Harper, NDP talk budget deal in public, pollster says

The four party leaders in the House of Commons are racking up greenhouse gas emissions like Saudi princes with their January tours and speeches, and the current fuss on news pages and column space must make voters wonder where they were sleeping when the election was called.

Even one of the coolest heads in the Ottawa pollster community is impressed with the recent cliff-edge momentum and atmosphere, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, NDP Leader Jack Layton and even Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe, who really doesn’t have that far to go, skitter like winter rabbits from one electoral district to another.

“This is akin to Cold War political madness,” Ottawa pollster Nik Nanos told Yahoo! Canada News. “Things can escalate very quickly and people are ready to push the election button at any time.”

But in his next breath, Nanos, who has impressed journalists and pols alike with his close tracking through the past several federal votes, urges all and sundry to calm down because, despite the hype, everyone but the Bloc is not yet in a position where they would benefit - in the NDP’s case it actually might lose, if an election were to be called tomorrow.

“The Conservatives have the advantage, but they don’t have a greater political advantage than they did in the ballot box compared to what they had at the last election,” Nanos says.

Translation: though the Conservatives had climbed to 38 per cent in one of his polls in early December, compared to the 37.6 per cent of votes in the 2008 election that gave Harper his second minority government, they have since slipped.

An Ekos poll later in December gave the Tories only 32 per cent, and an Angus Reid Vision Critical survey this month found 34 per cent of decided voters would support Harper’s party.

“The Liberals might talk tough about an election and go to tour, but they’re still building their organization and getting their leader ready,” Nanos says.

But maybe the most interesting part of his interview with Yahoo! came when he addressed the recent faux campaign statements by Layton and Harper.

Nanos believes those comments, when parsed, suggest Layton and Harper are actually talking to each other, over the heads of the reporters, behind them and the crowds in front, and possibly negotiating a way out of the election none of the party leaders want, including Duceppe.

Layton has yet to regain picture-perfect health in his battle with prostate cancer.

Ignatieff, his curse continuing, can’t seem to lift his party above 30 per cent in the polls, actually seems stuck at 28 per cent, and Harper, painfully close to the range he needs for a majority but certainly not there, is perfectly aware if someone does trip the election switch accidentally, and it results in another Conservative minority, it will be his last campaign as leader.

So, what do voters make of Harper’s threat to campaign against the public allowances for parties?

Because of their generous formula, $2 a vote to each party that gets at least two per cent of votes cast nationally in the last election or five per cent in the districts where they run candidates, even the Green Party received $1.8 million last year, without winning a seat.

And, what can voters make out of Harper’s statement he has no intention of dropping a one-percentage-point reduction in the corporate tax rate scheduled to be in the federal budget in March?

The Liberals have promised to vote against the budget, all of the Liberal MPs this time, if the tax cut is there.

The spectre of eliminating the election allowances may be just a reasonably serious threat.

But the firm tax-cut position, says Nanos, is Harper’s way of talking with Layton.

And Layton’s shopping list, which he also released during this flurry of winter tours, is his way of talking to Harper, telling the prime minister what would be required for the NDP to vote for the budget.

One of Layton’s MPs, Windsor MP Joe Comartin, has already suggested in an interview with this Yahoo! correspondent the party might be able to swallow the business tax cut, which in these times would certainly help the pickup in jobs, if the NDP could get something on the social side.

The big point on that list, which Layton had at the top, is an increase in contributions to the Canada Pension Plan and, more importantly an increase in benefits.

The party, perhaps even more importantly, also wants an increase in the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors. Right now, seniors receiving only CPP benefits, Old Age Security and the GIS combined have a maximum income of only $14,000 a year, well below the poverty line and certainly a factor in Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s decision to reduce Hydro rates after they spiked because of the HST.

So, says Nanos, Layton and Harper are actually negotiating right now, in public.

“At least one of the parties, the New Democrats, have signalled they’re prepared to work with the government on specific initiatives, which has not happened before,” he says.

“We’ve never received an explicit signal like that in the public domain. What’s interesting about this is the parties are negotiating in the open, the parties are sending signals, and Canadians can evaluate what the parties are doing.”

An interesting scenario and certainly, for Harper, more palatable than a deal with the Bloc Quebecois.