Elections Canada and other government agencies).
The official reasons from the Prime Minister for calling such a long writ period are to reduce the cost to the taxpayer (election rules are now in place, meaning that parties cannot spend government money to promote themselves) and to ensure that, instead of campaigning unofficially and outside the rules, all parties now must campaign within them. Both claims are dubious.
As to the former, as I've noted, this is going to be the most expensive campaign in history for the taxpayer. I'm not terribly troubled by that, to be honest, but the fact that the PM is claiming the opposite should be noted.
As to the latter... well, it's just total bunk.
First, the way the PM is selling this is to say that the other parties have already been campaigning for months, but that the Tories are only starting now. And they want to do it properly, meaning that they had to call for the start of the writ period, in order to ensure that they only campaign within the campaign spending rules. But those other parties are perfectly happy to have been campaigning outside of the rules. Problem is...
all the parties have been unofficially campaigning outside the writ period (and thus the spending rules) for months. Including the Tories. As any Canadian who has so much as glanced at a television or turned on a radio can tell you, the Tories have been running
this attack ad forever.
Second, the "playing within the rules" claim is disingenuous. Because the rules, recently changed by the Conservative government no less, benefit the Conservative Party over the other parties. See, there were changes to the campaign spending provisions. Formerly, there was a hard cap on how much a party could spend (on advertising and whatever else) during a campaign, no matter how long the writ period was. Under the new rules, though, the longer the campaign, the higher the spending limit. So, this being the longest campaign period in modern history, the limit is also sky-high.
The reason this matters is that the Tories have more money than the other parties. A
lot more. Probably more than they are able to spend under the campaign spending limits. Now, with a short campaign, they'd be able to spend as much as they wanted before the writ period... but would be limited once the election was called. This is important because it's an attempt to keep all the parties to a certain level of spending in the period close to election day. It's meant to ensure fairness.
But now, with a long campaign period, the spending limits are upped. Meaning that the Tories can bring a larger portion of their war chest to bear in the period
closest to election day. Probably more than any of the other parties can. The changes to the election spending law have arguably undermined the fairness of the system.
Green leader Elizabeth May and a former head of Elections Canada have come right out and called it unfair. I tend to agree, though you may not.
You can read more about this
here,
here, and
here.
New Election LawThat leads nicely into a wider discussion of the new election law. Called the "Fair Elections Act," it caused quite a stir when it was before Parliament.
There are the changes to the spending rules, which I talked about above.
The new law also makes the kind of identification required to vote stricter, leading to accusations that the Conservative government is attempting to suppress votes. See, the sorts of ID no longer accepted by Elections Canada happen to be the kind most relied upon by students and low-income individuals. That is, people least likely to vote for the Tories. Moreover, Elections Canada is no longer allowed to advertise in "get out the vote" campaigns... which, again, tend to be targeted at young people who are unlikely to vote Tory.
Moreover, though this isn't a provision of the Fair Elections Act, the government has also been pushing to maintain a ban on Canadian expats who have lived outside the country for more than five years from being allowed to vote. This restriction has been in place since 1993, but the Tories are pushing hard to keep the ban in place.
All of this has led to the Organization for Security and Economic Co-operation in Europe to commit to sending election monitors to Canada for this election. They were asked to observe by opposition parties and civil society groups concerned about the new laws. They'll be monitoring the overall system (rather than individual polls) to determine whether the election is fair or not. We'll hear their determination in the weeks following election day. This, of course, is deeply embarrassing.
You can read more about this
here,
here, and
here.
The EconomyFinally, there's the economic situation. It's, honestly, not great. When the economic numbers for June come out, if they show the Canadian economy shrank that month, Canada will officially be in recession. This is due mostly to slow economies in China and the US, as well as a glut of oil on the world market. Given that Canada is an export economy largely dependant on resources (especially oil), that's bad news.
The Tories are campaigning hard on the notion that they're the best stewards of the economy, and that the other guys will tank things totally with socialist overspending.
The problem with that is that the Tories' claims to being good with the economy are based on them saying "It was totally us!" when the economy was good and "It wasn't us at all - markets just do their own thing!" when the economy was bad. Which strikes me as nonsensical - you can't have it both ways. But, boy, they sure are trying...
You can read more about this
here,
here, and
here.
Anyway, that's where we stand with the issues up until today. I expect a bunch of other things to come out as the campaign rolls along (i.e. Mike Duffy), but they don't seem to have emerged yet.