2018 In Politics - What will the year hold for the three national party leaders

This is an excerpt from my weekly on-line debate over at Ontario NewsWatch.  For the full debate, visit them.  For my contribution, read on....

I was recently asked by a moderator to discuss what 2018 will hold for the leaders of the three major parties. I thought I that I would start the conversation by making a few observations about each leader, the challenges they faced in 2017, and some predictions for the year ahead.

Justin Trudeau:

Let’s be honest, Trudeau is riding high in the polls, the opposition leaders are not on the radar of most Canadians, and the entire government that he leads seems content to keep on with government by selfie. But there are storm clouds beginning to gather on his sunny ways.

The end of 2017 was not strong for Trudeau and his band of merry ministers. Of course, we had the significant ethical issues with the Minister of Finance that have been covered here many times, and the PM himself got a lump of coal from the Ethics Commissioner for the holidays when it was revealed that he too has some judgment problems of his own.

Add to that the seemingly difficult time that the Trudeau government is having with passing any legislation (half what Harper had done in the same time), and the serious gaffs on the international stage with TPP, China trade, and NAFTA in the recent months. But also there was his praise of Castro upon his death, the seemingly lack of interest in the evolving Iran situation, and people are rightfully asking if Harper was correct in the foreign policy debate during the 2015 election – that Trudeau was just not ready for the world stage.

2018 will be an important year for the PM. Can he stop the tailspin? Will they get their issues management problem fixed? And can this happen before the ever-friendly press turns on him and asks similar questions to the ones that I have asked above.

Prediction?  The polls will get closer and closer until Trudeau gets some foreign policy wins and can demonstrate that he is engaged in the job, not, as the Ethics Commissioner asserts, just as a ceremonial head of government.

Andrew Scheer:

This is a make or break year for Scheer. He simply has to define himself to Canadians or risk having the Liberals define him. He also has to begin to shed some of the social conservative assertions that are lurking in polite company. But perhaps those two statements are versions of each other.

Many people have critiqued the Scheer/CPC advertisement of which saw the leader walking around a playground. They have been mocked and ridiculed many times. I would ask those same pundits from all stripes to look back to the mock interview style ads that Harper used in 2006. The same people took issue with those, the same snickers could be heard, but those (and other factors) led to the end of the Liberal government.

What the critics forget is that there are more people on Main Street than Bay Street. The CPC narrative is clearly that the Liberals are out of touch elites, which is driven home by small business tax changes, taxation on diabetic medication, taxes on employee discounts while the ministers and their friends jet off to private islands, own secret assets in shady numbered companies, and attend international conferences with private photographers in tow.

The question is not if the ads are good or not (I believe they are for the right audience), but are they effective in driving the compare and contrast position that the CPC wants. That is the unknown.

Prediction? 2018 will be the year that the CPC make significant gains in the polls, or they will have to retool their strategy. Failure to get within 5% of the Liberals by this time next year will mean that they have to hope for a Liberal blunder, not a CPC surge, to get power in 2019.

Jagmeet Singh:

The current strategy for the new NDP leader is not working. They got shut out in the by-elections, with considerable losses in popular support. Worse still is that support, almost to a percentage point, went straight to the Liberals who have found fertile ground in support from the left.

It is crisis time for the NDP. What can the party do to attract that support back? Good question.  The road back is not an easy one.

If they go further left, they risk passing into oblivion for popular support as they alienate the working class support they have in favour of the downtown / city core socialist support.

So, do they move to the centre and become the middle option between the new left Liberals and the Conservatives? Perhaps, but look to Ontario in the 2014 general election and see how that was an utter failure for the NDP there.

We have been told to "wait to see what Jagmeet can do", but he took a beating on CBC in his first major interview after the leadership. We are told that he is "strong in Quebec" but the party's membership sales, popular support and groundwork paint a different story.

We are told to wait until we see him in a diverse, progressive, sub-urban riding of new Canadians, but we had that in the Scarborough Agincourt by-election and the NDP did not even contend, barely getting over 5% (less than 1,000 votes cast for them!) compared to 40% for the Conservatives and 49% for the Liberals. That is the lowest vote percentage for the NDP in that riding in at least the last 20 years.

Perhaps one way to end this crisis of irrelevance is to profile Singh as the true champion of the middle class against the fake populism of the Liberal elite. But it is difficult to be seen as the team captain for the NDP when you are not even allowed to suit up and take the field. With no seat, and no plans for a seat, Singh will have a difficult time generating the following through the media that they need to be relevant.

Prediction? Singh succumbs to pressure and seeks a safe by-election seat, likely after the Ontario election in June. But will it be too late? We will have to wait and see.

By-Election Wins and Losses: The Other Story

By elections are one of those funny things in politics.  When you win, it is of course a massive vote of confidence for the party that wins, the media breathlessly report that the victory is either proof positive of a massive change in government about to happen or that their existing majority government is set to rule for decades to come. 

We know who won the by-elections, but who lost is up for debate.

Of course, the Liberals held their seat in Bonavista-Burin-Trinity which was never really in question.  Formerly held by the Liberal cabinet Minister Judy Foote in Newfoundland and Labrador.  The Liberals also held onto their seat in Scarborough-Agincourt, which also was not really in question.  Gerry Ritz’s old seat was held by the Conservatives in the Saskatchewan riding of Battlefords – Lloydminster.  No real issues to discuss there.  Two wins for the Liberals, one for the Conservatives, all predictable.

The riding that got the most attention was the Liberal victory in the BC riding of South Surrey-White Rock where the Liberals took a seat away from the Conservatives.  At first glance it would appear that this is a big victory for the Liberals and a real embarrassment for the Conservatives. 

The Conservatives, fresh off the victory of Andrew Scheer as leader, have now lost two by-elections to the Liberals this fall with the other one in the Quebec riding of Lac-Saint-Jean.  Conventional wisdom, as well as my own personal belief, is that by-elections afford the electorate an opportunity to pass judgement on the sitting government without the fear or complications of changing the government.

We typically find that we have lower voter turnout, which means those who are mad and motivated (typically conservatives) by the dislike of the government will come out while those content with the government see no need to venture to the polls when the election will have no impact on the party in power. 

The fact that the Liberals won over the Conservatives in BC is a problem for the Conservatives.  Public opinion polls tell us that Scheer did not get the post leadership bounce that new leaders typically get.  And now with two by-election losses for the blue team, the CPC should be wondering just what it is that have to do to win.

They have spent the fall bashing the government on ethical issues too numerous to type here, they have attached on fiscal issues that people don’t seem to care about, and the litany of broken promises or promised not yet achieved is growing by the day, yet the Liberals keep winning. 

We can assume from the words and visuals of the Conservatives ad campaign that they will be trying to win in 2019 with a narrative that paints the Liberals as elites and out of touch with real Canadians.  Tax shelters, off shore accounts, numbered companies, forgotten villas all painted against the backdrop of tax hikes for small business and professionals alike being used as proof points.  But yet here we are in the midst of the this scandal and yet the Liberals are seating more seats, not bleeding support.  I am sure there will be some difficult discussions within Conservative offices..

So clearly the Conservatives lost and the Liberals are winners.  But I do submit that the NDP are the ones who should be the most worried about the results in BC.  For them, this is a crisis, not a mere expected loss.

No, the NDP did not hold any of the ridings, and no they were not expected to contest in any of them, but here is the big issue for them.  Their support has plummeted in the results of the night in that riding.  Their support levels were cut in half from 10% to about 5% of the popular vote.  The trouble is that this is the exact type of riding that we were told that Jagmeet Singh would compete and win in.  Specifically, we were told that they would reclaim support in Quebec, which has not happened, we were told they would compete in 416-905 in vote rich Ontario, which we have not had the opportunity to see yet, but living here I see no evidence of it, in addition to losing the diverse riding in Agincourt, and we were told that they would begin to make further gains in BC suburbs which is exactly where they took a big hit last night.

In a sense, that the Conservatives should be worried today, but the NDP have much more to worry about.  In most cases, the CPC vote went up in each riding – Newfoundland, GTA, and Saskatchewan.  So it is not all doom and gloom at the CPC HQ. 

The Liberals, and their popular local candidate in BC, essentially defeated the Conservatives with NDP support.  The drop in NDP support almost perfectly aligns with the increase in Liberal support pushing them over the top.  The Conservatives may have lost the seat, but it was the erosion in the NDP support in this riding that saw the liberals vault over the Conservatives to win. The NDP lost 5% of the popular vote, and the Liberals won this time out by 5% of the popular vote.  The Liberal tact to the left is killing the NDP.

This should not come as a surprise.  We have seen the exact same thing in Ontario with the Ontario Liberals there, guided for a while by the same Gerry Butts now guiding Trudeau, have successfully kept the NDP in check by moving the party to the left.  A fact painfully driven home in the 2014 general election in Ontario where the NDP were stalled, gaining no seats, in an election that many believed could be a “Jack Layton” moment.

If we believe the narrative that by-elections are an opportunity to punish the government without the consequences of a change in the governing party, then the protest rich support of the NDP should be increased not decreased.

Conservatives have a massive interest in a strong NDP.  More three-way races where all parties are competitive help the Conservatives.  The BC by-election last night shows exactly why.  The Conservatives did well!  They took 42% of the vote.  In a strong three-way race, or even a race where the NDP can get over 10%, that is a Conservative win.  The share of the popular vote for the Conservatives went up in Newfoundland, up in Scarborough, and up in Saskatchewan. So, while they are down one seat, there is still reason for optimism. 

The same is not true for the NDP. In all six of the by-elections since Singh has been elected leader of the federal NDP his party’s share of the popular vote has declined. 

Winners – Liberals, Losers – Conservatives, In crisis – NDP

The Need For Ethics Code Reform

There has been quite a bit of commentary surrounding the federal ethics rules these days.  Questions and accusations from the opposition of improprieties coupled with denials, donations, and distraction from the governing party as they point fingers at the commissioner herself and her advice to Ministers.

But the real question, partisan commentary aside, is if the rules are sufficient for governing the behaviour of our elected officials, their staff, and senior members of the civil service.  This is the topic that we explored on the weekly Ontario NewsWatch Salon with my fellow panelists.  The full interaction can be viewed here, but I thought I would take my text and reproduce it on this site.

To date, the Prime Minister has taken the approach that the Liberals are following the same rules as the Conservatives did when they were in power.  And he is right, in some cases.  The reality is that the interpretation of the ethics code, and perhaps the penalties under the code, have long been in need of some modernization. 

Lets us take the instance of the Minister of Finance.  Not from a partisan point of view, but because this is the issue that has brought all of this to the forefront again.  The Minister took advantage of what has been called by the Ethics Commissioner herself as a “loophole”. A loophole that she herself argued should be closed in committee hearings under the previous government. This loophole effectively let the Minister set up an Ethics Screen to ensure he did not cross any line while holding millions of dollars in publicly traded stock of his family company.

To me, and voters as a whole, this seem preposterous.  How can this screen, which allows his personal Chief of Staff (with the Minister as the employer) have the power to tell her or his boss not to do something.  Similarly, another option is the Deputy Minister, which while different, I submit is a similar version of the same issue with the Chief of Staff.

But in this case, the concern with such close advisors acting as a screen is not theoretical.  We have tangible evidence that these screens did not work.  Minister Morneau sponsored legislation that would make fundamental changes to pensions in Canada which would benefit the very company he owns stock in and was founded by his father.  In fact, he knew so well the upside to the company finances of this move that he actively lobbied the government prior to being elected to encourage the same changes to benefit his company. 

These acts are now the subject of an investigation by the Ethics Commissioner, but yet it seems that it was within the rules, despite the rule which states a Reporting Public Office Holder cannot hold anything defined as a "controlled asset" in section 20 of the Act. Controlled assets must be sold or placed in a blind trust within 120 days after the individual becomes a Reporting Public Office Holder.

So, for the sake of argument, what will happen if the Commissioner finds that the Minister’s Ethical Screen failed and there was an ethics breach? Well, the answer is not much, aside from sound bites and denials.  Morneau, if he had not been called out by the opposition and the press, could have made millions in profits from the increase in the share value since he assumed the role of Minister of Finance, a position which effectively gives him regulatory powers over his family company now as a Minister of the crown.  Yet the maximum penalty under the act? $500.00 .

The truth is that the Minister’s ethical screen approach appears to have failed,  but the list of not following the rules does not end there.

Ministers are required to disclose all their assets to the Ethics Commissioner.  Of course, Minister Morneau “forgot” about that villa in France and the corporation that owns it.  We also know that he has many more numbered companies.  What they are, what they hold, and why there are so many still remains a mystery.  We can only go on faith that they are in compliance despite the other demonstrated lapses on the ones we know of.

I will say that I do not believe that Morneau is motivated by greed, profit, or deception. I have yet to meet many people in public life who are motivated by those things at the senior level, regardless of partisanship.  But we do need to ask ourselves if we can continue to rely on proactive disclosure by the members themselves, without proactive investigation, to ensure compliance.  With a maximum penalty of $500, the temptation to forget, misrepresent, or have a failed ethical screen is just too great.  It is not a significant enough deterrent to stop willfully bad behaviour if it were to arise. 

So how do we fix it?

We don’t have to look far for inspiration.  The Lobby Commissioner rules, set up by the previous government, are the strongest in Canada, and amongst the strongest in the world.  Now, anyone who knows me knows full well my frustration with the administration of the rules there, but the intent is something the government can look at.

For example, the Lobby Commissioner can find a lobbyist in breach of the Code for the “appearance” of a conflict with a member, while ethics rules require an actual conflict to find guilt.  Compare the $500 fine for an ethics breach to the lobbyist act penalties of $200,000 and up to two years in prison.  Why do we have much more significant penalties, including jail, for lobbyists but not politicians? Surely the politicians can affect more personal gain than a lobbyist.  Surely the public expects more from an elected official or Minister of the crown than a lobbyist.  Lobbyists have to proactively, publically, disclose all communications monthly in the interest of transparency.  Why should the politicians be different? If they refuse to put items into a blind trust, they should be publically disclosed.

Clearly ethics reform is needed.  Sadly, it is typically only the opposition, blue, red, or orange, who push for reform.  Partisans of all stripes lose the will to change the system once on the benches on the other side of the isle.

Second Reading Debate on The Cannabis Act

Debate on second reading C-45 Cannabis Act has begun

Yesterday in Ottawa we saw yet another milestone on the road to the potential legalization of cannabis for recreational use in Canada. Parliamentary procedural geeks recognize that while this is entitled “Second Reading” of the bill, this is the first formal debate on legalization. The debate, which started yesterday, encompasses 24 pages of text so far. While this will be tiny compared to what we will see at the end of the process, it does provide us with a first glimpse into where the battle lines will be drawn. 

Context

The words, phases, and attacks employed by each of the three main parties in Ottawa gives us an idea on where this debate will be headed for the remainder of its time in the House of Commons and into committee hearings. Industry participants would be well advised to study these attacks now in order to properly respond to them as the debate ventures into the media, mainstream discussions with Canadians, and also in any committee hearings that they are asked to participate in. It is of the utmost importance that the cannabis industry understands their audiences as they move into the public debate. 

Liberal Party of Canada – Supports the Bill

Debate was started by the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould, the government sponsor of Bill C-45 as is tradition. While the Minister’s speech is predictable in its support for the bill, the commentary she provided did give us some additional confirmation of how the government views the issue, and some of the concerns identified by the sector.

First, at the risk of being repetitive, the Minister began her remarks by restating the intent of the bill. It is important to remember that this bill is not about a “wild west” of cannabis consumption. The government’s intent is to restrict access to cannabis, not enhance it. The Minister’s second sentence of her comments emphasized this when she said:

“The bill proposes a framework to restrict and strictly regulate access to cannabis in order to protect the health and safety of Canadians, to keep cannabis out of the hands of young people, and to keep the profits out of the hands of criminals.”

She follows that up closely by stating that “in many cases, it is easier for kids to buy cannabis than cigarettes or a bottle of beer”. I believe it is important for the sector to recognize that while producers and activists alike may cheer the legislation, the root intent is much different than what they may assume.

Industry participants, especially those with emerging consumer brands, will be happy to see some of the Minister’s comments on advertising and promotions. Many industry insiders were quite concerned to see the Task Force recommendations which called for plain packaging and a prohibition on marketing and promotions. Over the past number of months, I have been sharing my belief that this would be different when the program eventually rolled out with promotions and brands allowed in age of majority settings. 

The Minister has clearly agreed. She went so far as to state:

    “Bill C-45 would allow cannabis producers to promote their brands and provide information about their products, but only where young persons would not be exposed to it. These limits are reasonable. They would allow adult consumers to make informed decisions, but they respond to the greater risks cannabis poses for young people”

I believe that this is an indication that the government has heard the concerns of the industry and has agreed that customers need brands to differentiate from the black market, encourage customer education, and allow for easy differentiation between different companies with similar strains. In my opinion, this is a significant and positive comment on the record from the Minister. 

The Minister makes other commentary on:

• Medical vs Recreational regimes – “initially maintain a separate medical access framework to support patients”
• Products allowed for sale – “able to purchase dried or fresh cannabis or cannabis oil” and further that edibles would be allowed at a later date once a regulatory regime for their production is created.
• Those aged 12-18 would face Youth Justice Act charges for possession for under five grams, which seems to be an attack for the Conservatives.

Conservative Party of Canada – Against the bill

Not surprisingly, the Conservative Party of Canada is against the legislation for a variety of reasons. First up for the Conservative Party was the former Minister of Justice (and other posts) Rob Nicholson. Mr. Nicholson focuses his attacks on the bill around a few key points including:

• Age of consumption with his preference being 25 years of age
• Home grow of 4 plants
• Youth access up to 5 grams of dried cannabis
• Impaired driving
• Edibles

Sector participants would be wise to pay attention to the Conservative party’s attacks on the bill specifically around the four plant allotment for home growth, and the issue of those under 18 and the 5 gram limit as that is where the Conservative’s focused their discussion. 

Mr. Nicholson, and his colleague from the Conservative Party Ms. Gladu (Sarnia-Lambton) took particular aim at the 5 grams limit for those under 18. To be clear, the proposed legislation indicates that no one under 18 can have cannabis legally, but if an individual is found to have cannabis under 5 grams and they are under 18, they would face Youth Justice Act charges which would avoid them having a criminal record for life. The Conservatives seem to believe that this is the equivalent of allowing children as young as 12 to posses 5 grams which they say is akin to 10 joints. The Conservatives are forceful in their debate that this is a critical flaw of the legislation. In fact, Ms. Gladu went so far in her comment to suggest that this bill “would probably become the drug mules at the school” when coupled with the ability for people to grow four plants at home. 

The Conservatives are also attacking home grow with both Ms. Gladu and Mr. Nicholson both using the same phrases in their speeches saying that home grow will put cannabis in the hands of kids. Mr. Nicholson repeatedly asserted that these plants would be grown at home “in the kitchen” which gives kids access. The phrase here is important and it is repeated often. They believe that the four plants, up to a meter high, would grow in the kitchen and therefore put cannabis into the hands of kids rather than remove it:

“Unlike prescription pills, which people can put away, marijuana plants, by definition, have to be out in the open. I cannot imagine any easier way for children to get hold of marijuana than when their parents are starting to grow it in the kitchen.”

Mr. Nicholson closes one of his replies in the debate with a call to amend the legislation which would have the effect of killing the bill outright.

New Democratic Party of Canada – Supports the bill in principle

The NDP had Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan-Malahat-Langford) speak on the bill. The NDP focused most of their commentary on the need for decriminalization of cannabis now so that people do not have criminal records for life for the consumption of a soon to be legal product. 

The member spoke intelligently on the age restrictions and the effort to balance medical reports with real world consumption patterns and the fact that 18 affords people the vote, military service, and other adult decisions. The NDP does take issue with the heavy penalties for those selling to individuals under 18. He questions if 14 years is too heavy handed and he cites that this is the same penalty for producing child pornography and attempting to leave Canada to commit terrorism. Mr. MacGregor would prefer to leave this to the discretion of judges.

Interesting that Mr. Macgregor believes that the government is over emphasizing the role of  organized crime in marijuana production which could indicate their support for even less regulations on cannabis than what the government suggests.

Summary

While debate has just begun, with hours left to go, we now have an indication of where the battle lines will be drawn on this legislation. While support and objection have lined up in a predictable way, the words and phases used in those positions are valuable to understand for those interested in the industry as we move forward.

Thats Not Marketing

Marketing, Public Affairs, and a Book Review of Shopping For Votes

This Article origionally appeared in Policy Options Magazine

Are you a Tim Hortons Canadian or a Starbucks drinker? Do you see yourself as a voter, a consumer or a taxpayer? Where do you land in the Phineas T. Barnum versus John Powers debate? Does your lifestyle make you a ”Zoe” or a ”Dougie”?

This is the grammar of modern marketing and advertising, and Susan Delacourt tells us that the masterminds of Canadian political parties care more about which category to slot us into than about how we see the issues of the day. Or apparently that’s how the most successful parties operate. In Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them, Delacourt draws from her years of daily reporting on Canada’s politicians and their advisers to argue that consumer marketing has infiltrated our politics, turning democracy’s once-lofty regard for the electorate into nothing more than a vision of consumers to be manipulated.

It is a terrific look behind the curtain at how political parties now operate and sell themselves. Delacourt is not merely focused on how present-day politics employ the tools of marketing. She tells us how we got here, taking us through the evolution of how marketing has found its way to the very heart of Canadian politics. Shopping for Votesfittingly starts in the years following the Second World War: Delacourt cites Mackenzie King as being the first to micro-target votes with the introduction of the baby bonus system.

She then maps the rise in the consumer culture against the track records of successful political parties, from the role of Toronto ad men like Martin Goldfarb and Keith Davey in the dominance of the federal Liberal Party from the mid-’60s to mid-’80s, to the emergence of the Conservative Big Blue Machine in Ontario that found its own marketing gurus in Dalton Camp and Norman Atkins. Every technological advance or new theory on how to get inside voters’ heads has precipitated a generational struggle within the parties themselves, pitting an old guard distrustful of new techniques against the younger evangelists of new possibilities (well chronicled in Delacourt’s portrait of Allan Gregg’s disruption of the federal Conservatives’ operation). And it leads eventually to the two young stars of the current Conservative government, Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney, who she says have marrieda sophisticated, and to Delacourt an overly cynical, understanding of political marketing to the raw power of Reform’s western populism.

Delacourt sees a link between declining voter engagement and this rise in the marketing world’s penetration of politics. Her thesis sets up a chicken-and-egg debate for the reader: Has the growth of marketing techniques led to a backlash and disgust with politics that drives down voter turnout? Or have voters, disillusioned by what politics has delivered, distracted by cheap entertainment or too busy to care, simply made marketing more important to parties struggling to capture what’s left?

Delacourt pulls her reader in all directions on this debate until the dying pages of the book, when she sides with those who blame marketing for our democratic woes. To make her argument, she singles out the approach of Harper’s Conservatives and their focus on reaching the crucial 10 percent of the population that can be encouraged to turn out to vote but that doesn’t follow the news and may therefore be less familiar with issues. This is where marketing becomes vital, she writes. This minority of Canadians that can hold the key to winning elections is best reached through blunt pitches via television advertising or direct mail.

To make her point, Delacourt cites the work of Patrick Muttart, a former deputy chief of staff to Harper who brought new political techniques to chase votes from this unsophisticated electorate. "What are you supposed to do when you are down to the final weeks of the campaign and you are competing for the attention of the least informed, the least engaged and the least intense voters who are going to decide the outcome of an election campaign?” she quotes Muttart as saying. "This is why political marketers have to be so blunt and so direct.”

To Delacourt, this is the wickedness of marketing as applied to politics, a sign of the sickness of our democracy. If only politics had not descended to such gutter tactics, she argues, voters would not be turned off and would still be showing up at the polls to vote.

Her attack betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how political parties communicate with the public.  What Delacourt sees, and decries,  is not marketing. What political parties undertake is, more precisely, public affairs communications.

This is not semantics. In practice, the difference is critical. Without question the current public affairs practitioner has learned from the marketer, employing some of the same tools of the trade, such as focus groups. But the actions of the modern political machine are different and more precise than those of marketing. While marketers and public affairs professionals would both use a screwdriver, the marketers would use a flathead and the public affairs professionals, a Phillips.

As public affairs practitioners (disclosure: our company once employed Patrick Muttart), we tend to shun the marketing approach that directs its messages where the masses are. Rather than trying to convert the masses, we focus on finding and engaging like-minded people.

If voters can be placed along bell curves, the middle bulge is where those who are undecided, ambivalent or disengaged reside. But public affairs practitioners are interested in the admittedly fewer people who fall at each end of the spectrum: let’s call them the ones on both edges of the curve those who are "with you” or "against you.” In politics, this is where the action is. Public affairs professionals and political parties home in on those in the "with you” band, using many of the same tools as marketers but with a message aimed at trying to get them to exercise that vote. To the public affairs professional, even if you have a product they want, why chase those in the disengaged, stay-at-home middle who are not going to vote?

Meanwhile, ever-more sophisticated voter tracking and the rise of social media have revolutionized how we can reach these groups. Swaths of data about voters and their preferences, previously too expensive to collect and analyze, are now available. With this information, micro-targeting becomes possible. Technology connects people, and we are able to identify and contact people in communities across Canada that were once ignored or abandoned as too hard to reach. The technology allows us to make cloth out of thread, turning what were once seen as atomized voters into a constituency.

The gum marketer is trying to sell more gum to a series of people in a territory. The public affairs practitioner is building a virtual territory for gum chewers to congregate in.

The big difference between marketing and public affairs is that marketers typically deal in messages that can be challenged. Hence they push lines like "Big Macs are better than Whoppers because our beef is better.” Or "Whoppers are better than Big Macs because our beef is fresher and antibiotic free.” But public affairs practitioners are trying not simply to change voter choice within a category, but to destroy the whole category itself. The public affairs approach is to say, "Eating beef will kill you.” Or, as the Liberals found out, "He didn’t come back for you.”

For this reason, political operatives focus on motivation over choice. Using focus groups (a tool admittedly swiped from marketers), public affairs practitioners search to understand what drives voters. This enables them to choose words, either for or against a cause, to see what works with the target. It may well surprise readers of Shopping for Votes to learn that the Conservatives did not even bother with national polls after 2005 but rather just looked at their targeted constituencies and regular focus group sessions on the intangible plane of emotions and values. (This tidbit comes to Delacourt from Muttart, who, we narcissistically like to think, learned that approach here.)

With election campaigns being short compared with product launches, and with so many messages muddling our daily lives, is it any wonder that political advertising has to jump up and smack the viewer? This isn’t a defence of the morality of negative advertising. But as Delacourt correctly points out, the appropriate question is not whether the voter likes an ad, but rather what message they take away from it.

Delacourt is bang on when she ascribes our short attention spans to a rapid, media-driven consumption culture. Perhaps more people would be interested in politics and would therefore vote more if they weren’t so obsessed by buying stuff. But she fails to examine whether our embarrassingly low election turnouts would be even worse if political parties did not use these techniques to reach people the way they want to be reached. The mass appeal strategies of old targeted a massive middle ground of voters who now consistently say they are indifferent to politics. But social media affords political parties a chance to appeal directly to people who, research shows, may be open to a pitch on the issues.

How is the latter not serving democracy?

Mackenzie King knew that. He looked for needs within that segment of the population he needed to win power, those soldiers coming home and factory women now out of work, and served them with the baby bonus. They responded by giving him their vote. What King understood then, even without the benefits of all the data we have at our fingertips today, is that voters must be offered a reason to show up at the ballot box. That’s not marketing. That’s politics.